Where a River of Life Became a Border of Control
[no-caption] Wenting Li/SAPIENS The floor of the El Paso International Airport’s baggage claim area is a marble mosaic design; blue stones represent the Rio Grande (or Río Bravo,…
Footage of Failure: Multimodality in Practice
Failure is an unavoidable aspect of the ethnographic enterprise. And yet, failure should not be seen as a dead end. In the context of the FR&T program, we…
Footage of Failure: Multimodality in Practice
Failure is full of unanticipated potential. Being able to recognize and adapt to these failures depends on many factors, not least a combination of fortune and experience. The…
Book Review: Miseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Classes by Diane Reay
In Miseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Classes, Diane Reay draws on interviews with over 500 children to explore the class inequalities that persist in UK education today from the…
Sedentary Optics: Static Anti-Trafficking and Mobile Victims
My latest publication in Current Anthropology Abstract Postpanopticism and the “mobility turn” within the social sciences provide important challenges to territorial constructs, such as Foucauldian pano…
Dorothy Noyes, “Humble Theory: Folklore’s Grasp on Social Life” (Indiana UP, 2016)
Humble Theory: Folklore’s Grasp on Social Life (Indiana University Press, 2016) is an anthology of essays from Dorothy Noyes, professor of English and Comparative Studies at the Ohio…
My Brother is an Only Child. #Precarity and Solidarity in Post-Neoliberal Societies
This text, written by our guest editor Salvatore Poier, is a plea for solidarity and a request to engage in a vigorous and honest debate about the meaning…
Hobbes the Science Fiction Writer (Part I)
It is common to meet people who believe that much of the world is beset by “tribalism” and that the only thing holding back the chaos of a…
The Facebook Data Scandal and Why Anthropology Should get More Comfortable with Journalism
There’s anthropological spirit in investigative journalism that anthropologists could better acknowledge. Regardless of whether it has a anthropology qualification attached or it is embedded in comple…
CFP AAA 2018: Visualising the Visible and the Invisible: ethnography and technologies of the unseen
Apophenia—the recognition of patterns within randomness—is, as Hito Steyerl (2016) has argued, a condition of the rapid multiplication of chaotic plumes of data swirling around us, data riven…
What If Machines Could Learn the Way Children Do?
A good number of us shout at our laptops when they misbehave, often to no avail. Perhaps soon they will listen. Could we one day teach them—much like…
Fareen Parvez, “Politicizing Islam: The Islamic Revival in France and India (Oxford UP, 2017)
Politicizing Islam: The Islamic Revival in France and India (Oxford University Press, 2017) by Fareen Parvez is a rich ethnographic analysis of Islamic Revival movements in France (Lyon)…
Making the Most of Life
We often talk about what it means to “truly live” or even more simply what it means to be considered “living.” This idea was one of the main…
Contamination of the Social Fabric: Sápara Leaders’ Resistance to Oil Companies in the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Narrow Vision of Environmental Impact Studies
By Lindsay Ofrias, Princeton University § In the shadow of the world’s worst case of oil contamination, the Sápara, a small group of indigenous people, are desperately protecting their…
Video / Das Institut für Kulturanthropologie und Europäische Ethnologie stellt sich vor
Das Institut für Kulturanthropologie und Europäische Ethnologie der Goethe-Universität stellt sich mit einem neuen Video vor. Was ist eigentlich Kulturanthropologie? Wie sieht ein Kulturanthropologies…
2CFP’s: IU Superfoods Workshop & AAA Fixing Territory Session
Workshop: “Critical Approaches to Superfoods” Organizers: Emma McDonell, PhD Candidate, Indiana University Sarah Osterhoudt, Assistant Professor, Indiana University Richard Wilk, Professor, Indiana U…
Breffu: a slave, a rebel, a fighter – and a woman almost invisible to history
The role of women in conflict is often lost to the archaeological record – but Breffu’s story illustrates how sometimes we catch a glimpse of them Early one…
Breffu: a slave, a rebel, a fighter – and a woman almost invisible to history
The role of women in conflict is often lost to the archaeological record – but Breffu’s story illustrates how sometimes we catch a glimpse of them Early one…
#Review: White Gold. Stories of Breast Milk Sharing
Those of the general public who have heard of milk kinship usually regard milk kinship as a feature of “primitive”, “tribal” lineage-based societies, often semi-feudal, with residues almost…
The Death of a Dog
“Wise old man” by Shaun Hopkinson is licensed under CC by 2.0 In our society, it is common practice to euthanize dogs in old age either with or…
Awkward Anthropological Moments
In honor of recent National Awkward Moments Day, March 18, AN invited anthropologists to share their awkward, amusing, embarrassing moments and learning experiences from the field. Read about…
Transparent marketing and design
[This post first published on Medium March 16, 2018] I was looking at the app store this morning and noticed in the upper left hand corner The Art…
Wie weiter mit dem Engagement in Deutschland?
Studie „So schaffen wir das“ zur Arbeit mit Geflüchteten Pressemitteilung vom 21. März 2018 Seit 2015 hat sich in Deutschland eine überwältigende Zivilgesellschaft gebildet, die sich für geflüchtete…
From Edison to Tim Brown: Some ideas about Design Thinking
Design Thinking is defined as a method that allows us to generate innovative solutions based on the needs of users. It was created in the classrooms of Stanford…