Stories of Change Among the Clackamas at Grand Ronde
The Clackamas Come to Grand Ronde Reservation Preparing to Leave The Clackamas are addressed in letters as living in small encampments near Oregon City. They likely had a…
Why Political Ambiguity Appeals to the Masses
Participants in the Shetkari Sanghatana movement ardently supported a message that allowed for a wide variety of interpretations. Michael Youngblood On a December day in 1996, close to…
Call For Papers: What’s Next in Food Studies?
Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies invites submissions for a special issue (to be published in May 2019) on ‘What’s Next in Food Studies.’ Globally, food studies…
The Power and Precarity of Global Health Partnerships by Clare Herrick
A recent issue of Medicine Anthropology Theory devoted to the critique of global health partnerships (GHPs) raises a question of great significance to many Somatosphere readers: ‘In real world…
Fiona Murphy: When gadflies become horses: On the unlikelihood of ethical critique from the academy
Something smells of bullshit. It has for a long time. Caught in the spectacular entanglements of the neoliberal university, academic work is being actively “bullshitized.” Audit cultures, the…
Paula Serafini, “Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism” (Routledge, 2018)
How can art change the world? In Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism (Routledge, 2018), Paula Serafini, a Research Associate at the University of Leicester’s CAMEo Research Institut……
Anthropology can give designers the tools to do better their job
Hugo Rocha is a graphic designer with an MBA in marketing. Even though he told me that nowadays he thinks design shouldn’t really fit with marketing. For him,…
反对声音自然主义 | Against Sonic Naturalism
At the end of last year, I had the privilege to be part of the best academic conference ever – full spoilers, it’s called Tuning Speculation, it’s broadly…
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Forgotten Violence against Backpackers in Australia
While backpackers extensively contribute to the national economy as tourists and workers, they are only here on a short-term basis. Being temporary non-citizens there is less emotional investment…
Let’s Do This Together: A Cooperative Vision for Open Access
by Marcel LaFlamme, Dominic Boyer, Kirsten Bell, Alberto Corsín Jiménez, Christopher Kelty, and John Willinsky Over the past two weeks, public allegations of abuse at the (formerly) open-access journa…
History tick tock
A somewhat strange take on the watch mechanism metaphor for history, and on village structure, from K.N.Chaudhuri. Asia Before Europe (explaining Braudel).
#Review: Mobile Secrets
Information and communications technology (ICT) has been hailed as the holy grail of “transformational development”, the source of growing innovations (such as the sending of remittances through mobil…
Getting to the Bottom of Hanger
It turns out there is truth in the idea that when you’re hungry, you just aren’t yourself. — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
We Need to Talk About “Gun Violence”: Reflections on Terminology and Contexts of Violence by Joe Anderson
Among the many political challenges of our time, gun violence in America has emerged as one of the most divisive. A retreat into partisan communities prevents us from…
Populations, Race, and The Sorites Paradox
The sorites paradox (also called the paradox of the heap) refers to a particular logical contradiction that arises from the analysis of vague terms (Sainsbury, 2009). Terms like…
The Role of Scientific Discourse in Chile’s Trans Rights Movement
También disponible en español aquí. On June 18, 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the removal of “transsexuality” (a term based on psychiatric diagnosis and maligned by…
The Age of Cultured Machines
Two robots traverse the desert floor. Explosions from a decades-old conflict have left a pockmarked and unstable territory, though many more improvised bombs lie concealed in its vast…
Don Kalb: HAU not: For David Graeber and the anthropological precariate
When HAU was launched, my grad students at Central European University were celebrating. Open access! Finally, a breach in the wall that separated the haves from the have-nots.…
Personalizing Access, Personalizing Praxis #hautalk
Anthropology trained us to identify systems of oppression, those “invisibilized” dimensions of culture that reek of prejudice, privilege, and disproportionate power dynamics. These are the very theore…
Not Safe Spaces: On Protest & Exclusion in DC Restaurants
David Beriss It seems like every social crisis gets played out, one way or another, in restaurants. Lately, a few people who work in the Trump administration have…
Inaugural Summer Institute for Department Leaders
Ed Liebow, Executive Director More than 40 department leaders (chairs and directors of graduate/undergraduate studies) came to Washington, DC last week for two days of intensive workshops in…
Memories of a Playing with Food in a West Coast Kitchen
by Jennifer Shutek Every religion has its origin myths and sacred texts; so, too, does my faith in the goodness of the kitchen. While I grew up in…