Graffiti Bombing in U.S. National Parks
Graffiti in U.S. national parks has become increasingly common. Carving into rocks or writing and painting on them leaves images and impressions that are difficult to remove—forever changing…
Tag: Ethics
Al-Nuwayri on the Pleasures of Life
A post about the famous 14th century Mamluk text of al-Nuwayri, with a new English translation of excerpts from this classic compendium now available.
Ethnographic Refusal: A How to Guide
Refusal is a method whereby researchers and research participants together decide not to make particular information available for use within the academy. Here are some strategies for identifying…
Ethics in the Anthropocene: new paper in The Anthropocene Review
Together with Peter Brown and Chris Orr (both at McGill), I’ve co-authored a new article now available at The Anthropocene Review in advance of print. If you’d like…
The social framing of diagnoses and empathetic listening by Aaron J. Jackson
The account that follows depicts a visit with my neurologist. The visit was one of many within a five-month period of navigating various medical spaces to get to…
Web Roundup: Ethical Technology, Moral Medicine by Emily Goldsher-Diamond
Researchers at MIT have launched Moral Machine, a web project to help gauge human perspectives on “moral decisions made by machine intelligence.” The project comes in the wake…
Trump’s Muslim Bashing
The Atlantic (June 16) has a powerful piece by Uri Friedman on Donald Trump’s rampant Muslim bashing with responses by six Muslim commentators and scholars. It is well…
Ceci N’est Pas un Contact: the Fetishization of Isolated Indigenous People [Excerpt]
Words matter. Peruvian legislation recognizes two categories of indigenous peoples with little or no interaction with outsiders and the state: “peoples in voluntary isolation” and “peoples in initial…
Ceci N’est Pas un Contact: the Fetishization of Isolated Indigenous People [Excerpt]
Words matter. Peruvian legislation recognizes two categories of indigenous peoples with little or no interaction with outsiders and the state: “peoples in voluntary isolation” and “peoples in initial…
Ceci N’est Pas un Contact: the Fetishization of Isolated Indigenous People [Excerpt]
Words matter. Peruvian legislation recognizes two categories of indigenous peoples with little or no interaction with outsiders and the state: “peoples in voluntary isolation” and “peoples in initial…
Ceci N’est Pas un Contact: the Fetishization of Isolated Indigenous People [Excerpt]
Words matter. Peruvian legislation recognizes two categories of indigenous peoples with little or no interaction with outsiders and the state: “peoples in voluntary isolation” and “peoples in initial…
Should Chimps Be Considered People Under the Law?
A New York State Supreme Court ruling in 2014 decided that chimpanzees are not persons with rights because they cannot bear legal duties and responsibilities. But this is…
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…
Disciplinary Peace Above All Else? by Nadia Abu El-Haj
“When It’s Time to Vote, Don’t Boycott Academics – Cut the Purse-strings” raises important questions about the power of economic divestment in the struggle for Palestinian rights. In…
On Drones
Al-Jazeera has recently published an article on an American serviceman who helped design the drone program in Afghanistan. The article is online here. I published my critique of…
The Brussels attack and liberal Islamophobia
“WICHITA, KS – MARCH 5: A group of Muslim students take selfies before Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made a speech at a campaign rally on March 5,…
Conference Report: ‘Comment penser l’anthropocène?’ at Collège de France, Paris by Yannick van den Berg
November 5 & 6, 2015 – Conference Program and Videos The two-day conference ‘Comment penser l’anthropocène?’ (‘How to think the Anthropocene?’) at the Collège de France in Paris…
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…
Where We Draw the Lines
Weighing Commitments to Community and Heritage The AAA Statement of Ethics asks anthropologists to “do no harm,” an injunction that is deceptively simple. After all, anthropologists can rarely…
The Darkest Truths
In 2007, Caroline Sturdy Colls—then a 21-year-old University of Birmingham graduate student—made her first visit to the Nazi death camp at Treblinka, Poland. As a prospective forensic-archaeology scho…
Ten Ways on How Not To Think About the Iran/Saudi Conflict
by Omid Safi (@ostadjaan), On Being columnist, January 7, 2016 In the last few days, virtually every news outlet has featured a series of stories on the rising…
US Anthropology: Political, Professional, Personal, Imperial
Part One of: “Canadian Anthropology or Cultural Imperialism?” Recent events have called into question how a discipline can be commanded on an international plane, and represented in a…
Debating the End of the Human Terrain System, Part 2
US Army caption: “Fist bump–A group of local Afghan children bump fists with U.S. Army Soldiers assigned to the 1775th Military Police Company during a mission to Kuchi…
“Free Basics” – does it really matter to the poor in Panchagrami?
Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons: Facebook The launch of Facebook’s ‘Free Basics’, a rebranding of internet.org, has been a hot topic in India for the past few months as Facebook tries to…