Why Are So Many Guatemalans Migrating to the U.S.?
On May 23, a bystander filmed 20-year-old Claudia Patricia Gómez González after a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot her in the head. The young woman had recently crossed…
Tag: Violence
Re-framing Crime, Violence, and Poverty: new cinematic narratives of Black criminality in Imperial Dreams
Introduction: reframings Redmond (2017) has noted that, in order to garner support for the punitive policies of the War on Drugs, Americans were presented with stories that framed…
Time, Regained by Kevin Karpiak
The following is taken from the forthcoming book, The Police Against Itself: Reassembling French Liberalism “After the Social,” an ethnography of French police administrative reform, the vicissitudes …
Fed up security officers and drunk policemen in Nairobi by Francesco Colona
Greenwoods is a neighbourhood in Nairobi, Kenya, dotted with diplomatic residences. At the time of my research on public-private assemblages of security provision and the reconfiguration of citizenshi…
The End of the World As We Know It
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Listen to the companion episode of SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human! Back in 2008, Chad Huddleston was driving home from work when he saw a stra…
The Banality of Lost Guns: Producing Null Data Sets by Kristin Doughty
On the evening of June 6, 2016, a man with a concealed carry permit misplaced his loaded 9mm Kahr handgun in the middle of a park filled with…
Posting at the Margins
The “memeification” of political discourse in the 2018 Mexican presidential elections. Brandon Hunter-Pazzara “Okay, let’s start the memes,” posted a member of a community Facebook page in the…
We Need to Talk About “Gun Violence”: Reflections on Terminology and Contexts of Violence by Joe Anderson
Among the many political challenges of our time, gun violence in America has emerged as one of the most divisive. A retreat into partisan communities prevents us from…
Processing Settler Toxicities: Part II
This second instalment of a 2+ part post is adapted from a presentation at the 2018 Cultures of Energy Symposium at Rice University. Many thanks to everyone who…
The Trauma of Helping Asylum-Seekers
The United States’ detention of asylum-seeking women and children brings additional trauma to immigrants, such as this woman from El Salvador, who already carry many painful stories. Legal…
Guest Post: Anthropology’s front-lines: Notes on crisis, coloniality, and violence
[The following is a guest post by Proshant Chakraborty. Proshant is an applied anthropologist and research consultant based in Mumbai, India. He obtained his master’s in Social and Cultural Anthropolo…
How Volcanoes Destroy and Nurture Societies
The explosion must have been deafening. Clouds of black and gray likely erased the horizon as the earth and sky thundered violently. As smoldering debris rained down on…
Intimacy and Violence
A shaft of afternoon light began to stream through the window of the clinic room. Observing the light reflected in my eyes, she now saw in them the…
Letting Silence Have a Voice in #MeToo
On December 9, 2017, #MeToo ralliers in New York City, many of whom are survivors of sexual violence, took a stand against prominent men who have reportedly committed…
Fragile Security or Fatale Liaisons? Reflections on 2 March 2018 Attacks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, by Sten Hagberg
On Friday 2 March 2018 around 10 o’clock, two coordinated of terrorist attacks took place in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. The first attack involved gunmen seeking…
For Preppers, the Apocalypse Is Just Another Disaster
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS My first encounter with a group of preppers in St. Louis, Missouri, started at the bar of a restaurant about a decade past its prime.…
The Revolution that Wasn’t (Yet): Reflections on Iran’s protests two months out
I still remember vividly the words of an informant who, when asking him about his vision of a freer Iran, responded adamantly, “we don’t need more freedom, what…
Grief Can Make Us Wise
A candlelight vigil on February 15 honored the victims of the recent mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Jim Rassol/Getty Images In the first hours…
DragNet: January 16 – January 31, 2018
Image from projects.bettergov.org DragNet is back, with a recap of a number articles that came up last month in our twitter feed. In World News, we have a…
Can the Hunt for Skeletons Help Heal a Nation’s Wounds?
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS The abandoned Nicosia airport in Cyprus is a strange place for an anthropology lab. But there I was—at the end of a humid spring day…
What Really Happened on Easter Island?
The famous statues of Easter Island have long been a source of awe and wonder. John Elk III/Alamy Photos This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been…
REDUX: “Cleaning Up the Streets” #AnthroState
Hillbrow, Johannesburg: It’s April 2008. I am in the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel, one of Johannesburg’s most happening nightclubs since the Apartheid era. As with the Hillbrow…
Is the Clock Ticking Toward Doomsday?
Each January, the science and security board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists unveils an estimate of the likelihood that humanity will self-destruct. They do so by…
Unpicking an (A)moral Anthropological Stance: Ongoing Violence in Myanmar
REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain Introduction by Maaike Matelski In June 2015 the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology organized a seminar on account of the increasing number of Rohingya refug…