Can Ancient DNA Support Indigenous Histories?
A biological anthropologist reflects on how scientific research can be used to reaffirm or undermine Indigenous land ties in Argentina. ✽ In the early 1900s, two amateur archaeologists…
Tag: Technology
When a Message App Became Evidence of Terrorism
Beginning in 2016, the Turkish government accused anyone with the messaging application ByLock of terrorism. An anthropologist investigates the risks of this kind of digital evidence. ✽ Summer…
Smartphones Are Bicycles for Our Minds
The proliferation of smartphones is transforming basic structures of human existence, experience, and performance. How do these machines change what it means to be human? Where is your…
To Witness: Cell Phone Cameras, Immigrant Communities, and Police Accountability
“There is nothing like an iPhone …to show people the problem…” -Alex Vitale, The End of Policing An ACLU volunteer hangs informational posters in downtown Houston. The top…
A Dam’s Downstream Consequences
An anthropologist shares his story of the environmental, sociocultural, and political consequences of a hydropower dam in India for communities living downstream. Discussions about the impacts of da…
Languid, tropical, monsoonal time?:net-activism and hype in the context of South East Asian politics – 1999
Languid, tropical, monsoonal time?:net-activism and hype in the context of South East Asian politics. [From The Next Five Minutes3 Workbook (1999)… posted much earlier here: https://hutnyk.wor…
The Problems of Digital Evidence in Terrorism Trials
An anthropologist uses courtrooms in Turkey as his field site to understand how digital evidence is shifting legal practices. Today most people around the world are using digital…
Learning From Handy Primates
A researcher who studies animal behavior looks at tool use in nonhuman primates to better illuminate tool use in humans. Many of our primate relatives use tools. How…
Cultivating Modern Farms Using Ancient Lessons
An anthropologist examines what past farmers can teach us about adapting to climate change amid—and sometimes against—powerful political influences. This article was originally published at The Conve…
Untangling the World’s First-Known String
Neanderthals made the oldest string ever found, providing new insights into the technology and culture of our hominin cousins. At the Abri du Maras site in southern France,…
In Search of the First Cyborg
A Paleolithic archaeologist sets out on a journey in search of the first cyborg, making discoveries that end up very close to home. These days, a mention of…
Black Influencers Beyond the Screens
Meet Anuli Akanegbu, the host of the BLK IRL podcast and a doctoral candidate researching Black creatives who are contract workers in Atlanta, Georgia. Anuli Akanegbu is the…
Cultures of Technology
In the seventh season of the SAPIENS podcast, listeners will hear a range of stories about how technology—in a variety of configurations—shapes humanity. Since the dawn of our…
Love and Technology: An Ethnography of Dating App Users in Berlin – review
Fabian Broeker‘s Love and Technology: An Ethnography of Dating App Users in Berlin explores how dating apps mediate intimacy among young Berliners. Presenting an immersive ethnography of app usa…
Lonely Planet Looking for Connection: Citizen Science SETI Research at NASA
NASA’s homepage is as glitzy as you would expect of the U.S. Government’s sexiest administration. Glossy pictures of nebulas, astronauts, and asteroids float across the top of the…
Intravenous ideological global apparatus – IISAs
I am holding out for the new intravenous culture industry critique. Cannot get students to leave their screen devices alone even if they are banned in the classroom.…
Why Shoes Do Not Make the Runner
East African runners wearing “super shoes” have outpaced global marathon records. But the shoe fervor—alongside older stereotypes about African runners’ “natural” abilities—means athletes’ hard work o…
On Algorithmic Divination
Scientist operating an algorithmic divination machine as imagined by Midjourney’s AI (image by Author & Midjourney). Algorithms are tools of divination.[1] Like cowry shells, scapular bones,…
Restoring Faces and Dignity to Skeletal Remains
An anthropologist explains how a South African university used community-driven research to honor human remains acquired unethically. This article was originally published at The Conversation and has…
How to Imagine the Unknown: Choosing an Arm Prosthesis
When amputation happens, it is an un-ignorable event. After the surgery, the person learns how to be an amputee, they learn to conceptualize their altered body. This work…
Arc of Interference: Medical Anthropology for Worlds on Edge – review
In Arc of Interference: Medical Anthropology for Worlds on Edge, João Biehl and Vincanne Adams assemble reflections on the role of anthropology in understanding healthcare in today’s world of…
Making Companion Species at a Robotics Lab
I spent many a warm summer day holed up inside a robotics laboratory, analyzing various datasets for my Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research project. The room was often dark…
Inside Mexico City’s Surveillance State
An anthropologist investigates how one city’s rapidly expanding video surveillance system is transforming criminal investigation—sometimes in deeply flawed ways. ✽ In September 2022, a criminal prose…
Embracing Formal Rituals For Stronger Ideas and Connections
Punting on the Cam: A punter sharing Cambridge history with a couple under the Bridge of Sighs on the Cambridge University campus. I just spent a summer studying…