Yellow Water: Rupture and Return One Year after the Gold King Mine Spill

Beginnings Forged by glacial flows millions of years ago, the San Juan Mountains in southern Colorado remain a mystical landscape to many visitors. The lure of their sky-bound rocky spires, regionally called “fourteeners,” a colloquial title that references their higher-than-14,000-foot elevation, draws thousands of tourists annually to explore nostalgic remnants of the “wild west” in […]

Anthropology Now and Then in the American Museum of Natural History: An Alternative Museum

You know how they say in certain museums, history comes alive? Yeah. In this museum … it actually does. What are you talking about? Everything in this museum comes to life at night.                                                        – Night at the Museum, 2006 The American Museum of Natural History’s Cultural Halls are in serious need of deep rethinking […]

“There Are No Straight Lines in Nature” – Making Living Maps in West Papua

(Un)settling the Scene Alongside melting glaciers, marine oil spills and sinking islands, large-scale monocrop plantations have become emblems of the so-called “Anthropocene.” This term, which is derived from anthropo meaning human and cene meaning new in Greek, has gained traction in recent years to describe the current epoch, in which humans have become the single […]

Elusive Caimans and the Anthropologist as Devil

books and arts Lucas Bessire. 2014. Behold the Black Caiman: A Chronicle of Ayoreo Life. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 296 pages. Dust In this poignant and insightful ethnography, Lucas Bessire invites the reader to enter a world of shame, violence and all-consuming dust. Haunting descriptions of the vast plains of the South American […]