That Most Dangerous, Sacred American Space, the Bathroom

uncommon sense Spoiler alert: In Hitchcock’s masterpiece Psycho, Janet Leigh was not savagely murdered in the living room, but we’ll get to that. Culture wars can erupt anywhere, including in the bathroom. These spaces are personal. They really can be dangerous, nerve-wracking and threatening, but not for the reasons we hear on the media. Today’s […]

Outreach and Activism in Lebanon: A Dynamic Struggle for Gender Equality in Wake of the Arab Spring

Editor’s Introduction:  From an anthropological perspective, “education” embodies more than just formal schooling. In this post from Lina Abirafeh, a Gender Based Violence specialist working with the United Nations, we are introduced to the kinds of collaborative, culturally responsive campaigns designed to promote gender equality and end violence against women in the Middle East. To […]

Breastfeeding in the Classroom

Adrienne Pine was in a jam. The assistant anthropology professor at American University was about to begin teaching “Sex, Gender & Culture,” but her baby daughter woke up in the morning with a fever. The single mother worried that she had no good child-care options.   So Pine brought her sick baby to class. The […]

Gender

The structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss and the critique of Feminist Anthropology are discussed in an Iranian.com piece on gender. The problem with structuralism is that it discards the concepts of freedom and choice, merely emphasizing the way different social structures shape an individual’s experience, outlook and behaviour. As for the works of Lévi-Strauss, feminist anthropologists […]

FGM

Speaking to Voice of America, Medical Anthropologist Elise Johansen joins the widespread call to end Female Genital Mutilation: …FGM, a practice which dates back thousands of years, persists despite widespread recognition of its harmful physical and psychological effects on girls and women. Involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, FGM’s immediate health […]

Breaking Up in a Digital Age

Illana Gershon of Indiana University appeared at WBEZ91.5 and discussed some the finding presented at her book, The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media: When anthropologist Illana Gershon interviewed her Indiana University students as part of her research on social media and relationships, she posed this question to one of her classes: If you and your […]

The Universality of Homosexuality

Reflecting upon Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s assertion that there are no homosexuals in Iran, this Slate Magazine article discusses recent anthropological research conducted by Barry and Bonnie Hewlett and considers if homosexuality exists in every human society At a press event two weeks ago, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to elaborate on […]

Homophobia in Soccer

Type the name of Philipp Lahm into the Google search engine and the first thing its “autocomplete” feature throws up about Germany’s national football captain is “Philipp Lahm schwul” – “Philipp Lahm gay”. […]As elsewhere in Europe, Germany has no openly gay men in the professional leagues. Given the amount of repressive hide-and-seek going on, […]

Women’s World Cup

Anthropologists discuss football/soccer and culture at The New York Times and CNN: Beatriz Vélez, former anthropology professor at the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellín, studied the gender dynamics of football in her home city beginning in the 1990s. First, she wrote about the grudging acceptance girls received as token participants in the Football for Peace […]