Author: Ryan

There and back again

By Ryan | December 31, 2023

It’s fitting that I’m writing my last post for this site in Cabo Pulmo, Mexico, where I’d did all my doctoral fieldwork. That was back between 2009-2012. I joined the previous incarnation of this site, Savage Minds, after a guest blogging stint in 2011. That was right when I was finishing up grad coursework and getting ready for fieldwork. So fieldwork and blogging were all enmeshed with one another. It was a stressful but productive time, and I found it {+}

Anthropology Blog Resurvey Project #3: The Blogroll (plus)

By Ryan | December 24, 2023

As promised, here’s a list of the anthropology and archaeology blogs that are still active from Jason Antrosio’s archive from 2017. I found one site that’s actually not active, so that brings us down to 76 blogs that are still running. But Lorena Gibson just posted a new piece on Anthropod, so that brings us right back up to our total of 77! Yay! In the first section of this post I’ll list all the sites from Jason’s list that {+}

The 2023 Anthropology Blog Resurvey Project #2

By Ryan | December 14, 2023

Well, by now most of you have heard the news that this blog is closing down. That whole conversation was happening in the last couple of months, but really something that we’d been talking about for the past few years. Back in 2021 we all agreed to try to revive this blog, but things just didn’t take off. There was just so much going on at the time. This site, like many others, was a casualty of the mass exodus {+}

The 2023 Anthropology Blog Resurvey Project

By Ryan | December 5, 2023

As many of us already know, in the last decade or so we’ve seen some big changes with anthropology & archaeology online, particularly in relation to blogs. In short, there aren’t too many these days. This is due to what we can perhaps call the “Great Fragmentation,” when so many former bloggers left their home sites and migrated…mostly to Twitter. We all know what happened next. So what does the anthro blog landscape look like these days? What’s left? Who {+}

Adventures in chatGPT #3: Jack Kerouac Edition

By Ryan | December 4, 2023

When I first heard about chatGPT, the main thing I was concerned about, like many others, was that students would use it instead of writing their own work. I tried to take an open approach with it all to try to head off any potential problems. Rather than trying to ban GPT, I talked about it with my class pretty extensively. I adopted a modified version of Kerim’s statement about using chatGPT and other LLMs in the classroom, which I {+}

AABA Statement supporting Trans Lives

By Ryan | November 28, 2023

The AABA, along with several other organizations, has just released a statement in support of trans lives. Here’s an excerpt: The American Association of Biological Anthropologists, the American Association of Anthropological Genetics, the Dental Anthropology Association, the Paleopathology Association, The PaleoAnthropology Society, the Biological Anthropology Section of the American Anthropological Association, and the Human Biology Association stand together against the escalating legislation and governance in the United States and across the globe that attacks the existence of transgender, non-binary, and gender-diverse {+}

Anthropology after Twitter and the power of old things in new hands

By Ryan | November 19, 2023

I’m sitting here at Toronto Pearson International Airport after this year’s AAA meetings. The first time I went to the AAA’s was back in 2008, in San Francisco. I was a grad student back then, all worried and nervous about presenting at a professional conference. My first shock was just basic economics. The room at the conference hotel was $250, and it wasn’t particularly luxurious. It was tiny. And the sink was inside the room. As a grad student I {+}

Dehumanization, 9/11, and anthropology

By Ryan | October 17, 2023

There are a few different things that brought me to anthropology. One of them was 9/11. More specifically, it was how many people in the US responded to 9/11, including people I knew well. There was a moment, right after 9/11 happened and all of our TVs were full of images of loss, sadness, and fear, when it felt like things could go one way or another. Alongside all that loss were images of hope, help, understanding, and community. It {+}

Summer anthropologies #2: Leslie White goes to a baseball game (Part 3)

By Ryan | October 13, 2023

In the last post of this installment of the summer anthropologies series, I ended with the point that major league baseball (MLB) is an annual demonstration of autocratic corporate power. If that’s the case, I asked, why would anyone go? Well, humans are complicated. Take my case. I grew up playing baseball since I was about four or five years old. I played it all the time, went to MLB games when I had the chance, collected baseball cards, played {+}

Summer anthropologies #2: Leslie White goes to a baseball game (Part 2)

By Ryan | August 16, 2023

In part one of this installment, I mentioned Leslie White’s call to expand the purview of anthropology and take a closer look at things like baseball. I agree. White’s preliminary theory was that baseball, as a cultural institution, promoted national solidarity and unity: “No matter who you are, what you are, or where you are, if you are a fan you ‘belong.’” Nope. If you look at the history of baseball at that time, and before, White’s argument about the {+}