The Dangers of Birth in Tanzania
Women in sub-Saharan Africa have a 1 in 36 lifetime chance of dying from pregnancy-related causes. That’s down 45 percent since 1990, due largely to advocacy campaigns and…
Tag: health
Anthro in the News 10/17/16
Cholera threat in Haiti Haitians displaced by Hurricane Matthew, Source: Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters ABC News says relief efforts in Haiti are “ramping up” one week after Hurricane M…
Resource: Transitioning from high school to post-secondary education
Many students struggle with culture shock as they make the transition between high school and post-secondary education. New freedoms for many students living away from home for the…
Zika at the Rio Games: Pandemic or Panic?
The World Health Organization stated that there was “no public health justification” to postpone the 2016 Rio Olympics due to the Zika virus. Is the fear of Zika…
Review: The Psychology of Overeating
Cargill, Kima. 2015. The Psychology of Overeating. Food and the Culture of Consumerism. London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic (216 pp). Julie Starr Hamilton College In The Psychology of Overeating…
Understanding Mass Killings
Media commentary on Micah Johnson, the African-American who killed five police officers in Dallas on July 7, has focused on his animus against white police and his interest…
Good Earth: Exploring the Old Lead Belt
Figure 1. Park Hills, Missouri, 120 Buckley Street. The entire street borders the Desloge Chat Pile, which has been remediated by the Environmental Protection Agency and partially transformed…
Anthropologist, CTO
Is it really that strange to think that an anthropologist would be the best choice for a Chief Technology Officer? According to Susannah Fox, the CTO for HHS…
Anthropology and Public Health Policy
Medical anthropologist (and medical student) Dave Campbell outlines “Anthropology’s Contribution to Public Health Policy Development” (2011) in this accessible (and open access) piece published in the…
Cultural constructions of illness
“The Diseases You Only Get if You Believe in Them” (2016, The Atlantic) looks at certain forms of illness that are culturally specific. In this piece, Julie Beck…
Lao Camp Food (Part 2)
This is the second installment of a food journal I kept during several days in February camping with a bomb clearance team in Laos. If you missed my…
Labor Pains and Helpless Infants: Eve or Evolution? (Part 2)
In Part 1 of this post, we discussed two explanations for difficult childbirth and helpless babies: the Fall and the obstetrical dilemma (OD) hypothesis. Both have their weaknesses.…
Anorexia’s Deadly Deceit
Anorexia is commonly associated with body image issues. But more significant influences may be how people diagnosed with anorexia perceive and experience food—and how they associate eating practi…
How Anthropology Can Transform Global Health Efforts
In the context of global health crises from tuberculosis to HIV/AIDS and Ebola, Jean Hunleth discusses How Anthropology Can Transform Global Health Efforts (American Association of Universit…
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. …
Shared Sanitation: Bathroom Access and Facilities Around the World
Questions of bathroom access tend to have the greatest impact on the poor and the marginalized. — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
Shared Sanitation: Bathroom Access and Facilities Around the World
Questions of bathroom access tend to have the greatest impact on the poor and the marginalized. — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
Labor Pains and Helpless Infants: Eve or Evolution? (Part I)
Before Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge and shared it with Adam, being human was apparently hunky-dory. However, after Earth’s first two people disobeyed their creator, He…
Spaces of Waiting
Unable to access quality emergency obstetric care, millions of women across the global south, and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, shoulder the burden of health care systems that are…
What is "sensemaking"? Anthropology in marketing
Quantitative research — which has long been the market research standard — can provide insights into broad patterns and customer metrics. While this ‘big data’ can tell a…
Racism in/and Medicine
In The Pain Gap: Why Doctors Offer Less Relief to Black Patients (2016, The Daily Beast), Keith Wailoo (Princeton professor in History and Public Affairs) discusses how the treatment of…
Are We to Blame for the Colorado Theater Shooter?
Around midnight on July 20, 2012, James Holmes entered a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, for a showing of the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises and took…
Zika’s Frightening Stranglehold
Some of the earliest vampire stories were about demons or shape-shifters who spent their nights robbing pregnant women of their unborn fetuses, silently killing infants in their sleep,…
Meat Culture
You might have heard: The Obama administration released its new Dietary Guidelines for Americans in January to an outcry. While the new rules tell us to limit our…