The Banality of Lost Guns: Producing Null Data Sets by Kristin Doughty
On the evening of June 6, 2016, a man with a concealed carry permit misplaced his loaded 9mm Kahr handgun in the middle of a park filled with…
Tag: Features
Top of the Heap: Reading in pairs with Ayo Wahlberg by Hannah Gibson
For this instalment of the Top of the Heap series, I spoke with Professor Ayo Wahlberg, who is Professor MSO in the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. He…
Remaking Reproduction Conference: A Review by Risa Cromer
More than 150 scholars of reproduction descended upon an uncharacteristically sunny Cambridge in June 2018 to put reproduction at the center of social analysis at the Remaking Reproduction:…
How to Pay Attention by Nick Seaver
The main challenge in running a seminar on the anthropology of attention is that such a thing doesn’t exist.* While anthropologists often think quite deeply about attention, worrying…
Politics by Other Means: Health in Việt Nam by Martha Lincoln
My research in Việt Nam addresses how medicine, health, and disease function as political and cultural signifiers as well as telegraphing – in the form of epidemiological data…
Breaking news! Big Shift in Biomediatization from “Swine Flu” to H3N2 to the Trump Administration’s Attack on Breastfeeding by Charles L. Briggs
The H3N2 epidemic didn’t really take off until early January 2018—at least as far as US media coverage is concerned. A crucial marker was the New York Times‘…
Cancer Culture avant la lettre by Vincent Bruyère
Figure 1. Two views of Clara Jacobi (Netherlands, 1689). U.S. National Library of Medicinehttps://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101392944-img In the class I teach on illness narratives, c…
Respect, care, and labor in collaborative scholarly projects by Nayantara Sheoran Appleton
As members of Somatosphere’s Editorial Collaborative, we have been following the unfolding crisis surrounding Hau with profound concern (Agro 2018, Flaherty 2018). As others have noted, this crisis…
The Power and Precarity of Global Health Partnerships by Clare Herrick
A recent issue of Medicine Anthropology Theory devoted to the critique of global health partnerships (GHPs) raises a question of great significance to many Somatosphere readers: ‘In real world…
We Need to Talk About “Gun Violence”: Reflections on Terminology and Contexts of Violence by Joe Anderson
Among the many political challenges of our time, gun violence in America has emerged as one of the most divisive. A retreat into partisan communities prevents us from…
North Korea: Beyond Charismatic Politics, an Interview with Byung-Ho Chung
The following is an interview of Byung-Ho Chung Professor at Hanyang University and President of the Korean Society for Cultural Anthropology, conducted by AAA Executive Director Ed Liebow. EL: I…
Funny, Awkward, Tender, Focused: Drawing Bodies by Andrea Ford
Drawings from my research on childbirth in California created an opportunity for sharing reflections on fieldwork and “seeing.” Birth is a highly mediated experience, with ubiquitous images of…
Is Health Activism a Collective Responsibility? by Beza Merid
During the tumultuous “repeal and replace” frenzy in the spring and summer of 2017, the US House of Representatives and Senate moved quickly to consider bills intended to…
Who was Bobby Kennedy?
This post was submitted by Nancy Scheper-Hughes, professor of medical anthropology at UC Berkeley where she directs the doctoral program in Critical Studies in Medicine, Science and the…
In The Journals, May 2018 by Ann Marie Thornburg
We hope you find articles of interest in this month’s In The Journals selections. Happy reading! American Ethnologist Quantitative care: Caring for the aggregate in US academic population…
Digital Food Activism – a book review by Michelle Pentecost
Digital Food Activism Tanja Schneider, Karin Eli, Catherine Dolan and Stanley Ulijaszek (eds.) Routledge Series in Critical Food Studies, 2018, 234 pages A Swiss academic scans the…
Agitated children, turbulent trajectories: Towards a comparison between Europe and South America – a workshop report by Álvaro Jiménez Molina
This article describes the main discussions and contributions of the first workshop of the International Research Network on Disruptive Behaviours. The workshop was held at the “Centre for…
(Anti)Institutional Menses: Our Blood, Our Business by Andrea Ford
Photo courtesy of “Jane” Jane started us off by saying “I grew up in the US, so I could never count on having healthcare.” Jane (for whom I’m…
In the Journals, April 2018 by Aaron Seaman
Along with our normal roundup of articles, there are several special issues to note this month. The most recent issue of Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience contains a special…
Diagnosis where? Testing Pigs and Humans for T. solium cysticercosis in Uganda by Rebekah Thompson
Two live pigs being transported to a local butcher in Mukono district, Uganda Taenia solium is a zoonotic disease shared between humans and pigs. Humans become infected with…
Splice of Life by Lisa Jean Moore
A Birthday Present Georgia, my middle daughter of three, is a combination of my DNA and identity release[1] donor #2817[2]. Unlike her sisters who both have the advantage…
Risk and utility in the governance of diagnostic testing: the case of genetic screening, 1960 to the present by Steve Sturdy
Routine collection of blood samples from neonates – often using so-called Guthrie cards (pictured) – began in the 1960s when a number of North American and European countries…
Humanitarian diagnostics for sleeping sickness in Uganda by Jennifer Palmer
Map of sleeping sickness RDT availability (red dots) in the north-western region of Uganda hosting refugees from South Sudan. In 2015, the majority of refugees in this region…
Gun Cultures Reflect Broader Changes in American Society by Joseph Henderson
Author’s Note: I originally wrote this article for my institution’s student-run literary magazine after the Parkland shooting. Our little community was engaged in passionate debate about “gun culture”…