Review: Eating Tomorrow
Wise, Tim (2019) Eating Tomorrow. Agribusiness, Family Farmers, and the Battle for the Future of Food. New York: The New Press. ISBN 9781620974223 Ellen Messer, Ph.D. (Tufts University…
Tag: Africa
What’s in a name? Diagnostic uncertainty and moral experience in a mental hospital in the Tanga region of Tanzania
Hide Press Release (2 Less Words) Florin Cristea “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet” William…
The limits of medical heroism: reflections on Getting to Zero by Alice Street
Getting to Zero: A Doctor and a Diplomat on the Ebola Frontline By Sinead Walsh and Oliver Johnson Zed Books, 2018. 352 pages. It is midnight and my…
Guest Post: On Not Looking Like an Expert: Being Black and Doing Research in Africa, White People’s Historical and Theoretical Turf
[Footnotes is excited to present a guest post by Ampson Hagan. Ampson Hagan is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is…
Book Forum: Saida Hodžić’s The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life After NGOs by Erin V. Moore
Saida Hodžić’s The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs (University of California Press, 2017) illuminates the myriad state and non-state actors collaborating on campaigns ag…
Integration by Clara Devlieger
In one of several letters he wrote to me during my fieldwork, Serge addressed what he considered to be the problems of integration for disabled people in the…
Museum Anthropology Review is a Teenager Now; New Issue is Now Out
Life got away from me last week and I still have more “Exhibition Week” posts to share, but today I turn attention to the new issue of MAR.…
Ebola Afterlives by Eva Vernooij
Image by Eva Vernooij Adiatu[1], a young Sierra Leonean laboratory scientist, turns on the light in the high risk room of the molecular unit of the recently renovated…
Competence for Citizenship by Gitte Beckmann
White ants are a delicacy in the subregion Acholi in northern Uganda. Since fresh ones are available only once a year when they become flying roamers, one 100-kg…
Vampires, Cannibals, and Sorcerers on the Loose by Warwick Anderson
On February 8, 2019, a symposium organized by Nancy Rose Hunt on the scholarship and career of Luise White was held at the University of Florida. In the…
When Women’s Laughter Keeps Men in Line
Among the Mbendjele gathering-hunting people who live in the Republic of Congo, “women’s laughter manages to keep men in line.” Drawing from ethnographic research by Jerome Lewis, anthropo…
Care in the middle voice by Tyler Zoanni
When thinking about care, it is easy to assume an asymmetrical structure with two fixed two roles: the care-giver and the cared-for. It is likewise easy to assume…
Lifetimes by Susan Reynolds Whyte
“It’s only Veria who can bathe our old mama,” remarked mama’s daughter-in-law with gentle amusement. “Because Veria is blind. You know how modest mama is. She doesn’t want…
Different Shades of White: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Albinotic Body – Conference Report
Hide Press Release (2 Less Words) Christopher Hohl Several phenomena have contributed to the increased attention paid to albinism in the past decade. The terrible atrocities inflicted on…
“Radical Bricoleurs”: On Doing Science, Community Life, Activism and Bureaucracy in Mozambique
By Anselmo Matusse, University of Cape Town § One day I was walking with Mr. Angelo, 69 years old, a former Renamo soldier, demobilized in 1994, who is now…
Exploring anthropologies of medicine and health across borders at 4S 2018 by Aadita Chaudhury
This year’s annual meeting for the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) had an intriguing new component: an exhibition on the histories of STS in flux internationally,…
Fed up security officers and drunk policemen in Nairobi by Francesco Colona
Greenwoods is a neighbourhood in Nairobi, Kenya, dotted with diplomatic residences. At the time of my research on public-private assemblages of security provision and the reconfiguration of citizenshi…
Thinking with spirits by Kristine Krause
During my first visit to Ghana in 1998, I was involved in a research project that looked at possible co-operations between healers and psychiatric clinics. I stayed in…
Ghana, Electronic Waste, and the Circular Economy
By Tim Perkin As the demand for ICT increases worldwide, it is surprising how little is known about what happens to our electronic goods that are thrown away.…
Ramah McKay’s Medicine in the Meantime: The Work of Care in Mozambique by Britt Halvorson
Medicine in the Meantime: The Work of Care in Mozambique Ramah McKay Duke University Press, 2018, 256 pages The study of medical humanitarianism has grown tremendously in…
Great Ape Haters
Isaiah Nengo on racist tweets, evolutionary misconceptions, and his ancient ape skull discovery. In a tweet from 2013, Roseanne Barr called former United Nations National Security Advisor Susan…
The Power and Precarity of Global Health Partnerships by Clare Herrick
A recent issue of Medicine Anthropology Theory devoted to the critique of global health partnerships (GHPs) raises a question of great significance to many Somatosphere readers: ‘In real world…
#Review: Mobile Secrets
Information and communications technology (ICT) has been hailed as the holy grail of “transformational development”, the source of growing innovations (such as the sending of remittances through mobil…