Guest Contributor

Cloud Security for Anthropologists

By Guest Contributor | June 19, 2018

By Alexander Taylor Our ethnographic data is in the cloud, but our heads are not More and more anthropologists are conducting, storing and circulating their research in the cloud. Cloud storage – typically in the form of Apple iCloud, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive – is now the default storage option on the smartphones, netbooks, tablets and other digital devices that have become commonplace tools of fieldwork. Messages are sent to interlocutors through cloud platforms like WhatsApp. Interviews are carried {+}

Open Secrets: On Power and Publication (#hautalk)

By Guest Contributor | June 16, 2018

This is a Guest Post about the #hautalk by Emily Yates-Doerr Hau’s Editorial Board has just released its second response, this time unsigned, to the grievances aired by former staff. I am concerned that Giovanni da Col’s name remains listed at the top of the board and I am compelled to share my experiences with Hau publically. Last year, just before an article of mine was to be published in Hau, Da Col contacted me about funds for the publication. I {+}

Review of The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism. Bianca C. Williams. Duke University Press, 2018.

By Guest Contributor | June 11, 2018

By Erica Lorraine Williams I recently spent two weeks in Lisbon, Portugal. It was the end of an incredibly busy semester, and I had recently finished reading Bianca Williams’ breathtaking ethnography, The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism. I was reminded of how international travel offers an opportunity to fully immerse oneself in another environment. Despite being in Lisbon for work, I felt free and unencumbered. I was able to enjoy a temporary {+}

Reflecting on Boundaries, Protection, and Inspiration

By Guest Contributor | May 22, 2018

By: Gina Athena Ulysse Before reading Zoe Todd’s “Should I stay or Should I go?,” I had been pondering writing a post about why and how, I, a Black Haitian woman, claim anthropology. Since I usually begin with titles, I contemplated a few including, “One Foot in and One Foot Out: Post-Zora in da House,” “I Can’t Believe I Lasted this Long,” and my favorite, “Evolve or Be Extinct”— a nod to the King of Grime, English rapper Wiley. While {+}

The Labor of Racism

By Guest Contributor | May 7, 2018

By: Dána-Ain Davis One night in early 2018, a doula-friend of mine, Josie who is white, sent me a photo of a Black woman sitting in a wheelchair. A doula is a person who provides support during pregnancy and post-partum care. The woman’s name was Michelle. Michelle was both Josie’s friend and her client. The photo was taken as she had arrived at the hospital because she was in labor. Michelle looked beautiful sitting in the wheelchair. She was smiling. {+}

Race is Still a Problem in Anthropology

By Guest Contributor | April 9, 2018

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 {+}

Challenging the New Colonialism, and Celebrating the (Almost) Eradication of Polio: An Anthropological Response to Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now

By Guest Contributor | March 17, 2018

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 {+}

Another Scene in the Fight Against Islamophobia

By Guest Contributor | March 14, 2018

By: Darren Byler In early March 2018 the influential Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut gave a series of readings in Seattle. Unlike in years past when Uyghur celebrities had come to the city, only a handful of Uyghurs—Turkic Muslims native to what has become Northwest China—came to hear Tahir speak. This was not because they did not know he was in town or because they did not care, it was because they were afraid to be seen in public with a {+}

Between Expert and Witness: Insider Anthropology and Public Engagement

By Guest Contributor | February 5, 2018

By Larisa Kurtović Making anthropological expertise public—that is, releasing our insights into the world of non-academic publics—is never easy. Anthropological engagements with media are frequently awkward, fraught and unsatisfying. But what happens when an anthropologist who conducts research “at home” is summoned by the media as simultaneously an expert and a witness? On November 22, 2017, Ratko Mladić, the former Bosnian Serb military leader, was convicted of genocide and sentenced to life in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for the {+}

Ursula K. Le Guin, Interplanetary Anthropologist

By Guest Contributor | January 26, 2018

By Anand Pandian Sometime early in the year 1980, Ursula K. Le Guin receives a fan letter. And yet the letter isn’t actually addressed to Le Guin, but instead to “Faxe,” a minor character in one of her most beloved books, The Left Hand of Darkness, first published in 1969. Inked with fine calligraphy onto several cream-colored sheets, the missive runs as follows— Dear Faxe, When I first read The Left Hand of Darkness some eight or nine years {+}