Can Anthropology Be Decolonized?
In recent years, anthropology has increasingly reckoned with its colonial and racist roots. In a special forum, scholars weigh in on what “decolonizing” means—and share their visions for…
Tag: race
Rhyme & Reason: Poetry as a Cultural and Communal Bridge
In this upcoming free live event, SAPIENS 2022 Poet-in-Residence Jason Vasser-Elong celebrates the end of his residency with a discussion of poetry as a dialogue across the ages.…
FocaalBlog: Eric Wolf, Europe, Histories, Capitalism. Where are we now?
This panel was convened by Ida Susser at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2022 – Unsettling Landscapes. It builds on the workshop Vision and Method in Anthropology:…
Best of SAPIENS 2022
In a year of continuing global conflagrations, anthropologists investigated a wide range of pressing and curious questions about humanity’s past, present, and future. Here are the editors’ picks…
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…
Stephen Campbell: On the dialectics of capitalist expansion: An interview with Christopher Krupa
In April 2022, University of Pennsylvania Press published A Feast of Flowers: Race, Labor, and Postcolonial Capitalism in Ecuador, by University of Toronto anthropologist Christopher Krupa. Tracing t…
In Spain, Scapegoating Spikes During the Pandemic
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,…
Does “Monkeypox” Give Monkeys a Bad Name?
The debate over naming the virus known as monkeypox says a lot about the close—but fraught—relationships between humans and our fellow primates. ✽ The name of the latest…
Bioethics Must First Burn
Bioethics must burn before it can be reimagined to enable the flourishing of all humans, and not just the ones that align with or are presupposed by its…
Peeling Back the Myth of a “White” Midwest
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…
We All Love Roses
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…
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…
Book Review: Played Out – Difference and Repetition in Classic Board Games
By Samuel Gerald Collins Patkin, Terri Toles (2021). Who’s in the Game? Identity and Intersectionality in Classic Board Games. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland. After taking…
Maize and Okra
I saw big momma once, seated in a wooden chair with hair braided all the way like if you look downriver, you could imagine the chillin’ playing— after…
Perimeter Protection: The Resiliency of Plantation Infrastructures in the South Carolina Lowcountry
Editorial Note: This post is part of our series highlighting the work of the Anthropology and Environment Society’s 2021 Roy A. Rappaport Prize Finalists. We asked them to outline the…
Helena Wulff reflects on her career
What article or book that you wrote are you most pleased with? Could you talk about the story behind writing it? It is hard to choose between an…
Muda da Maré: Environmental Change, Ecological Grief, and the Fishers and Marisqueiras of Pernambuco
Editorial Note: This post is part of our series highlighting the work of the Anthropology and Environment Society’s 2021 Roy A. Rappaport Prize Finalists. We asked them to outline the…
Athletics, IQ, Health: Three Myths of Race
Our recent book, Racism, Not Race, tackles a big lie: The idea that human beings have biological races. Biological races do not exist in humans. Why, then, do…
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…
Predominantly White Institutions’ Overtures to Black Students OR This Is What They Tell You Without Telling You
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…
Transracial Adoption and the Limits of Love
A photo installation by artist Glenn Morey explores how Korean adoptees in the U.S. grapple with questions related to belonging, identity, and family. Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images On a…
Untangling Race From Hair
Descriptions of hair have long been knotted with false notions of race, but new research points to empowering ways of viewing this emotionally charged physical trait. D3sign/Getty Images …
Redrawing the Boundaries
For many, archaeology means digging up historical artifacts from beneath the ground. But to some, that framework is also violent and colonialist. What would it mean to leave…
A Hidden Figure in North American Archaeology
As a historian of science, I am interested in determining who gets credit for scientific discoveries and why. Sadly, credit often goes to the powerful and connected, not…