The Story of a Mass Shooting Survivor and Anthropologist
On April 30, my Liberal Studies class, framed as Anthropology and Philosophy of Science (Syllabus), was the site of a horrific event. Two of my students were…
Tag: Blog
Meet nitrous oxide: the fun drug that, because of prohibition, is terrible for the environment
The War on Drugs is an expensive, harmful disaster. It’s the most destructive and racist set of policies that exist in the modern era. But! Did you know that…
Teaching Evolution in the South: Framing Evolutionary Theory for Religious Students
I am a biocultural anthropologist and teach at a university in the southern United States of America. This means that many of my students are religious and haven’t…
Weeds don’t exist in the wild: What can that tell us about humans?
Each so-called weed, after all, has a remarkable story to tell. Each is the product of millions of years of evolution. Each is a descendant from an ancient…
How I kicked chronic migraine (And what that has to do with anthropology)
This post is about the biopsychosocial medical model and how it relates to the treatment of chronic pain. As an anthropologist, I’m particularly interested in the social part…
Tereza Kuldova: Think before you “heart” it: NZ street gangs guarding mosques in the aftermath of terror a PR stunt
Over the past two days, my Facebook feed has been flooded with shares of articles featuring New Zealand patched street gangs and outlaw motorcycle clubs—Mongrel Mob, Black Power,…
Admissions Fraud and the SAT: Hidden Implications
As you are well aware, there is a huge college admissions scandal that has been brought to life. Forbes calls it “The Worst Crime In College Admissions History…
Heiko Henkel and Sindre Bangstad: The politics of affect: Anthropological perspectives on the rise of far-right and right-wing populism in the West
This is the first part of a panel held during the 2017 American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The second part is freely available to all…
Focaal Volume 2019, Issue 83: The anthropology of austerity
We are pleased to announce that the latest issue of Focaal – Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology has recently published and is available online at www.berghahnjournals.com/focaal. This issu…
Fluid Masculinity: The case of Krishna
As Rama becomes more and more the icon of “virile Hinduism” and the symbol of a new kind of hegemonic, patriarchal, masculinity, so Krishna is held up as…
Hummingbirds are Nature’s…
One of my passions is studying multispecies entanglements. As an anthropologist, the ways in which human activities affect the lives of other living organisms are of central interest…
Making an academic ‘coven’
Hierarchies persist, which is why factions, such as covens, coalesce in the first place. They emerge from a place of need. A need to counteract isolation, disparate power…
Compassionate Cannibalism
Returning again to the ethnography by Conklin that started my thinking on this issue, the experience of compassionate cannibalism of the Wari spoke to the collective experiences of…
Misinterpreting People
Anthropology has long ago dispensed with the notion that there is any ‘one’ truth. But I think most ethnographers still hope that in describing a group, the people…
Michaela Schäuble: Ecstasy: A review of two recent exhibitions on consciousness-expanding experience
In his classic Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession, I. M. Lewis (1971) contends that ritual, belief, and spiritual experience are the three cornerstones of…
Luisa Steur: A Women’s Wall against the fascist menace in Kerala? Some less-comfortable observations
On New Year’s Day, the world was treated to the spectacle of a 640-kilometer-long “Women’s Wall” in Kerala (South India). This human chain of more than five million…
5 Tips to Smash out Your PhD in Anthropology
I suspect thesis writing progression is a bit like sustainable weight loss. Calorie or step counting isn’t nearly as effective as getting in touch with how you feel…
Kristóf Szombati: Protesting the “slave law” in Hungary: The erosion of illiberal hegemony?
In recent weeks, Hungary has again made international headlines. This time, it was a popular movement born out of resistance to the latest rewriting of the labor code—which…
MeToo Anthropology
I’ll spare you the worst of it but I will tell you that, some agonizing moments later, I was able to reach my field knife while he was…
Joshua Clover: The roundabout riots
Much has been written about the gilets jaunes and their relation to both politics, of the left and the right, and historical waves of labor unrest. In this…
Agnieszka Pasieka: Who is afraid of fascists? The Polish independence march and the rise of the (far?) right
“Polish leaders marched with the far right” was perhaps the most common description of the massive demonstration that took place in Warsaw on National Independence Day, 11 November.…
Participant observation from a first-timer at the AAA conference 2018, San Jose
This first experience of a really big conference makes me want to go to smaller conferences, where it would be easier to find the people who share my…
Victor Albert: Brazil’s Homeless Workers’ Movement is an assertive social work organization
On 21 October, Jair Bolsonaro, the now president-elect of Brazil, made an announcement via his smartphone that was transmitted to crowds of supporters gathered in São Paulo: “Criminals…
Decolonizing Primatology: Part I
We all have texts that are formative in our academic, professional, spiritual, personal, mental, and philosophical lives. There are a few books that I can point to as…