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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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:…
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…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Fieldnotes The box is white, and adorned with a rectangular red button about half the size of my palm. White is clean, sterile, new. Red is alarm, is…
Workshop Report: King’s College London, 11 December 2014 Introduction Different forms of exchange between neuroscientists, social scientists, and humanities scholars have been emerging, and these have…
This post is part of our new series, The Ethnographic Case. In 1976, when I was eighteen and he was eighty-four, my grandfather told me the case of the…
On Friday, April 24, more than 50 attendees gathered to hear the keynote—and kick off a weekend of stimulating talks and discussion—for the 3rd Cascadia Seminar, “Ethnographic Adventures…
This post is an introduction to our new series, The Ethnographic Case. We launch this series with a question: What is an ethnographic case? As ethnography is a…
Capital’s resilience as technologies and cultures change lies in the systematic priority placed on value development and extraction. However, this does not imply that actors in these systems…
Karnatic music, or South Indian classical music, is understood as “religious” music, deemed to be “divinely inspired,” and performers are seen as embodying the divine. Because of its…