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.
human nature
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.
Culture, Culture, Everywhere
With anthropologists saying many things about culture, is it any wonder the students and the public are confused?
Introduction to Anthropology Course 2015
Preview of a 2015 Introduction to Anthropology course using a new 3rd-edition textbook, Anthropology:What Does It Mean to Be Human?
hope: the first anthropological emotion
“The first anthropological emotion is hope” (Carole McGranahan) and also via Ingold, Trouillot, Lennon & Ono “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”
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.
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.
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 & its concept of culture to a mass audience. Plus cultural relativism & cultural wholes.
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).
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.
Party Like It’s 1999… with Napoleon Chagnon!
If “anthropology’s future depends largely on its ability to contest the Savage slot” (Trouillot) then what about Napoleon Chagnon?
Gun Control & Shoddy Anthropology
Arguments against gun control are rooted in shoddy anthropology: ideas about human nature, culture & history which anthropology does not support.
Testosterone Anthropology
Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s intriguing ideas on testosterone changes in “Mothers and Others” is answered by longitudinal anthropology on fatherhood testosterone.
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?
War, Peace, & Human Nature
Wonderful recent volume shows how views of human nature as inherently warlike stem not from the facts but from cultural views embedded in Western thinking.
Jared Diamond, Science, Violence & the Facts
The Ax Fight shows how Yanomami used steel axes long before anthropologists arrive. The Jared Diamond violence calculations must consider interconnection.
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.