Alexander W. Anthony: Covid in the confines of the US
Introduction There is a calendar in my office which still hangs at March 2020; an artifact of the confusion and rush to ‘lockdown’ and to find shelter from…
Tag: US
Don Nonini: Scoring the U.S. Working Class: Expropriation and Digitalization
Introduction Working-class people in the United States are now at a turning point – whether to compliantly return to the pre-Covid conditions capital set for them, or to…
Steven Sampson: Cabal Anthropology – or whether the anthropology of belief helps us understand conspiracism
QAnon, Deep State, pedophile plots, George Soros, stolen elections, 9/11 truthers, Obama birthers, 5G penetration, the anti-maskers, the anti-vaxxers… We slow-working, ever so reflective anthropologi…
Escape, Exposure, and Life on the Pacific Crest Trail
An act of walking into the wilderness implies an act of walking out of somewhere or something. The Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), which extends over the US states…
Richard H. Robbins: The Economy After Covid-19
Richard H. Robbins, SUNY Plattsburgh One feature of both the economic recession of 2007/2008 and the present Covid-19-induced economic collapse is increased central bank bouts of quantitative easi…
Don Nonini: Black Enslavement and Agro-industrial Capital
Don Nonini, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Insa Koch’s recent (2020) FOCAAL blog, “The Making of Modern Slavery in Austerity Britain,” reminds us that enslavement and…
Sharryn Kasmir: Prospects for Left Politics in the United States amid Coronavirus and Capitalist Crisis
Sharryn Kasmir, Hofstra University & University of Bergen Several weeks into the global pandemic, the gravity of the COVID-19-triggered economic crisis in the United States is coming into…
Larissa’s Story: Behind the Migration Crisis Headlines
In late September, 2019, the current US presidential administration struck several unprecedented deals with the Northern Triangle governments of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to return asylum s…
George Washington’s Letter to the Jews
I recently returned from a trip to New England to visit the affines. While there, my children received a gift from one of the aunts — a printed…
Intensity
It was my second night at the University Housing complex of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The metal frame and grid of the bed creaked so much it…
That Most Dangerous, Sacred American Space, the Bathroom
Binary clarity at an Interstate comfort station. “Ladies” to the left, “Gentlemen” to the right. Courtesy Robert Myers. uncommon sense Spoiler alert: In Hitchcock’s masterpiece Psycho, Janet Leigh…
Why Is This Trash Can Yelling at Me? Big Bellies and Clean Green Gentrification
“Pssst. There’s something really special happening here. I’m collecting five times more trash than the other guys and using solar energy to compact it all. Welcome to downtown…
An Immigrant’s View of “Amrika”
books & arts Deepak Singh. 2017. How May I Help You? An Immigrant’s Journey from MBA to Minimum Wage. Oakland: University of California Press. 305 pages. I am…
Fear and Loathing in Atlanta
Content warning: racism, violence, mention of miscarriage. I was on my way to the airplane that would take me back home, to Canada. I boarded the train between…
Meddling
When the news broke that Special Counsel Robert Mueller III indicted a Russian “troll farm” and 13 individuals associated with it, news and commentary reacted with outrage over…
Yellow Water: Rupture and Return One Year after the Gold King Mine Spill
Figure 1. A view of Animas Creek taken one year after the August 2015 Gold King Mine spill that discharged three million gallons of acid mine water toward…
The Great American Cultural Eclipse
Viewers in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, which was briefly renamed “Eclipseville” for the eclipse. Photo courtesy Nicole Erwin, WKMS. Total solar eclipses are magnificent, dramatic visual colli…
Lesley Gill and Norbert Ross: What’s Class Got to Do with It?
Unsettled by Donald Trump’s bigotry and xenophobia, liberal pundits have struggled to understand his improbable anointment as the nominee of the Republican party. Many have sought answers in…
More than Scenery: National Parks Preserve Our History and Culture
Antoinette Jackson talks with former president Jimmy Carter about the nearly vanished town of Archery, which occupied part of Carter’s boyhood farm. Photo courtesy of the USF Heritage…
Good Earth: Exploring the Old Lead Belt
Figure 1. Park Hills, Missouri, 120 Buckley Street. The entire street borders the Desloge Chat Pile, which has been remediated by the Environmental Protection Agency and partially transformed…
Remains of the Day: A Native American Burial Discovered in San Francisco Is Shrouded in a Fog of Acrimony
Computer visualization of the burial arrangement as discovered, working from generic photographs of bones. Courtesy of Peter Colby. On February 25, 2014, at eight in the morning, the…
Gina Athena Ulysse on Sandra Bland
In a piece on Africa is a Country titled “Meditation on Sandra Bland’s self-possession, The Beatles and neo-Black codes of conduct,“ anthropologist Gina Athena Ulysse reflects on Sandra…
The Unequal Distribution of Inequality: Lessons from South Africa
By Tijo Salverda As I have already pointed out in an earlier piece in this blog, growing inequality has become a major issue of concern around the world.…
On Racial Profiling and the ‘While…’ Phenomenon
Following inquiries from some of my international readers, I would like to take a few moments to explain the title of this blog. The ‘anthropology while white’ formulation…