What Did Malinowski Eat in Papua?
One hundred years ago (June 27, 1915 to be precise), Bronislaw Malinowski arrived in the Trobriand Islands of eastern Papua New Guinea to begin the fieldwork that would become legendary and shape his whole career, ultimately revolutionizing British social anthropology. He was 31 years old, a brilliant polyglot born of Polish gentry. He was highly […]
Anthropologists Write on Afghanistan
The New York Times Sunday Book Review discusses the books of Noah Coburn and Thomas Barfield, two Boston University anthropologists who conducted fieldwork at Afghanistan: Ten years after the Taliban’s leaders fled their country in apparent defeat, the war in Afghanistan has become what one observer calls “a perpetually escalating stalemate.” As in Iraq, the […]
Death in a Family
I am living with a large extended family, an experience that has been both comforting (people are always everywhere) and lonely (what a social misfit I am living so far from my own strong kinship ties!). Seven siblings (now ages 50–35) inherited the house I live in when their parents died. When one of the […]
The End of Summer, Part 2
So, what have I learned about medical anthropology in Bolivia? A lot, although I’ve only begun scratching the surface of all these topics. For a med-anth dork like myself, this is a great situation- it seems like every day, some new potential research topic reveals itself to me. The excitement of discovering interesting local issues […]
Courting La Paz, Part 1
When one arrives at a new fieldsite, the only things one can know with any certainty are the changes in one’s own experience. Lacunas of knowledge burst into one’s consciouness like the appearance of crystal-clear lakes dotting the ground when viewed from an airplane. The sprawling complexity of a landscape simplifies to valleys of ignorance […]