An anthropologist delves into the rarefied ritualistic world of specialty coffee, where highly trained brewers and judges compete to determine which beans reign supreme. Excerpted from Making Better…
In the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, fishing communities have become part of a complex “assemblage” of human and natural worlds shaped by the global fossil fuel…
I invite you to share in a partial and subjective review of the exhausting academic marathon that was the 17th congress of the European Association of Social Anthropologists…
Anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Margaret Mead could not have achieved success without their local assistants’ insider knowledge and extensive labor. ✽ Growing up a Brown girl…
“Police, Provocation, Politics” by Deniz Yonucu is an ambitious text that documents the long and complicated history of dissident populations and spaces in urban Turkey in the context…
“Less Trust, More Truth” said the black nylon drawstring bag in the cardboard box. I had to have one. No other item of swag at this crypto-conference articulated…
“We bet on mining,” peasant leaders (dirigentes) say of the decision to permit one of the world’s largest open-pit copper mining projects on lands occupied by Quechua-speaking communities…
An anthropologist and a Rroma activist investigate the rise in prejudice and abuse toward Rroma people during the COVID-19 crisis. ✽ During the first wave of the pandemic,…
Opinions about fetal personhood and abortion have fluctuated enormously throughout history and differ in surprising ways between cultures. ✽ After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade…
The popular image of the U.S. heartland as only a place of rural, hardworking white farmers has always been a larger-than-life myth. In a new book, Imagining the…
SAPIENS Poet-in-Residence Jason Vasser-Elong reflects on horrific cycles of violence—and highlights injustices that are often papered over. We All Love Roses – Listen Some say it’s human nature…
An anthropologist dreams of his work with Songhay sorcerers in Niger and of French poet Edmond Jabès, fictionalizing conversations and experiences to polish nuggets of wisdom for our…
[no caption] Frans Lemmens/Getty Images Excerpted from Paul Stoller’s essay “Jabès Amongst Songhay Sorcerers” in Philosophy on Fieldwork: Case Studies in Anthropological Analysis, e…
On the 99th page of my dissertation, “The Objective Function: Science and Society in the Age of Machine Intelligence”, the first full paragraph describes how machine learning researchers…
Her dark gray eyes scan the horizon. An iridescent golden sun and stars encircle her head, flanked on one side by a cobalt sockeye salmon and the other…
We are only a few days removed from the horrific mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX where nearly two dozen people were murdered in cold…
Two Indigenous Marind clan representatives peruse a map of their customary territories produced by local village members. Sophie Chao Excerpted from In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-…
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 …
The Acropolis of Athens has birthed countless tales, some of which appear to be more based on fiction than fact. Oleksandr Troitskyi/Wikimedia Commons This article was originally publishe…
Enslaved people built the Rotunda at the University of Virginia in the 19th century. Chrispecoraro/Getty Images Go to undergrad, go to graduate school, get a Ph.D. heft onto…
Connect the dots between “state”, “imperialism”, and “war”. Add “leaders”, “testosterone” and “nukes”. Look at the picture and tell me anarchism was a bad idea. In effect, as…
‘Call to Arms: Silver and Lead’ campaign review Posted December 10, 2034 by Julie Annie (staff writer at Génial Gaming) Answering the Call to Arms (yet again)…
The sky island of Dzil Nchaa Si’an is more than a mountain. It is a significant landmark in Arizona for Apache tribal members to collect medicinal plants, perform…
On February 4, The Harvard Crimson broke the news of an open letter, signed by 38 faculty members, in support of John Comaroff. This prominent professor of anthropology…