Why George Floyd Matters
With all due respect and no malice intended but the George Floyd murder is not the first time African American men have been wrongfully brutalized and killed by…
Tag: cultural anthropology
Cracking the Vault: A Celebration of Daniel Swan
Below find the first of a series of guest posts offered in celebration on the occasion of our colleague and friend Daniel C. Swan’s retirement from the University…
Pandemics: Agents of Global Change – Part 2
The Economic and Commercial Impact of Pandemics By now, the COVID-19 influenza outbreak has reached practically all parts of the globe. In the context of discussing the pandemic,…
Compassion and sacrifice during COVID-19 by Felix Stein
COVID-19 highlights the limits of compassion and the need for sacrifice in contemporary capitalism Compassion with the leader When the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was hospitalized over…
What Anthropology Teaches Us about COVID-19, Part 4: A Conversation with Physician-Anthropologist, Dr. Bjørn Westgard
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…
What Anthropology Teaches Us about COVID-19, Part 4: A Conversation with Physician-Anthropologist, Dr. Bjørn Westgard
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…
“Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas” – Pre-Order
My books just went up for library pre-order! I can’t believe I am finally looking at it!! LINK: https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463721721/shaligram-pilgrimage-in-the-nepal-himalayas
New Preface to Globalization from Below: The World’s Other Economy by Keith Hart
IV. The informal economy has taken over the World The idea of an informal economy was born in the 1970s when the post-war era of developmental states was…
What Anthropology Teaches Us about COVID, Part 3: A Few Thoughts about Culture, and What We Can Learn from Artists . . . and the Homeless
What is “culture”? Early generations of anthropologists offered all sorts of definitions. No matter what their specifics, the various definitions inevitably shared one feature: “…
Getting a Fake Shaligram, Intentionally
So, I got a fake Shaligram. But don’t be indignant on my behalf, it was on purpose. One of the most pervasive fears many Shaligram devotees (or would-be…
Pandemics: agents of global change
It was the early 1990s, while working at the American College of Physicians in Philadelphia, I became interested in epidemiology. With all the doctors around (there were twelve…
What Anthropology Teaches Us about COVID-19, Part 2: An Optimist’s Scenario
Here’s what I imagine could–and should–emerge from this viral nightmare. Locally, stranger-neighbors will (re)discover each other. Re-appreciate the bonds of co-residence. …
Cultural Critique: Anthropological – by Keith Hart
Cultural Critique Cultural critique, the use of anthropology to draw critical attention to institutions that readers take for granted, is as old as the origins of the modern…
The Subjugation of Liberal Democracy
Are we witnessing in our lifetime the slow destruction of liberal democracy? Have we exhausted the limits of a political system that has served nations for more than…
Religious Colonizing in Brazil
After Bolsonaro was elected President of Brazil, I sort of lost the desire to write anything more about the country. As a gringo living in Brazil for more…
Shaligram Interpretive Practices: The Vasudev Shaligram Example
One thing I love about Shaligram interpretive practices is how extensively narrative they are. As in, not only does each specific ammonite fossil invoke stories about the geological…
The Collapse of Societies
By now, the entire world is aware of the historic and unprecedented events occurring in the United States. It seems trite to characterize these events as…
A Shaligram is Born – Part 2
This second part on the birth of Shaligrams is meant to briefly demonstrate the concrete links between the sacred contexts of Shaligram veneration and the actual practices devotees…
A Shaligram is Born – Part 1
Witnessing the appearance of a Shaligram stone within the Kali Gandaki river is to, quite literally, witness its birth. Formed in the womb of the mountains (the Himalayas)…
Agriculture in Human Evolution – by Keith Hart
In his Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Men (1754) Jean-Jacques Rousseau was concerned, not with individual variations in natural endowments, but with…
Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community: A Giving Heritage
It is a great moment for a great project. Some Shreds and Patches readers will remember when, in 2017, the Mathers Museum of World Cultures hosted the special…
Interrogating the Concept of Categories – an Interview with Lochlann Jain
Stanford University anthropologist and artist, Lochlann Jain, speaks with Anne Brackenbury (former editor at University of Toronto Press who launched the ethnoGRAPHIC Series) to talk about Jain’s new…
The Political Economy of Food in an Unequal World-by Keith Hart
Food in a New Economic Order What is ‘new’ about neo-liberalism? It is a world economic order based on selective freedom, on the freedom of money…
Filtered Realities
In order to proceed, we must first acknowledge the more than three decades of work by a man who has been sounding the alarm concerning the…