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…
Tag: Opinion
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 &…
Speaking with Silence
Silence can be a powerful communicative tool in today’s political landscape. Words take center stage in the verbal sparring of the Twitter age. Against the backdrop of Trumpian…
White Patriarchy Gets a Pacifier
In the era of #MeToo, we need collective liberation, not the tears and tantrums of white male entitlement. In less than the time it takes you to read…
In Spain’s Silence, Francisco Franco’s Memory Echoes
People make the fascist salute on November 20, 2011, at the Valley of the Fallen—the basilica near Madrid, Spain, where the country’s former dictator Gen. Francisco Franco is…
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…
The New Elite’s Battle Against Affirmative Action
The Harvard University Affirmative Action lawsuit says more about wealth than about race. What little solace we had from Abigail Fisher losing her anti-affirmative action case against the…
The Double Lives of Chinese Foreign Correspondents
In 2015, I sat over coffee at a London cafe with a local correspondent of China Central Television (CCTV), the main state broadcaster. Over the preceding years, I…
Call for 2019 Opinion Columnists!
What do you want to see in AN? Have you been wishing for a column that probes the anthropology of climate change or stand-up comedy or the tech…
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…
Communicating in Times of Crisis
What anthropologists can do to support asylum seekers and the interpreters who serve them. It started with people tagging me on Facebook during the first few days of…
Euphemisms for the Global Other
I recently attended a conference in Copenhagen about sustainable consumption where I kept hearing “the Global South” used to refer to poor people in general, to low income…
Reclaiming “Allahu Akbar” from Semantic Pejoration
Allāhu akbar, the Arabic phrase meaning “God is the greatest,” has gained connotations in US public discourse that differ vastly from its meaning among Muslims. Understanding this process…
How “Fake News” Lost Its Meaning
Collins Dictionary named “fake news” its 2017 word of the year, an easy choice given the word’s “unprecedented usage increase” of 365 percent over the previous year. Collins…
Regarding the moral issue in Corporate Anthropology
An interesting anecdote is told by Patricia Sunderland and Rita Denny in their work “Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research”. They were both contacted by an important fast food…
Regarding the moral issue in Corporate Anthropology
An interesting anecdote is told by Patricia Sunderland and Rita Denny in their work “Doing Anthropology in Consumer Research”. They were both contacted by an important fast food…
Internet Privacy Hogwash
What does anthropology have to say about privacy? Ever since the early years of the Internet, privacy and public conduct have been hot button issues. Some initial bad…
Starbucks, Racism, and the Anthropological Imagination
Capitalism is generated through moral and economic negotiations. After a series of discrimination allegations, Starbucks announced in April that it would close to eight thousand stores on May…
Love, Kinship, and Ceremonial Observance
How do I explain to my soon-to-be college graduate that she has to go to her graduation ceremony? My invocations of Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner are…
Anthropological Invigoration
How do you balance a commitment to the discipline of anthropology with recognizing and valuing insights that are relevant and challenging but come from outside anthropology? How might…