How Societies Morph With the Seasons
An evolutionary anthropologist details seasonal changes among foraging communities—and distills how the fixed political structures of industrialized societies are an outlier in human history. ✽ If you…
An evolutionary anthropologist details seasonal changes among foraging communities—and distills how the fixed political structures of industrialized societies are an outlier in human history. ✽ If you…
Hemangini Gupta‘s Experimental Times explores the gendered dynamics of startup capitalism in Bangalore, offering a rich ethnographic study of labour, urban space, and entrepreneurship. Tanushree…
The Precariat in Western China by Xueyang Ma examines the experiences of workers in precarious employment in Ya’an, a city in Sichuan province, Western China. Drawing on interviews…
Introduction Private health service delivery is becoming increasingly dominant in biomedical landscapes worldwide. In global health circles, private health services […] The post “You have to do …
In figure 1, the pen in John’s hand points to a column on the computer screen. On the same screen […] The post Movement and Meaning for Oil…
Foreign Capital to Boost the Development of Africa Figure 1: Africa Finance Breakfast gathering in Paris in May 2019. Photo […] The post Foreign Investment for Domestic Development…
When activist and anthropologist Graeber died unexpectedly in 2020, scholars gathered to mourn him. Contributors to a resulting volume, As If Already Free, reflect on his legacy. ✽…
As the European Space Agency launches its flagship mission to explore Jupiter’s moons, an anthropologist explores the gap between launch enthusiasts and local residents. This piece is part…
An anthropologist recounts how a small island nation built and deployed its first satellite—and what their effort says about unequal access to the growing space economy on Earth.…
Are governments doing enough to address today’s widening inequalities, or are they pandering to the wealth elite? Max Steuer‘s Dangerous Guesswork in Economic Policy and Sarah Kerr‘…
In this interview with Anna D’Alton, Sarah Kerr discusses her new book, Wealth, Poverty and Enduring Inequality: Let’s Talk Wealtherty. The book argues that to tackle inequality today,…
Written by Keith Hart National capitalism starts unravelling in the 1970s In the early 1970s, the United States’ losing war …
In an effort to address toxic polarization in the U.S., an anthropologist of the “Trumpiverse” explains MAGA supporters’ thinking in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. This article was…
Written by Keith Hart [Summary: The two centuries since the industrial revolution are a blink of the eye of world …
Anthropologist David Graeber’s celebrated theory of “bullshit jobs” continues to provide a critical window into why modern work is often so useless, soul-sucking, and absurd. This article was…
In Born to Rule, Sam Friedman and Aaron Reeves examine how Britain’s elite continues to reproduce itself through entrenched structures of privilege, despite the appearance of increased meritocra…
An anthropologist reports on the impediments to labor organizing—and why it’s still worth trying. ✽ In the notoriously anti-union U.S. South, a Volkswagen plant unionized. After months of…
The scientific community in Argentina is facing a crisis. In response, scientists are protesting to stand up for their work and community. María Pía Tavella is an Argentine…
In the epicenter of fast fashion, a small cohort of Chinese eco-friendly designers is amplifying the call for a less wasteful and environmentally destructive clothing culture. ✽ While…
Dan Evans’s A Nation of Shopkeepers explores the growth of the “petty bourgeoisie” in the UK following Thatcherism, as the rise of home ownership, small landlordism and changes to the…
Written by Keith Hart 4. Sex divisions in the Caribbean and West Africa I spent two years of fieldwork in …
Written by Keith Hart 2. The agrarian phase of peasant patriarchy and the anomaly of slavery Families based on a …
In a brief documentary, an anthropologist provides a glimpse into the precarious lives of poor older Peruvians whose experiences mirror those of countless elders around the world. ✽…
Written by John Keith Hart Introduction The idea of a sexual division of labor rests on asserting that men and …