The Obsession with Death, But Fear of Dying
In my observation of society there has always been an obsession with death. Death is everywhere in pop culture from blazing articles on tabloid pages at the supermarket…
Claire Schmidt, “If You Don’t Laugh, You’ll Cry: The Occupational Humor of White Wisconsin Prison Workers” (U Wisconsin Press, 2017)
Claire Schmidt is not a prison worker, rather she is a folklorist and an Assistant Professor at Missouri Valley College. However, many members of her extended family in…
Book Review: Children and Media in India: Narratives of Class, Agency and Social Change by Shakuntala Banaji
In Children and Media in India: Narratives of Class, Agency and Social Change, Shakuntala Banaji draws on extensive fieldwork research to offer a rich and textured account of the place of…
Skåda i brännvin
Brännvin är gjort på säd eller potatis och förr även cellulosa, och har från och till varit både förbjudet och reglerat genom historien. Som många andra former av…
Death in the Spotlight
A look at what happens when the rich and famous die. Many of us are familiar with death whether it is someone close to us or a friend…
Is A Dystopian Consumer Future Already Here?
This blog post is actually an announcement….I’ve started a new chapter and a new blog, and I am calling it “Consuming Culture”. Here is a sneak peak with…
Blue binders of white donors: sorting race out in South African IVF by Tessa Moll
Miracle babies. The microscopic enchantments of embryos. The image of a woman holding that much-desired infant. In vitro fertilization, or IVF, is replete with awe-inducing imagery, often bordering…
Invisible Lines, Sacrificial Children and Touchy Subjects: Ethics in Psychiatric Anthropology
As I now write up my data, I’m representing people that I can no longer consult. I can only draw on the words they gave me and the…
Transcontinental Travel—2,000 Years Ago
Two thousand years ago, a sophisticated people lived in the rolling hills of the greater Mississippi River drainage in North America. Most of their sites are concentrated in…
Three Lies of Digital Ethnography
anthro{dendum} welcomes guest blogger Gabriele de Seta, contributing the final post in the Private Messages from the Field series edited by Crystal Abidin and Gabriele de Seta. Three Lies of…
„Wie ist es da bei euch in Deutschland mit den Flüchtlingen?“ – Wir Forschende als Informant_innen und unsere Verantwortung im Feld
Immer, wenn wir uns in unserem Forschungsfeld bewegen, verändern wir es unbewusst oder vielleicht manchmal auch bewusst. Inwieweit dadurch unsere „Ergebnisse“ verändert werden, muss von Fall zu Fall…
Funeral Traditions in Tana Toraja
Death is something that is unavoidable. Whether you have experienced the death of a close one or have yet to do so, it is a universal experience. However,…
Book Review: The Neopopular Bubble: Speculating on ‘the People’ in Late Modern Democracy by Péter Csigó
In The Neopopular Bubble: Speculating on ‘the People’ in Late Modern Democracy, Péter Csigó argues that the financial crisis of 2008 has prompted the development of novel forms of sense-ma…
Schrijven – mooi en moeilijk
Door Ton Salman. Helder, goed onderbouwd, juiste bronvermelding, logisch opgebouwd, strak betoogd – we benadrukken het steeds: zó moet je schrijven. En dat geldt des te meer voor…
How archaeologists discovered an ancient Assyrian city – and lost it again
Turkey’s Ilisu dam will flood hundreds of ancient sites, including the city of Tušhan, but there is now a rich record of what will be lost It’s a…
How archaeologists discovered an ancient Assyrian city – and lost it again
Turkey’s Ilisu dam will flood hundreds of ancient sites, including the city of Tušhan, but there is now a rich record of what will be lost It’s a…
Robert Foxcurran, “Songs Upon the Rivers” (Baraka Books, 2016)
The story of the American West as it is often told typically involves Spanish, British, and American Empires struggling with Indigenous people for control of the vast territory…
Native People are Part of Oregon, and Are Not the Sons and Daughters of the Pioneers
In recent years, in the State of Oregon, there have been some positive signs that the state has finally accepted that there are Native people, Continue reading
what i’m working on: financial divisions in South Africa
Anne-Maria Makhulu explores systematic economic inequity in post-Apartheid South Africa Anne-Maria Makhulu Anne-Maria Makhulu is an associate professor of cultural anthropology and African and Africa…
Book Forum––Des Fitzgerald’s Tracing Autism: Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and the Affective Labor of Neuroscience by Todd Meyers
Des Fitzgerald writes of his book, Tracing Autism, “This is a book about scientists talking about their own practice, in tones that are beset by ambiguity, uncertainty, complexity,…
Migration as Clickbait
The demonization of young migrants and their families may be shocking, but these policies and practices are neither new nor surprising. On October 24, 2017, United States Customs…
DragNet: January 16 – January 31, 2018
Image from projects.bettergov.org DragNet is back, with a recap of a number articles that came up last month in our twitter feed. In World News, we have a…
Hurricane Bomb
By Rosa E. Ficek, University of Puerto Rico at Cayey § Nobody went outside. The outside world did not exist. There was no internet or television. The power had gone…