Refusal as Care
It was my second time attending the neighborhood association meeting in the community where I was doing fieldwork. The association president had invited me, saying he thought it…
Tag: Opinion
How to Spark Joy by Tidying Up Your Thesis
Before we can begin revising your thesis, you must make the decision that you want to revise it. Once you make that step, this process will only need…
Informed Consent Statement for Readers of This Column
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Speak the Names of Those Who Were Lost
Naming can dignify, disparage or even deny one’s social standing. Days after the horrific attack on the Christchurch mosque in New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke about…
The Conversation
What is does it mean to work post-graduation, and what does anthropology have to do with it? It happens every quarter. The conversation. Students ask us big questions…
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…
Why the Myth of the “Savage Indian” Persists
Media portrayals of “good Indians” and “bad Indians” have shaped the minds of generations of Americans. Harold M. Lambert/Getty Images Peter Pan, the beloved children’s classic, is sure…
When We Come to Anthropology, Elsewhere Comes with Us
Ethnography’s power comes from the margins. Not the center. A glance at my watch revealed that my colleague was already five minutes over his thirty-minute allotment. Students from…
Diving into the unknown: Business Anthropology in Portugal
When one starts studying anthropology at the university, one of the first things we’re told is that it can be used in almost anything. From medicine to psychology,…
What Does Diversity and Inclusion Mean?
We need an emic approach to creating more inclusive departments. In December 2018, I called the founder of a diversity management organization to ask about a meeting where…
Can a Transgender Body Be the Body of the Nation?
While the US federal government remained in the longest partial shutdown in history, the Trump administration managed to make headway in its baffling effort to prevent transgender Americans…
Fieldnotes from the Kitchen Counter
This text appeared in the American Anthropologist submission queue, somehow entered as an anonymous manuscript, which the ScholarOne system is not supposed to permit. It seems to consist…
Bangladesh Garment Workers Strike
Thousands of garment workers who make clothes for global brands have taken strike action over low wages. It is time the Western consumer listened. More than 50,000 Bangladeshi…
The Science of Human Nature Has a Serious Problem
[no-caption] Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images This article originally appeared on The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. Over the last century, behavioral researchers have reveal…
A Daughter’s Disability and a Father’s Awakening
[no-caption] Thomas W. Pearson The nurse gently lifted Michaela onto my partner’s bare chest, a newborn embraced by her mother for the first time. I marveled at the…
Government Of, By, and For the Trolls
Countering Trump begins by recognizing his role as troller-in-chief. The United States and the world have now spent two years trying to figure out how to deal with…
Issuing Trigger Warnings in an Age of Mass Shootings
Ellie Fleischer writes “Enough Is Enough” at a memorial near the Tree of Life Synagogue on Monday, October 29, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Salwan Georges/Getty Images On the last…
Fighting America, One iPhone at a Time
Boycotts, illusions and the making of the new Turkey Find it absurd. Find it irrational. But while those infuriated with Nike in the United States were busy cutting…
What Makes a Refugee Vulnerable?
A Somali father and his daughter waited to register at the Dagahaley refugee camp in Kenya in 2011, when drought and discord forced some 130,000 people to flee…
How Austerity Unravels Social Ties
People collect water from a pump in a small village in Mozambique. Graeme Robertson/Getty Images Roxana* and Rajah are neighbors who live on the outskirts of Nampula City…
What Our Skeletons Say About the Sex Binary
Stanislawa Walasiewicz won the gold for Poland in the women’s 100-meter dash at the 1932 Olympic Games. Upon her death, an autopsy revealed that she had intersex traits.…
A Demagogue’s Words Matter
Trump’s immigration metaphors set a divisive tone from the top. Trump wields demagogic rhetoric like a marketing tool, ramping up prejudicial appeals in the closing days of the…
HHS Transgender Proposal a Shabby Costume
Implementing the Department of Health and Human Services’ proposed definition of sex as “either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born…
The Skeletons in the Museum Closet
Museums are full of wonderful things. From the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian Institution’s natural history museum to the Folsom point at the Denver Museum of Nature &…