The Heaviness
A multidisciplinary poet-scholar and suicide attempt and multi-suicide loss survivor unveils complex anthropological threads that shape suicidal ideation. ✽ Worldwide, most people know someone who ha…
Tag: health
Making Bioethnographic Teams Work: Disciplinary Destabilization, Generative Friction, and the Role of Mediators
Increasingly, scholars across the life and social sciences recognize the necessity of multi-method, interdisciplinary research for its ability to adequately understand the world’s complex problems.[1]…
How Microbes Became Friendly: Visualizations of the Microbiome in Public Media
The biology, as astonishing as it is, does not tell us what it will mean. -Stephan Helmreich, “Homo Microbis” (2014, 4) Within microbiome research, the human body can…
A Love Letter to the Munay-Ki
A poet exuberantly gives thanks for the Munay-Ki rites enlivened across the ages and shared by the Q’ero people in the Peruvian Andes. “A Love Letter to the…
The Psychedelics Industry Is Booming—but Who’s Being Left Out?
Three researchers discuss the possibilities and problems arising as psychedelic plant medicines, held sacred by many Indigenous communities, move into the global mental health and tourism industries. …
Neighborliness Matters to Your Health
Drawing from cross-cultural research, an anthropologist shows how neighborliness can lessen wealth-based health disparities. DOES GOOD HEALTH REQUIRE WEALTH? The poorest people in the U.S. spend their…
Slow Death by Volcano
A biocultural anthropologist shares new research on the surprising long-term hazards of volcanoes in Iceland—and how to address them. THE RISE OF ICELANDIC VOLCANOES In the fall of…
What a Cow’s Horn Reveals About Khoisan Medicine
An archaeologist explains what a 500-year-old horn container found in South Africa illuminates about precolonial Khoisan medical and spiritual knowledges. This article was originally published at The…
Invisible Labor of Health and the Spell of Productivity
When I talked with Jia, who works for an e-commerce company in Shanghai, China, she was trying to finish a “Perfect Month Challenge” on her Apple Watch. That…
How to use health technologies to “kill one little deer in the dark forest”
There is a global push towards making AI more ethical and transparent. As critical contributions on the topic of AI have pointed out: even when computational applications are…
A Native Alaska Community’s Reckoning With Vaccine Hesitancy
An anthropologist’s research with Tlingit communities in Alaska shows they have good reasons to be skeptical about vaccines. They know their history. ✽ New COVID-19 boosters are now…
Worlds of Care
Worlds of Care: The Emotional Lives of Fathers Caring for Children with Disabilities by Aaron J. Jackson is a self-described “meditation on fathers’ everyday lived experiences surrounding care…
Technologies of Trust put to the Test
Drawing on participant observation of COVID-19 tests and blood donation, this article demonstrates how micro-interactions between medical personnel and laypeople can constitute trust, grounding the he…
In Spain, Scapegoating Spikes During the Pandemic
An anthropologist and a Rroma activist investigate the rise in prejudice and abuse toward Rroma people during the COVID-19 crisis. ✽ During the first wave of the pandemic,…
Does “Monkeypox” Give Monkeys a Bad Name?
The debate over naming the virus known as monkeypox says a lot about the close—but fraught—relationships between humans and our fellow primates. ✽ The name of the latest…
Making medicines trustworthy: pharmaceutical technologies of trust and regulation
How do globalised health regimes create and shape landscapes of medical regulation and patient safety? This essay asks about the many ways in which patients, consumers, health advocates,…
Are Insomniacs Overthinking Sleep?
From WiFi-enabled sleep trackers to wearable brain-altering apps, sleep technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated. But is the antidote to insomnia far more ancient? ✽ You will likely spend…
6 Recommended Reads on Epidemics and Religious Change
Photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash Epidemics can turn the world upside down. They kill millions, isolate us and wreak havoc on international trade. But what is their impact on religion?…
Global health meets sugar capitalism
After a long drive, Sheila and I arrive at the gates of a sprawling fifty-one square mile Malawian sugar plantation that belongs to Africa’s largest sugar company. An…
Misperceiving Life Expectancy in the Deep Past
An archaeologist explains that most people do not calculate life expectancy correctly. This leads to misunderstandings. This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republis…
Finding Mental Health Issues Hidden in the Past
An archaeologist speculates about how to uncover evidence of depression, anxiety, and neurodiversities in ancient humans. ✽ Hi, my name is Paige, and I have generalized anxiety and…
Reducing Hypertension in Trinidad and Tobago
Author: Daniel Miller The research project Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing which is now close to completion was always intended to also develop some practical projects to…
What the Anthropology of Smell Reveals About Humanity
Former first lady Michelle Obama savors the scent of a Douglas fir tree presented to the first family for Christmas in 2010. Rod Lamkey/Getty Images Vivian,* a Washington,…