Recently, I checked in with Dr. Bjørn Westgard, to see how he was doing. Back in the ‘90s, Bjørn was enrolled in a wildly demanding, combined M.D./Ph.D. program…
In discussions on COVID-19, it has become a common trope that disciplines like anthropology are particularly relevant and fitting for writing about the pandemic. Indeed, the pandemic unearths…
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…
In Turkey, HIV has never been considered a “Turkish” issue, but an issue of Eastern European sex workers and Western queers, both perceived as sexual deviants. However, according…
It was a sunny Tuesday morning, at the beginning of March 2020. The dirt pétanque field in a Catalan coastal town was filled with English chatter about golf,…
HÜSLER SAMIRA-SALOMÉ & PYTHON ANNICK MARIA ILDIKO On 26 March 2020, the Federal Council declared an extraordinary situation in accordance with the Epidemic Act and issued a set…
Sophia Hornbacher-Schönleber, University of Cambridge COVID-19 is wreaking havoc in Indonesia. The government ignored the crisis for too long, relying on a dubious religious discourse of divine pro…
[The following students are high school seniors at “KTH School” taking International Baccalaureate Social and Cultural Anthropology. After their final IB exams were cancelled, they decided they would…
VAS PAPAGEORGIOU, WILL KENDALL AND LIDIA LUNA PUERTA We are graduate students at an extraordinary time. At the early stage of our careers, we were still learning how…
COVID-19 has prompted a renewed awareness of how we use our bodies under “normal” circumstances. COVID-19 is also demanding that we change our bodily behaviors to prevent the…
KIM CROWDER March 8th. I book a routine vet visit for my geriatric rescue pony’s annual vaccinations and hormone-monitoring test. March 22nd. In line with pandemic protocols the…
Anthrodendum welcomes guest blogger Christian Elliott, an undergraduate senior majoring in cultural anthropology at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. Video conferencing and the limits of re…
FRANCESCO FLORIS Well before the high rate of infections grew and lay citizens became affected by COVID-19 in Italy, fear, news from China, fake news, and the statements…
Mild ‘[A] large portion won’t notice that they have it’. ‘Another substantial portion will have very, very mild symptoms’. ‘A small portion will have a very significant reaction’.…
In early March 2020, groups of professional tailors and hobbyists formed to make high quality facsimiles of surgical masks to remedy a shortfall in personal protective equipment (PPE)…
by Josh Babcock CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviews Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in a segment titled, “What the U.S. can learn from Singapore on Covid,” March 30,…
INGA AENNE FELDMANN The corona virus health crisis sent many countries of the world in a lock down to protect their elderly and vulnerable from severe illness and…
Sydney’s Bondi Beach in January 2012. Photo: Alex Proimos As sometimes happens in Sydney in late March, toward the end of summer, that particular Friday was brilliantly hot…
CHRISTIAN UNGRUHE The Covid-19 pandemic teaches a number of painful lessons. Many people, persistently deprived from access to adequate health care, housing, education or jobs, pay a devastating…
Editor’s note: This post is the fourth in our five-part series “COVID-19: Views from the Field.” Click here to read an introduction written by series organizer Rebekah Ciribassi.…
Covering mid-April – May 4 In an effort to highlight the vital perspectives of medical anthropology and neighboring disciplines, as well as to help manage the volume of…
MANUELA PELLEGRINO How to feel close when physically distant? This is, of course, not a new dilemma in itself; indeed, people who live far from their loved ones…
CAMILA RUIZ SEGOVIA Night had fallen at the coastal state of Veracruz, Mexico, when a group of men kidnapped Luis Guillermo, 29. He was an independent businessman by…
From Wikimedia Commons As I complete this essay, the quarantine imposed on Baltimore stretches into its second month, and I continue teaching online amid terror and despair.&nbs…