Dangerous Mountains Dr. Peter Wynn Kirby, an anthropologist at the University of Oxford, wrote an op-ed for The Japan Times and makes some thought-provoking observations about the connections between the stockpiling of whale-meat, plutonium and policiy making in…
Catastrophe and its Ghosts A year after whole neighborhoods were killed by the Japanese tsunami, rumors of ghosts swirl in Ishinomaki as the city struggles to come to terms with the tragedy. One reconstruction project appears stalled because of fears the undead spirits of…
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…
Nuclear Allergy? In the wake of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese often proclaimed their society to be “allergic” to nuclear technology—particularly nuclear weapons. What has been far less acknowledged in Japan is a persistent pattern of…
What Might The Media’s Short Term Attention to Disasters Tell Us About Ourselves? One of the most interesting turn of events during the current nuclear crisis in Japan is how by Thursday, March 17, 2011 the ongoing drama of the catastrophe was displaced from the headlines by stories about the rebellion in Libya. Just as it…
Nuclear Lessons Barbara Rose Johnston and Hugh Gusterson ponder nuclear realities at the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences Barbara Rose Johnston: Radiation is invisible, how do you know when you are in danger? How long will this danger persist? How can you reduce…
Nuclear Power, Fears and the Limits of Democracy Keibo Oiwa, a Japanese cultural anthropologist and environmentalist, speaks to Democracy Now about the current nuclear crisis: And I’m really realizing again that, you know, democracy is so hollow now. I mean, we don’t have power. This is not…
On Japanese Suffering “In Japanese culture, there’s a sort of nobility in suffering with a stiff upper lip, in mustering the spiritual, psychological resources internally,” said John Nelson, a cultural anthropologist and chairman of the department of theology and…
