Urbex in Baltimore
Reporter Jessica Anderson recently interviewed me for this fascinating piece about urban exploration in Baltimore. I enjoyed talking with her about the allure of abandoned/vacant spaces and learning m…
Tag: Uncategorized
Food…Use It or Lose It?
by Sandy Bonnington Each year 7 million tonnes of food and drink are thrown away in households around the UK with over half of this being perfectly edible…
Two Sections Awarded Funds to Explore Publishing Innovations
The AAA Committee on the Future of Print and Electronic Publishing (CFPEP) approved two proposals on April 11, 2016, for publishing innovations grants, one from the Society for…
Remembering Rana Plaza
by Rebecca Prentice It’s been three years since the most deadly disaster in garment manufacturing history: the April 24, 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory building…
5% unemployment is a lie
For Quartz, I wrote about the very misleading 5% unemployment rate, a statistic which discounts 1) the long-term unemployed and the lowered labor participation rate 2) the explosion…
New York values
For the Globe and Mail, I wrote about the New York primary, in a piece published the day before. The piece discusses not only the candidates — three…
how to make TV now (the “whole world” approach)
Natalie Chaidez is the show runner for Hunters (Mondays, 10:00 eastern, SyFy). Recently Sean Hutchinson asked her what she was aiming for. Our idea of aliens is cliched, she replied. She wanted to &#…
Deborah Cramer: The narrow ledge – a tiny bird, an ancient crab, an epic journey
Fascinating new book out from Deborah Cramer, description from Yale follows with a talk from Deborah Cramer below: Each year, red knots, sandpipers weighing no more than a…
An “Ecological Path” in Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park: On the Reflexivity of Oil Infrastructure
By Peter Taber, Arizona State University § Satellite imagery of a small section of the Block 31 road entering the Apaika platform area, taken in 2013. Imagery courtesy of…
Indiana Folk Arts: 200 Years of Tradition and Innovation
Please come out to the Mathers Museum of World Cultures this Sunday afternoon to celebrate the vernacular arts of Indiana and to help launch our state bicentennial exhibition.…
The ‘wicked grin’ test (as a new creative measure)
How do you know when something in our culture is really good? I think it’s when it makes us grin a wicked grin. This is one of those: Dave Chappelle does…
Applying Anthropology for a Safer World
Claim our bodies, claim our right, Take a stand, take back the night! Across the globe, the month of April is a time for communities to mobilize Take…
Cheap Chinese Goods
In a new project, I trace the fortunes of three interrelated communities across four northern Andean cities. Indigenous Otavaleño traders, mestizo apparel producers in the manufacturing cluster of…
If I was going to be interviewed about blogging by The Geek Anthropologist: 15 questions
(… this is very informal…) Why do I blog? When you work outside academia and you’re not actively researching you still want to write, you still want…
En las plazas se sueña en pie
Semi-automatic translation from the original Spanish: Dreaming while standing in the squares. In France today it is not 12 April but 43 March. And in March they will…
Uzbekistan 2015: Year in Review
It was another rough year for Uzbekistan, with entrenched corruption, forced cotton labor, and an economy weakened by the Russian remittance crisis among the key trends. My report for Nations…
How to manage many stakeholders
A note on style: I wrote this in a hotel room somewhere. I used Scapple from Literature and Latte to do it. It was really just a note…
“Anthropology for peace”
In the Communications Unit at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) where I work, there are posters from an old engagement campaign that read “_____ for peace.” The…
A different kind of pilgrimage
Photograph by Neil Rickards By Dimetri Whitfield The most surprising thing for me about conducting fieldwork is that you encounter all these interesting people that ultimately do…
废俗 | Junklore
“Redundant information, calculated as, say, the number of stickers in corners, on walls, on lampposts that it takes to build cognizance of this information in one subject, may…
New Piece: Review Essay
The wonderful team at Somatosphere just published my review essay on three recent – and quite important – books on disability themes. “When Risk, Doubt, and Difference Converge:…
How a town based on Superman fell for Trump
Most articles about why people vote for Donald Trump get their answers from two places: polls, with no follow-up questions but lots of speculation as to the “real…
Ayahuasca Art: The Nature of Marriage and the Marriage of Nature
I have been told time and again by countless ayahuasca drinkers that the experience of ayahuasca is ultimately beyond words. These impenetrable descriptions are nonetheless usually followed by…