What a “Safe and Dignified” Burial Means During a Pandemic
Bamileke community members typically mourn the deaths of loved ones through drumming, singing, and other collective rituals. Bobyphoto/Wikimedia Commons A few months into the pandemic, a …
Tag: health
Medical Anthropology and Practice of Medicine in Health Issues by Awah Kum Tchouaffi
Abstract: It is known through anthropological literature that African countries are distinguished by a category of medicine that many specialists call ethnomedicine or traditional African medicine. F…
Tackling Care and Capitalism in College Football
Despite the health risks, many college football teams, such as the Stanford Cardinal (pictured here), have continued playing throughout the fall season. Bob Drebin/Getty Images A few mont…
The CDC Needs Social Science
[no-caption] John Moore/Getty Images The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as the primary agency in the United States that monitors, predicts, and responds to chronic disea…
How Sweat Lodge Ceremonies Heal War’s Wounds
Heated, dome-shaped sacred structures called sweat lodges (the architecture of one shown here) have been used for generations by Indigenous peoples in North America to support healing, revitaliza…
dear gretas
[no-caption] Javier Zayas Photography/Getty Images In my poem, I call up anarchs. Who are they? Anarchs are us: born leaderless and classless—and born to groove. Our species, Humo…
Facing COVID-19 as an Undocumented Essential Worker
Many immigrants in the U.S. continue working in agriculture and other essential sectors amid new pandemic safety protocols. Brent Stirton/Getty Images One afternoon in mid-April, I was si…
Did Processed Foods Make Us Human?
Anthropologist Bill Schindler uses techniques developed thousands of years ago to prepare fresh-caught salmon during the filming of National Geographic’s The Great Human Race. Luke Cormack …
Moments of Resilience Amid a Pandemic
[no-caption] Angus Krieg SAPIENS host Chip Colwell speaks with Melanie Adams, the director of the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum (ACM), about #Moments of Resilience, the ACM’s e…
What Human Hair Reveals About Death’s Seasonality
A lock of hair from Edith Cook, a girl who died in 1876, offers a window into her death. Jelmer Eerkens Each wave of Edith Howard Cook’s reddish-blonde…
A Vaccine Will Not Be Enough
[no-caption] Angus Greig SAPIENS host Jen Shannon speaks with Agustín Fuentes, a professor of anthropology at Princeton University, to unpack his insight that the COVID-19 pandemic is a…
“Un-fixing” hormones: searching for the multiple in hormonal selves
What are hormones? While biomedical notions of hormones focus on their biological functions in bodies, hormones are also cultural artifacts, shaping understandings of health, normalcy, and what it…
What’s Behind Humanity’s Love-Hate Relationship With Exercise?
Many people have a strong desire for physical rest despite the fact that health experts advise them to exercise more. Heart rules/Pexels At the start of the COVID-19…
A Japanese Sea Spirit Battles COVID-19
Some public health messages in Japan use the image of Amabie, a three-legged folklore mermaid, to help stop the spread of COVID-19. Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare…
Two Surgeries, 800 Years Apart
As an archaeologist, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what life was like in the past. I’ve also been injured a time or two, and I’ve wondered…
What Many Don’t Know About Welfare
This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. When Americans talk about people receiving public assistance—food stamps, disability, unemplo…
What Milk-Sharing Communities Reveal
[no-caption] Getty Images Heather Wascak was devastated. In 2014, within days of giving birth to a baby girl, Lucia, she was aching to be with her child. “She’s…
Book Review: The Anthropology of Epidemics by Ann H. Kelly, Frédéric Keck and Christos Lynteris
In The Anthropology of Epidemics, editors Ann H. Kelly, Frédéric Keck and Christos Lynteris curate a collection that provides insight into how ethnographic studies of epidemics might challenge…
In the Journals – Prisons and Pandemics
Prisoners’ Round by Vincent Van Gogh via wikimedia Welcome back to In the Journals! My name is Ally, I am a graduate student beginning a Master’s in Anthropology at…
Haitian Deportees Face an Unconscionable Crisis During the Pandemic
The Trump administration has deported more than 240 Haitian nationals from the U.S. back to Haiti—a country that has a weak health care system and few resources to…
Chelation Chronicles – 1H 2020
I’ve been fighting a host of chronic health issues for 10+years now. I have come to believe that heavy metal poisoning is likely the root cause. In this…
What Pandemics Leave Behind
[no-caption] Angus Greig At some time in the future, the novel coronavirus pandemic will fade. What will this globally traumatic contagion leave in its wake? In this episode…
Wording sociality and health: COVID-19’s lexicon revisited
Anthr{dendum} welcomes guest blogger Elena Burgos Martinez. It is all a matter of words. The recent emergence of a wealth of COVID-19-related material shows that we all narrate…
U.S. Coronavirus Advice Is Failing Pregnant Women
Zully, a COVID-19 patient whose last name was withheld for privacy, holds up a photo of her newborn baby, Neysel, on April 24 in Stamford, Connecticut. She gave…