Outsmarting Risk: From Bonuses to Bailouts
Recent criticisms of Wall Street bonuses and bailouts—whether they express incredulous disbelief, hopeless resignation, or unfortunate necessity—somehow leave us unsatisfied. Most explanations fail to satisfy us precisely because they accept the “common-sense” understanding of Wall Street risk—an “understanding” that itself fundamentally misapprehends the culture and practice of financial risk in the United States, especially as […]
Spitting Image
*This is a special feature from the third, Darwin themed print issue of Anthropology Now.* spitting image, spit’n’ image. Informal. exact likeness; … bef. 950; (v.) ME spitten, OE spittan; c. G (dial.) spitzen to spit; akin to OE spætan to spit, spætl spittle …. (Dictionary. com 2009). Last year, the California-based project 23andMe—a project […]
Nuclear Payouts: Knowledge and Compensation in the Chernobyl Aftermath
*This is a special feature from the second, atomic themed print issue of Anthropology Now.* “Nothing happened” When the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in the early morning of April 26, 1986, it blasted a radioactive plume as high as eight kilometers into the sky. In a failed attempt to suffocate the flames of the reactor’s […]