The Inaugural Post of Betwixt and Between: Anthropology Now’s Guest Blogger Venue
#Anthropology Once upon a time, in the late 19th century, anthropology was popular, but it wasn’t necessarily a good thing. From pseudo-scientific justifications of racial hierarchies to the displays of so-called primitive people at ethnographic expositions, anthropology satisfied an ever growing public yearning for the exotic thrill. This thrill for the exotic, for the occult, for […]
On Anti-Addiction Vaccines
Angela Garcia, Anthropology Now author, wrote an op-ed in LA Times on anti-addiction vaccines: My aunt Marion is in the hospital dying of liver and kidney failure, the result of her 20-year struggle with heroin use. I was told of her imminent death the same day news broke about a vaccine against the drug. "Breakthrough heroin vaccine […]
Aliens
Before we can understand an alien civilization, it might be useful to understand our own. To help in this task, anthropologist Kathryn Denning of York University in Toronto, Canada studies the very human way that scientists, engineers and members of the public think about space exploration and the search for alien life. From Star Trek to SETI, […]
An Anthropologist to Head the World Bank?
The White House named Jim Yong Kim as its nominee to head to World Bank. Jim Yong Kim is the president of Dartmouth College, an anthropologist, a physician and a global health expert. This nomination forms a radical break from the traditional profiles of the World Bank leaders. Shall this appointment be approved, this would be […]
Family Life in the USA
Elinor Ochs’ latest research on child-rearing practices among middle class US families receives wide spread media attention: Anthropologist Elinor Ochs and her colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles have studied family life as far away as Samoa and the Peruvian Amazon region, but for the last decade they have focused on a society […]
Catastrophe and its Ghosts
A year after whole neighborhoods were killed by the Japanese tsunami, rumors of ghosts swirl in Ishinomaki as the city struggles to come to terms with the tragedy. One reconstruction project appears stalled because of fears the undead spirits of those who perished last March will bring bad luck. ”I heard people working to repair […]
Parody as Scientific Theory
Nate Greenslit writes for From the Fields, a Wired Science op-ed series: As an anthropologist of science, I am fascinated with how people create their own meaning from scientific content, which in turn shapes public understanding of science and, ultimately, scientific agendas themselves. YouTube has become a lively repository for this kind of meaning-making. A great […]
Cyborg Anthropology
Amber Case is a cyborg anthropologist. The TED Website explains: Technology is evolving us, says Amber Case, as we become a screen-staring, button-clicking new version of homo sapiens. We now rely on “external brains” (cell phones and computers) to communicate, remember, even live out secondary lives. But will these machines ultimately connect or conquer us? […]
FGM
Speaking to Voice of America, Medical Anthropologist Elise Johansen joins the widespread call to end Female Genital Mutilation: …FGM, a practice which dates back thousands of years, persists despite widespread recognition of its harmful physical and psychological effects on girls and women. Involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, FGM’s immediate health […]
Border Crossing
Fox News Latino reports: Shoes, backpacks and other objects discarded in the desert by undocumented immigrants have been collected by a team of anthropologists to document the difficult journey they make to get into the United States. “For me, these objects aren’t trash. They reflect the history of all the great migrations,” Jason de Leon, […]