Tag: anthropology

Dehumanization, 9/11, and anthropology

Dehumanization, 9/11, and anthropology

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 {+}

On The Culture of Harassment in Archaeology: An interview with Barbara L. Voss

On The Culture of Harassment in Archaeology: An interview with Barbara L. Voss

[Content advisory: This article discusses harassment and discrimination in archaeology, including discussion of sexual assault.] On the morning of March 30, 2021, three articles on the culture of harassment within archaeology dropped. And it was epic. Across three articles, Barbara (Barb) Voss reviewed and analyzed current research about the prevalence and patterns of harassment within our discipline. Most useful was her list of proven interventions that have demonstrable results in reducing harassment. Most difficult and heart wrenching to read were {+}

Climate Change and COVID-19: Online Learning and Experiments in Seeing the World Anew

Climate Change and COVID-19: Online Learning and Experiments in Seeing the World Anew

By Adam Fleischmann The site is easy to access. Just a short walk and I’m there, immediately confronted with two large rectangular windows. The large window up high and on the right is mostly opaque, save one dominating feature: a single, dark line scorches across its surface like a comet’s tail, bottom left to top right. The window on the left is less subdued, less ominous. Graceful curving layers of color arc to the right and skyward, almost topographical in {+}

I’ve Never Met Anyone Like Me, But Anthropologists (Not Me) Study People Like Me, Or: What if we trans/non-binary people weren’t just your objects of study?

I’ve Never Met Anyone Like Me, But Anthropologists (Not Me) Study People Like Me, Or: What if we trans/non-binary people weren’t just your objects of study?

cw: transphobia, mention of suicide and murder I started writing this piece in June. It was during Pride month, amidst JK Rowling’s ongoing public transphobia, and the same time as I was getting occasional news alerts about Trumpian cuts to protections around trans healthcare. It was also amidst some discussion here in Canada about Prof. Kathleen Lowery, a professor whose workload was shifted after complaints about her transphobia. Prof. Sarah Shulist covered a fair amount of the news around Prof. {+}

On Gutters and Ethnography

On Gutters and Ethnography

In a departure from more conventional communication methods in academia, I’m exploring how comics–a medium I love to read and am learning to make (thank you to my teacher in pre-pandemic times, Julian Peters!)–speak to ethnographic practice. In particular, I am wrestling with how the gutter between comics panels is something to consider in terms of ethnographic narratives. The work I refer to below is Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, which is an excellent resource for comics artists and readers alike. {+}

Omens of an Intellectual Death

Omens of an Intellectual Death

Found Poems on “Scholarly Knowledge” from Promotion Review Letters by Dr. REDACTED, Professor of Anthropology, REDACTED University Dedicated to Dell Hymes, who once said, “One should react to the utterance of ‘That’s not anthropology,’ as one would to the omen of an intellectual death. For that is what it is…. Either one has something to say about [a subject] or one does not.”  #1: “Leadership in Scholarly Activities” “It is laudable that Professor REDACTED has chosen to engage with the public {+}

Role-playing urgency: bridging climate change knowledge and action?

Role-playing urgency: bridging climate change knowledge and action?

“What does it mean to know climate change?” ask Henderson and Long in a 2015 piece for this site’s Anthropologies #21. Researchers on science education, they ask this question to explore what we can do to ensure “knowledge of climate change” becomes “knowledge for social action.” This is no small task—for educators or anthropologists. It has largely shaped my own research, the preoccupations of those with whom I work and climate politics in North America writ large. As Henderson and Long duly explain, {+}

Musings from the murky middle ground of climate science and action

Musings from the murky middle ground of climate science and action

“There are many reasons why people in our field work remotely,” one data analytics coordinator tells me. We are talking on the phone one afternoon, me from the far East Coast, him from the flat Midwest, having met each other at the Global Climate Action Summit on the West Coast. He continues. For one, it’s more sustainable. Plus it’s 2018, he says, we have the technology, so why not? This allows them to draw from a diverse and well qualified {+}

1.5ºC: The Future and Present of Anthropology in an Era of Climate Change

1.5ºC: The Future and Present of Anthropology in an Era of Climate Change

Anthro{dendum} welcomes guest blogger Adam Fleischmann Early Saturday morning, October 6, 2018, push notifications lit up phones across the eastern half of North America just as the rising sun hit the weekend coast. Messages were coming in from a time zone more than half a day away–from Incheon, South Korea. The 48th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had just come to a close. North American climate civil society organizations—never a cohort accused of respecting normal business {+}

Should I stay or should I go?

Should I stay or should I go?

At the end of my sixth semester as an anthropology professor, I’m reflecting on what it means to inhabit this discipline (or, maybe, to occupy (re-occupy?) it). I have spent the better part of the last 8 years immersed in anthropological theory, anthropological politics, and engaging and interlocuting with the ghosts of the discipline’s past. And, to be honest, this work wears away at my cells, my fibres, my bones. I’m exhausted. I have aged. I recently joked in a {+}