Vom Keller in die Welt der Kunst
Dr. Richard Kuba verwaltet die Felsbildsammlung des Frobenius-Instituts und bringt die Bilder mit Ausstellungen ans Licht der Öffentlichkeit. Die prähistorische Kunst hatte auch großen Einfluss auf di…
The Happiness Fetish Revisited
In response to several surveys that attempt to quantify happiness, Ryan, Adam, and Aneil spend this episode of This Anthro Life exploring happiness through the lens of fetishism.…
We can’t recycle our way to ‘zero waste’
Why is recycling low on the waste hierarchy?
Chaotic borderlands: Libya’s porous borders after Qadhafi
Porous borders What has happened on Libya’s borders in recent years? Here are some examples: During the insurgency and civil war in Mali in 2011 and 2012, weapons…
Historicizing concepts in refugee history
Historicizing past events is a double bind. It requires us to understand our object of interest in historical context, both in its contemporary situation and in the chronological…
Hero or Outlaw: How Archetypes Can Tell A Brand Story
In 2001, The Hero and The Outlaw introduced the branding world to the use of archetypes. The book reminds us that humans relate to stories with strong characters,…
A Mon Carrying Basket from Myanmar
Between November 1963 and August 1964, William C. Sturtevant and Theda Maw Sturtevant pursued ethnographic field research in Burma (now Myanmar) with support from the (U.S.) National Science…
Alexander Reshetov and the History of Russian Ethnography
Alexander Mikhailovich Reshetov (1932–2009) was a prominent Russian anthropologist and historian of anthropology. He authored more than 500 scientific publications dedicated to the culture of East an…
A Dyak Carrying Basket
The Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution holds a large ethnographic collection from Maritime Southeast Asia. This Dyak basket was collected not long …
A Japanese Packbasket
Here I present another of the Asian packbaskets that I examined in the ethnology collections of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. (See…
Links & Contents I Liked 242
Hi all, Did I mention that ‘summer’ has so far passed by the South of Sweden and I am finishing this review on a November-like gloomy afternoon…anyway, there…
An Ifugao Packbasket from Northern Luzon, Philippines
In connection with ongoing research on work baskets in the Southwestern provinces of China, I spent some time during the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology looking comparatively at…
“To Peace, Because the Awful Alternative is the End of All Life”: Build Bomb–Explore Space(s)–Save World! (Part 2)
This two-part post is a collaborative authorship between Taylor R. Genovese and Martin Pfeiffer, a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. For more on…
Wisdom Without a Country
In the oasis of his studio, Constantin Brâncuși revolutionized sculpture by drawing out the “being that is within matter”—the cosmic essence or spirit that exists underneath the surface.…
Do we even need to define ethnographic film?
Before this year I never felt the need to come up with a clear definition for what counts as an “ethnographic film.” Constructing better pigeonholes only seems to…
Anthropology in a Tag Line
Anthros…tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Question: Oh, you’re an Anthropologist? So, you dig up bones, right? Answer: Well, some anthropologists excavate bones and others work…
Schizophrenia’s Tangled Roots
Symptoms of schizophrenia and related disorders likely arise from a perplexing interplay of social, environmental, psychological, and biological factors. Apfelsaft123/Flickr Jacqui Dillon…
Surfing vs. the commodification of everything
Tom Curren, logo-free, 1991. Photography by Tom Servais. Do you ever think about the first time a concept really stuck for you? Not the first time you heard…
A Peak at Two “Miao Albums” with a Group of SIMA Colleagues
Working with the graduate students participating in the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology is a pleasure. The students who are attending in order to gain skills for their…
Is History Over? How Can Power be Soft? Ask Ulf Hannerz
The end of history The clash of civilizations The coming anarchy Soft power We’ve all heard these trendy mottos, and most of us have probably cringed. Anthropologists…