Picking a Bone with Evolutionary Essentialism
There is more to our evolutionary history than a single origin in Africa. In the past year, at least four fossil finds have been billed as overturning the…
Category: English
Through Dappled Light
Homo naledi hints at the wonders of what we have yet to learn about human evolution. A common teaching analogy in paleoanthropology is that of the drunk looking…
Great Ape Haters
Isaiah Nengo on racist tweets, evolutionary misconceptions, and his ancient ape skull discovery. In a tweet from 2013, Roseanne Barr called former United Nations National Security Advisor Susan…
‘Inclusive WASH’ – Contested assumptions about bodies and personhood in a Ugandan refugee settlement
As I skimmed through the first pages of the shiny brochure of the ‘Inclusive WASH’ project, I suddenly recognized some of the people that the leaflet depicted in…
Looking South Toward Granada
The Alhambra (Photo by Paul Stoller) There has been much recent discussion about structural inequalities in the academy—especially in anthropology. In European and North American anthropology there …
Book Review: Callous Objects: Designs Against the Homeless by Robert Rosenberger
In Callous Objects: Designs Against the Homeless, Robert Rosenberger explores the growth of ‘hostile architecture’ and reflects on what it suggests about society’s attitudes towards …
The Secret Life of Objects: Strategies for Telling New Stories in Exhibitions #livesofobjects
You can find the entire cosmos lurking in its least remarkable objects – Wislawa Szymborska, Polish poet It’s 2013 and I am poring over the Ethnographic Collection of the…
The Value of Anthropology: My Story
Dr. Agustín Fuentes argues that it is human creativity that is the defining characteristic of our species ( see my review of The Creative Spark here: Book Review- The Creative…
Help make TFS better and WIN!
It’s our 1st birthday in 2 weeks time (nooo, say what?? Where did that year go?) and a birthday is always a good time to take stock. Are…
Ankunfts-, Entscheidungs- und Rückführungszentren (AnkER-Zentren) – Erwartungen und kritische Bestandsaufnahme
von Miriam Schader, Tim Rohmann und Sybille Münch Seit August 2018 läuft die Pilotphase der zentralen Aufnahme-, Entscheidungs- und Rückführungseinrichtungen (AnKER-Zentren), die sich an den be…
Book Review: Welfare, Inequality and Social Citizenship: Deprivation and Affluence in Austerity Britain by Daniel Edmiston
In Welfare, Inequality and Social Citizenship: Deprivation and Affluence in Austerity Britain, Daniel Edmiston offers insight into how austerity and inequality impact upon citizen identities, showing …
The fool with the watering can, or asynchronous time travelling by Jeannette Pols
One of the most bewildering and fascinating things about spending time with people with dementia is that they can rapidly travel through time. This was most clear with…
Six photos of my father at 91 by Alessandro Duranti
I have chosen to tell a story based on six photographs I took of my father, Ivio Duranti (1918-2009) in the last year of his life. He was…
Re-enacting memories by Elinor Ochs
One way to ‘think with dementia’ is to phenomenologically shift from ‘memory’ to ‘remembering’ and to mine ‘remembering’ for its qualities and potentialities as socio-culturally limned experience. Whe…
“I do want euthanasia, but not now.” Timing a request for euthanasia with dementia in the Netherlands by Natashe Lemos Dekker
Sitting on orange seats in the corridor, Ms Verbeek, her niece Hannie and I are waiting for the general practitioner. Ms Verbeek seems a little restless and is…
Folding time: walk-talking joint moments in the nursing home by Laura Vermeulen
We knew each other from the drop-in centre. Aspects of our daily life concerns had been shared. ‘We’ were drop-in centre participants: the majority had been diagnosed with…
Steven Roberts, “Young Working-Class Men in Transition” (Routledge, 2018)
How do young working-class men experience the transition to adulthood? In his new book Young Working-Class Men in Transition (Routledge, 2018), Steven Roberts talks directly to young men…
Refraction of time by Jeannette Pols
On a Thursday evening, five men gather around a dinner table. Their host, a scientist from Surrey, England, has left them a note telling them to begin eating…
The Dirt
To keep practitioners up-to-date, Discard Studies publishes The Dirt, a monthly compilation of recent publications, positions, opportunities, and calls for proposals in the field.
The Un(der)revealed Relations of Things in Museums: an introduction #livesofobjects
I was at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam one fall afternoon when I decided to take a shortcut through the exhibition from the library to my office. To take…
Att tala om väder
Förra veckan infann sig hösten i Åbo. Och den kom med besked, med ett otroligt åskväder som varade i timmar. Nästa morgon läste jag på sociala medier hur…
The Social Credit System and Governmentality in China by Mario Tümmler
This essay analyses the Chinese Social Credit System regarding its effects on governmentality. In that, it goes beyond the predominant discussion which focuses only on the coercive capabilities…