Best of SAPIENS 2025
In SAPIENS’ final year of publishing new stories, the magazine honors 10 standout contributions that carried anthropology into the hearts and minds of readers worldwide. ✽ As SAPIENS…
In SAPIENS’ final year of publishing new stories, the magazine honors 10 standout contributions that carried anthropology into the hearts and minds of readers worldwide. ✽ As SAPIENS…
SAPIENS’ 2025 poet-in-residence situates her listening in Kashmir and Germany during and after her fieldwork, contextualizing her contributions to SAPIENS this year. If you missed Uzma Falak’s …
An anthropologist traces how transgender women navigate state-sponsored religious programs aimed at “rehabilitating” LGBTQ+ Muslims. ✽ Dora and I walked through the quiet nighttime streets of Chow Ki…
In a perhaps misguided effort to preserve love of writing, enthuse about independent critical mental facility, to “exercise the metaphoric muscle”, as Mick Taussig would say, and just…
An anthropologist delves beyond simplistic portrayals of the anti-natalist movement to understand what motivates its adherents. ✽ Growing up in the atheistic milieu of China’s Cultural Revolution, my…
A poet and aspiring anthropologist in Indonesia reflects on the values reflected in rice cultivation in a traditional village in Southern Banten, West Java, Indonesia. ✽ I WROTE…
An environmental anthropologist investigates deep-time, mythical, and contemporary relations between seals and Orkney Islanders. SEAL SONG One gray afternoon, I saw a seal lying on a rock, eyes…
An anthropologist-poet listens to echoes of laughter and other sounds of crossings in Kashmir. In the house once occupied by soldiers laughter echoes as three women sing Yamberzal…
An anthropologist explores how nests made from the saliva of swiftlets—long valued within some Asian medicinal and culinary traditions—have reached a growing global market. ✽ I’m in one…
A visual anthropologist explores how divine cattle collide with urban realities in Kathmandu, revealing contradictions between ancient values and contemporary lifeways. ✽ In the haze of dawn, Kathmand…
A former National Health Service doctor and multidisciplinary scholar explores how Black women in the U.K. manage reproductive risks and anxieties. ✽ I sit at my laptop, debating…
An anthropologist participates in the Houston Pride Parade, offering dance, music, and prayer with others to counter intensifying oppression faced by queer and Latine communities. ✽ Along Allen…
After the deadly 2022 Itaewon crowd crush, South Korea faced a failure of prevention—and mourning. A group of anthropologists explores how grief was managed, marginalized, and ultimately erased,…
SAPIENS poet-in-residence for 2025 listens to a chorus of dreams in her field recordings from Kashmir. ✽ “Dreaming has a share in history.” —Walter Benjamin, Dream Kitsch …
A former National Park Service anthropologist reflects on the vital role of cultural anthropology to the agency’s mission—and what might be lost if the Trump administration’s cuts to…
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukrainians have been gathering to support the war effort by creating camouflage nets for fighters on the frontlines. ✽ On a hot…
Class lecture Youtube video (click here) Introduction: The study of Indian society and culture by anthropologists has never been a singular, unified intellectual endeavor. Spanning more th…
City of Equals by Jonathan Wolff and Avner de-Shalit examines what it means for one citizen of a city to feel equal to another, despite different experiences and…
An anthropologist fighting cancer navigates the social pressure to get breast reconstruction after a mastectomy. ✽ “I’ve decided to go flat.” I said these words aloud for the…
In this live discussion, anthropologist Anand Pandian shares insights from his timely new book, Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down.…
I spent part of the summer of 2025 in Kalama Conservancy, in northern Kenya’s Samburu County. The conservancy, part of the Gir Gir group ranch, covers 16,000 hectares…
A researcher dips into life at a community pool in Cambridge, England, to find out why so many people over 60 are finding joy and pleasure in a…
A Venezuelan anthropologist reflects on distrust he felt from residents of informal settlements in Santiago, Chile—and how his experiences track global trends of fearing outsiders. ✽ I knocked…
A group of anthropologists working in Indonesia explores how mistrust among on-demand drivers—toward companies and one another—can be a form of individual power. ✽ DEDI WAS HOPEFUL when…