It’s the Data, Stupid: What Elsevier’s purchase of SSRN also means
On Tuesday May 17, 2016, SSRN announced that it was being acquired by Elsevier. SSRN, the Social Sciences Research Network, is a widely used repository of scholarly articles…
Europe’s Destructive Spirals of Distrust
On February 6, 2016, thousands of people protested the immigration of Muslims, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and other cities across Europe. Peter Dejong/AP Photo Controversies around minori…
3 Tips for Finishing Up Fieldwork
There is no easy end to fieldwork. Our job as anthropologists is to turn a slice of normal …
3 Tips for Finishing Up Fieldwork
There is no easy end to fieldwork. Our job as anthropologists is to turn a slice of normal …
3 Tips for Finishing Up Fieldwork
There is no easy end to fieldwork. Our job as anthropologists is to turn a slice of normal life into a story, and stories generally require beginnings, mi…
The reception and consumption of telenovelas in Senegal
This is a fourth set of notes under the broad theme of media and change in preparation for the volume Postill, J., E. Ardevol and S. Tenhunen (eds.)…
3 Tips for Finishing Up Fieldwork
There is no easy end to fieldwork. Our job as anthropologists is to turn a slice of normal …
Writing from research online
Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC) RMIT University, Melbourne PhD Community Writing Group 2 25 May 2016 Convener: Jolynna Sinanan This month, John Postill will lead the writing group…
Arctic Professorship, Finland, for an anthropologist?
Dear readers, belown seems to be a really promising job opening. For our community of Arctic Anthropologists, of course we would be most interested in getting as many…
A Bibliography for Teaching Flint
This bibliography is designed for professors who want to “teach Flint” in their classrooms. The Flint, Michigan water crisis is an extreme but quintessential case study that shows…
Manufacturing neglect: What happens to drugs once the epidemic has passed? by Jeremy Greene
We like to think that drugs help put an end to disease, although in the aggregate this is seldom the case. However many individual infections and infestations might…
Development tourism without adult supervision-Reflections on Aftenposten’s Sweatshop documentary
I just watched the second season of Sweatshop, a documentary produced for the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten (with English subtitles). Four Norwegian fashion bloggers continue their investigation int…
#Review: The Politics of Humanitarianism: Power, Ideology and Aid
Humanitarianism is a chimera, arguably an infection, but certainly an ethos and organising principle of our age that intersects with transformative moral-political modes of inquiry and praxis. This…
Beyoncé’s Anthropology of Labour
by Rebecca Prentice Last Sunday, the headline screamed: “Exposed: Sweatshop ‘Slaves’ Earning Just 44p an Hour Making ‘Empowering’ Beyoncé Clobber.” British tabloid newspaper The Sun claimed that Beyon…
Anthropology Boycott: Supporting BDS, Voting Against AAA proposal
After a long time thinking about it, I’ve decided that I support the BDS Movement for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel. But I plan to vote against…
Anthropology Boycott: Supporting BDS but Voting Against
After a long time thinking about it, I’ve decided that I support the BDS Movement for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel. But I plan to vote against…
Wofford College Commencement Address 2016
** On May 15, 2016, I had the honor of delivering the Commencement Address at Wofford College, the college I attended for my undergraduate degree. Here is the…
An Interview With Reviewers 1, 2, and 3
This is the third post in a sequence called Strange Rumblings in the Meritocracy. [What follows is an edited and condensed transcript of an interview I conducted with…
The Land of Lakes and Volcanoes . . . and a Canal
Anthropology and Nicaragua’s Interoceanic Canal The cab driver sized me (M. Petriello) up, “¿A dónde nos vamos?” (Where are we going?) he asked, assessing the fee and my…
The Nicaraguan Interoceanic Canal and Heritage Protection
Why consultations with Indigenous communities matter The construction of the Nicaragua Interoceanic Grand Canal has garnered only a sporadic interest in the news media, one that does not…
After the End of Disease: Rethinking the Epidemic Narrative by Dora Vargha
In conversations with people living with polio in Hungary, I often encountered members of the tight-knit community referring to themselves as “dinosaurs”. We are a breed that is…
HH-39: Why Good Science Doesn’t Need Eureka Moments
Dendrochronology—literally the study of tree time—is a multidisciplinary science that yields accurate and precisely dated information through the detailed analysis of growth rings in trees. Today, nea…
The Anthropology of the Built Environment: What Can Environmental Anthropology Learn from Infrastructure Studies (and Vice Versa)?
*A commentary on Part I of our Engagement thematic series, The Nature of Infrastructure. By Ashley Carse, Vanderbilt University § I am honored to have an opportunity to…
Under Surveillance: Islamophobia and Muslim Student Associations
In 2012, the Associated Press released a news report titled “NYPD monitored Muslim students all over Northeast.” In the article, we learn that the New York City police…