Our Living Message for Extraterrestrials
On March 23, 2016, Microsoft brought a new artificial intelligence (AI) online. Named Tay, she was linked to social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and other sites so…
Tag: Culture
If I was going to be interviewed about blogging by The Geek Anthropologist: 15 questions
(… this is very informal…) Why do I blog? When you work outside academia and you’re not actively researching you still want to write, you still want…
Coffee To Go
For the last couple of months, my husband Jerry and I have been traveling across Southeast Asia with a coffee maker. It’s a little lightweight Black & Decker…
The Nachtwinkels of Antwerp
Cities have always been places where different customs, cultures, and individuals come in contact. In Antwerp, Belgium, a large network of nachtwinkels, or “night shops,” sells a basic…
Ancestral Lines, Second Edition
At the core of the Teaching Culture series of ethnographies is John Barker’s Ancestral Lines: The Maisin of Papua New Guinea and the Fate of the Rainforest. This…
Notes From a Crime Scene
Drive out in the late afternoon to one of the many hills on the outskirts of the tiny Arizona town of Arivaca and look west. You will see…
Lifting the Emotional Embargo With Cuba
The June heat was so intense, the air so still, that the open balcony doors offered little relief. Anthropologist Ruth Behar felt her clothes sticking as she looked…
The Great Chocolate Migration
Last fall, I was sipping Mexican chocolate at a chic little Singapore café. It was a local branch of a New York–based chain, which was started in Israel…
The Mystery of the Corpse in the Burlap Sack
On July 28, 1889, a couple drove a carriage down a remote road about a dozen miles south of Lyon, France. Michel Eyraud, a middle-aged conman, and his…
A Business for the Future? Redefining Value, Quinoa and the Quest of Pachakuti Foods w/ Alexander Wankel
We’re back in Peru! Join Adam and special guest Alexander Wankel of Pachakuti Foods for a conversation about the future of food production, agrobiodiversity, sustainability, and keeping traditio…
Trace ethnography: a retrospective
Stuart Geiger @staeiou continues our edition of ‘The Person in the (Big) Data‘ with a reflection on his practice of ‘trace ethnography’ that focuses on the trace-makin…
Ladders to Other Worlds
As a symbol of cultural continuity, the wooden pueblo ladder connects its users to their ancestors, the universe, their spiritual beliefs, and one another. Pueblo Indian communities in…
Out! “Curb” or “Truck”?
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond. Crown Publishers, March 2016. On the cool September day that Arleen Beale and her two boys moved…
Airplane Food
Late in January, I boarded a long-haul flight, 27 hours and 5 minutes, 9,405 miles, three connections. I packed emergency Larabars (food for quick energy), ordered gluten-free meals…
The Person in the (Big) Data
This edition of EM is jam-packed with methods for doing people-centred digital research and is edited by EM co-founder Heather Ford, newly-appointed Fellow in Digital Methods at the Universi…
Racial Realities
When I tell my students that there is no such thing as “race” (meaning biological race), I wait for the blowback. I know it is coming. “Well if…
Confronting Rape Culture
The November 19, 2014, publication of “A Rape on Campus” in Rolling Stone magazine threw the University of Virginia into a frenzy of institutional responses. The article reported…
Mate: The Drink Beyond a Drink w/ Guilherme Heiden
Coca and Mate by Guilherme Heiden and Adam Gamwell Mate (pronounced mah-tay), or more commonly known as yerba mate for English speakers, is an herbal tea drink native…
Remember Your Loved One—Build a Birdhouse
Not far from where I live in central Florida, dozens of remarkable birdhouses grace a short canal along the meandering St. Johns River. Some of the birdhouses are…
Public Anthropology
To mark the publication of Public Anthropology: Engaging Social Issues in the Modern World, the author, Edward J. Hedican, provides us with a few thoughts on the impetus…
Lemon Difficult: Building a Strategic Speculation Consultancy
Joseph Lindley works with design fiction in order to facilitate meaningful speculation about the future. In between he likes to make music, take photographs and combine the other two…
An interview with Noemi Charlotte Thieves
I had a chance to interview Noemi Charlotte Thieves on January 10. We were at a going-away party in Brooklyn and fell into conversation. The conversation was SO INTERESTING…
Meat Culture
You might have heard: The Obama administration released its new Dietary Guidelines for Americans in January to an outcry. While the new rules tell us to limit our…
Beyond the Vaccination Rift
“Man is by nature a social animal … for [whom] the whole must necessarily come before the part.” —Aristotle Parents who do not vaccinate their children have faced…