A New Generation is Reviving Indigenous Tattooing
Nahaan, a Tlingit-Inupiaq-Paiute tattoo artist, inks a woman’s face. Nahaan To celebrate her graduation from the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Alaska Native Studies program in 2012, Mar…
Tag: identity
Unapologetically Inaccurate
Rami Malek claims “we’re longing for stories like” the one he won an Oscar for. Are we? On Sunday, Rami Malek won an Academy Award for portraying Freddy…
An Author by Any Other Name
[no-caption] Bill O’Leary/Getty Images Sitting in a packed hotel lobby café in Washington, D.C., in 2009, I leaned closer to the literary agent I was interviewing for my…
Where Do “New” Languages Come From?
As part of the Enduring Voices project, Abamu Degio (left) listens to a recording of herself singing a traditional Koro song, with linguist David Harrison (right). Jeremy Fahringer,…
What Is This Lahu Thing Called Love?
How pop music videos perform a simultaneously Lahu and modern identity. As the music video begins, we see a young man waiting anxiously, peering through a gate. A…
Being Afghan in America: In the Field With Morwari Zafar
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS How does an immigrant become an “American”? How does any newcomer join any group? SAPIENS host Esteban Gómez shares the story of Morwari Zafar, an…
BONUS: What Carl Zimmer Learned About DNA, Identity, and Heredity
Surprise! As a special holiday treat, the SAPIENS team is presenting this unedited conversation between SAPIENS host Chip Colwell and acclaimed science journalist Carl Zimmer about DNA, identity,…
Power Players: US Football and French Rugby
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Some athletes seem larger than life. They are revered and imitated—and they seemingly hold a lot of power. But whether they feel empowered in their…
From Crystal Skulls to the Caste War
Intersections of Tourism, Archaeology and Heritage in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico Figure 1. Tourists admire the “El Castillo” pyramid at the site of Chichen Itza in Yucatán,…
Religionswissenschaft und Ideologiekritik. Ein Gespräch aus der Zukunft
Heute bin ‘ich’ ein auktorialer Erzähler in einer Geschichte einer möglichen Zukunft, die ich erzählen möchte. Wie jeder Futurismus ist es eine noch fiktive Geschichte. Ich wähle dieses…
Closer to Home
What is home? Is it a physical space, a set of relationships, or a state of mind? SAPIENS host Esteban Gómez follows Amy Starecheski, a researcher who has…
Confronting the Specter of Cultural Appropriation
[no-caption] kokouu/Getty Images Humans celebrate many things—from rites of passage to religious events to groundhogs. One of the most intriguing, anthropologically speaking, is Halloween…
Ancestry Tests Pose a Threat to Our Social Fabric
[no-caption] Andrew Brookes/Getty Images I have never understood why anybody would think humans are by nature violent, warlike creatures. True, we have all surely had arguments turn sour…
Is Your DNA You?
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS What does your DNA have to do with who you are? On a journey for answers, SAPIENS hosts Chip Colwell, Jen Shannon, and Esteban Gómez…
The Myth of Racial Purity in Roman Britain
This model at the Museum of London depicts the first bridge over the River Thames, which was built by the Romans in the first century. Steven G. Johnson/Wikimedia…
Written in Blood
How my research on DNA ancestry tests became fake news. When I was sent a link to a Snopes article asking, “Did DNA Testing Companies Admit to Altering…
Paper: Indigenous articulations in the digital age
Budka, P. (2018). Indigenous articulations in the digital age: Reflections on historical developments, activist engagements and mundane practices. Paper at International Communication Association 2018…
About those Ancestry dot com commercials
In the fall 2017 quarter I kicked off my intro to cultural anthropology course with one of those Ancestry dot com videos. These are all over the place,…
Why Aid Remains Out of Reach for Some Rohingya Refugees
[no-caption] Sajjad Hussain/Getty Images Ameena (a pseudonym) is a 25-year-old Rohingya refugee in New Delhi, India, who is seven months pregnant with twins. Her face is gaunt. Often…
An Anthropologist’s Obsession with Outlander
I have been on hiatus from blogging for some time, mainly due to two factors. First, I launched a public anthropology podcast, Anthropologist on the Street (huzzah!), which…
Ten Skeletons Bury a Right-Wing Talking Point
Anglo-Saxon mythologies and culture continue to enchant many who live in the U.K. Andrew Parsons/Getty Images This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republ…
Do Clothes Make a Messiah?
[no-caption] Livioandronico2013/Wikimedia Commons This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. Over the past few decades, the…
Patrick Neveling and Tijo Salverda: How capitalists think—about belonging, moralities, global entanglements, and historical social processes, for example
Given that nowadays most people live in societies organized according to capitalist principles and given that few oppose those principles fundamentally, capitalists may well constitute the world’s lar…
Living On Screen: Sondra Perry and Ian Cheng at the Serpentine Galleries
Like many other London institutions seeking to shore up against an ever-rising digital tide, the Serpentine Galleries have announced a new annual “Digital Seasons” initiative that will recognize…