My time in line with the Trump fans
For the Guardian, I wrote about the St. Louis Trump rally, and how easily a line of polite and friendly Trump fans transformed into a violent mob hurling…
Phillip Penix-Tadsen, “Cultural Code: Video Games and Latin America” (MIT Press, 2016)
Symbols have meanings that change depending upon the cultural context. But how do we discuss symbols, their meanings, and their cultural contexts without an adequate vocabulary? Phillip Penix-Tadsen, ……
Filming Empathy – Part 1
In their essay “Whatever Happened to Empathy?” Hollan and Throop1 cite the ambivalence that Franz Boas felt about the usefulness of the concept for ethnography: On the one…
Why We Post is “the biggest, most ambitious project of its sort”, says The Economist
Since our launch on the 29th February, the first three open access books in the Why We Post series have been downloaded over 6,000 times! 6,000 downloads in just…
„No negations of any kind!“ – Islamischer Feminismus versus Pro-Familie-Bewegung
Dana Fennert (Universität Marburg) promovierte im Sonderprogramm “Islam, Moderner Nationalstaat und Transnationale Bewegungen” der Gerda-Henkel-Stiftung und zuvor im DFG-Kolleg “Kulturkontakt und Wis…
Magic little gecko, won’t you become a doctor?
Yesterday I took my two children, aged 4 and 7, to the doctor. Both had been ill for the past week; the older one was suffering from a…
Terminal Condition: Neoliberal Globalization
After decades of protests and riots against neoliberal structural adjustment; after anti-globalization mass movements flourished across North America and Europe; after a large portion of Latin America…
Thinking about Our Shared Common Ancestry–Pausing to Reflect Back on My Career as an Africanist
Honored to have an interview I recently did with Dallas Tatman (an MA student in African Studies at the U of Illinois) unexpectedly show up, to my surprise,…
Waiting for the Future
Call it what you will: an anecdotal and impressionist narrative, or a set of strung-together fieldnotes, collected over years of living and working with people across class lines…
TMB als “Lebendes Buch” im C3 in Wien
Das C3 – Centrum für Internationale Entwicklung veranstaltet am Mittwoch, den 16. März 2016, eine Living-Books-Veranstaltung zum Thema “Hilfe!? (Gem)Einsam für eine bessere Welt”. Da…
Tibetan Formulas in Interdisciplinary and Multilingual Perspectives – Translating ‘Wind’ Disorders and Stress in Tibetan Medicine (Workshop Report)
Mona Schrempf A physician of Tibetan medicine compounding a formula for his patient | Nagchu, Tibet (TAR), 2003. Photo by Mona Schrempf This three-day workshop (May 8-10, 2015)…
Vale Bernard Bate
I was saddened to learn yesterday that my friend and colleague Bernard Bate passed away. A scholar in his prime in his mid-fifties, Barney (as he was known) was a…
Revisiting the Human in These Multispecies Landscapes
By Jared Margulies, University of Maryland Baltimore County, photographs by Indra Kumar, reproduced with permission § Indra shows me some photographs he’s taken recently of a variety of animals. I’m…
Academic hands
Jeffrey Williams wrote in his excellent essay Smart that academics’ hands are remarkable for their contrast with working-class hands: My father has a disconcerting habit, especially for people…
2016 Election: Referendum on Racism
I’ve been a bit slow about updating this website, apologies readers. Here is an article I wrote for the Globe and Mail a week ago about racism in the…
Een beetje zonsverduistering
SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA door Freek Colombijn Ik ben op veldwerk in Indonesië en op het moment dat ik dit schrijf praten veel mensen nog na over de totale…
The Deportation Conundrum – REDUX #BORDERS
Today we re-visit a post on the deportation conundrum by Barak Kalir. The post was first published in the spring of 2014 as a part of our thread…
Die Ressource „Mensch“
Für die Rubrik „Ein schönes Paar“ im Wiesbadener Stadtmagazin SENSOR durfte ich Lina Siri und Christian Mappala interviewen. Die beiden finden, die wertvollste, Ressource, die Unternehmen …
Morgendagens lokalsamfund?!
Jeg er så heldig, at jeg til daglig arbejder med det jeg også blogger om, nemlig landdistriktspolitik, lokale udviklingsplaner og jeg holder af at møde passionerede lokale ildsjæle,…
LSE Fried Rice is not for everyone
Source: Ryan Carey By Sean Carey London’s Chinatown, which lies between Shaftesbury Avenue and Leicester Square, is changing fast. Why? Mainly because the area’s biggest landlord, Shaftesbury, i…
Political Arrangements
The thing about work that stands out most, reading through enthusiastic future forecasts on the one hand and stories of worker distress after the Sriperumbudur Nokia manufacturing plant…
Racial Realities
When I tell my students that there is no such thing as “race” (meaning biological race), I wait for the blowback. I know it is coming. “Well if…