Imagining the Future & Economic Fictions
“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living,” Marx remarked in The Eighteenth Brumaire, and although we may all make…
Tag: economics
The Birth of Indonesia’s Cyber Village
In Yogyakarta, one of Indonesia’s culturally rich cities, lies Kampoeng Cyber, or “Cyber Village”—a community that caught the attention of Mark Zuckerberg (right), the co-founder of Facebook, for…
The Flipside of Counterfeit Goods
Although they are often illegal, counterfeit electronics such as these fake iPhones continue to be manufactured in China and distributed widely due to high demand for inexpensive products.…
The Double Life of Kale
Kale is cultivated as a reliable food source by many impoverished people in Kenya and Tanzania. This stands in stark contrast to the United States, where kale is…
Rubber Barons’ Abuses Live On in Memory and Myth
The Kukama people who live along the lower part of Peru’s Marañón River tell intergenerational myths that recollect the violence and trauma of the rubber era, which peaked in…
The Big Business of Europe’s Migration Crisis
Governments have erected numerous barriers to stem the tide of migrants and refugees flowing into Europe. These obstacles fuel a system that exploits migrants and puts their lives…
Food Anthropology, A Tribute to Sidney W. Mintz
What are your essential articles for teaching a Food Anthropology course? What most distinguishes Food Anthropology from other ways of studying food? What are the most important insights…
Inequality and “the Global Question”
To mark the publication of Global Inequality, the first book in UTP’s new Anthropological Insights series, author Kenneth McGill explains the process of writing a book about inequality…
India’s Uber Dilemma: Entrepreneurship or Exploitation?
Uber is part of a “gig economy” trend in India and elsewhere—an economy partially powered by self-employed workers on short-term jobs. While it offers flexible schedules for its…
Guest Podcast: Food Futures: Playing our Way to Conservation? Experimental Economics in the Andean Countryside
Special guest podcast from our friends at the Food Futures Podcast on Beaconreader.com: Corinna Howland interviews Adam Gamwell about experimental games, or field experiments, which NGOs and economist…
The Right to Own Living Memorials
Are you an organ donor? Have you donated your body to science? Have you donated a loved one’s body to science? If you answer yes to any of…
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…
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…
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…
“Throw Me Something, Mister!”
The parade crowds were already forming as I held on to my oversized cowboy hat and made my way to the krewe’s meeting spot. I could see our…
The Water-Cooler Problem
George Macartney had a bad day at work. The deal he was sent to close was rejected, despite months of advance negotiation. He followed the agreed-upon protocols, though…
In Memoriam, Sidney Mintz, 1922-2015
Professor Sidney Wilfred Mintz, affectionately known as “Sid,” passed away on December 26, 2015. In a first and now widely-shared post, Elizabeth Dunn succinctly conveyed the thoughts of…
Screw the gift economy, a reply to Clay Shirky
I came across a post today by Gaby Dunn called “Get rich or die vlogging: The sad economics of internet fame.” Dunn gives us YouTube and Instagram celebrities…
Running Dry: Water, People, and the Planet in Marathwada, India
This is a very interesting series on water problems in Marathwada, India. Well worth the read, and certainly important for understands the broader interconnections and logics affecting people…
New book – Ecological economics for the Anthropocene: an emerging paradigm
Just out from Columbia University Press: Ecological Economics for the Anthropocene: An Emerging Paradigm Edited by Peter G. Brown and Peter Timmerman Ecological Economics for the Anthropocene provides…
The Price of Freedom
What do the end of slavery and the European financial crisis have in common? Recently, the BBC ran a two-part documentary in the UK on how slave owners…
The Price of Freedom
What do the end of slavery and the European financial crisis have in common? Recently, the BBC ran a two-part documentary in the UK on how slave owners…
The Price of Freedom
What do the end of slavery and the European financial crisis have in common? Recently, the BBC ran a two-part documentary in the UK on how slave owners…
Kennedy and the Triumph of the Social
While everyone should be celebrating the monumental decision of the Supreme Court to recognize same-sex marriages, there is also something in there that, along with this weeks’ ruling…