Wearing slammerkins and dreaming: Sex work in fiction
In Slammerkin, Mary is a street prostitute in mid-18th-century London. Thrown out of her dismal basement home by a mother absolute in condemnation of Mary’s pregnancy at 14,…
Tag: Culture
What Religious Beliefs Reveal About Post-Truth Politics
As part of a traditional ritual, elderly Bidayuh practitioners invite the rice spirit and other spirits to participate in the festivities at the sangar, or bamboo altar. Liana…
Social-Problem novels and The Three-Headed Dog
I was interviewed in an old pub in Stoke Newington next to a photo-plaque memorialising Writers and Reformers.* I suppose it was by chance, but maybe not. Campaigners…
Social-Problem novels and The Three-Headed Dog
I was interviewed in an old pub in Stoke Newington next to a photo-plaque memorialising Writers and Reformers.* I suppose it was by chance, but maybe not. Campaigners…
Inside Kashmir—A Heroic Fight for Justice
Over the last three decades, India’s occupation of a large portion of Kashmir has brought political strife, widespread oppression, and violence. David Williams/SAPIENS On a hot sunny day…
Ellroy’s Black Dahlia as a B-girl: Sex work in fiction
A typical paperback cover from the heyday of pulp fiction makes convention girls look carefree and glamorous. Some might have been and still be, but picking clients up…
The girlfriend experience in Lawrence Block: Sex work in fiction
Lawrence Block is a successful mainstream writer whose plotlines often include sex workers, in a normalising way (call girls, mostly). Matthew Scudder, the detective protagonist in one of Block’…
Ken Burns, an anthropological portrait of an artist and the edge
[This essay first appeared in Medium. It has been lightly edited for presentation here.] In the world of documentary filmmaking, it feels like there’s the era “Before Ken…
Ebola Prevention Caught in the Bushmeat Trap
Questions about the safety of eating “bushmeat” were front and center during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. SarahTz/Flickr In 2015, as an Ebola epidemic raged in…
Hustling and cruising with John Rechy: Sex work in fiction
You know how it is when you are staying at someone’s house and you finish your own book and have to look around the alien shelves for something…
Women selling sex in the postwar London of Doris Lessing
The Four-Gated City was published in 1969 by Doris Lessing. The passage quoted below describes a single young woman walking west on the Bayswater Road in 1950. The…
The Many Hands Shirt: Reuniting a Family and an Heirloom
In late 2013, I got an out-of-the-blue call from Stella Iron Cloud, a member of the Oglala Lakota (a.k.a. Oglala Sioux) Tribe of South Dakota. She asked if…
The Rescue Industry has a song
The Rescue Industry has entered the lexicon and now has its own song: Rescue Two-Step, described as ‘an anti-criminalization anthem dedicated to sex workers everywhere’. Listen and watch,…
Part 2: Life Lessons From Prince: Four Things I Learned After Four Days At Paisley Park.
I found myself asking this morning why I chose to break this blog up into 4 pieces instead of just pulling it all together in one sitting and…
The Making of a Community Activist
The construction of a proposed natural gas pipeline in Puerto Rico’s Jobos Bay would threaten one of the island’s largest estuaries and the people who depend on it.…
More 5-star reviews for The Three-Headed Dog
I love the customer reviews posted on The Three-Headed Dog‘s Amazon page and wish there were a reply-function so I could talk with the writers. Take E Silheit,…
How Babywearing Went Mainstream
Baby carriers—an ancient tool adapted to modern times—offer parents a way to bond with their child and express their individuality. Michelle Jones/SAPIENS Danielle Gold has 18 baby carrie…
Interviews by Johnny Lemuria and Maggie McNeill
Two bloggers have interviewed me on the occasion of publishing a new book. First I’ll show you Maggie McNeill’s, because it’s written; after that I’ll give the link…
The case for culture in business, as clearly and forcefully as I can make it
This is an abbreviation of talk I gave for the design firm Thomas Pigeon in early April. It puts the “case for culture in business” as forcefully as I…
In the field with Iraq’s archaeologists of the future
Working in Kurdistan at the site of Qalatga Darband, The British Museum is training Iraqi archaeologists to preserve and study their country’s threatened heritage Iraqi Kurdistan is spectacularly…
Who is the Three-Headed Dog? Surveillance and migration
Charon Crossing the River Styx was painted by Joachim Patinir between 1515 and 1524. A reproduction hangs on the wall of a bar in Málaga’s centro histórico where…
A letter to my culture interns, Jarvis and Donte
I have never had interns before. In fact, I thought there was something wrong with using them. But I now have two. I will call them Jarvis Rochford and Donte Cole.…
Culinary Catalysts and Scientific Shifts: Peruvian Quinoa in the Age of Genetics and Gastronomy
Chef Maguiña with Adam Gamwell. Property of Adam Gamwell. This episode of This Anthropological Life presents a little differently from our normal episodes. The Society for Applied Anthropology…
Culinary Catalysts and Scientific Shifts: Peruvian Quinoa in the Age of Genetics and Gastronomy
Chef Maguiña with Adam Gamwell. Property of Adam Gamwell. This episode of This Anthropological Life presents a little differently from our normal episodes. The Society for Applied Anthropology…