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,…
Tag: health
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…
Should You Feel Bad About Your Pandemic-Era Plastic Waste?
Plastic waste has grown exponentially across the globe during the pandemic. Matthew Williams-Ellis/Universal Images Group/Getty Images “Sometimes I want to avoid producing excessive waste…
The Cultural Anxieties of Xenotransplantation
In January, news broke that David Bennett Sr.—a 57-year-old man with a serious heart disease—received a heart from a genetically modified pig. The eight-hour operation, which took place…
What’s the Appeal of Deep Voices in Men?
Deep voices, like singer Barry White’s bass-baritone, are seen as appealing across a variety of cultures and sexual identities. POP-EYE/ullstein bild/Getty Images For many people, Barry W…
Negative heritage and de-normalizing necropolitics
Upon entering the Orthodox Christian cemetery in Siret, a town on the Romanian-Ukrainian border, we were met with neatly kept marvel gravestones, occasionally adorned with plastic flowers and…
Mosquito Trails: Ecology, Health, and the Politics of Entanglement (Book Review)
By Jack Payne-Cook If I was asked by someone unfamiliar with anthropology to provide an example of the contemporary relevance of the discipline, I would consider offering Alex…