As if it were not challenging enough during the “normal emergencies” [1] of the United States-led War on Drugs, research and advocacy for sane drug policies becomes even…
Field hospital constructed in Gothenburg, Sweden in March 2020. Photo: Helén Sjöland. While reading Giorgio Agamben’s (2020) anthropological note on the “danger” of habituation of Italians to…
This Somatosphere forum features essays written in the wake of a debate held at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the United Kingdom…
The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability Jasbir Puar Duke University Press, 2017. 296 pages. Jasbir Puar’s second book, The Right to Maim, examines the relationship between life,…
Governing Bodies: American Politics and the Shaping of the Modern Physique Rachel Louise Moran University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 224 pages. 1. When Michelle Obama launched the “Let’…
Beyond Bioethics: Toward a New Biopolitics Osagie K. Obasogie and Marcy Darnovsky (editors) University of California Press, 2018. 518 pages “The science will let loose its cascading interactions wit…
Ungovernable Life: Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq Omar Dewachi Stanford University Press, 2017. 239 pp. Every year, tens of thousands of Iraqi patients leave their country…
Unprepared: Global Health in a Time of Emergency Andrew Lakoff University of California Press, 2017. 240 pages. Let us be frank: it is hard to think preparedness…
As I’m sure many of you saw, this month started with the successful launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, giving a boost (sorry) to privatized space travel, and providing…
For this installment of the Top of the Heap series, I spoke with Paul M. Rabinow, who is a Professor of medical and sociocultural anthropology at the University…
We’d like to help spread the word about the recent issue of Limn, edited by Andrew Lakoff, Stephen J. Collier and Christopher Kelty, now in print. From the…