Reviving food diversity through Indigenous knowledge
This NPR piece — How Native American Tribes Saved A Giant, Ancient Squash From Oblivion — offers an interesting example for thinking about the everyday impacts of colonization…
Tag: cultural change
Census Data and the Social Construction of Race
Since Franz Boas, anthropologists have argued that race is not a biological but a social fact that varies across time and place. Using the US Census, Vox underscores…
Colonialism & white saviourism in tourism and trade
Travel writer/ editor/ photographer Bani Amor‘s work in Bitch magazine tackles the question of what it means to decolonize travel culture (tourism) as well as our trade relationships with…
One person’s trash…
One person’s trash is another’s treasure… or data, if you are an archaeologist or anthropologist working in a landfill. Places where trash builds up can provide archaeologists important…
An anthropologist walks into… a gym
Katie Hejtmanek is a cultural anthropologist who studies the culture of strength sports (powerlifting, weightlifting, CrossFit) in the United States. Her articles for BarBend offer not only interesting…
Re/telling the story of Canada’s Residential Schools
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada investigated the impact of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools system on students, their families, and indigenous peoples across Canada more broadly. …
Anthropologist, CTO
Is it really that strange to think that an anthropologist would be the best choice for a Chief Technology Officer? According to Susannah Fox, the CTO for HHS…
How ‘Maintainers,’ Not ‘Innovators,’ Make the World Turn
I have been hearing a lot about ‘disrupters’ and ‘innovators’ in tech and marketing industries lately, and something about that language has always irked me. Lee Vinsel (an…
The state of indigenous language and culture in Canada
The Canadian government’s program of cultural genocide in residential schools included the erasure of aboriginal languages. In Undoing Linguicide (an hour long audio documentary for CBC Radio’s Ideas…
Racist Mascots
Alongside all of the excitement and fanfare that accompanied the recent start to the 2016 MLB season (go Jays!), seeing sportscasters (and twitter users) discuss the team in…
18. Political technologists and civil society
By Muzammil M. Hussain This is the eighteenth post in the Freedom technologists series. The following are some passages taken (with permission) from chapter 4 of Hussain, M.…