“Not All Suffering Is Illness; Some Suffering Is Political”: The Ambit of Radical Care
Baijayanta Mukhopadhyay. 2016. A Labour of Liberation. Regina, SK, Canada: Changing Suns Press. 68 pages. A Labour of Liberation, published by the new Changing Suns Press, is a slim, signicant book that takes seriously health care as labor — raced, gendered, classed labor — while holding up the specificity of what that labor is: care. […]
“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 […]
Surveilling Trump: A Call to Action
Trump Watch For better or worse, many people across the globe pay close attention to the Unites States. To be sure, it’s a juggernaut. Some observers consider it — and for good reason — the most powerful country on earth. Social scientists, meanwhile, recognize that it is a nation-state and a society with great internal […]
Facing the Future
books & arts John Urry. 2016. What is the Future? Malden, MA: Polity Press. 226 pages. One of the greatest rewards of reading John Urry’s latest and, unfortunately, last solo-authored book, is that it so vividly reflects the kinds of concerns and commitments that led him to become one of the most influential sociologists of […]
Ethnography on Trial
“[Ethnography] is the most appropriate research approach for increasing understanding of the range of sociocultural effects of the multifaceted and evolving Deepwater Horizon disaster on the people and communities of coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.” Diane Austin Rebuttal to BP Round 2 Reports, September 26, 2014 It is fitting that this article is being published […]
April 2017
Volume 9 | Number 1 | April 2017 Features Ethnography on Trial by Diane Austin, Lauren Penny, and Tom McGuire “There Are No Straight Lines in Nature”: Making Living Maps in West Papua by Sophie Chao In-between Ethnography and Filmmaking: Field Notes and Rituals behind the Frame by Adriana Vila Guevara Trump Watch Surveilling Trump: […]
The “Born-Free” Generation
visual essay In 1994, South Africa celebrated its first universal elections. The event marked the end of apartheid, the institutionalized system of racial segregation that characterized the country for almost 50 years. I was born in South Africa just one year prior to this historical event. As a consequence, I am a member of the […]
Time and the Other Primates
books and arts Tomasello, Michael. 2014. A Natural History of Human Thinking. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 178 pages. 18th-Century Questions, 21st-Century Problems Influential circles in German philosophy have taken an American anthropologist into their hearts. A comparative psychologist and linguist by training, Michael Tomasello has served as co-director of the Max Planck Institute for […]
New Articulations of Biological Difference in the 21st Century: A Conversation
This conversation is prompted by continued frustration about how race is discussed and understood by the public and by those researchers who remain determined to draw clean lines around people who share particular physical characteristics. We make the case that knowledge of human evolution and population genetics should be a core aspect of “diversity requirements” […]
Her Road from Damascus: A Syrian Refugee Story
How Raghad Alhallak and her family sold their home and bakery in Syria, scaled a mountain, fought off wild dogs, evaded border guards and nearly drowned at sea — before being welcomed in Germany. The Alhallak family fled Damascus at the end of the summer of 2013, after selling their jewelry, their bakery and their […]