In “Waste Donations,” Kevin Yildirim explores how interdependencies are forged within precarious urban conditions through the auspices of charitable giving. 1/2

Check out the seven articles in our latest journal issue! Each one a guaranteed banger, each one open access. Give them a read here: journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca...

In “Morally Immunizing Debts,” Ferda Nur Demirci explores how underground mineworkers in Soma, a lignite-coal basin in Turkey’s North Aegean region, forge new approaches to self and intimate other through readily available consumer loans and ongoing financial obligations.

Lyle Fearnley and Chen Sun's “Green Involution” takes on China's Green Revolution through an ethnographic analysis of young rice scientists caught between fast-paced academic careers and the slow cycle of agricultural research. 1/2

Delighted to see this new Theorizing the Contemporary series now published—the second to appear in Spanish, on a wonderfully exciting topic and featuring a brilliant lineup of contributors @culanth.bsky.social www.culanth.org/fieldsights/...

Police reformers have long argued that investing in “improved training” methods and facilities will reduce police violence. Jessica Katzenstein’s ethnography of police training in Maryland shows, however, that reformist methodologies 1/2

This article by Rishabh Raghavan examines how artisanal fishermen in Ennore, Chennai, use acts of refusal, both individual and collective, to cope with and contest the toxic effects of industrial pollution. Read here: journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca...

ICYMI, our latest journal issue is waiting for you! Take a look at the line-up 👇 journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca...

Reminder that SCA Fridays is today discussing our Unbuilding series - register below and take a look at the new essays here: www.culanth.org/fieldsights/...

Amid genocidal violence in Gaza, "the dead body becomes a site of anticolonial resistance for the living, an example of Palestinian refusals to relinquish autonomy over death, and a form of self-determination and agency that is necessary to imagine and achieve liberation."

Instead of maintenance or repair, how might curation offer a lens into the acts of redesign and reformulation that urban residents enact amid an incomplete or unfit built environment? Rebekah Plueckhahn explores curation and unbuilding in Ulaanbaatar: www.culanth.org/fieldsights/...

Tomorrow!!

A new article from AWR! In 'Visualizing Transborder Lifeworlds in the Polish-German Border Region' Iepke M. Rijcken, @piotrgoldstein.bsky.social, & Maksymilian Awuah reflect on transborder lifeworlds using photography and sound recording as a research method.

What does deforestation sound like?

SCA Fridays is BACK!! Please join us this Friday for a discussion launching our recent Theorizing the Contemporary series on *Unbuilding* - details below.

The President of Barnard College calls for more controversial speakers like the late Kirk (without citing any of his controversial views), a position at odds with what Barnard colleagues describe as a track record of censoring events and speakers on Palestine. (1/4) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/o...

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Check out this interview with 2024 Bateson Prize winner Naisargi Davé on interspecies relationality, ethics and politics in anthropology, and ethnographic writing! www.culanth.org/fieldsights/...

In our most recent Theorizing the Contemporary series, eleven scholars write about the built environment reimagined—check out Unbuilding here: www.culanth.org/fieldsights/...

In our current journal issue, Natacha Nsabimana explores how repetitive exile—the cycles of political violence and forced expulsion in Rwanda and Burundi—reshape political subjectivity and understandings of the nation.

How did "free speech" become a cudgel to silence dissent? My latest in @bostonreview.bsky.social www.bostonreview.net/forum/the-ri...

New episode of the Cultures of Energy podcast! Hannah Knox joins us to talk about the challenges climate change has posed to the concepts and methods of governing a city. Case in point: Manchester! tinyurl.com/3yax7euh @cymene.bsky.social @culanth.bsky.social @4sweb.bsky.social

I talked with the Baltimore Sun about my new book, Something Between Us: on American landscapes of isolation, anthropology as a means of unexpected connections, and Baltimore as a space of both enduring inequality and emerging forms of environmental justice. www.baltimoresun.com/2025/09/08/d...

In this interview, Tanya Jakimow expands on her recent article about elections, examining how elections produced discarded candidates and the role they can fill in democratic communities, as well as the ambivalent effects of gender quotas: www.culanth.org/fieldsights/...

like so many products to come out of silicon valley in the last decade or so, AI is a legal innovation masquerading as a tech innovation. the legal theory seems to be that AI is entitled to everything but liable for nothing.

