Consumption, Performance and Identity in Cosplay
By Emma Louise Backe Every year, hundreds of thousands of fans congregate at conventions like San Diego’s Comic Con, Atlanta’s Dragon Con and Emerald City Comic Con, to…
Tag: Gender
Did Women and Children Exist in Prehistory?
Stone tools, like Acheulean hand axes, remain well-preserved for eons because they are stones first, tools second. Fired ceramics remain well-preserved for millennia because they are, in essence,…
Mass Violence and Teachable Moments
This past weekend, Orlando, Florida witnessed the worst mass shooting in America’s recent history. This violent, planned attack in a public place is tragic, and our hearts go out…
The Ultimate Proletarian and the Neoliberal Condition
“Proletarian” has acquired many layers of meaning over the centuries, possibly in part because the many, historically changing situations of proletarians became more complex. Since the advent of…
Food Anthropology, A Tribute to Sidney W. Mintz
What are your essential articles for teaching a Food Anthropology course? What most distinguishes Food Anthropology from other ways of studying food? What are the most important insights…
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…
Avoiding gendered bias… for instructors
Writing a reference letter for a student? The Feminist Philosophers blog has shared a handy infographic from the University of Arizona that will help instructors write great reference letters…
Review of a Film by Michael Moore: “Where to Invade Next” (2016)
Having seen almost all of Michael Moore’s films to date, I have no difficulty in applauding “Where to Invade Next” as his best film yet. I may have…
Black Disabled Woman Syllabus
Vilissa Thompson, Disability Rights Consultant & Advocate, has created the Black Disabled Woman Syllabus in response to the lack of intersectionality she has seen in disability studies. …
The reception and consumption of telenovelas in Senegal
This is a fourth set of notes under the broad theme of media and change in preparation for the volume Postill, J., E. Ardevol and S. Tenhunen (eds.)…
Apple and the Smartphone market in India
Photo Courtesy: CC: Wikimedia Commons: Kārlis Dambrāns from Latvia Less than a fifth of the Indian population might own a smart phone, but India is now the second…
Fasching als ‚doing gender‘? – Die Hexe in der Fastnacht
Als kleines Mädchen drückte ich mich vor den Faschingsumzügen im südwestdeutschen Raum – aus Angst vor den bösen Hexen. Sie sind immer wild, raufen, wälzen sich auf dem…
Applying Anthropology for a Safer World
Claim our bodies, claim our right, Take a stand, take back the night! Across the globe, the month of April is a time for communities to mobilize Take…
Sex/Gender: Part II: What’s Fixed, Changeable, Changing? by Constance Cummings
A Critical Moment: Sex/Gender Research at the Intersections of Culture, Brain, and Behavior FPR-UCLA 2016 Conference Summary Part 2 of the FPR-UCLA conference on sex/gender, which was chaired by…
Dancing “My Humps” in Rural China
Every evening in Anshan Town, a rural village in China’s Shandong province, around 25 middle-aged women gather in the small public square to dance to the Black Eyed…
How ‘Maintainers,’ Not ‘Innovators,’ Make the World Turn
I have been hearing a lot about ‘disrupters’ and ‘innovators’ in tech and marketing industries lately, and something about that language has always irked me. Lee Vinsel (an…
The filmmaking case: the ethics of (mis)representation by Anna Wilking
As a visual anthropologist, I went to the field with the intent of making a documentary film about one of my informants, while also conducting ethnographic research with…
Exploring Boundaries: From Access to Female Sexworkers to the Question of Research
When designing a research project, a researcher’s initial plans are often interrupted by what data we actually can access. Whether negotiating political structures, cultural taboos, necessary permissi…
Sex/Gender: Part I: Why Now? by Constance Cummings
A Critical Moment: Sex/Gender Research at the Intersections of Culture, Brain, and Behavior FPR-UCLA 2016 Conference Summary Emerging theories in neuroscience – fueled by new technologies in brain im…
Confronting Rape Culture
The November 19, 2014, publication of “A Rape on Campus” in Rolling Stone magazine threw the University of Virginia into a frenzy of institutional responses. The article reported…
Unmanning Space Language
Language matters, as demonstrated by the recent discussion following the discovery of example sentences using sexist stereotypes in the Oxford Dictionary of English. Language about who goes into…
Kelly Ray Knight’s addicted.pregnant.poor by Kirsten Bell
addicted.pregnant.poor By Kelly Ray Knight Duke University Press, 2015, 328 pages addicted.pregnant.poor is the sort of ethnography you start reading and don’t put down again until it’s finished. …
(Re)Konstruktion von gender im Exotensport Jugger
Wie soziale Prozesse Geschlechterkategorien reproduzieren – soziale (Re)Konstruktion von gender im Exotensport Jugger 1 Einleitung „Drei, zwei, eins – Jugg!“ so beginnt ein jeder Spielzug, der von rhy…
Freddy’s Hair
Freddy Lim Campaign Photo A week before historic elections which swept Taiwan’s ruling Nationalist Party (KMT) out of power, KMT candidate Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) asked voters not vote…