Mourning Kin After the End of Cannibalism
Clockwise from top left: (1) Indigenous Wari’ dwellings in Amazonia, Brazil. (2) The author (middle) with her adopted father, Paletó (right), in 2012. (3) The author interviewing Wari’…
Tag: relationships
How People Actually Use Their Smartphones
[no-caption] John Cei Douglas In 2022, the smartphone, first introduced by IBM, will celebrate its 30th birthday. Most of us now use a smartphone every day—whether we like…
Confronting Anti-Blackness in “Colorblind” Cuba
A man holds his grandson inside the doorway of a fruit and vegetable shop in Havana, Cuba. Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Images I sat waiting for Yudell* to finish his shift…
Did Dads Evolve?
[no-caption] Vincent van Gogh/Wikimedia Commons This article was originally published at Knowable Magazine and has been republished under Creative Commons. Lee Gettler is hard to get on t…
Brotherhood and Anti-Blackness in College Football
Clemson Tigers teammates celebrate a successful play against the Boston College Eagles in 2020. David Grooms/TigerNet.com/Flickr This article was originally published at Black Perspective…
Introducing the Other “AI”: Anthropology Intelligence
[no-caption] DrAfter123/Getty Images “The last thing a fish would ever notice would be water.” —attributed to anthropologist Ralph Linton I sat in a drab Soviet hotel room in…
Culture—Not Genetics—Was More Salient for Anglo-Saxons
An Anglo-Saxon burial mound rises in Taplow Court, England. Shutterstock This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. Scholar…
When the Guinea Pig Goes Gourmet
“Do you eat guinea pig?” I asked Leonardo. We were perusing the menu in a restaurant in Lima, and I wanted to know what my Peruvian friend thought…
The Macabre and Magical Human-Canine Story
Researchers found this dog skull in a Czech Republic site inhabited by humans some 28,500 years ago, offering a clue to understanding the ancient story of domestication. Mietje…
A Letter From COVID-19
[no-caption] Beastfromeast/Getty Images In June 2020, I published a “Letter From COVID-19” in the Italian newspaper la Repubblica. At the time of writing, Italy was still under lockdown…
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…
Unlikely Blessings
[no-caption] Glenn H. Shepard Jr. When I discovered the poetry of Paul Celan as an undergraduate, I had little idea his words would later guide me through dark…
How Cellphones Make and Break Human Connections
Cellphones have become an integral part of many people’s lives. Towfiqu Barbhuiya/EyeEm/Getty Images Cellphones have come to occupy increasingly important roles in everyone’s lives, from …
Arrival Waters
[no-caption] Traumlichtfabrik/Getty Images I am about 70 years away from the experience that led to this poem and about 50 years away from anthropology. Some 20 years ago…
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.…
What Problems Does Organic Cotton Solve?
[no-caption] Andrew Flachs One warm afternoon several years ago, I was walking with Korianna,* a farmer in Telangana, India, when I smelled something bad. The scent of diesel…
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…
Love Poem for the Shape of the Field
[no-caption] Johannes Plenio/Pexels The sun opens, shutters. The social scientist wants to know where to look, keeps widening her gaze. Over here on the earth, a girl fries…
Does Love Always Come Before Marriage?
Thousands of couples were wed in a mass ceremony in South Korea on February 7, 2020. Some of them had only met a few weeks earlier, after being…
Is Love a Biological Reality?
Helen Fisher knows more about love than most. As a biological anthropologist who studies the topic, she has been a chief scientific adviser to the internet dating site…
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…
Why Losing Bonds Sports Fans
Football fans respond to their team during a match. Motortion Films/Shutterstock This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. …
#Book Review: Animal Intimacies
The creative disentanglement of human-animal relationships in Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central Himalayas by Radhika Govindrajan is an important addition to the multispeci…
Do Twins Share a Soul?
I have a clone. He’s an identical twin brother, really. But as monozygotic twins derived from one fertilized egg, we share the exact same genome. Since birth, we…