What Is Vaccination Equity?
Born in Mexico, Rosario (a pseudonym) has worked as a cleaner in the Los Angeles public hospital system for more than three decades. But despite meeting California state…
Tag: health
Social Distancing in a Sumatra Rainforest
An Orang Rimba man named Nyeruduk stands in front of a tent on a rubber plantation in Sumatra. Dedi Supriansyah On an otherwise silent night in March 2020,…
What Does the American Dream Have to do With the COVID-19 Vaccine?
Protestors gather outside Dodger Stadium, a mass vaccination site in Los Angeles, in January. Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images On January 30, protesters disrupted a mass…
How Imperialism Gave Us 2020
Violence and disease have long been intertwined in the Americas. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images The world is caught in the grip of a deadly pandemic and yet another wave…
Time to Rethink Teeth
Tooth enamel growth starts before birth and continues until adult teeth are fully formed. Ksenia Chernaya/Pexels Four years ago, I found myself cataloguing some dusty containers of about…
What Makes Vaccines Social?
[no-caption] Luis Alvarez/Getty Images Now is a pressing time for vaccinating the U.S. population (and the world) against COVID-19. But there are social hurdles that need to be…
Sanderien Verstappen: Hidden behind toilet rolls: visual landscapes of COVID-19
During the lockdowns of spring 2020, short videos became a popular means of reflecting on new experiences of quarantine and social distancing. Passed around on social media platforms,…
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 …
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…