Neighborliness Matters to Your Health
Drawing from cross-cultural research, an anthropologist shows how neighborliness can lessen wealth-based health disparities. DOES GOOD HEALTH REQUIRE WEALTH? The poorest people in the U.S. spend their…
Tag: Ethics
Presentation: Cultural Dimensions of Digital Ethics
Budka, P. (2023). Cultural dimensions of digital ethics: Anthropological notes and perspectives. Presentation at Academies for Global Innovation and Digital Ethics (AGIDE) Workshop, Vienna, Austria: …
“Japan moves to criminalize exploitative photo voyeurism”
Text from Japan Today, 5/2/23. A bill has been submitted to an ongoing session in the Japanese Diet targeting a crackdown on people who take surreptitious photographs, a…
How global fashion brands failed Rana Plaza’s survivors
by Rebecca Prentice The survivors of the deadly supply chain disaster were paid ‘rights-based’ compensation from global brands; it wasn’t sufficient to help rebuild their lives The Rana…
Who Pays the Price When Cochlear Implants Go Obsolete?
Some cochlear implant users can’t afford to keep up with compulsory technology upgrades. After becoming dependent on the devices, they’re losing their hearing and feel abandoned by manufacturers.…
Seeker of Life/Kawsay Thawiq
A Quechua poet and linguist speaks to the conflicting feelings some Indigenous groups experience when non-Native paleoarchaeologists and others visit their communities for research projects. “Se…
Navigating the Ethics of Ancient DNA Research
Paleogenomic research has expanded rapidly over the past two decades, igniting heated debates about handling human remains. Who gives consent for the ancient subjects of studies—and who should…
Centering Black Lives in the Study of Human Remains
A contributor to a special series on decolonizing anthropology reckons with bioarchaeology’s racist past by focusing on Black women’s creativity and everyday lives in her work. This contribution…
A Native Alaska Community’s Reckoning With Vaccine Hesitancy
An anthropologist’s research with Tlingit communities in Alaska shows they have good reasons to be skeptical about vaccines. They know their history. ✽ New COVID-19 boosters are now…
Will a Nobel Prize Make Paleogenomics More Accountable?
An anthropologist offers possible directions for ancient DNA studies moving forward—especially regarding the field’s complex histories with Indigenous communities and public education. This article w…
Nuremberg, Covid, and Anthropology: Never Again
Today, August 20, 2022, marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the trials of medical professionals at Nuremberg. Central principles and fundamental rights were enshrined as a…
Omar Dewachi on Iraq
Omar Dewachi, an anthropologist who was an Iraqi physician during the Gulf War, has published an article from his forthcoming book, which is entitled “When Wounds Travel: Ecologies…
Is Donated Blood a Gift or a Commodity?
An anthropologist dives into the morally fraught blood and plasma industry and what it reveals about human societies—the good, the bad, and the gory. ✽ In the spring…
Is Donated Blood a Gift or a Commodity?
In 1950, human blood was stored for patient use at a U.S. Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons In the spring…
Radical Harm Reduction and the Responsibility of a World by Jarrett Zigon
Addiction is exceedingly moralized. Perhaps no other concept associated with the experience of addiction reveals this more than that of responsibility. Too often, addiction is understood in…
Requiem for a War Robot
An experimental robotic pack mule, the Legged Squad Support System, walks alongside U.S. Marines on patrol. Sarah Dietz/U.S. Marine Corps Excerpted from War Virtually: The Quest to Autom…
Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States (Book Review)
by Ellie Plumb In Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States, Seth M. Holmes seeks to uncover the synergistic effects that citizenship, race, ethnicity, and…
Should You Feel Bad About Your Pandemic-Era Plastic Waste?
Plastic waste has grown exponentially across the globe during the pandemic. Matthew Williams-Ellis/Universal Images Group/Getty Images “Sometimes I want to avoid producing excessive waste…
Bulldozing Islamic Jeddah
mid-19th century view of Jeddah from Richard Burton’s travelogue The current de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, MBS, has promoted a major development scheme entitled Vision 2030. This…
The Cultural Anxieties of Xenotransplantation
In January, news broke that David Bennett Sr.—a 57-year-old man with a serious heart disease—received a heart from a genetically modified pig. The eight-hour operation, which took place…
Lament for Yemen
Lament for Yemen Yemen,your body lies crushedbeneath the rubble that was the homewhere you were bornyour blood floods the landbreaks the terraced slopeswhere sorghum supplied every needyour br…
Environment, Labour and Capitalism at Sea (Book Review)
by Connie Scott “Fish simply appear in supermarkets” (p.209), writes Penny McCall Howard. Most consumers have little or no awareness of where their fish comes from, or of…
The Hard Labor That Fuels the Hair Trade
The majority of hair that India exports comes from waste—such as the strands gathered in this picture of a street collector in Chennai. Emma Tarlo Every evening, for…
Ayça Çubukçu: On “Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology”
Published in 2004 in the inspirational context of a veritably exploding anarchism around the world, David Graeber’s Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (referred to here on as Fragments)is…