Laughter is Social Glue
– After Ritu Khanduri, With apologies Laughter is social glue— When it escapes the blow is softened— The Brits did not know about Laughter Out of Place, said They, Those brown people, have no sense of fun, only satire and malice—Why can they not be happy we’ve won? Laughter is social glue— It cements […]
Bollywood and Violence
Irfan Ahmad, a political anthropologist, writes in Al-Jazeera about Bollywood and violence in India: On July 31, a shocking incident took place at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), one of South Asia’s top universities. In a dastardly attempted murder, shortly before noon, Akash Kumar, 23, and a student of Korean studies, entered the classroom […]
Spirituality
Spirituality is not what it once was – that much is certain, according to anthropologist Peter van der Veer. Working at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, he has examined the significance of the spiritual and its transformation processes in modern societies using the example of China […]
Margaret Mead: This I Believe
The Hindu newspaper published a piece commemorating the recording of Margaret Mead‘s “This I Believe” essay for Edward R. Murrow‘s radio series: I believe that to understand human beings it is necessary to think of them as part of the whole living world. Our essential humanity depends not only on the complex biological structure which […]