Paying back or paying forward: What does it mean to give?
I was lucky to have Mexican friends to put me up, ferry me around, shower me with food and attention, without asking for a thing in return. It…
Tag: Blog
Eating Iran: From the delicious to the inedible
I was having second thoughts, but pressed on safe in the knowledge that I was performing an act that would raise my esteem in the eyes of those…
On Being Declared Missing in the Himalayas
Neither the Fulbright Commission overseeing my work nor the US Embassy in Kathmandu could contact me and, in the interim, the three other visitors to Mustang had all…
Born to Be Cute: Charisma and Niche Construction
As a multispecies ethnographer and evolutionary anthropologist, I am interested in the ways in which ecological interaction between various taxa affects their selection pressures and evolutionary traj…
Evan Smith: Love milkshakes, hate racism: A short history of throwing food at the Far Right
An earlier version of this article first appeared on Hatful of History. In the last month, milkshakes have been lobbed at several far-right candidates in the European elections…
Anthropologists and Dragons
I surprised myself by not hesitating. Spinning around, I headed straight back toward one of those that had followed us into the alley—a woman in dark robes, eyes…
Stephen Campbell: Touring Myanmar’s leftist history
For more by the author, see his article “Putting-Out’s Return: Informalization and Differential Subsumption in Thailand’s Garment Sector” in Focaal, freely available to all rea…
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…
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…