Rethinking BDS
A shorter version of this post will soon appear online as a podcast, in coordination with the motion put to a vote among the membership of the American…
J’Accuse: How Not to Have a Political Debate about BDS
Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions presents this essay by Lisa Rofel and Daniel Segal on the debasement of the political debate about the boycott by…
5% unemployment is a lie
For Quartz, I wrote about the very misleading 5% unemployment rate, a statistic which discounts 1) the long-term unemployed and the lowered labor participation rate 2) the explosion…
New York values
For the Globe and Mail, I wrote about the New York primary, in a piece published the day before. The piece discusses not only the candidates — three…
Philadelphia Street Style: Monika, Walnut St
Monika described her style to me as “a good mix of ’90s, classic style, and a little bit of western minimalism.” I’m not sure what western minimalism is,…
War in Syria and the Refugee Crisis
There are different ways in which the war in Syria and the ensuing refugee crisis can be made sense of anthropologically. When a crisis looms large on the…
In the Journals – April 2016 Part I by Michelle Pentecost
Welcome to the first stack of ‘In the Journals’ for April! It’s a bumper crop, so find a cosy corner and some coffee to comb through it all.…
Advanced Course in Arabic Manuscript Studies
Scholars, Scribes, and Readers: An Advanced Course in Arabic Manuscript Studies6-10 June 2016, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge, UK The Islamic Manuscript Association, in cooperation with Camb…
Flatulanthropology #BODY
When Jon was a PhD student at Edinburgh University in the early 1990s, there was a running joke about the possibility of developing a project on ethnoscatology –…
David Vetter and the Children of Mars
On September 21st, 1971, David Phillip Vetter was born with SCID (severe combined immunodeficiency). This rare hereditary immune disorder prevented him from fighting off infections caused by everyday…
Are nuances like curry leaves?
The title of this post – and its contents – was inspired by an anecdote I wrote about in an earlier post in my field blog. Before I…
(Video) Games as Motivation for Japanese High School Students
By Andrew Ross Sushi served on conveyor belts. Robot restaurants and robot theater. Toilets that automatically open themselves upon room entry. For visitors of Tokyo (and to an…
The Myth of the Virgin Rainforest
The little village of Pa Lungan sits in a grassy clearing, high in the hills of Malaysian Borneo, in a region called the Kelabit Highlands. The people here—a…
Special Issues! Biomedicalization in Brazil; Life after Biopolitics by Anna Zogas
April brings many special issues! We’ve already highlighted themed issues on insurance and digitized health, and here are two more themed issues to know about: this month’s História, Ciênc…
When It’s Time to Vote, Don’t Boycott Academics – Cut the Purse-strings by Jennifer S. Hirsch
Editor’s note: We received this letter, signed by the authors listed above and by nine anonymous authors, as a reply to our earlier Debate Forum. After far too…
how to make TV now (the “whole world” approach)
Natalie Chaidez is the show runner for Hunters (Mondays, 10:00 eastern, SyFy). Recently Sean Hutchinson asked her what she was aiming for. Our idea of aliens is cliched, she replied. She wanted to &#…
The Bone Lab Goes To School
“You’re the lady that taught us about the bones last year,” one of the students exclaimed as I made my way through the door of Bedford Village Public…
Learning to Make People Laugh: A Semiotic Anthropology of Stand-up Comedy
The Open-Mic Anthropologist The first time I performed stand-up comedy was in December 2015, at an open-mic club called On the Rocks. Gripped by nerves, I worried I…
Overproduction as mass existentialism
Earlier this year, I observed that there are two kinds of scholarly overproduction, “herd” overproduction and “star” overproduction. I’d like to come back to that line of…
Proposing a Harry Potter and Anthropology Course
In Part Three of an ongoing series on teaching anthropology and popular culture, Leah McCurdy (University of Texas, San Antonio) provides some suggestions for creating an anthropology course…
Letter to the Editor and Response: The Symbolic Violence of Choice
The Symbolic Violence of Fallacious Reasoning To the Editor: Re “The Symbolic Violence of Choice” (In Focus, March 2) On its face, Starrett’s essay resembles any anthropologically grounded…
Why I have voted in support of BDS: Ghassan Hage
Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions is pleased to present Ghassan Hage‘s eloquent essay on the urgency of voting for boycott in a desperate situation of…