I couldn't tell you how many times I've read the essays in Culture and Truth. I was assigned to read it in intro to anthropology 20 years ago and I've gone on to read parts of it with many students since then. Everything he wrote made the field of anthropology better.

Three things said about AI and social science: it's a topic to study, a thing to critique, a tool to use. My new Daedalus essay argues these aren't three conversations; they're one. A 🧵 on "Field Theory: AI as Social Science Question, Object, and Tool." www.amacad.org/publication/...

You can watch the film here: archive.org/details/hami...

I'm so excited! My new article just came out with Discourse. This has been a labor of love and I am so thrilled to have it out in the world. In it I follow the Ghanaian adaptation of Hamlet, (Hamile) across media to challenge "the medium is the message." digitalcommons.wayne.edu/discourse/vo...

It's available for pre-order!

This chilling interview with the Heritage Foundation is necessary reading for anyone concerned about the future of higher ed.

Check out the new issue of Sources: Materials & Fieldwork in African Studies co-edited by Anita Afonu, Dan Hodgkinson, and I. Excited to see these essays and their accompanying sources finally make it out into the world. @kinolaus.bsky.social journals.openedition.org/sources/3100

If you find yourself needing a little pick-me-up this week, you should know that there's a Devo documentary on Netflix.

This is a Neil Young stan account. New song, Big Crime, is timely.

In light of the NEH grants announced today (focusing heavily on Greeks/Romans, Shakespeare, and papers of politically powerful white men from the 19th century), a counterpoint: Kwame Anthony Appiah 'There is No Such Thing as Western Civilization' www.theguardian.com/world/2016/n...

A new Annual Review of Anthropology piece on the "Anthropology of Science" (by Langlitz and Dan-Cohen) raises a question I have long wondered about - why is there no dedicated journal for this domain of inquiry? Should there be? What could it look like? Why would it matter?

Princeton is hiring a lecturer in environmental anthropology and STS. The contract is for one year. Lots of opportunities to advise student research. careercenter.americananthro.org/job/690701/l...

Anthropologists (and others! 🙏): If SAPIENS Magazine has mattered to you—as a reader, writer, teacher, or student—now is the time to speak up. Write to Wenner-Gren today. Tell them why public anthropology matters. #SaveSAPIENS #AnthroSky Link to petition: actionnetwork.org/letters/urge...

I'm not teaching my biopolitics class anymore, but I'm making a mental note for the week on surplus population.

I understand the default attitude of being annoyed at graduation ceremonies, but attending a commencement for incarcerated students put this in perspective for me. Never take it for granted.

Celebrating Canadian sovereignty by listening to Neil Young.

The Agriculture Department has axed two programs that gave schools and food banks money to buy food from local farms and ranchers, halting more than $1 billion in federal spending. www.politico.com/news/2025/03...

“I remember Jim as a beacon of many things,” Kohrman said. “Most importantly, of kindness, creativity, scholarly community and intellectual rigor, as well as an unwavering commitment to building a more just world, in and outside the academy.” stanforddaily.com/2025/02/19/j...

Impossible to answer because on the one hand you have Neil Young's 1970s solo work, but then you can't really compare that to the raw energy of Neil Young with Crazy Horse. Then of course you have various projects to which Neil Young was a relatively smaller but crucial contributor like Buffalo Spri

Biology is far more interesting than simple categories and being human entails an astonishingly complex interplay of biology and culture. “Sex is a Spectrum: the biological limits of the binary” @princetonupress.bsky.social publishing May 6th! Preorder princeton.press/0r0zpeq1

Out soon: Exploring Ethnography of Outer Space: Methods and Perspectives, featuring my chapter "Anthropologists in outer space: Science fiction, infrastructure, comparison." A huge thanks to the editors for making this happen!

My favorite new-to-me older music discovery of 2024 was Neil Young's synth-heavy 80s albums Trans and Landing on Water. I won't say that the people who warned me off of them were totally wrong, but I'm so glad I gave the albums a chance.

My favorite album of 2024 was probably Love Changes Everything by Dirty Three. I liked this review on Pitchfork. pitchfork.com/reviews/albu...

We now have a cover for Medicine on a Larger Scale: Global Histories of Social Medicine (CUP 2025), eds. @ahlie.bsky.social, Jeremy Greene, and me. Many brilliant contributors give alternative genealogies and futures for social medicine - never so necessary, so urgent as now #histstm #histsci #STS

I'm already reading a novel not in the fantasy genre, so I feel like I don't need to adopt any resolutions for the new year. I'm fine the way I am, thank you very much.

Do I tell the students I've had a sleeping cat on my lap during all these Zoom meetings?

I'm very proud of this article, which was published in early view today. It should be of interest to those working in African / postcolonial science studies.

The latest issue of African Studies Review has a whole series of remembrances of Paulin Hountondji.

As a Californian living in exile, I'm looking forward to starting every conversation today with "did you feel the earthquake?" Oddly comforting.

Ghana Studies Association statement in relation to the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill ghanastudies.com/announcement...

I completely understand the exhaustion with all things Foucault, but I've been teaching a biopolitics seminar for the last four years and one of the key observations over that time is that every year it feels newly essential in particularly terrible ways. It can feel like a rediscovery every year.

I did an interview with Anthropological Theory Commons about my recent article. Thanks to @epf.bsky.social for organizing!

I don't recommend losing your Zotero library.

I know life is a constant effort to catch up on things you should have already read, but I really slept on Paulin Hountondji's work. An aversion to the rationality debate and dependency theory might have been to blame, but his work on scientific dependence would have transformed my dissertation.

I’m really so happy that this article, Projects, Revisited: A Concept for the Anthropology of the Good,” was published by Anthropological Theory. My hope is that it finds the people who would want to read it. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...