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Social Cultural Anthropologists examine social patterns and practices across cultures, with a special interest in how people live in particular places and how they organize, govern, and create meaning. A hallmark of sociocultural anthropology is its concern with similarities and differences, both within and among societies, and its attention to race, sexuality, class, gender, and nationality. Research in sociocultural anthropology is distinguished by its emphasis on participant observation.
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 […]
Read More…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 […]
Read More…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 […]
Read More…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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
Read More…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 […]
Read More…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 […]
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With all the violence in the world and the ever growing movement of mankind toward more violence, it appears there is always a war somewhere in the world. It occurred to me that since ancient times politicians always create wars, generals manage wars, and soldiers fight them. Now, setting aside the economic advantages of […]
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In the study of epidemiology, one has an opportunity to learn about communicable and non-communicable diseases. This curriculum is usually pursued on the graduate level and involves a combination of courses that investigate hard sciences dealing with pathogens, hosts, environments, and incubation. Also, it includes study in the soft sciences such as human evolution, human […]
Read More…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 […]
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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’ […]
Read More…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 […]
Read More…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 […]
Read More…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 […]
Read More…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 […]
Read More…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 […]
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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 […]
Read More…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. […]
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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 […]
Read More…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 […]
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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 […]
Read More…In the aftermath of Trump’s victory, we would do well to recall Hegel’s maxim that difference-in-sameness moves history. Max Weber used a similar argument to moderate the polarised Methodenstreit (Battle over Methods) between Berlin and Vienna about economics in the late 19th century. We would not be interested in the Greeks if they were the […]
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