Dear Nathaniel and Hannah, I am sorry that my generation has failed you. We have bequeathed you a world that has too many problems, too much fear, and too much hate. Dad and I tried to raise you to see the good in people, to understand others’ perspectives, to argue for fairness
Today, I began a new series on my blog: interviews with anthropologists about their new books! We anthropologists often write wonderful books . . . that find too few readers. What better way to find new readers for a book than to interview its author? I begin this series by
Kristen Ghodsee’s new book, From Notes to Narrative: Writing Ethnographies that Everyone Can Read, was recently published by the University of Chicago Press (in 2016). The discipline of anthropology desperately needs good writers. Our writings are often so dense, jargon-packed, and off-putting that I sometimes fear we deserve our reputation
Symbolic anthropologists, take note. What’s in a symbol? Everything, when it comes to politics. Especially, election-year politics. And especially when a major political candidate claims ignorance of centuries-old symbolism used to discriminate against an oppressed minority. Was Trump being anti-Semitic, or was he being stupid, when he Tweeted an accusation
A shorter version of this post has just appeared online as a podcast, in coordination with the motion put to a vote among the membership of the American Anthropological Association to boycott Israeli academic institutions. Here’s the text . . . The first thing I want to say is that
The latest in the abortion wars: “One Indiana woman recently created the Facebook page Periods for Pence where she encourages others to call the governor’s office to report their periods, since they could technically be having a miscarriage.” A new generation of feminists is defying classic menstrual taboos by the simplest possible
Honored to have an interview I recently did with Dallas Tatman (an MA student in African Studies at the U of Illinois) unexpectedly show up, to my surprise, on the NPR’s StoryCorps website.
Who should judge what counts as “worthy science”? Who should judge what counts as “in the national interest”? New legislation just passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would require that all scientific projects receiving federal funding be approved by elected politicians according to criteria they set out as measuring
I get the logic of economic boycotts for political reasons. In high school, I stopped buying grapes to support Cesar Chavez’ protest of the slave-like working conditions of Mexican farm workers in grape vineyards. I also stopped buying Saran Wrap, to protest Dow Chemical’s manufacture of napalm for killing civilians in Vietnam. When
Whatever the political and economic rationales existing beneath the surface, the modern nation of the US was created by European refugees fleeing religious prejudice. The Huguenots and Puritans arriving on the shores of New England helped create a new nation founded with the ideological goal of religious freedom. Donald Trump