#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…
anthro in the news 6/25/18
How about gun control for the military and/or racist police? Credit: PosterBoy/Flickr police killings: collateral damage National Public Radio (U.S.) reported on a study published in The Lancet…
Marx on India in 1857
Marx writes to document the outrages committed by the British in retaliation for the uprising in 1857: “The Punjaub is declared to be quiet, but at the same…
Sirpa Tenhunen on her new book, A Village Goes Mobile
h https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-village-goes-mobile-9780190630270 Interview by Ilana Gershon Ilana Gershon: What is so fascinating about A Village Goes Mobile is how effectively you use yo…
Book Review: Social Theory Now edited by Claudio E. Benzecry, Monika Krause and Issac A. Reed
With Social Theory Now, editors Claudio E. Benzecry, Monika Krause and Issac A. Reed bring together contributors to provide an outlook on the current state of social theory and…
Exploring multiplicity: Photographing and blogging as method
Partial truths: Blogging as research method – What do our methods actually do if they cannot depict reality as it is? This is not a new question in…
Hongwei Bao, “Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China” (NIAS Press, 2018)
Hongwei Bao’s book is a thoughtful exploration of gay identity and queer activism in China. This work stems from the term and identity tongzhi, which means “comrade” and in…
Guest Post: To Talk Like Them
[Footnotes is pleased to welcome the following guest post by Tian An Wong, a professor of Mathematics with an affinity for social theory. This post was originally published…
Aglaja Przyborski über Identitätsnormen, „supernormale Helden“, Bild und Repräsentation sowie die Möglichkeiten der soziologischen Analyse
Aglaja Przyborski hat ihr Psychologiestudium mit der Motivation, Beraterin und Psychotherapeutin zu werden begonnen, aber auch mit der Idee empirische Zugänge zum Menschen zu finden, die nicht in…
Ep. #16 The costs of efficiency: Cris Shore talks neoliberalism in the public sector
“Rather than always studying poor, peripheral peasants, pastoralists, and fishermen, let’s turn the critical gaze of our discipline, which we do so well, let’s pivot it round like…
Spotlight: Yagnamurti Shaligram
Yagnamurti Shaligram Yajna (or conversely, Yagna) literally translates as “sacrifice, worship, or…
What did Friedrich Engels have to say about Australia?
there was a series that Ben and Melitta used to include in Rabelais, along such lines – what did Lenin think of the Labor Party etc., I wish…
Verano de investigación en la UADY
En 2017 Hugo Alberto Aguilar Velasco, estudiante de licenciatura en psicología de la Universidad de Guadalajara, estuvo trabajando conmigo durante el Verano de la Investigación Científica, ayudándome …
Nacirema Thinking
Body Ritual Among the Nacirema Horace Miner’s “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” has endured as a first-day favorite for Introduction to Anthropology courses, and is read far beyond…