#events: Diversity, Migration and the Future of Anthropology
Hello! This month we have found some great opportunities for you in diverse parts of the world, and given that broad theme of this month’s #events post is…
Go read my review of Varel’s “The Lost Black Scholar”
After quite some time — and without a chance for me to review the final edits (!) — History of Anthropology Review has published my review of David…
Human Placenta, Birth Cohorts, and the Production of Epigenetic Knowledge by Martine Lappé
Precious Material Over the past decade, the Canadian university-based Epigenetics Lab has become increasingly central to the production of knowledge about human health and development.[1] During m…
Louis Apol, the painter of Novaya Zemlya
Since my very first visit to the Netherlands, I have been surprised at the interest of Dutch people in one of the islands in the North of Russia,…
Patrick Inglis, “Narrow Fairways: Getting By and Falling Behind in the New India” (Oxford UP, 2019)
Processes of globalization—the liberalization of national markets, the rapid movement of goods, services, and labor across national borders—have had profound impacts on local contexts, perhap… Visit New Books…
How Did Belief Evolve?
The Egyptians began constructing Karnak temple around 4,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence suggests large-scale religions arose throughout the world by 4,000 to 8,000 years ago. Christoph…
Now Open: 2020 APLA Book Prize in Critical Anthropology
Due to the generosity of an anonymous donor, we have changed the name of the APLA book prize to the “APLA Book Prize in Critical Anthropology.” APLA is…
Eva van Roekel, “Phenomenal Justice: Violence and Morality in Argentina” (Rutgers UP, 2020)
In Phenomenal Justice: Violence and Morality in Argentina (Rutgers University Press, 2020), Eva van Roekel grounds her research in phenomenological anthropology and the anthropology of emotio… Visit New…
With My Life
“[…] I will preserve and protect The honour and independence of my country With my life!” First light: a deep purple over the edge of the camp, as…
Das Glück ist nicht immer lustig: Paare aus zwei Kulturen
Grenzen haben sich geöffnet, Gesellschaften haben sich internationalisiert, die sozialen Schichten aber schotten sich neuerdings rigoros voneinander ab. Bi-kulturelle Paare werfen da die Frage nach Gl…
two Bengals
Somewhere I have a photograph of a piece of graffiti from Kolkata in the early 1990s. It shows three palms behind a brick wall on which is painted…
The discovery that all human hunter-gatherers, throughout the at least the last 80,000 years, did ecological engineering, means that “wilderness” does not really exist.
THIS is what transformed humanity between 300,000 and 100,000 years ago – the development of a cultural system of environmental management that made the ecosystems of the world…
Ancient History of the Molala (La’tiwi)
The Molala (Mollala, Molalla, Molele, La’tiwi) are a tribe of Western Oregon. They lived on the eastern periphery of the Willamette and Umpqua Valleys. There were at least…
Von Böhmen an den Amazonas: Was Glasperlen uns über Weltbeziehungen verraten
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum Im Ethnologischen Museum zeugen Gegenstände aus Glasperlen von weltweiten Handelsbeziehungen. Vier Perlenschurze aus Amazonien sind derzeit im Bode-…
Gloves, embryos, and DDT: thinking with surfaces on toxicity in South Africa by Tessa Moll
In the early 1980s, researchers at Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa were confounded by the persistent failure of their experimental mice embryos. The researchers had hoped…
Book Review: Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs edited by Amanda Lashaw, Christian Vannier and Steven Sampson
In Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs, editors Amanda Lashaw, Christian Vannier and Steven Sampson bring together contributors to advance the growing field of NGO anthropology. Written b…
Jennifer B. Saunders, “Imagining Religious Communities: Transnational Hindus and their Narrative Performances” (Oxford UP, 2019)
Imagining Religious Communities: Transnational Hindus and their Narrative Performances (Oxford University Press, 2019) tells the story of the Gupta family through the personal and religious n… Visit New…
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020)
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology…
#Hashtag: “I AM one of the 1.4 Billion”
When I agreed to write this post in January, I could not have imagined that I would be doing so in quarantine. The state of the coronavirus continues…
‘The Lost Black Scholar’ by David A. Varel
David A. Varel. The Lost Black Scholar: Resurrecting Allison Davis in American Social Thought. 304pp., 16 halftones, notes, index. University of Chicago Press, 2018. $45 (cloth) David Varel’s…
A revolution covered in smoke and gas clouds – Trying to make sense out of the political chaos in Lebanon
WRITTEN BY BRAM VAN DER HEIJDE Since the 17th of October, the Lebanese streets have been filled with demonstrators trying to ‘take down the sectarian system’ that has…