Do Strict Criminal Penalties Protect Animals From Abuse?
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…
Tag: law
Dating the Arrival of Modern Humans in Asia
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…
Writing Indigenous Oral Tradition to Fight a Dam
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. ✽…
The Urgency of Envisioning a World Without Police
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…
Fair and Balanced—Weighing Coca With a Wipi in Peru
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…
Jennifer Petersen on her book, How Machines Came to Speak
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…
The Power of Criminal Prosecutors
“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…
I Do This for You, Mom
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…
A Story of Icelandic Skulls
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…
They eat our sweat
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…
Ep #100 The laws of Robotics & Anti-Trust Laws: Frank Pasquale on AI Law & Multidisciplinary Interactions
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…
A Mass Shooting in the “Evangelical Vatican”
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. ✽…
Broadening Demands for Reproductive Justice
An interview with anthropologist Dána-Ain Davis digs into abortion rights and reproductive justice after the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. ✽ On June 24, the…
How a Coerced Confession Shaped a Family History
A researcher delves into her family’s oral history and local archives to tell the story of a relative—falsely accused as a boy of a crime in Jim Crow–era…
We Should Talk More About the Abortion Pill
In May 2018, activists took abortion pills as part of a protest against anti-abortion laws in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Many were dressed as characters from The Handmaid’s Tale,…
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…
The Ukrainian Refugee Crisis’ Double Standard
Watching the war unfold in Ukraine due to the recent Russian invasion, I, like many others, have been gripped by heartbreaking images of refugees arriving to the borders…
What Kenya’s Killer Cops Reveal About Police Culture
On July 7, 2021, Nairobi residents marched to protest police brutality and harassment, particularly against poor people. The date also commemorates demonstrations against authoritarian rule that …
Who gets to be ‘Myanmar’ at the ICJ?
The Myanmar military will appear at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague on 21 February 2022. Their main interest does not lie in defending the…
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…
Juan Luis Rodríguez on his book, Language and Revolutionary Magic in the Orinoco Delta
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/language-and-revolutionary-magic-in-the-orinoco-delta-9781350115767/ Interview by Rusty Barrett Rusty Barrett: First, for those unfamiliar with Venezuela, coul…
The only lesson is that there aren’t enough jobs
Every so often something happens that perfectly encapsulates the consumptive death rattle that is the job market in higher education. A few weeks ago, the department of anthropology…
Kenyan Mothers Take on Police Violence
Lucy Wambui is a convenor of the Mothers of Victims and Survivors Network in Nairobi. Ed Ram I first met Sarah Wangari three weeks after her son Alex…