Perspectives in Anthropology

Internet-based magazine

Category: Ethnography

Ethnography is a research method designed to explore cultural phenomena where the researcher observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study. An ethnography is a means to represent graphically and in writing the culture of a group. The resulting field study or a case report reflects the knowledge and the system of meanings in the lives of a cultural group. Ethnography, as the empirical data on human societies and cultures, was pioneered in the biological, social, and cultural branches of anthropology but has also become popular in the social sciences in general—sociology, communication studies, history, wherever people study ethnic groups, formations, compositions, resettlements, social welfare characteristics, materiality, spirituality, and a people’s ethnogenesis.

How the informal economy took over the world by Keith Hart

A la recherche du temps perdu (In search of lost time) The idea of an informal economy was born at the moment when the post-war era of developmental states was drawing to a close. The 1970s were a watershed between three decades of state management of the economy and the free market decades of one-world […]

Seeing Culture Everywhere: A Book Review by Keith Hart

The authors of this well-written book tell how they were pushed by their editor into writing for a general audience. They have succeeded without sacrificing analytical rigor. They are a German freelance anthropologist, journalist and entrepreneur and a professor of anthropological history at the University of Amsterdam. They seek to describe and explain the ubiquity […]

Why George Floyd Matters

With all due respect and no malice intended but the George Floyd murder is not the first time African American men have been wrongfully brutalized and killed by the police in the United States. Even more striking, the graphic violence displayed on video for the world to see of an African American man and a […]

Pandemics: Agents of Global Change – Part 2

The Economic and Commercial Impact of Pandemics: By now, the COVID-19 influenza outbreak has reached practically all parts of the globe. In the context of discussing the pandemic, it serves no purpose to focus on the fact that scientists, medical professionals, public health experts and a handful of concerned economic institutions and businessmen have been […]

New Preface to Globalization from Below: The World’s Other Economy by Keith Hart

IV. The informal economy has taken over the World The idea of an informal economy was born in the 1970s when the post-war era of developmental states was drawing to a close. It seems, four decades later, that the economy has now escaped from all attempts to make it publicly accountable. What are the forms […]

The Subjugation of Liberal Democracy

Are we witnessing in our lifetime the slow destruction of liberal democracy? Have we exhausted the limits of a political system that has served nations for more than a century? These are questions many of us probably never thought we would face. But here we are faced with the hard to imagine reality that the […]

The Collapse of Societies

By now, the entire world is aware of the historic and unprecedented events occurring in the United States. It seems trite to characterize these events as an aberration that will soon pass over. Even more striking, it seems these events will have far-reaching, long-term, damaging effects on not only the Constitution of the United States […]

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 […]

The Horror of War – Part 2

It was Christmas Eve and it just so happened that I pulled guard duty. The post I was assigned to was a 30-foot tower that stood facing toward the Bien Hoa Airport. At night, you could see the large flood lights and the air traffic controller tower clearly from that position. I had pulled guard […]

An Anthropologist in the World Revolution – Pt. 2 by Keith Hart

As we approached the millennium, with the dotcom boom roaring away, I wanted to write a book that would sum up 30 years of teaching and point forward at the same time. My first attempt was a textbook, Anthropology and the modern economy. But I found it depressing: it contained nothing of what I had […]

An Anthropologist in the World Revolution – Pt. 1 by Keith Hart

Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, well-known for his inspiring YouTube lectures and documentary shorts, has received over a hundred applications for his graduate course in ‘digital ethnography’ from around the world.1 The only problem: no such course exists. Wesch teaches undergraduates and has organized a ‘digital ethnography working group’ […]

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 […]

Teaching Anthropology in 2018

Recently, a colleague contacted me with a very interesting and specific question. At the time, I was on the road and too busy to address his inquiry. I asked him to hold on until I had time to think about how to approach the question. After some thought, I decided to respond by penning this […]

There’s Something in the Water

A recent death in the family necessitated a return to the United States after living abroad for the past ten years. A family member in Miami has a large home, so I stayed there for six months while handling family business. From the very beginning, I noticed a slight discoloration in the tap water in […]

The Struggle for Power by Keith Hart

Book Review: The Rise and Fall of Nations: Ten Rules of Change in the Post-Crisis World by Ruchir Sharma, London: Allen Lane, 2016; pp 464, £25. Ruchir Sharma grew up between Mumbai, Delhi and Singapore. He entered the world of international investment in the early 1990s as a specialist in emerging markets. He has […]

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 Bitcoin Controversy

Most people have already heard of Bitcoin. However, very few know what it is or how it originated. Many people know that it is some form of “cryptocurrency” but only a few know what that term means. Those of us that spend time on the Internet are familiar with the term but do not know […]

Brazil’s Dichotomous Treatment of Corruption – PT 2

After the end of the Brazilian military dictatorship, the Liberal Front Party (LFP), Democratic Social Party (PMDB) and Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) dominated the government of Brazil. For more than 20 years, right wing and centrists autocrats controlled the government and struggled with enormous foreign debt, rampant hyperinflation, and the difficulties of transitioning to […]

Preface to the Coming World Crisis-by Keith Hart

Trump’s election has accelerated talk on the left of the end of (neo-) liberalism and the rise of fascism in the West. The prospects for world war seem closer now. As when the 2008 crash is placed in history, comparison is usually with the 1930s. We need rather to develop a perspective on 1900-2100 as […]

What Anthropologists Really Do-by Keith Hart

The Summary The new anthropologist is a self-appointed people’s representative in the double sense of writing them up and acting as their advocate. And anthropology is a sort of democratic politics, informed by long-term, empty-headed exposure to strangers wherever they live and shaped by the main public issues of the day. This populism is hostile […]

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. […]

The Second American Revolution

Well, it only took about two-hundred and forty years but the greatest fear of the writers of the Constitution of the United States has taken place. A rich, capitalist class of billionaire Americans have finally taken over the government. It seems that political representatives from states all over the country have sold out their constituents […]

Religion and Economy – Part Two-by Keith Hart

We need to understand better how we build the infrastructures of collective existence, money among them. How do meanings come to be shared and memory to transcend the minutiae of personal experience? Property must endure in order to be property and that depends on memory. Money thus expands the capacity of individuals to stabilize their […]

Religion and Economy – Part One-by Keith Hart

Religion belongs to a set of terms that also includes art and science. Science began as a form of knowledge opposed to religious mysticism, but is now often opposed to the arts. If science may crudely be said to be the drive to know the world objectively and art is mainly a means of subjective […]