Niccolo de’ Conti (and others) on the Lontar Palm
Yesterday I put up a post about Niccolo de' Conti, one of the more interesting Europeans to visit Indonesia before the sixteenth century. His account…
The 59th Street Bridge Song
Slow down, you move to fast You got to make the morning last (Paul Simon, Feelin’ groovy/The 59th St Bridge Song) I grew up with vinyl. My family was…
Connected Capitalism?
“The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist—McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that…
Rewind and Fast Forward, Part 2
In Part 1, I compared traditional fieldwork in a South Indian village with my unexpected and forced relocation to a U.S. treatment center for heroin addicts. Now, in…
Overflowing landfills, unwanted humans, and a new anthropology of waste
Why has the largest man-made structure on earth, until recently, been a landfill? Are waste pickers environmental heroes, or is their work first and foremost inhuman? Do we…
Overflowing landfills, unwanted humans, and a new anthropology of waste
Why has the largest man-made structure on earth, until recently, been a landfill? Are waste pickers environmental heroes, or is their work first and foremost inhuman? Do we…
Overflowing landfills, unwanted humans, and a new anthropology of waste
Why has the largest man-made structure on earth, until recently, been a landfill? Are waste pickers environmental heroes, or is their work first and foremost inhuman? Do we…
Overflowing landfills, unwanted humans, and a new anthropology of waste
Why has the largest man-made structure on earth, until recently, been a landfill? Are waste pickers environmental heroes, or is their work first and foremost inhuman? Do we…
Overflowing landfills, unwanted humans, and a new anthropology of waste
Why has the largest man-made structure on earth, until recently, been a landfill? Are waste pickers environmental heroes, or is their work first and foremost inhuman? Do we…
Myths and Facts About the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions is pleased to extend its original series on this blog in light of a boycott vote at the November 2015 American Anthropological…
Knowledge from an Object
Considering the material culture aspect of art conservation, this column is a continuation from my April 2015 column, Preserving Visual Culture and my tour of the U of…
Closed fists of Ebola
I did long term anthropological fieldwork amongst the polio-disabled communities of Freetown between 2008 and 2012. The research fed into my doctoral dissertation: „Where parallel worlds meet: civil…
A conversation with De-Colonizer: Research and Art Laboratory for Social Change #Palestine
De-Colonizer: Research and Art Laboratory for Social Change is a project that we, as Allegra Lab, could not ignore when doing our researches for this thematic thread on…
Fieldwork is haunting me, thanks to WhatsApp
When is the end of fieldwork? (Photo:Merlijn Hoek CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) When is it that fieldwork finishes? Thanks to social media, the separation between being in the fieldsite…
Niccolò de’ Conti on Malays
Niccolò de' Conti was a fifteenth-century Italian traveller who visited parts of what is now Indonesia, including, apparently, Badan, probably meaning 'Banda', the small archipelago …
Ethnography as Improv
“Anthropology is not a social science tout court, but something else. What th…
Ethnography as Improv
“Anthropology is not a social science tout court, but something else. What th…
Ethnography as Improv
“Anthropology is not a social science tout court, but something else. What th…
Ethnography as Improv
“Anthropology is not a social science tout court, but something else. What that something else is has been notoriously difficult to name, pre…
In the Journals, October 2015 – Part II by Sultana Banulescu
This month’s “In the Journals…” brings us a body of articles discussing pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, female anatomy, substance abuse, and addiction, with a focus on risk, secrecy, stigma,…
Around the Web Digest: Week of October 25
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Yes, Halloween. Send me any links to include here at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com. The Economist traces the growing popularity of the holiday…
Conference review: MAGic 2015 Anthropology and Global Health: Interrogating Theory, Policy and Practice by Josien de Klerk
“Global Health is like a containership. The multiple actors —international and local NGOs, humanitarian organisations, scientists, activists, politicians — operate the tugboats, attempting to nu…