Come discuss the future of our journal at a time of transition!APLA/PoLAR want to pursue a publication arrangement with a top university press. But there are many unknowns and challenges. Please join us Monday, September 15, 3 pm Eastern US time. Hope to see you there!

A remarkable ethnography examining toxic exposure caused by engineered wood used in FEMA trailers, accompanied by a pedagogical toolkit designed to support student learning.

Over 400 leading genocide scholars support resolution finding that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza: www.reuters.com/world/middle...

Listen to your heart! 🎧💗 Our latest AnthroPod episode is all about 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒. @yichizhang.bsky.social and @kasmanio.bsky.social discuss what it's like to study love and the importance of taking love seriously as a concept. Give it a listen 💖🔊 www.culanth.org/fieldsights/...

You have to organize. I don't know what else to tell people. And organizing is not sexy and it is difficult and it matters that you be persistent. We need long-distance runners right now.

Underrated part of having your semester start this past week is getting to now go, WHEW, I taught class all WEEK, I could really use a LONG WEEKEND

From the archive. In a new book, an anthropologist and father of three, including a daughter with Down syndrome, reflects on the pressures of parenting. Read more: www.sapiens.org/culture/ordi...

What happened before, during, and after a hurricane, flood, and lies and racist violence hit Katrina should be remembered accurately, even though it was narrated with wild, destructive inaccuracy at the time, by government officials and mainstream media. Wrote about it here, five years after:

Often dismissed as suffering a particular form of PTSD, people who have survived and are continually affected by Mexico City's earthquakes sense the material shifts in the city and its geology. For Elena, who marks the growing cracks in her apartment, the earthquake never ended.

What is the place of facts in the 21st century? How do facts shape the future of collective life? Is a new genre of facts emerging? Join us on Thursday September 4th, 2025 at 9am PT for “The Future of Facts in Latin America” publications virtual launch.

In 1924, the Argentine state massacred hundreds of Indigenous workers. A century later, memories of colonial violence remain. As Tamar Blickstein describes in our series on settler colonialism, colonial policy rendered Qom and Moqoit people exterminable.

In settler colonial societies, attempts to discuss or confront colonial power amount to "incitement," because it is the onus of the colonized to maintain "social cohesion." www.culanth.org/fieldsights/...

"Something that I hit home in the very beginning of some of the classes that I teach is that this content, queer theory, feminist theory, trans theory, it’s for everyone. Everyone can benefit from learning this content. Everyone can find liberation." www.culanth.org/fieldsights/...

Hello from @skort.bsky.social 👋 starting another school year over here. If you're also gearing up for a new term, we're sending curious, critical, compassionate vibes to you on your campus.

Indigenous studies has brought much to Middle Eastern Studies and Palestine Studies in particular. But what might the Middle East teach us about Indigeneity and settler colonialism? www.culanth.org/fieldsights/...

From right wing journalists trying to dox a professor to working through the durability of race as a signifier with students, read this reflection on teaching about race in white space: www.culanth.org/fieldsights/...

I recently interviewed Sahana Ghosh for the Society of Cultural Anthropology. Read here!

"even as a wide range of essential American institutions—universities like UChicago, but also hospitals and health insurers—increasingly sacrifice their duties to society on the altar of asset accumulation, they fail at accumulating assets." stanfordreview.org/uchicago-los...

the crisis in which the University of Chicago is now engulfed -- one entirely of its own making, and which has led to the (hopefully temporary) suspension of admissions into numerous PhD programs in the humanities -- represents I think a seismic event in the history of American higher education 1/

Check out the seven articles in our latest journal issue! Each one a guaranteed banger, each one open access. Give them a read here: journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca...

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

there's a lot to be concerned about, on top of the usual beginning-of-semester anxieties, but: what are you excited about or looking forward to as you head into a new semester or quarter?

Using zines and scrapbooks in teaching, Alexandra Dantzer "witnessed how students used them to hold tension—between theory and feeling, the personal and the structural, language and its limits." Check out examples and more here: www.culanth.org/fieldsights/...

"Beyond demolishing, repairing, or waiting, unbuilding is a form of purposeful world-making in which the intentionality of design is unsettled by the temporalities of unruly materials and practices as they break down, seep, or demand attention." www.culanth.org/fieldsights/...