Grid girls and the Presidents Club: Women and sexist jobs
In 1995, my friend’s 17-year-old daughter Ermina was looking for work in Santiago, Chile. The obvious job available to her was posing in a short skirt beside cars…
Dick description: Writing sexy
Let’s start with an anthropological classic: Geertz’s thick description of the Balinese cock fight which sometimes reads like a dick description[1] (“uninventive obscenities” anticipated by Geertz 197…
Reading Not to Perish
The “publish or perish” imperative in academia is periodically debated in the newspapers. I think some distance should be taken from the arguments developed in such articles. Even…
Stephen Hawking, Dis-Incorporated
As Helene Mialet’s ethnography examines the role of his assistants, his students, and the media in the social construction of ‘Stephen Hawking: the great genius’, she also shows…
Marching for Science w/Valorie Aquino – This Anthro Life
On this episode of This Anthro Life, hosts Ryan Collins and Adam Gamwell are joined by TAL correspondent and guest host Astrid Countee and by a very special…
Ten Skeletons Bury a Right-Wing Talking Point
Anglo-Saxon mythologies and culture continue to enchant many who live in the U.K. Andrew Parsons/Getty Images This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republ…
Collapse and/or Authoritarianism
When will US Government Collapse? This post on “When will US Government Collapse?” is part of a series examining the possibility that rather than a slow, processual decline…
Hadas Weiss: Reflections on Moishe Postone’s legacy for anthropology
As anthropologists, we strive to speak up for the often marginalized and underprivileged populations we study. Aiming to do so rigorously by heeding the structures that create and…
Global Health Diagnostics: Workshop Summary by Shona Lee
On January 17th, 2018, participants from the UK, Europe, and India gathered in Edinburgh for “Investigating Diagnostic Devices in Global Health”, a workshop that also marked the launch…
Book Review: Fragile Conviction: Changing Ideological Landscapes in Urban Kyrgyzstan by Mathijs Pelkmans
In Fragile Conviction: Changing Ideological Landscapes in Urban Kyrgyzstan, Mathijs Pelkmans offers an ethnography of everyday life in a former mining town in southern Kyrgyzstan that focuses on the…
A Call for Blog Posts!
A Call for Blog Posts on Certain Timely Themes! We invite anthropologists of any persuasion to contribute to a dialogue about contemporary cultural issues! The current cultural conversation…
Around the Web Digest: March 2018
We got an inch of snow yesterday in Chicago and it’s going to be in the 70s tomorrow, so I don’t know how to dress anymore. However, this will not stop…
Do young people need their own law?
Our new Finnish-Russian co-financed research project “Live, Work or Leave? ” looks at young people’s understanding of wellbeing compared between Finland and Russia. So far one of the…
A Pretext for Plunder? Environmental Change and State-Led Redevelopment in the Peruvian Amazon
Gordon Ulmer, Sydney Silverstein, and I just published a short article (with lots of photos!) in the latest edition of Anthropology Today. It examines how projected environmental changes…
Curious Affection by Eben Kirksey
A gigantic balloon—pink and glistening—billows up overhead. It is like a womb, or a tumor, filling the huge atrium at the entrance to Patricia Piccinini’s biggest show to…
Unearthing Knowledge: Forensic Anthropology and Technologies of Memory
What is commonly known as the Colombian conflict refers to more than six decades of enduring violence. During these years, a number of peace agreements have been signed…
Book Review: Among Wolves: Ethnography and the Immersive Study of Power by Timothy Pachirat
In Among Wolves: Ethnography and the Immersive Study of Power, Timothy Pachirat offers an experimental contribution to scholarship on social science methodology. Written in the form of a play,…
Japonica Brown-Saracino, “How Places Make Us: Novel LBQ Identities in Four Small Cities” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
Many of us move to a new place at some point in our lives for a variety of reasons: for a job, to be with a partner, to…
Business Anthropology: a pending subject in Academia
In this article I will defend the incorporation of the “business anthropology” in the training plan of the different degrees and studies in Social Anthropology, either as a…
Business Anthropology: a pending subject in Academia
In this article I will defend the incorporation of the “business anthropology” in the training plan of the different degrees and studies in Social Anthropology, either as a…
Communicating anthropology: Blogging or scientific journals?
Blogs and bloggers have undermined a series of symbolic barriers that have limited the creation and expansion of knowledge and the development of our discipline in the past.…
Communicating anthropology: Blogging or scientific journals?
Blogs and bloggers have undermined a series of symbolic barriers that have limited the creation and expansion of knowledge and the development of our discipline in the past.…
Devil’s Lake and Salmon River Encampment
Devil’s Lake is in Lincoln City, in fact it is the only such lake and state park completely contained within a city in Oregon. The Continue reading
Sydney Ideas – Beyond Trafficking and Modern Slavery?
I am honoured to take part in a keynote panel this Wednesday at tge University of Sydney which will consider discourses of trafficking and modern slavery. With current…