Citizen surveillance and social media during South Africa’s lockdown
Surveillance has become a common concern in public debates, but it is usually associated with the power of tech corporations to surveil people through algorithms. In the book…
Tag: South Africa
When “Slow Violence” Collides with Visceral Hunger – COVID-19 and the Current and Future Food System of Cape Town, South Africa (#WitnessingCorona)
Hide Press Release (9 Less Words) Gareth Haysom African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated both the unsustainability and the fragility…
Feminise the pandemic: Covid-19 and gender inequality in South Africa
Like all countries around the world, South Africa is now dealing with the uncertainty of navigating in uncharted waters, as it moves from full lockdown to a gradual…
How should we study intergenerational trauma? Reflections on a 30-year birth cohort study in Soweto, South Africa by Andrew Wooyoung Kim
My parents immigrated to the United States from South Korea in the late 80’s in search of political stability and socioeconomic opportunity. While they did not come with…
Trans people have been hit hard by Covid-19 disruptions – here is why
The Covid-19 pandemic is raging, and as an anthropologist who is also a transgender woman, I have been frequently reflecting on the situation in which we trans people…
“South Africa Suffering from Three Pandemics: COVID-19, Ignorance, Stupidity”
KEKETSO PEETE “… those things kill people who fly, us we don’t fly, we are here in Mzansi [South Africa] year in and year out” This was a…
Anxiety, Scarcity and Precarity in a Time of COVID-19
SHARLI ANNE PAPHITIS On the 16th of March, I took one of my last trips into the office on the London Overground and found myself completely alone on…
How A Pandemic Shapes The City: Ethnographic Voices From South Africa
TAMIA BOTES, LESEDI M.S. CHOCHO, GEORGIA KELLOW, ELINOR BRONNVIK ENGELKING, LUCY KHOFI, EDNA BOSIRE, ERMA COSSA AND DESIREE MALOPE Like others globally, we are observing sudden and severely…
‘Stay on your continent!’ Coronavirus and the alarm of European spread in South Africa
Hide Press Release (2 Less Words) Brandaan Huigen When the first cases of infection started to appear in southern Germany, Jens Spahn, the Federal Minister of Health, was…
Gloves, embryos, and DDT: thinking with surfaces on toxicity in South Africa by Tessa Moll
In the early 1980s, researchers at Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa were confounded by the persistent failure of their experimental mice embryos. The researchers had hoped…
Liz Gunner on her book, Radio Soundings
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/radio-soundings/032576130F53ED88EA2765200B763F9F Interview by Louisa Meintjes Louisa Meintjes: In analyses about popular culture produced during apartheid, Zulu …
Through Dappled Light
Homo naledi hints at the wonders of what we have yet to learn about human evolution. A common teaching analogy in paleoanthropology is that of the drunk looking…
Urban kinship: the micro-politics of proximity and relatedness in African cities, by Jesper Bjarnesen and Mats Utas
It is our pleasure and privilege to introduce a special issue of Africa, exploring the micro-politics of proximity and relatedness in six African cities. To understand how social…
Anthropologists and Espionage, chapter 4,378
Is there anything new to say in the never-ending discussion of anthropology and espionage? Most anthropologists think it is unethical to gather intelligence on behalf of the government…
Teaching and timelessness
As I write, night is falling slowly and heavily, like a train gaining momentum gracelessly. It’s easy to feel sleepy when I come home after the all-day heat,…
Housework and anxiety on the day before class
It’s a Sunday. The ants are everywhere around the kitchen sink, swarming through the crack in the dishwasher door. Afterwards, every time you feel the tiniest itch, you…
Considerations on grading
Since last month, I’ve been teaching in Social Anthropology at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. (The website still needs updating, so you can’t find my name on it yet.)…
Homo naledi genome: Will we ever find this elusive key to human evolution? | Jennifer Raff
Despite the recent announcement of a new haul of Homo naledi fossils, recovering ancient DNA is still proving as difficult as ever Despite what many people believe, paradigm-shifting…
Dating your Ancestors is Complicated: The Strange Case of Homo Naledi
Photo: John Hawks. Homo naledi has much in common with early forms of the genus Homo On this episode, Adam and Ryan dive into the complexities of our…
Dating your Ancestors is Complicated: The Strange Case of Homo Naledi
Photo: John Hawks. Homo naledi has much in common with early forms of the genus Homo On this episode, Adam and Ryan dive into the complexities of our…
We are all Helen Zille. Or, why the West thinks that colonialism was not all bad
Check out my latest piece in Africa Is A Country on South African prominent white politician Helen Zille’s tweets in defence of colonialism. I talk about southern African…
Building Out the Rat: Animal Intimacies and Prophylactic Settlement in 1920s South Africa
by Branwyn Polykett, University of Cambridge § In the years between the two world wars another global war was declared, the war on the rat. The rat was a stray…
Eldercare in South Africa: Dreaming of a White Paper Christmas #ageing
About a year ago around Christmas, South African Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi and ANC colleagues released the anticipated White Paper on implementing ambitious health system reforms branded…
Eldercare in South Africa: Dreaming of a White Paper Christmas #ageing
About a year ago around Christmas, South African Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi and ANC colleagues released the anticipated White Paper on implementing ambitious health system reforms branded…