Why “The Great Replacement Theory” is not a Theory, and why that Matters
The notion of a “theory” comes from science. As such, the term conveys all the legitimacy upon which the scientific method relies. It should not be tossed around…
Tag: Anti-Semitism
A Strange Past Returns Strangely
The last time I heard anyone utter the name, Przemysl, I must have been ten or eleven years old. In his thickly Yiddishized English, my maternal grandfather must…
Writing about Coffee
Despite being a lifelong non-coffee-drinker, I somehow found myself reading two fantastic books about coffee recently. The first, Miriam Sagan’s A Hundred Cups of Coffee, hijacked me from…
From Hollywood to Hitler: Rethinking the Cultural Politics of Propaganda
What is propaganda? What does cinema reveal about the Third Reich and its people? What are German films about during the Third Reich? What do they reveal? And…
Europe’s Other Walls
The Berlin Wall has always had multiple lives. Beyond its fall lies a story of proliferating borders and exclusions. “Berlin is not the same without a Wall,” said…
A Demagogue’s Words Matter
Trump’s immigration metaphors set a divisive tone from the top. Trump wields demagogic rhetoric like a marketing tool, ramping up prejudicial appeals in the closing days of the…
An Anthropologist at the Women’s March on Washington, Part 2: The Posters
Photo by Alma Gottlieb Women (and some men) with signs, as far as the eye could see. In my first post about the Women’s March of…
It’s Never “Just a Symbol”
Symbolic anthropologists, take note. What’s in a symbol? Everything, when it comes to politics. Especially, election-year politics. And especially when a major political candidate claims ign…
Rethinking BDS
A shorter version of this post will soon appear online as a podcast, in coordination with the motion put to a vote among the membership of the American…
Why Not “Je Suis Lassana”?
Much of the Western world has expressed solidarity with the right to publish offensive cartoons by identifying with the cartoonists at the iconoclastic weekly, Charlie Hebdo, who were…