Follicular Circulations: Race in the Global Hair Market
How is race done in the transnational circulation of hair for the production of wigs, extensions, and toupees? Or to put it differently: what happens to race in…
Tag: race
The Colour of Coffee: Racism, Gender and Coffee Consumption in 19th Century Algeria
Today, coffee is consumed everywhere in the world. Despite its neo-colonial forms of production, it is a drink which brings people together, but the consumption of coffee in…
The Anthropologists Who Undid Sex, Race, and Gender
Anthropologist Margaret Mead—a museum curator, a professor, a popular commentator, and an author, among other roles—was perhaps the most famous student of Franz Boas. Bettmann /Getty Images …
Decolonizing Extinction: An Interview with Juno Salazar Parreñas
Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation By Juno Salazar Parreñas, The Ohio State University 288pp. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. § Colin Hoag spoke with…
White Men and Their Toxic White Fragility
It has been several months since the shooting in my classroom at UNC Charlotte where two of my students were killed, four were physically injured, and an untold…
A Grammar of Perseverance
Reflections on Race, Poverty and Violence in Orange, New Jersey It’s a muggy mid-June Saturday afternoon. A large inflatable moonwalk occupies the asphalt, and kids line up for…
How Some Tried—and Failed—to Kill “Race” in Latin America
DNA sequencing is now used extensively in medicine, forensic science, and explorations of ancestry. Andrew Brookes/Getty Images When the structure of DNA was first revealed in 1953, it…
“Homework”: The highs and lows of anthropology at home
Anthrodendum welcomes guest blogger Chelsey Carter (Twitter @chelsitabonita7). She is an MPH/PhD candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis (USA) with a graduate certificate in Wo…
White Fans, Liberal Ideologies, and the Erasure of Black Stories in Gaming
Last month, the highly anticipated video game Mortal Kombat 11 (MK11) was released to an excited yet wary fighting game community. Game studio NetherRealm’s newest incarnation received praise…
How Medicare For All Challenges our Ideas of Black Deservingness by Ampson Hagan
The contemporary debate over healthcare in the United States revolves around an unstated but somewhat widely understood notion of what people deserve. The question of “deservingness” is particularly…
Guest Post: On Not Looking Like an Expert: Being Black and Doing Research in Africa, White People’s Historical and Theoretical Turf
[Footnotes is excited to present a guest post by Ampson Hagan. Ampson Hagan is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is…
Jonathan Rosa on his new book, Looking Like a Language and Sounding Like a Race
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/looking-like-a-language-sounding-like-a-race-9780190634735 Interview by Jessica López-Espino Jessica López-Espino: Let’s start with your title, what does it me…
Remembering the Woman Who Was My Second Mother in Cuba
Caro in the terrace of her house in Havana, 2001. Ruth Behar When my cellphone rang on the morning of December 12, 2018, and I saw the call…
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…
Creating Bodies, Creating a Nation: How the Idea of the Straight, White, Muscular Male Body Shaped America by Ketil Slagstad
Governing Bodies: American Politics and the Shaping of the Modern Physique Rachel Louise Moran University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 224 pages. 1. When Michelle Obama launched the “Let’…
Top Articles of 2018
As the year winds down, Anthropology News rounds up our most popular articles of 2018. From critical reflections on the discipline and experiences of it, to grappling with…
Navigating Silicon Valley’s Contradictions
Silicon Valley’s workers must maneuver their way through this place of diversity and discrimination, capitalist aims, and countercultural aspirations. You can spot the extremes on the street in…
“The Workingmen’s Colony”: Labor Conflict and Historic Preservation in Campbell, Ohio
In August, I visited the town of Campbell, a former hub of Ohio’s steel industry. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company established operations there in 1902, on the banks…
Great Ape Haters
Isaiah Nengo on racist tweets, evolutionary misconceptions, and his ancient ape skull discovery. In a tweet from 2013, Roseanne Barr called former United Nations National Security Advisor Susan…
Race, Rural Livelihoods, and Contested Conservation Landscapes
A visit to Basu Farms in Pembroke Township, about 60 miles south of Chicago, provides a glimpse into the entanglement of land tenure, black history and self-determination in…
The Hidden Resilience of “Food Desert” Neighborhoods
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Even before Ashanté Reese and I reach the front gate, retired schoolteacher Alice Chandler is standing in the doorway of her brick home in Washington,…
The Banality of Lost Guns: Producing Null Data Sets by Kristin Doughty
On the evening of June 6, 2016, a man with a concealed carry permit misplaced his loaded 9mm Kahr handgun in the middle of a park filled with…
Wizards, Vampires, Klingons, and Other Alternative Cultures
On the last day of my introduction to anthropology class, we watch scenes from the documentary Trekkies. Students grin at the sincere folks dressed as Starfleet officers and…
Biology, Race, and “Orientalism”
Edward Said published Orientalism in 1978 and is highly influential, both in post-colonial studies and social theory. Said argues that through the construction of the ‘Orient’ (the East) a…