Perspectives in Anthropology

Internet-based magazine

Pandemics: agents of global change

It was the early 1990s, while working at the American College of Physicians in Philadelphia, I became interested in epidemiology. With all the doctors around (there were twelve different medical sub-specialties at ACP), it was not hard to be impressed with their serious demeanor about medicine but more important – their extraordinary knowledge. Some years […]

Cultural Critique: Anthropological – by Keith Hart

Cultural critique, the use of anthropology to draw critical attention to institutions that readers take for granted, is as old as the origins of the modern discipline. It was a major purpose of Boas’s students, especially Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. Its antecedents range from modernism to the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and […]

Religious Colonizing in Brazil

After Bolsonaro was elected President of Brazil, I sort of lost the desire to write anything more about the country. As a gringo living in Brazil for more than twelve years, I had the opportunity to witness the changes the Lula administration brought to Brazil, the impeachment of Dilma Rouseff and the openly corrupt Temer […]

Agriculture in Human Evolution – by Keith Hart

In his Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Men (1754) Jean-Jacques Rousseau was concerned, not with individual variations in natural endowments, but with the artificial inequalities of wealth, honour and the capacity to command obedience that he derived from social convention. In order to construct a model of human equality, he imagined […]

The Political Economy of Food in an Unequal World-by Keith Hart

Food in a New Economic Order What is ‘new’ about neo-liberalism? It is a world economic order based on selective freedom, on the freedom of money to move where it will (but not people, machines, products or information) and on the freedom of strong states to impose their will on the weak. This describes our […]

Filtered Realities

In order to proceed, we must first acknowledge the more than three decades of work by a man who has been sounding the alarm concerning the dangers of media organizations manipulating information for the purpose of influencing opinions and behaviors. His name is Noam Chomsky and his two ground-breaking books, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy […]

The Mueller Report: Highlights

The Mueller Report is probably one of the most extensive legal investigations in the history of the United States. Certainly, the circumstances necessitating it are historic and unprecedented in American political documentary. Even more striking, the idea that someone elected to the office of the President of the United States would so openly abuse power […]

The Horror of War – Part 3

Sometime in June 1971, an incident occurred that completely changed my attitude toward the US Army. In fact, I was never the same again. It all began with Brother Bobby’s hooch maid Mai and a white GI that liked her. It seems that when Bobby was working at the Mess Hall, this white GI would […]

The Real Race Problem – Part 2

On the eve of the one-hundred and eighth anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois’ newspaper The Crisis, we are presenting, in its entirety, a lecture from the distinguished anthropologist, mentor and head of the Anthropology Department at Columbia University for many years – Dr. Franz Boas on the subject of the “race” problem. THE REAL RACE […]

The Culture of Corruption

Many of us know that political corruption is not new to the world. It is an unsavory, human practice with a history that extends far back into ancient times, countries, and rulers. Unlike modern times, there were no checks and balances of power then and rulers were free to rule however they saw fit. During […]

Anthropology and the New Human Universal by Keith Hart

World society today resembles nothing so much as the eighteenth century ancient régime that Kant had every reason to believe had been abolished by revolution. Now a rich, aging white minority inured to luxuries unimaginable two centuries ago presides over masses whose passivity is measured by their lack of spending power (Hart 2002). The institutional […]

Gun Violence in American Schools

There is something terribly wrong going on in American schools today. A silent epidemic is spreading throughout the country like a cancer. What does it say about a society when children and adolescents can get their hands on military grade weapons, somehow get them into their schools and gun down dozens of fellow classmates […]

The Open Anthropology Cooperative: Towards an Online Public Anthropology-by Keith Hart

We attempt here to explore the relationship between anthropology, social media and public engagement through a web-based network that we helped to found and manage. We argue that obscure social and technical dynamics are at work here, but academic anthropology today also poses signiﬁcant obstacles for this enterprise.

Mess in the Middle East

Many people throughout the Western world do not understand what is happening in the Middle East. Much of the confusion stems from a misunderstanding of the complicated relations between countries, land, people, and political objectives. One particular myth is these conflicts go back as far as the Crusades and the wars between Muslims and Christians. […]

Brexit: Where once was an empire-by Keith Hart

Separation from Europe has opened up the real possibility that the United Kingdom will break up. Scotland is already bent on secession and the two Irelands may resolve the problem of belonging to different commercial regimes by reunification. The London media portray such an outcome as unthinkable. My aim here is to recall the violent […]

Why do Leaders Fail?

This is an opinion piece that some might say loosely fits within the realm of anthropology. And yet, if one could say that anthropology is the genealogy and archaeology of human activity, then under those circumstances it should be appropriate. I wish to discuss those things that any head of State, President, or sovereign leader […]

World’s Most Vital Resource

It is not necessary to explain the process by which algae through millions of years of geological time and chemical reactions become fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal. It is important to explain, however, why these fossil fuels have become the most vital resources in the world today. Our modern-day lives depend […]

The War Against Privacy

In the May-June 1993 issue of Wired Magazine, an article on a group of mathematicians advocating a radical, libertarian, cryptographic philosophy appeared on the front cover. The group of scientists called themselves the “Cypherpunks.” By 1996, their political-scientific philosophy had developed into a populace movement against government intrusions into the private lives of individuals. […]