The Partial Truths of Big Data
Last July I was using R to do some social network analysis of Instagram tags. After lots of package downloads, App Developer’s applications, etc., I couldn’t get it…
The Revolutionary Genius of Neanderthals
For the last dozen years or so, Geico Insurance has run commercials featuring Neanderthals in modern contexts. The story line varies, but the take-home point does not: Switching…
The Revolutionary Genius of Neanderthals
For the last dozen years or so, Geico Insurance has run commercials featuring Neanderthals in modern contexts. The story line varies, but the take-home point does not: Switching…
Trump’s Formulaic Twitter Insults
Every presidential transition also involves a change in the regime of language. This year the juxtaposition between the outgoing and incoming regimes is especially stark, something President Obama’s…
In the Journals – January 2017
Welcome back to In the Journals, a monthly review of just a fraction of the most recent academic research on security, crime, policing, and the law. I do…
Kate Crehan: Gramsci/Trump: Reflections from a fascist jail cell
Antonio Gramsci, condemned by Benito Mussolini to twenty years in prison, wrote his celebrated prison notebooks while sitting in a succession of fascist jails. He reflects on some…
The Anthropoliteia #BlackLivesMatter Syllabus, Week 15: Ashanté Reese on Zora Neale Hurston and Refusing One Dimensional Blackness
The editors of Anthropoliteia are happy to relaunch the second semester of an ongoing series The Anthropoliteia #BlackLivesMatterSyllabus Project, which will mobilize anthropological work as a pedagog…
Emojis + Hieroglyphics = Universal Language?
Will Emojis be the death of writing? Are emojis modern day hieroglyphs? Is the increased use of emojis in textual conversations a sign of the end of language as we…
#REVIEW: TRANSRACHEL. UNSETTING ANALOGIES WITH ROGERS BRUBAKER
In early 2015, I followed the case of Rachel Dolezal, the Spokane woman who attempted to pass as black. She went to considerable length to affirm her blackness…
Unsterbliche Ethnologie :)
+++ Bernhard STRECK erläutert das ethnologische Fachspezifikum, welches „sicher“ den Wandel der Zeiten überstehen wird: „…weil es weniger an theoretische Stringenz oder …
Democracy in Turkey (but not for Kurds)
No longer can we assume—if anthropologists ever comfortably did—that human rights and formal democracy are mutually constitutive. Worldwide we witness the rise of ostensibly democratically-elected lea…
anthro in the news 1/17/17
Friday the 13th fears The Apopka Voice (Florida) carried an article about the roots of fear surrounding the date of Friday the 13th. The article includes commentary from…
Digital ethnography
Digital ethnography – a selection of resources e-Seminars of the EASA Media Anthropology Network: Facebook as research field and research platform: http://www.media-anthropology.net/file/esemin…
Artificially Intelligent, Genuinely a Person
It’s difficult to overstate our society’s fascination with Artificial Intelligence (AI). From the millions of people who tuned in every week for the new HBO show WestWorld to…
How Hostels Have Turned Backpackers Into “Brokepackers”
Hostels used to be reliably inexpensive options for backpackers. That is no longer the case. Michelle Jones In May 2014, having recently completed my master’s degree in anthropology,…
Studium in Deutschland: Ein steiniger Weg
Ein Auslandsstudium gilt vielen als Krönung einer chinesischen Bildungsbiographie. Doch der Sinn eines Auslandsstudiums ist nicht unumstritten. Ein chinesischer Netizen berichtet von seinen Erfahrunge…
Egypt as “Securocratic” State
There’s a new paper from Maha Abdelrahman of the University of Cambridge entitled “Policing neoliberalism in Egypt: the continuing rise of the ‘securocratic’ state.” Abdelrahman join…
Around the Web Digest- January 8
To start this post off, I want to remind readers of our Read-In on January 20, 2017 where we will read Michel Foucault’s lecture eleven of “Society Must…
What FoodAnthro is Reading, January 17 Edition
A brief digest of food and nutrition-related items that caught our attention recently. Do you have items you think we should include? Send links and brief descriptions to…
#REVIEW: PAPER TIGER: LAW, BUREAUCRACY AND THE DEVELOPMENTAL STATE IN HIMALAYAN INDIA
Nayanika Mathur’s Paper Tiger. Law, Bureaucracy and the Developmental State in Himalayan India is an ethnography of the everyday life of law and bureaucracy. It reveals the complexity of…
Teaching Martin Luther King in Hawai‘i
Every Spring I teach “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in the class immediately following MLK day. Typically I focus on first and second year college students. I do…
Six Poems
A selection 1982-1999 Various places Refuge (Paresseux nerveux) A short history of knowledge Ishmael at the masthead (View from a balcony, Jamaica) One glad look Nuclear reaction i…