The Symbolic Power of Virus Testing
Protests against stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of the coronavirus have occurred across the country, as shown here in front of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing.…
Tag: Culture
The Tragic Intersection of the Coronavirus and Ecotourism
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, ecotourists like these, shown here viewing an Asian elephant, packed river boats on the Kinabatangan River in Borneo, Malaysia. Mark Sisson/Minden Pictures/AP …
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: “…
The Problem of Imagining the Real
As the novel coronavirus sent China into lockdown, my wife and I started to carefully follow the news. China was far away, and it was hard to imagine…
Will “Faith Not Fear” Spread the Coronavirus?
U.S. President Donald Trump spoke at an evangelical megachurch in south Miami in January 2020. Lynn Sladky/AP Photo As Easter fast approaches, epidemiologists and observers worry that the…
What Will Italy Become Without Its Elders?
The author’s first daughter shares time with her great-grandfather Giuseppe, born in 1925 and recently deceased. Daniela Valsecchi Our elders are dying one by one, oak trees struck…
Unmasked: Covid-19 and the Cultural Dimensions of the Debate on Mandatory Face Masks
In the context of the covid-19 pandemic, Germany witnesses debates on whether masks could help contain the spread of the virus. This article argues the controversy may be…
Explaining the Emergence of Coronavirus Rituals
People in Rome, Italy, go out on their balconies at a specific time to give one another a round of applause during the coronavirus lockdown. Alessandra Tarantino/AP Photo…
When Coronavirus Emptied the Streets, Music Filled It
Sardinia is celebrated for its traditional a cappella music and its murals, like this one in the town of Orgosolo that honors pacifist musician Fabrizio De André. Simona…
What’s Wrong With “the Chinese Virus”?
Most Americans take it for granted that in the 1960s, more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers died in something called the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, however, there is no…
COVID-19 and the Failure of Neoliberalism in the Face of Crisis
We are firmly set in the middle of a global pandemic at the moment. As it currently stands, the World Health Organization (WHO) is reporting just under 300,000…
Why We Buy Weird Things in Times of Crisis
The world is in the grip of a serious pandemic as a novel virus sweeps from continent to continent, causing cases of sometimes-deadly COVID-19. Yet much of the…
Gasping for Air in the Time of COVID-19
The impact of the virus is having suffocating effects in more ways than one. Sorbetto/Getty Images Panic about COVID-19, a novel flu-like disease that emerged in Wuhan, China,…
Big Bend: Narratives of Isolation
“Splendid Isolation, the Big Bend…” is how the National Parks Services introduces Big Bend National Park on its website. My partner and I recently took a several day…
Is It Ever OK to Publish Photographs of Human Remains?
[no-caption] Jonas Androx/Pexels Ask SAPIENS is a series that offers a glimpse into the magazine’s inner workings. Death is an experience that binds all of humanity. Everyone dies.…
Native American Children’s Historic Forced Assimilation
Children arrived at school at different points in the assimilation process. Many still openly embraced their traditional cultures, including some of these Lakota children on the Rosebud Indian…
Becoming Inia and Dolphin
The Amazon River Basin is one of the richest river systems in the world, covering more than 7-million square kilometers. This system contains more than 5600 species of…
AES 2020 Abstract: Mediating Multispecies Relations Through Western and Indigenous Conservation
Western notions of modernity have situated human society apart from nature, which encompasses those spaces and beings that are unmodified and unsullied by human activity. The Western conception…
The Bitter Side of Cocoa Production
Chocolate comes from processing the seeds found in the fruit, or “pods” (shown here), of the cacao tree. USAID/Flickr A fine piece of chocolate tickles your tongue with…
The Life and Meaning of Margaret Mead
Anthropologist Margaret Mead immerses herself in the community on a field trip to Bali, Indonesia, in 1957. AP Photo This article was originally published at Aeon. In 1978, after…
Why Face Masks Are Going Viral
A discount market on Penang Island, Malaysia, displays a face mask on a mannequin. Surgical masks are unregulated and provide minimal protection from pathogens. Paul Keller/Flickr On the…
The Double Life of Coca
In Andean countries such as Peru and Bolivia, locals and tourists drink mate de coca, a tea made from coca leaves, to stave off altitude sickness. Calsidyrose/Flickr In…
This morning Twitter Kissed Culture Hard on the Mouth
Originally published on Medium, January 21, 2020 Recently the marketing team at Twitter put culture at the heart of what they do, in that most precious territory, the…
Corporate “Sorcerers” Reveal the Magical Power of Capitalism
The destruction of forests contributes to widespread drought through atmospheric processes that can seem like sorcery. Pixabay/Pexels To Indigenous Marind communities living in West Papua…