What is Anthropology?
To the question of “What is Anthropology?”: Anthropology is a generous comparative inquiry into the conditions & potentials of human life.
anthropology branding
Anthropology Matters
The October 2017 issue of Open Anthropology promotes material linked to the #AmAnth17 meetings, Anthropology Matters (November 29-December 3).
Hackonomy
Bonin Bough’s lecture at Hartwick College on “Hackonomy” parallels recent themes in Introduction to Anthropology and Cultural Ecology.
Relevant Teaching for the 21st Century
4-5 February 2016 at University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill: “Defending Anthropology 101 and the Mega-Class: Relevant Teaching for the 21st Century.”
Culture, Culture, Everywhere
With anthropologists saying many things about culture, is it any wonder the students and the public are confused?
Anthropology Major Jobs
Please help a recent high school graduate who desperately wants to be an anthropology major but worries about the anthropology major jobs after graduation.
Anthropology’s Brief Reign (2015)
With President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan, President Barack Obama of the US, and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, Anthropology is taking over the world.
Transformational Storytelling Anthropology
Anthropology and Storytelling – Stories that must be told to transform the anthropocene. And yet: Can anthropology spell out relevance for a wider audience?
Humans Just Like Us?
Is the time gone for reaffirming that the Bongobongo are “humans just like us”? And does Open Access anthropology spell out the stakes for a wider public?
The Other Side of Participant Observation
Resources and thoughts on Teaching Cultural Anthropology for fall 2014: “Teaching is the other side of participant observation” (Tim Ingold, Making 2013:13)
Margaret Mead & Jared Diamond
What makes Jared Diamond possible? Discussant commentary for the panel “Margaret Mead and Jared Diamond: Past Publics, Current Engagements.”
Entangling the Biological
An Introduction to Anthropology course for 2014, with emphasis on “entangling the biological” and the relevance of anthropology for important dialogue.
Is the State Relevant?
At a time when globalization is said to render the national state irrelevant, an anthropology of the state has pressing political and intellectual stakes.
Irony, Paradox, Uncertainty
Pairing “Advertising Missionaries” with “A Fragmented Globality” to ask “What, if anything, is truly new about our times?” (Trouillot 2003:47)
Fetishizing Fieldwork on the Road to Essentialism
Fieldwork and the ethnographic monograph invited closure around cultural wholes. Anthropology can defend the concept of culture while jettisoning the word.
How do we get out from culture?
Are there ways to counter the notion of “gang culture” without promoting myths of individualism? Can we usefully bring anthropology to the courtroom?
The Concept of Culture
Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of Culture translated Boasian Anthropology & its concept of culture to a mass audience. Plus cultural relativism & cultural wholes.
anthropology will only matter if it evokes a purpose outside of itself
Thinking about the purpose of anthropology–“Ultimately, anthropology will only matter . . . if it evokes a purpose outside of itself” (Trouillot 2003:5).
Anthropology Is Your Ally
An impassioned plea to lower the arrogance decibels. In the wake of Steven Pinker’s “Science Is Not Your Enemy” assessing humanities & science together.
We Cannot Abandon Humanity
As Bill Gates reads Jared Diamond & Steven Pinker, reiterate anthropology’s calling: “the fate of no human group can be irrelevant to humankind” (Trouillot).
Epigenetics & Human Nature
Could epigenetics finally re-write the script about human nature? Maybe, but first we have to go over The Edge’s promotional tribute to Napoleon Chagnon.
Power & the Culture of Greed
Brooks uses culture to bypass power, inequality, economics, politics, and history. That’s the real cultural problem–and a problem anthropology must tackle.
Links to the Highly Improbable
An anthropologist caught between “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” and “Marginal Revolution: Small Steps Toward a Much Better World.”
Party Like It’s 1999 with Napoleon Chagnon!
If “anthropology’s future depends largely on its ability to contest the Savage slot” (Trouillot 2003:9), then how to take Napoleon Chagnon’s Noble Savages?
Gun Control & Shoddy Anthropology
Arguments against gun control are rooted in shoddy anthropology: ideas about human nature, culture & history which anthropology does not support.