Findings : Anthropology’s Persistent Race Problem
To what extent do college anthropology departments unknowingly reproduce academic spaces in which being white is the norm? Critically taking on race, racism, and racial practices within anthropology, Brodkin, Morgen, and Hutchinson argue that anthropology has “not done well when it comes to decolonizing their own practices around race” (545). Their reasoning revolves around […]
Findings : This Is Not a House
Surrealist painter René Magritte’s famous painting “The Treachery of Images” displays a drawing of a pipe with the caption “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” (this is not a pipe). The painting points out a problem with referential images: when we look at an image that refers to another object, making the connection between image […]
Findings : Queer Critters
Anthropology courses often teach us to recognize the humanity in others. Introductory textbooks reveal the logic behind social practices of native peoples, inviting the reader to identify with foreign cultures. At the same time, the desire to preserve the sanctity of such common humanity motivates communities to demonize individuals who commit “acts against nature.” […]
Findings : Re-thinking Anti-colonialism Today
Frantz Fanon’s powerful and enduring legacy has deeply inspired contemporary social movements organized by the poor in post-Apartheid South Africa. Fanon summed his relentless criticism of hierarchies, even within anticolonial movements, in the phrase “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.” This is a phrase that has informed the political […]
Findings : Museums of Memory
Trauma site museums are dedicated to historic events of mass suffering, such as genocide or war, and are often built at the site of such events. How can these museums themselves act as living records of violence and trauma? What role do they play in practices of reconciliation, memorialization, and testimony for countries dealing […]
Findings : A Culture Interdependent with Salmon
The Nimiipuu people of the Pacific Northwest (more commonly known as the Nez Perce Indians) have a close, interdependent relationship with salmon. This fish has long been central to their diet, rituals, stories, and understanding of the environment, the cultural consequence of their physical interdependence with the salmon. At the time of their first contact […]
Findings : Debilitating Marginal? Queer Living in a Class-Divided Society
On September 22, 2010, Tyler Clementi, a gay freshman at Rutgers University, committed suicide. Many held his roommate responsible for the tragedy: Dharun Ravi had spied on Clementi’s rendezvous with a male friend and tweeted about what he saw (Ravi was later convicted on charges of bias intimidation, invasion of privacy, and tampering with […]
Findings : Why Do Guy Fawkes Masks Seem to be Everywhere These Days?
The Internet receives a remarkable amount of credit for contemporary political developments. This is true of both revolutionary and mainstream movements, from the Arab Spring to Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. At the same time, widespread commentary on the Internet’s mobilizing capacity has generated numerous and ranging assertions about the effects of online organizing. Does […]