The Mexican River Defenders Fighting for the San Pedro
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…
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…
It was often said, in the course of the transition from communism to capitalism in the 1990s and 2000s, that Eastern Europeans are good at surviving. The IMF…
Edward F. Fischer. Making Better Coffee: How Maya Farmers and Third Wave Tastemakers Create Value. University of California Press. Berkeley: 2022. ISBN: 978-0-520-38696-9 David Sutton (Souther…
An anthropologist delves into the rarefied ritualistic world of specialty coffee, where highly trained brewers and judges compete to determine which beans reign supreme. Excerpted from Making Better…
An archaeologist fascinated by a centurieslong memorial practice in Georgia considers how these unique gravestones reflect shared values and traditions—yet are sometimes destroyed in nationalist cultu…
An archaeologist explains how new evidence stands to change what we thought about how ice age humans prepared food. This article was originally published at The Conversation and…
The allure of the onion Fieldwork can produce odd obsessions. As an anthropologist studying agrarian risk economies, mine was onions. In the central Indian region of Malwa where…
In October, 2022, I participated in the Food Sovereignty Workshop at Ohio State University and discussed the issue of sustainable agriculture and water resource use to improve the…
Victoria Stead and Melinda Hinkston, eds. Beyond Global Food Supply Chains: Crisis, Disruption, Regeneration. Palgrave. MacMillan. Open Access. (2022) https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/…
Three researchers use a study of the cypress pine in Arnhem Land, Australia, to explain why large-scale, institutional fire management is inferior to sustainable cultural burning. This article…
An archaeologist considers what farming simulators reveal about humanity’s ancient and evolving relationship with agriculture. ✽ “I hate when I have to harvest at night,” my husband complained…
Traditional farming in al-Ahjur, Central Highlands (photography by Daniel Martin Varisco) The early major civilizations in the Middle East and Asia with their head start several millennia ago…
An anthropologist traces the origins and world travels of one of his favorite kinds of plants. ✽ As someone who grew up in the Philippines, I have always…
Jennifer Jo Thompson, University of Georgia (SAFN President) After three years of planning, postponing due to COVID-19, and then planning again, “Cultivating Connections”—the 2022 joint annual mee…
Wu, Amy (2021) Farms to Incubators. Women Innovators Revolutionizing How Our Food is Grown. Fresno, California: Craven Street Books. Ellen Messer (Tufts University) This book, like the docum…
SAFN member and food and environmental anthropologist Mark Anthony Arceño will be hosting a panel discussion next Wednesday, June 15th, from 12-1pm EST, focusing on food and food…
I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book: Seasonal Knowledge and the Almanac Tradition of the Arab Gulf. Details about the book, including a free…
This exquisite film was produced in 1973 and filmed in 1972, thus representing Yemen half a century ago. It is now available on Youtube. The filmmakers were Karen…
By Daniel Martin Varisco [In 2003 I attended a conference in Rome and gave a paper which was eventually published in Convegno Storia e Cultura dello Yemen in…
I am always intrigued by old photographs of traditional ploughs in the Middle East. The picture above is from a 1925 travel book by Norma Lorimer entitled By…
Lima, 2015. At the Mistura, an annual food festival in Peru wherein people from the desert, the Andes, and the coast bring their produce and artisanal products to…
From the Facebook site of al-Amth?l al-zir?‘iyya f? Tih?ma.
Segnide J. Guidimadjegbe Oregon State University I was born and raised in Benin, a West African Country that is used to be called “Dahomey.” Very young, my sibling…
Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of postings by students in a graduate seminar on food justice at the University of New Orleans. You can read…