Administration has a difficult history in South Africa: apartheid was centrally an administrative project, through segregation and exclusion. Areas of […] The post A Crisis of Fiduciary Regulati…
New analyses from Iron Age burials reveal that women remained in their natal communities and provided the key to kinship. The findings offer essential clues about gender roles…
SAPIENS’ 2024 poet-in-residence conjures the voices of those imprisoned in archives. ✽ when the writing is done reference room locked index cards slotted library doors bolted when the…
This is a comic that explores the affective experience of sharing a built environment and material cultures, making and re-making more-than-human kinship, and dealing with anticipatory grief with…
In this interview with Anna D’Alton (LSE Review of Books), Naila Kabeer discusses her new book, Renegotiating Patriarchy: Gender, Agency and the Bangladesh Paradox, forthcoming from LSE Press in Septe…
“The struggle continues” is a famous and frequently repeated phrase attributed to Eduardo Mondlane, the first President of FRELIMO, the Mozambican Liberation Front that fought against Portuguese colon…
An anthropologist takes us on a journey “down the line” to explore what freediving can teach us about ourselves and kinship with the sea. ✽ Face down in…
A poet-historian in Tanzania remembers those who have passed but who are still nearby. “Bila Mwili” is part of the collection Poems of Witness and Possibility: Inside Zones…
Bedtime stories are stories narrated by adults to children before they fall asleep. As an essential parenting skill, the storytelling scene is infused with love and trust. These…
In Contesting Moralities: Roma Identities, State and Kinship, Iliana Sarafian challenges established scholarly practices that attempt to define Romani identity, instead exploring how individuals navig…
In Understanding Humans: How Social Science Can Help Solve Our Problems, David Edmonds curates a selection of interviews with social science researchers covering the breadth of human life and society,…
As homophobic and transphobic rhetoric sweeps the U.S., some churches are increasingly welcoming LGBTQ+ parishioners who participate in religious life and help reconcile Christianity with a spectrum o…
In a new book, an anthropologist and father of three, including a daughter with Down syndrome, reflects on the pressures of parenting. Excerpted from An Ordinary Future: Margaret…
A scholar from Nagaland in India offers visceral, familial insights on language and culture loss in her Indigenous tribal community. ✽ My poem “Speaking in Tongues” explores the…
In Kin Majorities: Identity and Citizenship in Crimea and Moldova, Eleanor Knott presents a comparative study of how people living in Crimea and Moldova identified with Russia and Romania, respectivel…
Two researchers explain how ancient DNA research is helping to restore the origin story of the Swahili people along the coastal region of East Africa. This article was…
Chimit, a Buryat professional in his late 20s, had been considering moving to Europe for at least a decade, but this plan proved hardly feasible with his low…
An anthropologist recounts a magical moment of songwriting collaboration between Diné (Navajo) and Ndebele artists gathered for the WOMAD Festival in South Africa. ✽ In October, I traveled…
An archaeologist explains how studies of ancient DNA and objects reveal that expansive migrations led to much greater diversity in medieval Britain than most people imagine today. This…
Two anthropologists explain a novel genetic analysis of ancient DNA and artifacts that suggests Neanderthals in Siberia lived in close-knit communities. This article was originally published at The C…
A poet-anthropologist speaks to the labyrinthine experiences of domestic violence—the entrapment, the hope for freedom. ✽ During the final week of domestic violence awareness month in October, I…
The Intimate Life of Dissent examines practices of refusal and resistance through the friendships, kinships and solidarities which withstand and obstruct them. The authors of this edited volume…
Trust exposes and discloses the social. But the heterogeneity and even excessiveness of meaning in the concept—its overdetermination, its multifariousness and multiformity, its downright fuzziness—sug…
From WiFi-enabled sleep trackers to wearable brain-altering apps, sleep technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated. But is the antidote to insomnia far more ancient? ✽ You will likely spend…