Big Bend: Narratives of Isolation
“Splendid Isolation, the Big Bend…” is how the National Parks Services introduces Big Bend National Park on its website. My partner and I recently took a several day…
Tag: Society
Becoming Inia and Dolphin
The Amazon River Basin is one of the richest river systems in the world, covering more than 7-million square kilometers. This system contains more than 5600 species of…
AES 2020 Abstract: Mediating Multispecies Relations Through Western and Indigenous Conservation
Western notions of modernity have situated human society apart from nature, which encompasses those spaces and beings that are unmodified and unsullied by human activity. The Western conception…
Science as an Orientalizing Field
Science is a Western form of knowledge production and can be divided into three forms: 1) science as a set of methods for investigating the world we inhabit,…
Does Generosity Come Naturally?
[no-caption] Marcel Hirshegger/SAPIENS When anthropologist Cathryn Townsend headed into the field in 2009 to study generosity, she knew the project was for her. That’s because she was the…
How Belonging Shapes the Vaccination Crisis
[no-caption] Marcel Hirshegger/SAPIENS Anthropologist Elisa Sobo never wanted to study the issue of vaccination. The topic was too fraught, she says, and she didn’t want to touch it…
The Liminality of Grief in Trauma
As time continues to press forward after the April 30 shooting at UNCC, I have continued to reflect, think about my experience, and discuss the experiences with others…
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…
The Strange Rites of Celebrity
Jesse Eisenberg’s breakthrough roles in movies such as Zombieland (2009) and The Social Network (2010) earned him fame and accolades. WEBN-TV/Flickr In the summer of 2016, I ran…
Religion and politics in the US: How the Christian Right moves away from Jesus
Along with an anthropology degree, I also completed a degree in philosophy with a focus on philosophy of religion. My primary interests in that are theodicies (excuses for…
Born to Be Cute: Charisma and Niche Construction
As a multispecies ethnographer and evolutionary anthropologist, I am interested in the ways in which ecological interaction between various taxa affects their selection pressures and evolutionary traj…
The Story of a Mass Shooting Survivor and Anthropologist
On April 30, my Liberal Studies class, framed as Anthropology and Philosophy of Science (Syllabus), was the site of a horrific event. Two of my students were…
Tax Season Woes Have Complex Roots
In Cochabamba, Bolivia, people’s acceptance of taxes owed varies widely. Miranda Sheild Johansson In the midsize Bolivian city of Cochabamba, informal work is the norm among the lowest-pa…
Admissions Fraud and the SAT: Hidden Implications
As you are well aware, there is a huge college admissions scandal that has been brought to life. Forbes calls it “The Worst Crime In College Admissions History…
Is a More Generous Society Possible?
A group of women and children from the Ik tribe share a meal. Cathryn Townsend In January 2016, Cathryn Townsend set out to live among “the loveless people.”…
Book Review: “How to Think Like an Anthropologist”
After each semester I evaluate what did and didn’t work in my classes. I didn’t teach Introduction to Anthropology for Fall 2018 so I had an extra semester…
Spring 2019 Introduction to Anthropology Syllabus
Intro to Anthropology (ANTH 1101-001) UNC Charlotte, Spring 2019 Mon/Wed/Fri (10:10-11:00am) in Rowe 161 Instructor: Adam Johnson Office Hours: M/W 12:30-1:30pm ajohn344@uncc.edu by appointment i…
Issuing Trigger Warnings in an Age of Mass Shootings
Ellie Fleischer writes “Enough Is Enough” at a memorial near the Tree of Life Synagogue on Monday, October 29, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Salwan Georges/Getty Images On the last…
Revisiting Geno-colonization: Senator Warren and “Native DNA”
I woke up this morning to the news that Senator Elizabeth Warren has released a DNA test “providing strong evidence” that she has a Native American ancestor 6-10…
Don’t Lose Sight
I’ve been working on a different post but this one seemed more context-appropriate and I am giving another pass over Kinji Imanishi’s A Japanses View of Nature: The World of…
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…
What the Tech Sector Could Learn from Anthropology
Technology is a social tool that requires understanding of social and cultural factors for it to be a driver of equality. Failing to incorporate an anthropological perspective into…
Populations, Race, and The Sorites Paradox
The sorites paradox (also called the paradox of the heap) refers to a particular logical contradiction that arises from the analysis of vague terms (Sainsbury, 2009). Terms like…