South Africa’s Road Out of Colonialism
A lawyer and anthropologist examines the history of the longest road in South Africa and why a proposed extension may repeat past violence. While researching the history of…
A lawyer and anthropologist examines the history of the longest road in South Africa and why a proposed extension may repeat past violence. While researching the history of…
Thinking about the sea Figure 1: The Sea is Not Empty’, the Women Dreaming emerging from the sea in Marra […] The post Regulating Underwater Worlds: Anthropology, experts…
To A. and O., for better or for worse. The story I want to tell might seem to be about […] The post Meet the smugglers. Decolonising the mind,…
Beginning in 2016, the Turkish government accused anyone with the messaging application ByLock of terrorism. An anthropologist investigates the risks of this kind of digital evidence. ✽ Summer…
An anthropologist shines a light on Romani and Egyptian recyclers whose work has been made illegal, calling for a new way of viewing humanity’s garbage. ✽ One afternoon…
Criminals and Gangmembers Anonymous, a 12-step recovery program, has proliferated in California’s carceral system. An anthropologist investigates the program, which sees criminality as a chronic addic…
An anthropologist uses courtrooms in Turkey as his field site to understand how digital evidence is shifting legal practices. Today most people around the world are using digital…
In Reconciliation by Stealth: How People Talk about War Crimes, Denisa Kostovicova considers how best to achieve reconciliation in post-conflict societies, focusing on case studies from the Balkan…
Members of the Sovereign Citizen conspiracy movement have been described as “paper terrorists” because of the way that they attempt to intimidate their enemies with mountains of nonsensical,…
Public health officials say opioid use and related deaths have reached a crisis point in the U.S. An interview with anthropologist and psychiatrist Helena Hansen unpacks the racial…
After alleged thefts from the British Museum, a curator explains the challenges of keeping track of collections—and the legal limitations on returning cultural material to source communities. A…
A researcher explains why the Fulbright-Hays fellowship should change its rules that have kept native and heritage speakers from working where their languages are spoken. ✽ Each year,…
In Mexico, a growing animal protection movement often promotes harsh criminal punishment for those who abuse animals. But are these strategies working, or do they lead to further…
A team of researchers explains how the discovery of a human skull and jawbone helps push back the timing of modern humans’ migration into Southeast Asia. This article…
In the northern Philippines, the Isnag are documenting their Traditional Stories to sustain their culture and fight a legal battle against dams that would inundate their homelands. ✽…
An anthropologist working in Baltimore argues that safety for Black communities requires an end to policing. That also means taking a hard look at how policing intersects with…
An Andean community’s use of weighing scales shows how meanings of fairness and justice differ across cultures. THE WIPI SCALE IN PERU On a cool spring morning in…
Interview by Joseph Wilson https://www.dukeupress.edu/how-machines-came-to-speak Joseph Wilson: The combination of legal discourse analysis and technology studies in this book is a fascinat…
“Criminal.” It’s a label that can follow someone around for much of their life. But how does a person become a criminal? Anyone who is in prison has…
One day, a woman in Baltimore received a text message from her mother wishing her a happy holiday. But something didn’t feel quite right. Jeri Hutton Green is…
An anthropologist journeys to the Arctic Circle and finds a surprising story about the human remains that end up in museum collections. “Prime harvest”—that’s how one early 20th-century…
In They Eat Our Sweat, Daniel Agbiboa engages the road transport sector in Lagos, Nigeria, to reveal how corruption operates through a dialectical “double capture” of state and…
We’re back this week with a great interview with Frank Pasquale! The Familiar Strange · Ep #100 The laws of Robotics & Anti-Trust Frank Pasquale on AI Law…
The recent violent attack on Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, happened in a place shaped by decades of anti-LGBTQ organizing by evangelical Christian groups. ✽…