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?…
Tag: health
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,…
What the Anthropology of Smell Reveals About Humanity
The post What the Anthropology of Smell Reveals About Humanity appeared first on SAPIENS.
Did Margaret Mead Think a Healed Femur Was the Earliest Sign of Civilization?
According to a commonly shared story, the anthropologist Margaret Mead was supposedly asked by a student what she thought was the earliest sign of a civilized society. There…
Did Margaret Mead Think a Healed Femur Was the Earliest Sign of Civilization?
An anthropologist digs into the origins of a popular story attributed to Margaret Mead about the original sign of civilization. ✽ According to a commonly shared story, the…
Living With the Prospect of Assisted Dying
[no-caption] The Real Tokyo Life/Getty Images Excerpted from The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America by Anita Hannig. © 2022 by Anita Hannig.…
Living With the Prospect of Assisted Dying
Excerpted from The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America by Anita Hannig. © 2022 by Anita Hannig. Used with permission of the publisher,…
Is Donated Blood a Gift or a Commodity?
In 1950, human blood was stored for patient use at a U.S. Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons In the spring…
Is Donated Blood a Gift or a Commodity?
An anthropologist dives into the morally fraught blood and plasma industry and what it reveals about human societies—the good, the bad, and the gory. ✽ In the spring…
Do Children Need Special Foods?
Ultraprocessed breakfast cereals, sometimes touted as “healthy” thanks to vitamin fortification, are one of the most popular foods targeted toward kids. Education Images/Getty Images In c…
We Should Talk More About the Abortion Pill
In May 2018, activists took abortion pills as part of a protest against anti-abortion laws in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Many were dressed as characters from The Handmaid’s Tale,…
Impossible Choices at the Crossroads of Motherhood and Fieldwork
Co-author Jamie Hodgkins holds her daughter as she co-directs the excavations at the Arma Veirana site in northwestern Italy. Fabio Negrino/University of Genoa Many women* in science who…
Unmasked: Illustrating COVID-19 in Okoboji
[no-caption] Aaron Gronstal These illustrations tell the story of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in a small tourist town in the Iowa Great Lakes region: my…
Nurturing Autism Acceptance in Indonesia
Idris (right), a teenager on the autism spectrum, visits a local mosque in Indonesia to pray with his father. Elemental Productions On a typical day, Wawan, a teenager…
Sixty may be the New Fifty but is Twenty Six the New Old?
Author: Sheba Mohammid In Trinidad and Tobago, we may not have Ponce De Leon’s fountain of youth, but we do have a pool. It’s technically an offshore sandbar,…
Athletics, IQ, Health: Three Myths of Race
Our recent book, Racism, Not Race, tackles a big lie: The idea that human beings have biological races. Biological races do not exist in humans. Why, then, do…
Does Green on COVID-19 Maps Mean What You Think?
Picture a traffic light. This isn’t a trick question. We want you to visualize some sort of box housing three lightbulbs, each behind a colored filter: red on…
At the Limits of Cure for Tuberculosis
As part of a tuberculosis screening, a radiologist in Germany examines a lung X-ray of a refugee from the 2022 Russian war in Ukraine. Matthias Balk/Picture Alliance/Getty Images…
An Anthropological Approach to mHealth: Health & Care in the Smartphone Age
Author: Charlotte Hawkins As part of the ASSA project, we are currently working to publish a volume called: ‘An Anthropological Approach to mHealth: Health & Care in the…
Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States (Book Review)
by Ellie Plumb In Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States, Seth M. Holmes seeks to uncover the synergistic effects that citizenship, race, ethnicity, and…