How to Care for the Dead
Scientists have thought about burial—the act of interring a dead body—as a distinctly human behavior. So what happened when a group of paleoanthropologists discovered a primitive hominid that…
Tag: Culture
Decolonizing Primatology: Part I
We all have texts that are formative in our academic, professional, spiritual, personal, mental, and philosophical lives. There are a few books that I can point to as…
How Austerity Unravels Social Ties
People collect water from a pump in a small village in Mozambique. Graeme Robertson/Getty Images Roxana* and Rajah are neighbors who live on the outskirts of Nampula City…
The Dream of the Green Hog Revolution
[no-caption] Ezra Weiss This September, as Hurricane Florence bore down on the North Carolina coast, it spread a soup of stinking effluent from at least 110 lagoons on…
Making #AmAnth18 Manageable: The Teaching Culture Top 30
The 2018 AAA meetings are upon us and we’re looking forward to getting out from this rainy, cold Toronto weather and into some California sun! In keeping with…
For Chimps, Human Touch Can Hurt
At a sanctuary in Cameroon, caregiver Henriette holds Gnala, a 2-year-old chimpanzee who had previously lived in a human household as a pet. Amy Hanes/Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue The…
How Halloween Has Traveled the Globe
A young girl attends a Día de Muertos celebration in Mexico dressed in a Halloween costume. Peter Langer/Getty Images Wendy Fonarow arrived in Mexico City late in October…
Why Are So Many Guatemalans Migrating to the U.S.?
On May 23, a bystander filmed 20-year-old Claudia Patricia Gómez González after a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot her in the head. The young woman had recently crossed…
Power Players: US Football and French Rugby
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Some athletes seem larger than life. They are revered and imitated—and they seemingly hold a lot of power. But whether they feel empowered in their…
Thesis Review and Interview: Deorukhe Women’s Agency in the Making of Bodies, Cuisine, and Culture in Maharashtra, India
Photograph: Gauri A. Pitale – Waterlogged rice fields of rural Konkan, Maharashtra Please note: As Associate Editor, I am soliciting reviews of recent dissertations in the Anthropology of Food….
In Spain’s Silence, Francisco Franco’s Memory Echoes
People make the fascist salute on November 20, 2011, at the Valley of the Fallen—the basilica near Madrid, Spain, where the country’s former dictator Gen. Francisco Franco is…
Cognitive attraction and online misinformation
Next month, I will give two talks – or two versions of the same talk – on “Cognitive attraction and online misinformation”. One will be in Den Bosch…
Art is a Movement – This Anthro Life
“Money cannot be the reason why you make art. Artwork can be sold and should be sold because artists need to make a living. But they should not,…
Closer to Home
What is home? Is it a physical space, a set of relationships, or a state of mind? SAPIENS host Esteban Gómez follows Amy Starecheski, a researcher who has…
Confronting the Specter of Cultural Appropriation
[no-caption] kokouu/Getty Images Humans celebrate many things—from rites of passage to religious events to groundhogs. One of the most intriguing, anthropologically speaking, is Halloween…
Why Don’t Westerners Eat Off One Plate?
The Hadzabe share food and daily tasks. Ryan Jarvis “Why don’t your students love each other?” asked Kaunda, a Hadza hunter, as we sat around the campfire overlooking…
Bracing for the Vanilla Boom
Vanilla beans are dried in the sun as part of the curing process. George Zhu As the vanilla market opens in northeastern Madagascar this season, some local farmers…
The Value of Anthropology: My Story
Dr. Agustín Fuentes argues that it is human creativity that is the defining characteristic of our species ( see my review of The Creative Spark here: Book Review- The Creative…
Surviving Climate Change in Italy
On a cold, wet afternoon in February 2014, Andrew Mathews stood on a mountain in Tuscany and looked out over the valley below. An environmental anthropologist and a…
The Double Lives of Chinese Foreign Correspondents
In 2015, I sat over coffee at a London cafe with a local correspondent of China Central Television (CCTV), the main state broadcaster. Over the preceding years, I…
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro: “I would like the Museu Nacional to remain as a ruin, a memory of the dead things.”
This week, a translation of an interview between anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro of the Museu Nacional in Brazil, and journalist Alexandra Prado Coelho. “My wish, with the…
The End of the World As We Know It
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Listen to the companion episode of SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human! Back in 2008, Chad Huddleston was driving home from work when he saw a stra…
Are You Ready for TEOTWAWKI?
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS It’s the end of the world as we know it. How do you feel? SAPIENS co-host Jen Shannon follows the trail of some contemporary preppers…
The Hidden Resilience of “Food Desert” Neighborhoods
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Even before Ashanté Reese and I reach the front gate, retired schoolteacher Alice Chandler is standing in the doorway of her brick home in Washington,…