“Would you believe me now If I told you I got caught up in a wave? Almost gave it away Would you hear me out If I told you I was terrified for days? Thought I was gonna break” — Maggie Rogers, Light On I spent the better part of last year living and working in the US, falling asleep every night only two blocks from the mysterious lull of Long Island Sound — the weight and presence of water seeping {+}
Growing up, I always imagined the beach to be a natural place. I think it’s safe to say that this sentiment may be pretty common among many beachgoers. It’s easy to think of the beach as being somewhat “natural,” or at least close to that thing some people call “nature.” This is a short piece, so I won’t go down the what is nature!? rabbit hole for now. By natural I mean something along the lines of “not caused or {+}
A view of Indigenous Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau land in the Brazilian state of Rondônia being burned on Sept. 24, 2016. Photo: Gabriel Uchida. https://theintercept.com/2019/07/06/brazil-amazon-rainforest-indigenous-conservation-agribusiness-ranching/ So, the current climate in Brazil is completely devastated. Both the environmental climate and the public climate. Every day we have a new nonsense political news about this or that stupidity said by a far right politician. I think I got it right when I said last November that craziness was the main principle of the anthropophagic way {+}
Anthrodendum welcomes guest blogger Saira Mehmood. She will be a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Spelman College in the 2019-2020 academic year. You can follow her on Twitter @SairaAMehmood. The Challenges of Conducting Fieldwork in a Place You Call Home Saira A. Mehmood I conducted my dissertation fieldwork in my hometown of New Orleans. As a woman of color, I have noticed many other anthropologists of color also conducting fieldwork in places they call home. {+}
This is the final post in a four-part blog series about transforming the academic-industrial complex, particularly museums. After introducing the proposal, I described ending the myth of neutrality and then discussed turning away from partnerships that exploit people and the earth. The last part of my call is to: shift the narratives that are being told and center authors beyond the institution’s traditional umbrella of authority A starting point is language. In A Million Black Anthropocenes or None, Katherine Yusoff {+}
Anthrodendum welcomes guest blogger Melinda González. She is a PhD Candidate at Louisiana State University in the department of Geography and Anthropology, pursuing a doctorate in Anthropology. She is currently conducting dissertation research on post-Hurricane Maria community organizing in the Puerto Rican diaspora. Melinda is a first-generation college graduate, single mother, published and performance poet, and capoerista. You can learn more about her at PhDdreams.com. Methods of Motherhood: The Borderlands of Scholarship, Motherhood, and Trauma Melinda González “Una herida abierta” In {+}
Anthrodendum welcomes guest blogger Shir Lerman Ginzburg, project director in the Department of Pediatrics and the Preventive Intervention Research Center (PIRC) at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. She earned both her PhD in medical anthropology (2016) and her MPH (2015) from the University of Connecticut. Her primary research interests include mental health (particularly depression and anxiety), idioms of distress, obesity, diabetes, mindfulness, Hispanics, and Puerto Rican identity. She also has an interest in the Zika Virus and health disparities. {+}
Anthrodendum welcomes guest editors Beatriz Reyes-Foster and Rebecca J. Lester. Humanizing Fieldwork: Trauma and Resilience in Ethnographic Fieldwork, Part II The first collection of posts in this series demanded that we recognize the fact that fieldwork can hurt, and that we have fostered a disciplinary culture where that hurt has been normalized and even celebrated. In this next installment, our contributors recognize the challenges of navigating mental illness before and during fieldwork as well as the multiple structural constraints faced {+}
After introducing my call for transformation within museums and the wider academic-industrial complex, and presenting the first part of my call, ending the myth of neutrality, I am writing to explain the second component of my call for transformation: dismantle partnerships with agencies and corporations that exploit people and the earth. Caring about people and the earth is not only part of the work of anthropologists and archaeologists, but should be part of our lives without the need for approbation {+}
Lately, when I have the pleasure of walking in the stacks of a regal, well-stocked, old library, and am in a devious mood, I imagine I am an alien roaming the halls of some temple of speciesism. I roll my eyes and mutter, “wow, another book by a human about a human’s perspective on something.” My alien observation describes all of human art, invention, science, and literature. More humans talking about humans and human’s views on other. Trapped in all-too-human {+}