A Daughter’s Disability and a Father’s Awakening
[no-caption] Thomas W. Pearson The nurse gently lifted Michaela onto my partner’s bare chest, a newborn embraced by her mother for the first time. I marveled at the…
Tag: Family
Melinda Cooper’s Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism by Ilana Gershon
Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism Melinda Cooper MIT Press, 2017, 416 pages. Neoliberal policy in the United States sometimes seems internally contradictory….
Burning down the house: When crisis becomes daily life in early-onset dementia by Silke Hoppe
For my doctoral research, I interviewed family members living with a loved one with early-onset dementia, a diagnosis that one receives under the age of 65. Jans, not…
George, the dog by Emily Yates-Doerr
Babe, my grandpa, was born on the kitchen tiles of a small Seattle home. His dad, whose own grandpa had run a seedy downtown brothel, would disappear and…
Six photos of my father at 91 by Alessandro Duranti
I have chosen to tell a story based on six photographs I took of my father, Ivio Duranti (1918-2009) in the last year of his life. He was…
Re-enacting memories by Elinor Ochs
One way to ‘think with dementia’ is to phenomenologically shift from ‘memory’ to ‘remembering’ and to mine ‘remembering’ for its qualities and potentialities as socio-culturally limned experience. Whe…
Is Higher Education a “Family-Friendly” Career Choice?
At the end of a day of academic work, you may not want to talk to anybody else, and giving yourself that option is a form of self-care.…
Observations and reflections
Four Poems, Spring 2018 1) I remember you, abuela. The tortillas and the way you touched the comal to check the temperature. I want to ask you things…
Talking in Silences
Elizabeth has an agency all of her own, albeit one that we might not be familiar with, and so to reduce her experience only to the ties of…
Research Moving Forward: The Social Construction of Down syndrome
I’m at the point where I’m beginning to plan out my next research project. I’m finishing up work on one manuscript (Genocolonization) and writing another with my partner…
Ep. #5 Stunted thinking: Annie McCarthy talks slum children, NGOs, and stunting in Delhi
In Ep. #5, Stunted thinking, Annie McCarthy talks slum children, NGOs, and stunting in Delhi, India.
#review: becoming legal
The cover-image of Ruth Gomberg-Munoz’s book Becoming Legal: Immigration Law and Mixed Status Families depicts a group of protestors holding placards – one which reads ‘We want our…
It’s Not Just Your Parents’ Fault
Did you know that your mind is a cesspit of anger, and fear, and unresolved moments from your childhood? It’s not just you. Apparently everyone is living in…
The Anthropoliteia #BlackLivesMatter Syllabus Project, Week 17: Riché Barnes on #BlackFamiliesMatter, Especially Black Mothers
The editors of Anthropoliteia are happy to relaunch the second semester of an ongoing series The Anthropoliteia #BlackLivesMatterSyllabus Project, which will mobilize anthropological work as a pedagog…
On Kindness and What the World Needs Now w/ Hannah Brencher
Have you ever felt disconnected from your relationships and your life because of your reliance on your phone and social media? Do you ever feel nostalgia for the…
On the Backs of Other Mothers
I had no idea I was singing the saddest song about motherhood of all time. It all started when I became curious about a lullaby my grandmother used…
Of Fantasy and Daughters
I recently had the excellent fortune to guest blog on The Horn Book’s new venture: Family Reading about my love of reading fantasy, and sharing the books with my…
Megan Crowley-Matoka’s “Domesticating Organ Transplant: Family Sacrifice and National Aspiration in Mexico” by Parsa Bastani
Domesticating Organ Transplant: Family Sacrifice and National Aspiration in Mexico Megan Crowley-Matoka Duke University Press, 2016, 336 pages In Domesticating Organ Transplant: Family Sacrifi…
#Review: What Kinship Is – And Is Not
To what degree can our biological, genetic and reproductive systems be considered the basis for family relationships? Marshall Sahlins divides his answer to this question into two sections…
Sex/Gender: Part III: What Counts as Adequate Function? by Constance Cummings
A Critical Moment: Sex/Gender Research at the Intersections of Culture, Brain, and Behavior FPR-UCLA 2016 Conference Summary The sex/gender conference succeeded in bringing together people “with dif…
On the Brazilian crisis, Pentecostalism and thinking out of the bubble
Pentecostal service in the Brazilian field site. Photo by: Juliano Spyer Brazil is in the midst of a heated national debate between people in favour of, and those contrary…
Tanya Cassidy’s and Abdullahi El Tom’s “Ethnographies of Breastfeeding: Cultural Contexts and Confrontations” by Ben Kasstan
Ethnographies of Breastfeeding: Cultural Contexts and Confrontations Tanya Cassidy and Abdullahi El Tom (editors) Bloomsbury, 2015, 255 pages Ethnographies of Breastfeeding offers a timely insi…
Nostalgia for a field Christmas
Image courtesy of shanzmataz. It’s the first time I’ve been away from Christmas in Trinidad since I started fieldwork there in 2011 (oh wait, I was home briefly…
Surviving the Holidays, Anthropologist Style
As the holidays inch closer, and you’re beginning to dread joining the bag of mixed nuts you call your family, consider approaching them with anthropologists’ eyes this year.…