#BookReview: Terraformed
Terraformed by Joy White aims at making sense and contextualising the vulnerability and inequality experienced by the Afrodiasporic population of the UK. The author describes her effort as…
Tag: power
What Dog Breeds Say About Race
In the Philippines, the most sought-after dogs are those that have a breed—and preferably a certificate that proves their provenance. Be it Alaskan malamute, German shepherd, or Siberian…
Why Are Black People’s Remains in Museums?
Many U.S. museums, including those housed at Harvard University, collected and currently still store human remains. Smith Collection/Gado/Archive Photos via Getty Images This article was …
Why a Mexican Village’s DIY Cellphone Network Matters
A campesino checks his cellphone while working in the fields outside of Talea de Castro, Mexico (the mountain village in the distance on the upper left). Agustine Sacha…
Black and Indigenous Futures
In this final webinar of the series, archaeologists, artists, and cultural theorists turn to questions of what’s next in the struggle for the recognition and promotion of Indigenous…
Mucus Passports: Mobility in the Time of COVID-19
[no-caption] Bim/Getty Images GUARANTEE “Have you gotten your COVID-19 test result already?” Vijay (a pseudonym) asks me while ringing up my bill at his salon. “Yes,” I answer.…
Heart of Stone
“The world is thus ‘animate.’ ‘We’ are not the only kind of we. The world is also ‘enchanted.’” —Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human Anthropologist…
Anarchism In Practice Is Often Radically Boring Democracy
Most anarchist organizing requires the full participation and consensus of all members. Sterling College/Flickr Two hours into a weekly planning session, the 15 or so black-clothed, tatto…
A Radical Recentering of Dignity
A protestor in 2020 in Santiago waves the Chilean flag. Marcelo Hernandez/Getty Images In an interview during October of 2019, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera made a statement that…
In the Journals – Policing Migration
A Macedonian police officer raises his baton toward migrants by Freedom House via creativecommons Welcome back to In the Journals! This ongoing series aims to bridge conversations that…
Two Lessons I Learned about the Transfer of Power while Living in Africa
1. The moment that any transfer of power occurs from one individual or regime to another is fraught—ritually, sociologically, emotionally. Why? This is a liminal period–“betwix…
Unsettling the Past: Radically Reimagining Archaeological Knowledge
For decades, Black and Indigenous archaeologists have rightfully called for a radical reimagining of how archaeology interprets and understands the past. The formulation of archaeologies by, for, and…
Tackling Care and Capitalism in College Football
Despite the health risks, many college football teams, such as the Stanford Cardinal (pictured here), have continued playing throughout the fall season. Bob Drebin/Getty Images A few mont…
The Power of Images
[no-caption] FG Trade/Getty Images The headlines and powerful prose of the anthropologists and journalists who write for SAPIENS draw our readers in time and again. But, as the…
Quantum Arms Race
A lot has been said and written about the impending unleashing of quantum technology in the world. Whereas many sing paeans to the potential of the technology to…
What’s Left Unsaid When a Language Dies
“Transition” by Papua New Guinean artist Philemon Yalamu. From Papua New Guinea: A New Dawn by Fondazione Imago Mundi/Luciano Benetton Collection. A Death in the Rainforest: How a Languag…
Interpreting Sexuality: Intellectually Disabled People and “Special” Educators in India by Shruti Vaidya
“Why does she like putting the glass bottle near her pee-hole? She couldn’t talk and tell us what was going on…what did she exactly want? What was in…
Black and Indigenous Storytelling as Counter-History
For untold centuries, storytelling has been foundational to the ways Black and Indigenous people understand and connect to the world around them. However, knowledge systems upheld in academic…
What White Power Supporters Hear Trump Saying
President Trump frequently uses language that White power extremists understand as expressing support for their views. Angus Greig Donald Trump’s path to the U.S. presidency in 2016 was…
#Book Symposium: Landscapes of Power
The cover of Dana Powell’s book, Landscapes of Power, taken from a painting by Diné teacher and muralist James B. Joe titled Bleeding Sky, is our first glimpse…
#Book Symposium: Landscapes of Power
In her monograph Landscapes of Power, Powell takes the proposed – at the time of her initial fieldwork – development project of the coal plant Desert Rock on…
#Book Symposium: Landscapes of Power
In Landscapes of Power, Dana Powell maps a failure: the proposed Desert Rock power plant which never came into being beyond paper thin promises made via PowerPoint presentations.…
Do Black Lives Matter in Outer Space?
Artist Peter Williams explores Afrofuturist themes in this painting titled “He Was a Global Traveler.” (Peter Williams, “He Was a Global Traveler,” 2020, oil on canvas, 72 x 96…
From the Margins to the Mainstream: Black and Indigenous Futures in Archaeology
Widespread protests against police violence and anti-Black racism have recently swept the globe. In the wake of protests in May and June, specifically, many citizens and communities looked…