Is anthropology more important than ever?
New books in 2021 plug Anthro-Vision. But is anthropology more important than ever? After decades of teaching, we need to ask: What happened?
cultural relativism
Nacirema Thinking
Although Horace Miner’s “Body Ritual among the Nacirema” has been assigned for thousands of anthropology courses, we need to think before using it uncritically.
Anthropology on Immigration
Anthropology has studied immigration and stands with immigrants against mass human rights violations.
Anthropology for a Safer World
Open Anthropology highlights anthropological research for understanding and teaching about gun violence & the #MarchForOurLives for gun reform
What is Anthropology?
To the question of “What is Anthropology?”: Anthropology is a generous comparative inquiry into the conditions & potentials of human life.
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.”
Bring Sanity to Gun Violence
As gun violence continues in the United States, this gun control podcast reflects on how anthropology can bring sanity and contribute to political debate.
How Did Anthropology Begin?
Early episodes of European colonialism, plantation slavery in the Caribbean, and Darwin in Tierra del Fuego are crucial to “How Did Anthropology Begin?”
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.
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?
Margaret Mead & Jared Diamond
What makes Jared Diamond possible? Discussant commentary for the panel “Margaret Mead and Jared Diamond: Past Publics, Current Engagements.”
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.
Fieldwork & Kinshipology
Laura Bohannan’s Return to Laughter is a great book to discuss institutionalized fieldwork in anthropology and how kinshipology trumped messier discoveries.
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?
Globalization Stories
Contemporary stories of globalization erase centuries of contact and encounter: Exploring the North Atlantic fiction of modernity as a seductive universal.
When Culture Looks like Race
Anthropology saw culture as anti-race, yet descriptions of Dobu in Patterns of Culture, show culture reified–and looking a lot like race.
The Concept of Culture
Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of Culture translated Boasian Anthropology and its concept of culture to a mass audience. Plus problematic 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
When Bill Gates recommends Jared Diamond & Steven Pinker, reiterate anthropology’s calling: “the fate of no human group can be irrelevant to humankind” (Trouillot).
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.
Childcare, Culture & Power
Meredith Small, “Our Babies, Ourselves” introduces many ways to raise babies, the biocultural of neurologically unfinished infants. But does this elide power?
Angry Papuan leaders demand Jared Diamond apologizes – Survival Intl
Papuan leaders jump into the discussion, as Stephen Corry and Survival International challenge two very public figures–Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker.
Patterns of Culture (1934) wins Jared Diamond (2012)
Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of Culture wins Jared Diamond for conceptual clarity, writing style, ethnographic example, and impact. Pretty good for 1934.
Anthropology & Politics in 2012 Elections
Anthropology should be front and center–the 2012 Obama Romney election concerns race, culture, history, and power, key issues for political anthropology.