I endorse the Biden-Harris ticket for the United States presidency. I believe this is more than a personal preference–it is informed by anthropology. In short: Anthropology endorses Biden-Harris. Here I highlight Tribal Nations, immigration, racial equity, the global community, and the climate emergency. (Image credit: Unity Over Division, Etsy) Biden-Harris on Tribal Nations When scrolling through the Biden-Harris website, one of the top issues under “Joe’s Vision” is the Biden Plan to Strengthen Tribal Nations. When was the last time that happened? As Michel-Rolph Trouillot eloquently wrote ..read more

In October 2015, Sallie Han and I put out our third co-edited issue of Open Anthropology, “Race, Racism, and Protesting Anthropology.” The articles in that issue have again been made free to read from July-August 2020 as part of the American Anthropological association page on Confronting Anti-BIPOC Racism. Please check it out and download the articles while you can! Also take a look at the April 2020 “Pandemic Perspectives” issue, guest co-edited by Michael C. Ennis-McMillan and Kristin Hedges. Those articles will be free-to-read until April 2021. Our original purpose for the “Race, Racism, a ..read more

In a time of global convulsion, I’m rethinking the purpose of Living Anthropologically as a blog and website. And yes, that image up there is borrowed from the Anthropologie clothing store, which now has its own Anthro Day, AnthroPerks, and “the Anthro community.” My idea for a 2020 tagline: Living Anthropologically means documenting history, interconnection, and power during a time of global transformation. We need to care for others as we attempt to build a world together.Click To Tweet Please let me know what you think! And, I’ll try to explain. I launched Living Anthropologically in 2011 ..read more

It’s 3 May 2020 in the United States. People say we are past the peak coronavirus surge, but it remains a slow-moving disaster. And at a time when academia should be demonstrating the value of thinking through COVID-19, higher education seems shackled to normalcy. As a professor struggling to teach anthropology at a small college just a few hours drive from the greater New York City coronavirus epicenter, I’ve been very unsure of how to respond. We closed the campus, and sent most of our students “home.” Many were sent directly closer to the NYC coronavirus epicenter. And as a professor, what ..read more

Issues of trade came to renewed attention in 2019, as the global trading system was rocked by upended agreements and cries for economic populism. Anthropology has long been concerned with trade. The December 2019 issue of Open Anthropology made free to read 15 articles on trade and exchange until December 2020. The rest of this post describes the feedback I received as I gathered articles for the issue. Soon after the issue was published, it was pretty much superseded by the coronavirus, which completely upended many trade agreements. Search Engine Trade & Anthropology Interestingly, searc ..read more

Update November 2020: This post was written in June 2019 as a plea for impeachment. Eventually Trump was impeached for malfeasance with Ukraine, but a Republican Senate voted to acquit. In the light of the coronavirus crisis, acquittal was a terrible move. In part because Trump was not impeached based on the bigger anthropological reasons detailed below, Trump claimed exoneration, and his subsequent inaction on coronavirus has cost too many lives. It is now time to choose Biden-Harris: Unity Over Division. Impeaching Trump, Anthropologically Many eloquent statements have been written about why ..read more

Open Anthropology on Gender, Language, & Power Following the March 2019 Open Anthropology issue on Walls, Fences, and Barriers: Anthropology on the Border (and see the previous blog-post for additional resources), our August 2019 issue focuses on gender, language, and power. The issue is titled “Hearing Women Talk.” From the Editors’ Note: In this issue of Open Anthropology, we explore a range of concerns surrounding women’s talk, speech, and language and whether or not women are heard. We seem to be in a transitional moment for “Hearing Women Talk.” In the United States, a female candida ..read more

[Image Credit: Lupe Flores, No Border Walls, 2016. Images for Fencing In Democracy organized by Miguel Diaz-Barriga and Margaret Dorsey at apexart – nyc.] Human history is marked by migration, cooperation, group permeability, & interconnection. Recent efforts to build walls harms human potential.Click To Tweet Anthropology has long been interested in the question of boundaries. How do people construct boundaries around a group called “us” against a group called “them”? Despite popular beliefs, most of human history is marked by cooperation, group permeability, and interconnection. It is on ..read more

In January 2019, I taught “Peoples and Cultures of Latin America and the Caribbean” as a one-month anthropology course at Hartwick College (see the Course Outline). I first taught on Latin America as a one-month January Term course in 2009, and I first blogged about it in a 2012 teaching post. That post became part of a series which includes the 2016 Teaching Latin America and Caribbean Anthropology and the most recent Latin America & Caribbean Anthropology 2021. These posts are all cataloged in the Latin America index tag for the site, which also includes related blog-posts such as a quer ..read more

Update: A plea for oversight with impeachment In November 2018, I wrote the post below urging a vote for Antonio Delgado. And he won! As of June 2019, I urged Impeachment of Donald Trump. Antonio Delgado did vote in favor of impeachment. However, this vote did not receive enough support and as of March 2020 many people around the world are dying because Republican senators did not have the courage to impeach Trump when they could. As you may have heard, mid-term elections are November 6 in the United States. My district is New York 19, which anthropologist Greg Laden sees as one of only 6-7 cr ..read more