“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 […]

Refusing to Look Away: The Act of Killing and the Indonesian genocide of 1965

The Act of Killing (2013). A Film by Joshua Oppenheimer. In the mid 1990s I was conducting transcultural psychiatric research in Bali, Indonesia, exploring the relationship between Balinese culture, individual experience, and the long-term outcome for severe mental illness. Engaging in person-centered ethnography, I interviewed a number of individuals on a weekly or monthly basis […]

New Guinea

Hugh Brody, a British Anthropologist and a filmmaker writes at Open Democracy about New Guinea, one of the most culturally and ecologically diverse regions in the planet. Tragically, industrial and international politics have devastated life there. Thursday, December 1, 2011, is the fiftieth anniversary of West Papua’s independence. On this day in 1961 West Papuans were […]

The Keeper of the Kris

**This is a special feature from the September 2010 issue of Anthropology Now. In “The Keeper of the Kris,” Janet Hoskins reviews Ann Dunham Soetoro’s book, Surviving against the Odds: Village Industry in Indonesia.** If she were alive today, Barack Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham Soetoro, would be 67. The president’s mother was portrayed in Obama’s […]