Today marks 40 days since Saba Mahmood’s passing. In my family culture and tradition, 40 days after death is an important marker of passage, of coping, of figuring out how you will move on… for both those who have passed and those who experienced the loss. To mark this moment, on behalf of Anthrodendum, I invited scholars representing diverse stages in their own careers, each of whom has a different relationship to Saba and her work. As a collection of notes, these {+}
Jan Chipchase is a leading design researcher. Some of you may have come across his work on the anthropology of mobile phones. I discovered it by chance while flicking through a copy of Wired magazine some years back. That Wired piece became a core reading for students when I taught a Business Anthropology module at Manchester. It opened my eyes to a wider world of anthropology. Jan has extensive experience of working with interdisciplinary teams to carry out field based {+}
We got an inch of snow yesterday in Chicago and it’s going to be in the 70s tomorrow, so I don’t know how to dress anymore. However, this will not stop me from getting you your monthly gift of articles to read my loyal dendrites! Museums in the 1800’s often traded objects with each in order to grow their collections, even with culturally significant objects. Atlas Obscura takes an examination on how anthropologists helped gather these objects for museums and what anthropologists are doing now {+}
By Anar Parikh [The following essay emerges from conversation with fellow PhD student and AES/SVA attendee, Scott Ross (George Washington University).] How is it that a senior anthropologist used the n-word during a plenary lecture and no one is talking about it? At last month’s American Ethnological Society Spring Conference in Philadelphia, Sherry Ortner delivered one of three keynote lectures, titled “Documenting Newark: Violent Resemblances.” Whereas much of Ortner’s work during the past two decades has focused on conceptualizing and {+}
Many social scientists purchase expensive qualitative data analysis software to code their field notes and interview data, but I want to show how you can accomplish the same thing for free using Dynalist or Workflowy. Neither app is truly free, but they both offer generous free plans that allow you to do a lot before you would need to pay for a subscription. We are also going to ignore most of the features offered by these apps, such as outlining, {+}
It has only been a few months since we re-launched “Savage Minds” as anthro{dendum}, but upon further consideration we feel that the site lacks focus. It was one thing when we were the only major anthropology blog, but now we are just one of many. For this reason we feel the blog needs to narrow its scope. So, with that in mind, we are relaunching today as anthro{duodenum}! The world of the gut — the microbiome, the microvilli that line {+}
Is there anything new to say in the never-ending discussion of anthropology and espionage? Most anthropologists think it is unethical to gather intelligence on behalf of the government when they do their fieldwork — but not all of them. Some spies pose as anthropologists. Sometimes people start out as anthropologists and move into espionage as a form of applied work. Indigenous people and others have criticized anthropology as itself inherently a form of unethical surveillance which aids colonialism. It turns {+}
In Part I, I explored how Hobbes’s myth was a kind of science fiction story designed convince his readers to end the English Civil War by accepting peace under the rule of a single sovereign. (For Hobbes that meant either King or Parliament, but not both.) I also discussed how that myth “requires both the artificial man and the state of nature,” since “one part of the story cannot work without the other.” Now, in the conclusion of this two-part {+}
It is common to meet people who believe that much of the world is beset by “tribalism” and that the only thing holding back the chaos of a Hobbesian war of all against all is the presence of “strong leaders.” This worldview reached its apogee during the Cold War, when the US used it to justify propping up numerous dictators around the world, helping them brutally suppress separatist movements and impose authoritarian rule. The argument was that the alternative would {+}
By Elizabeth Marino* Why I Read Enlightenment Now Cognitive Psychologist, Steven Pinker, wrote a book called Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. This would have casually rolled around the edges of my conscious mind, and then promptly fallen out, until a piece in the New York Times came out titled: The Mind Meld of Bill Gates and Steven Pinker, in which Gates claimed that Enlightenment Now is his favorite book of all time. It’s unclear whether {+}