Best of SAPIENS 2023
In another year of exceptional challenges and hardships, anthropologists tackled a range of issues and questions about what it means to be human. Here are some of SAPIENS’…
In another year of exceptional challenges and hardships, anthropologists tackled a range of issues and questions about what it means to be human. Here are some of SAPIENS’…
After alleged thefts from the British Museum, a curator explains the challenges of keeping track of collections—and the legal limitations on returning cultural material to source communities. A…
In Support the Troops: Military Obligation, Gender, and the Making of Political Community, Katherine Millar analyses “support the troops” discourses in the US and UK during the early years…
Allegra Lab · From Despair To Where? Anthropology, critique, political practice and the case for radical optimism TRANSCRIPT OF THE AUDIO ESSAY (listen if…
Skip to the action steps You know how we’ve been fighting to legalize and regulate drugs, so people have access to a safe supply? Well, two community organizers…
In Mexico, a growing animal protection movement often promotes harsh criminal punishment for those who abuse animals. But are these strategies working, or do they lead to further…
In the midst of acute eco-anxiety, can community-based filmmaking help young people imagine a different future? FILMMAKING IN THE ANTHROPOCENE A group of 12-year-olds enters a decrepit building…
In The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions, Adam Kuper interrogates the history of anthropological museums and considers questions of colonialism, race, and …
By Salvador Contreras § Havaiko’s safe return to his family was a stroke of luck. In a village nestled in the Wixárika Sierra of Western Mexico, Havaiko and…
In the northern Philippines, the Isnag are documenting their Traditional Stories to sustain their culture and fight a legal battle against dams that would inundate their homelands. ✽…
The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is awaiting the results of a membership vote on a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions submitted in response to a solidarity call…
Introduction: Understanding as Resonance Aja Smith and Anne Line Dalsgård In this third section of the thread, Understanding as Resonance, the essays explore that which happens when words…
In Citizen Designs: City-making and Democracy in Northeastern Thailand, Eli Elinoff explores citizenship struggles and the political engagement of residents living in Northeastern Thailand. Unlike tra…
Anthropologists are often quick to decry the law as a fig leaf for the exercise of raw political or economic power. Yet when holding bureaucratic sinecures, anthropologists’ daily…
An anthropologist and an organizer try to connect descendant communities with the remains of 20 Black Philadelphians slated for court-ordered burial. ✽ On February 13, 2023, a Pennsylvania…
How do people adapt when the ground beneath their feet starts to wash away? All over the world, coastal communities are facing the same challenges: rising sea levels…
What is shamanic power? And how does it affect modern politics in Indigenous Amazonia? In this episode, we follow the life of a young Indigenous activist fighting for…
by Rebecca Prentice The survivors of the deadly supply chain disaster were paid ‘rights-based’ compensation from global brands; it wasn’t sufficient to help rebuild their lives The Rana…
This book is a rich cultural analysis of how people live with big cats in India in times of the Anthropocene and climate change. As people are increasingly…
An anthropologist journeys to the Arctic Circle and finds a surprising story about the human remains that end up in museum collections. “Prime harvest”—that’s how one early 20th-century…
Nature-loving volunteers in the Mexican state of Chihuahua gather weekly on the banks of the San Pedro River to collect trash. But their aims are bigger. ✽ If…
An archaeologist traces the current protests in Peru to exploitive labor policies enacted in silver mines during Spanish colonial rule from 1532 to 1800. ✽ Last month, Peru’s…
Celebrated 19th-century biologist Ernst Haeckel pushed race science as his little known protégé Nikolai Miklucho-Maclay defended Indigenous rights. A biological anthropologist reflects on the impacts …
Interview by Fionnán Mac Gabhann iupress.org/overthrowing-the-queen Fionnán Mac Gabhann: Overthrowing the Queen represents one of several objectives devised as part of a collaborative proje…