The Skeletons in the Museum Closet
Museums are full of wonderful things. From the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian Institution’s natural history museum to the Folsom point at the Denver Museum of Nature &…
HAU’s Hauntings
How does the genre of weird fiction provide the destabilizing framework for the future of HAUtalk? The HAU controversy is a dense teratoma,[1] a complicated intermingling of issues…
An Anthropologist Confronts the Culture of Hate
The Wall of Terror in Berlin, Gestapo and SS Headquarters (Photo by Paul Stoller) Even though I was long ago the object of anti-Semitic scorn and abuse, I…
Adam Reich and Peter Bearman, “Working for Respect: Community and Conflict at Walmart” (Columbia UP, 2018)
When we hear about the “future of work” today we tend to think about different forms of automation and artificial intelligence—technological innovations that will make some jobs easier…
Ett vägmärke igen – privata och familjära traditioner
Då man reser är det inte ovanligt att man indelar restiden i portionsbitar som gör att längre sträckor känns mer uthärdliga att färdas. Lite som man under året…
Desperately Seeking Futurity: Precarity and the Desire(s) of Higher Education Participation
by Matthew Clark Discourses on graduate employability have increasingly gained a prominent position in higher education (HE). Although a bemoaned topic for many and a source of melancholic…
Konsum und Verhalten in postmaterialistischen Gesellschaften – Unsere 20. Ausgabe des Soziologiemagazins ist erschienen
Liebe Leser_innen, Wir, die Redaktion des Soziologiemagazins, konsumieren zahlreiche Dinge im Zuge jeder Heftentstehung. Sei es der fair gehandelte Kaffee, den wir während des Lektorats von Texten kon…
“Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded” (2014): Reversing Empire and the 1980s’ Drug War
Miami, and what became a Miami aesthetic, was probably one of the most distinctive and memorable features of the 1980s in North America. Hit shows like Miami Vice…
Clearing the Land and Making all Indians Good: The Massacre at Bear River, Utah
In 1863, the California Volunteers under Colonel Patrick E. Connor (3rd Volunteer Regiment, California Cavalry), massacred either 300 or three thousand Ute (Shoshone) Indians in Cash Valley…
Ep. #25: Zombie nouns, meaningful objects, biopolitics in politics, and value trials: This month on TFS
This month Julia (0:59), starts us off with a discussion about zombie nouns – non-nouns that have been turned into nouns – such as sociality, relationality, neoliberalisation, and…
Listmania: A Few Thoughts on One Page From a 6,500 Cubic Feet Collection
For much of my work, archival records provide important context for interpreting the documents I receive under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This context takes different forms…
Ein langes Wochenende in Peking – Teil 2
Tag 2: “Ancient Secret Great Wall Tour” – Chinesische Mauer zwischen Badaling und Mutianyu Um 7:30 Uhr, nach einem Frühstück im Hostel, wurde unsere Gruppe (ca. 20 Leute)…
Why Doesn’t Diversity Training Work?
Diversity training in both academia and business has seen limited success at best. Photo courtesy of publicdomainpictures.net The Challenge for Industry and Academia Uncommon Sense Starbucks’ deci…
Banksy’s Donkey
By Peter Versteeg In 2007 street artist Banksy organized a project called Santa’s Ghetto in the city of Bethlehem, where international artists would work on the (‘security’ or…
Degrowth: A Call for Radical Abundance
*Note: I expanded this post into a full article, published in Real World Economic Review in 2019. See here. When orthodox economists first encounter the idea of…
How Halloween Has Traveled the Globe
A young girl attends a Día de Muertos celebration in Mexico dressed in a Halloween costume. Peter Langer/Getty Images Wendy Fonarow arrived in Mexico City late in October…
Links & Contents I Liked 298
Hi all, This week I needed to take a little break from blogging-but there’s always time for a great weekly link review! Development news: You saw the Congo…
Book and Paper Prize Winners!
The Association for Political and Legal Anthropology is pleased to announce the winners of this year’s Book Prize and Graduate Student Paper Prize competitions. Join us at the…
Why Are So Many Guatemalans Migrating to the U.S.?
On May 23, a bystander filmed 20-year-old Claudia Patricia Gómez González after a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot her in the head. The young woman had recently crossed…
„Nicht-Arbeiten? Zwischen Nichtstun und ‚Sozialschmarotzer‘“
Studentische Forschungsergebnisse zum Anhören „Je mehr auch die geistige Arbeit sich dem traditions- und geschmacklosen, gewaltsamen Industriebetrieb assimilierte, und je eifriger Wissenschaft und Sch…
Hello, It’s Me
My blog has been just about dead the past couple years, for one reason or another and then another (#Becauselife). I’ve occasionally posted a quick update here and…
Neuer Vorstand des RfM
Pressemitteilung vom 26. Oktober 2018 Neue Impulse für die Migrationsgesellschaft Der Rat für Migration hat seit Oktober 2018 einen neuen Vorstand. Bildungsexpertin Yasemin Karakaşoğlu, Professorin fü…
Migrant sex worker in a Thai brothel: Le Carré’s The Secret Pilgrim
I collect well-styled and informative descriptions of sex-industry settings in novels, here John le Carré’s 1990 The Secret Pilgrim. Fiction can transmit far more of the atmosphere and…
Gary Alan Fine, “Talking Art: The Culture of Practice and the Practice of Culture in MFA Education” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
Most people have heard of the Masters of Fine Arts–“MFA”–degree, but few know about the grueling process one must undergo to complete one. In Talking Art: The Culture of…