Repatriation Is Our Future
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, or NAGPRA, is supposed to curb the illegal possession of ancestral Native American remains and cultural items. But…
Tag: identity
A Trinket, a Trifle, and a Novel New Disciple: Fandoms and Consecrated Commodities
Religious commodification is an arena that has gained increasing interest among social scientists, especially where religious symbols and artefacts are being appropriated by both adherents and non-adh…
Predominantly White Institutions’ Overtures to Black Students OR This Is What They Tell You Without Telling You
Enslaved people built the Rotunda at the University of Virginia in the 19th century. Chrispecoraro/Getty Images Go to undergrad, go to graduate school, get a Ph.D. heft onto…
The flea, the canyon, and racism: Reflections on outrage
By Benjamin Koponen On January 22nd, 2022, an elderly white woman punched me in the arm while I, a black man, was biking to help a friend paint…
Transracial Adoption and the Limits of Love
A photo installation by artist Glenn Morey explores how Korean adoptees in the U.S. grapple with questions related to belonging, identity, and family. Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images On a…
Bend like a Willow Tree
‘Watch out, we’ll catch every one of you!’ Hamza’s shrill voice echoed in the stairwell, and through the opening, he saw a swarm of children scattering to hide…
Dear Yaye
November 2017 Dear Yaye, I am writing to you because a week ago, Babacar returned. Babacar Diop, I think I might have written to you about him,…
Academic Fictions: A ballad of Kochi
Come oh villagers, come to the port Carry your sickles and scythes, sticks and rocks Come to the port, our city has fallen!! Our little city by the…
The Politics of “Ukraine” Versus “the Ukraine”
[no-caption] TheKit_13/Pixabay This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. For most of the 20th century, English speakers re…
Listening to Metal in the World: Music, Identity, and the Other
“Hey Jarrod, you like world music right? Check out this Mongolian band called 13th Bell”. I received this text a few weeks ago and was quite piqued by…
Untangling Race From Hair
Descriptions of hair have long been knotted with false notions of race, but new research points to empowering ways of viewing this emotionally charged physical trait. D3sign/Getty Images …
Danko Šipka on his book, Lexical Layers of Identity
Author Interview by Nikolina Zenovic Nikolina Zenovic: You have written extensively on lexicography, lexicology, and lexical conflict, particularly in the context of Slavic languages. How does…
Reviving Huaycán—and the Community That Surrounds It
Aracely Solano, a youth volunteer and member of the Huaycán Cultural collective, welcomes visitors to the archaeological site outside of Lima, Peru. Daniel Meza Just an hour’s drive…
The Weight of History: Doing Fieldwork as an Ethnic Chinese Researcher
I have been asked about my research in China as a researcher from Taiwan by my colleagues in the US. One of them commented: “It’s not common for…
“Cowboys and Indians”—When Dirt Rocks Are Dynamite
The Lone Ranger and Tonto. Silver Screen Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images “With his faithful Indian companion Tonto, the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains led the fi…
At the Heart of It All
For its practitioners, archaeology can feel like it is unearthing events deep in the past … until it doesn’t. What is the experience of researchers who discover their…
A Lens on Cyprus Reunification
[no-caption] Vasili Sotiropulos Panikos sat on a beach in Cyprus, dressed in a blue Speedo and straw hat, sipping whiskey with his friends. Behind him, the Mediterranean Sea…
Heritage out of Control: Present Gods, Absent Nation
The sun had already set when the night-long live broadcast of a kohoḿbā kankāriya ritual in a Sri Lankan town begins. A larger-than-life image of the leading national…
Heritage out of Control: When Heritage Turns to Rubble
In December 2017, Toungouma was stolen, the famed stone said to render justice in the Département of Dogondoutchi, Niger. When it was found a few days later, the…
Redrawing the Boundaries
For many, archaeology means digging up historical artifacts from beneath the ground. But to some, that framework is also violent and colonialist. What would it mean to leave…
Heritage out of Control: Human bones as inherited waste of Europe
Central and Eastern Europe – known as “Bloodlands”, the area where Nazi and Stalin’s atrocities met, leaving behind many sites marked by mass killings – provide an obvious…
How Do Personal Data and Algorithms Influence Our Sense of Self?
All achievement is threatened by the machine, as long as it dares to take its place in the mind, instead of obeying. That the master’s hand no…
The Emotional Logic of a Black Poetics: Truth, Metaphor, Beauty, Joy
In this free live event, Poetry Editor Christine Weeber and SAPIENS Public Anthropology Fellow Eshe Lewis will speak with Justin D. Wright, a doctoral student in sociocultural anthropology…
Lessons We Learn
“Lessons We Learn” is part of the collection Lead Me to Life: Voices of the African Diaspora. Read the introduction to the collection here. The past flashes like…