I began interviewing authors of fabulous new anthropology books for this space back in 2016. While completing 11 interviews, I also amassed a backlog of more terrific books whose authors I planned to interview. One thing led to another, and my embarrassingly accumulating backlog fell hostage to a pandemic. I’ve
The new Maya Angelou quarter is a symbol, yes. But not “just” a symbol. Because, symbols matter. If they didn’t, they would just be like other, ordinary stuff. If symbols didn’t matter, we wouldn’t fight over them. As in, people burning or otherwise desecrating flags when they’re mad at their
Educators are wringing their hands these days about how much students have “fallen behind” the past year. But students everywhere have learned a great deal the past year. What they’ve learned is far from the classic facts that they get tested on in English and math classes. Knowledge about the world is up. Way up. This may be the biggest teachable moment in any contemporary schoolteacher’s career. Teachers: grab it! What might new syllabi look like?
What if a country had a great public health system? What if that country had a veritable army of public health nurses? What if those public health nurses received two years of extra training in specialties such as maternity care and mental health? What if maternity nurses made two years
This past month, the swans have taken up residence in our local cove, for the first time in the six summers we’ve lived here. What could be a more beautiful way to celebrate the birth minute of my husband’s milestone birthday than a sunrise with swans? What smiles the swans
We needed to find a new plumber. I called around. The first business that seemed willing to clean our boiler and replace a problematic hose spigot had availability soon. Before settling on a date, I remembered to ask the woman answering the company’s phone–let’s call her, Mary–a non-plumbing question: Will
Weeding is an exercise in anthropology. How do we know what’s a weed? The great French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, organized his nearly-80-year-long career around a single, foundational principle: “culture” basically comes down to classification. If something is “this” (whatever “this” is), then it’s not “that.” Reciprocally, if something is “that,” then
What can anthropology contribute to the critical conversation about race in America, following the welcome jury decision in the Derek Chauvin trial? After they amassed and presented a week’s worth of technical details–medical, anatomical, temporal, legal–in the end, the prosecuting attorneys’ case against Derek Chauvin rested on a simple claim:
They should have asked an anthropologist. The political and military professionals ignored the warnings presaging last week’s Capitol invasion. But many who conduct research in rural Africa, while untrained in cyber-espionage, could have predicted the attack. From living in small, rain-forest villages hosted by the Beng people of Côte d’Ivoire
1. The moment that any transfer of power occurs from one individual or regime to another is fraught—ritually, sociologically, emotionally. Why? This is a liminal period–“betwixt and between,” as the great anthropologist Victor Turner described it–neither fully in one political space, nor in another. Liminal moments offer options for creativity,