What’s in a name? by Ruth Goldstein
“Is writing seemly? Does the writer cut a respectable figure? Is it proper to write? Is it done?” – Jacques Derrida, “Plato’s Pharmacy” in Disseminations ~ ~ ~…
Tag: Features
“Bioculturalism” — An interview with Christopher Lynn by Christopher D. Lynn
This series aims to get anthropologists and closely-related others talking seriously, and thinking practically, about how to synergize biological and social scientific approaches to human health and w…
“He didn’t blow us up”—routine violence and non-event as case by Ken MacLeish
This case is a story that a soldier told me. I call her Kelly, and she said it was “the craziest story I was gonna get” from her.…
Image as Method: Conversations on Anthropology through the Image by Andrés Romero
What follows is a series of conversations conducted after the recent Image as Method symposium, which took place on May 4th and 5th, 2015, at Columbia University’s Heyman…
“Bioculturalism” – An interview with Emily Mendenhall by Emily Mendenhall
This series aims to get anthropologists and closely-related others talking seriously, and thinking practically, about how to synergize biological and social scientific approaches to human health and w…
An anthropology beyond nature and culture? Tim Ingold and Gisli Palsson’s edited volume, Biosocial Becomings. by Perig Pitrou
Biosocial Becomings: Integrating Social and Biological Anthropology Cambridge University Press, 2013, 288 pages. This essay originally appeared in Portuguese in the journal Mana. Translation provide…
Epidemics and Xenophobia by A. David Napier
In June 2015 The Bellagio Task Force on Epidemics and Xenophobia met to discuss the resurgence of xenophobia across the globe—one most recently prompted by fearful and unsympathetic…
Facial Paralysis: Somaticizing Frustration in Guatemala by Nicholas Copeland
While conducting ethnographic fieldwork on indigenous political organizing in northwest Guatemala in the mid 2000s, I encountered, quite by accident, an apparent epidemic of Bell’s Palsy—an illness in…
Un/Inhabitable Worlds: The Curious Case of Down’s Syndrome by Gareth Thomas
In her superb exposition of staring, Garland-Thomson (2009) draws attention to Chris Rush’s artistic piece Swim 2 which depicts a woman with Down’s syndrome in a regal pose…
“Bioculturalism” – An interview with William Dressler by William Dressler
This series aims to get anthropologists and closely-related others talking seriously, and thinking practically, about how to synergize biological and social scientific approaches to human health and w…
Introduction: “Bioculturalism: The Why and How of a Promising Medical Anthropological Future” by Jeffrey G. Snodgrass
I’m perplexed by cultural anthropology’s antagonism toward biology, with culture and biology more typically treated as providing alternate and competing, rather than complementary and synergistic, exp…
The Ethnographic Vision of John L. Gwaltney: The Thrice Shy, A Forgotten Gem by Lesley A. Sharp
Gwaltney, John L. 1967. The Thrice Shy: Cultural Accommodation to Blindness and Other Disasters in a Mexican Community. New York and London: Columbia University Press. 219 pp., including…
Forgotten Gems — a new series by Janelle Taylor
What sources of creative insight and inspiration might scholars today find in the history of our field — in particular, in some of the paths not taken? What…
Daniel Jordan Smith’s AIDS Doesn’t Show Its Face: Inequality, Morality, and Social Change in Nigeria by Darja Djordjevic
AIDS Doesn’t Show Its Face: Inequality, Morality, and Social Change in Nigeria. University of Chicago Press, 2014, 208 pages In Daniel Jordan Smith’s AIDS Doesn’t Show Its Face:…
Image + Text – a new series by Juliet McMullin
from Judith Vanistendael, When David Lost His Voice. (London: Self Made Hero Press, 2012). Comics and graphic narratives have grown in popularity over the past few decades, not…
No Judgments: Fieldwork on the Spectrum by Faye Ginsburg
Spectrum:a broad range of varied but related ideas or objects, the individual features of which tend to overlap so as to form a continuous series or sequence. (Dictionary.com) The presence of disabili…
How to make a “vulnerable population” by Laura Stark
“They used my ass and took advantage of me.” This was the story of Eddie Flowers, a former drug addict used in LSD experiments during the 1950s. Leaning…
Pixelization in Crip Time: Disability, Online Sociality, and Self-Making in Russian Apartments by Cassandra Hartblay
Vakas is a Russian man in his 30s with a traumatic brain injury acquired during childhood. He spends most of his days in his room in his family…
Heather Paxson’s The Life of Cheese: Crafting Food and Value in America by James Babbitt
The Life of Cheese Crafting Food and Value in America University of California Press, 2012, 332 pages. Heather Paxson’s The Life of Cheese might seem like an odd…
Encased: Plotting Attentions through Distraction by Melissa Biggs
Cases set boundaries; cases draw you in. Often imagined as they appear in traditional museums – archipelagos of order in ordered spaces with carefully placed markers for larger…
Bomb Ecologies? Inhabiting Disability in Postconflict Laos by Leah Zani
I am an anthropologist researching postwar revival and development in Lao PDR (Laos), the most cluster-bombed country in the world (Branfman 2013). Through fieldwork with development organizations an…
Autophony: Listening to your eyes move by Anna Harris
This post is part of our new series, The Ethnographic Case. One doctor, seven medical students and an anthropologist crowd into the patient’s very small hospital room. The doctor…
Creating Methods that Speak Across Disciplines in Medical Anthropology by Emily Mendenhall
María and I finished our three hours together with a blood spot and a hug. It was an extra long hug, and I couldn’t be sure if it…
Creating In/Abilities for Eating by Dikaios Sakellariou
I am lying in bed. It is 4 am. The TV is flickering. I am listening for it, I am waiting for it. Next to me a gentle…