On the Edge of the Body
By Renata Carvalho Anthropology’s many attempts of conceptualising the body into clear and useful analytical categories has raised significant ontological questions that problematise the very basi…
Tag: the body
Fit for Purpose? Prime Minister Johnson’s Two Bodies and the UK Better Health Strategy by Kandida Purnell
Amongst the UK’s current Conservative Government, rhetorically invoking the body politic is common practice. For example, in 2019 Number 10 Special Advisor Dominic Cummings argued that a European…
Provincializing Metabolism (On the Poverty of Modernism) by Maurizio Meloni
According to accepted wisdom and textbooks, “metabolism” is a nineteenth-century term and concept, established at the confluence of organic chemistry, cell biology, and physiology. In Microscopical R…
Our Understanding of the Labor Experience Is Overdue for Change
Labor interventions are largely driven by standards set in the 1950s. A growing body of research suggests it may be time for a change — Read more on…
Juxtaposition by Annemarie Mol
Editor: The following is an introduction to a new Japanese translation of The body multiple. It can be purchased through Suiseisha publishers, as part of their series on The Anthropological…
Infant Topography: Baby Body Mapping in Maphisa, Zimbabwe by Min’enhle Ncube
Nomsa, her sixteen month old son Nathi and I met early one morning at the entrance to the open cast mine in Mafuyana, Southern Matabeleland, Zimbabwe. Nathi safely…
Top of the Heap: Helen Verran by Hannah Gibson
For this installment of the Top of the Heap series, I spoke with Helen Verran, a historian and philosopher of science who is Adjunct Professor at Charles Darwin…
Academic hands
Jeffrey Williams wrote in his excellent essay Smart that academics’ hands are remarkable for their contrast with working-class hands: My father has a disconcerting habit, especially for people…
How Do We Normalize Pregnancy?
Is our cultural antipathy toward pregnancy and children creating a health hazard? — Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
Boredom as a practice
I was reading through my field notebooks lately and I came across a little ethnographic snippet of description. It is a description of a male French student sitting in a…