Revealed! Chinese stores in Hungary are collection points for organ harvesting

In the past few weeks, stories have been circulating on the Hungarian Internet about women disappearing in Chinese shops  and being discovered dead or drugged by relatives in a secret room, either with organs already taken out or in preparation for the harvesting. The women (always women, rescued by a male relative who is a [...]

The post about the gold penis enlarger

If this post doesn’t attract the spam bots, I don’t know what will…
Recently I saw an article in the Herald’s “Strange but True” section — where I do all my trolling for topical anthropology blog posts — about a Saudi guy who had paid $US50,000 for a solid 18-carat gold, diamond and ruby encrusted, penis [...]

Culture matters for health

Let me break my long silence with a quick announcement for a conference.  The ANU is hosting a symposium and short course on the subject of cultural epidemiology.  Seems like and event that would be of interest to readers of this blog.  Here are the details:
*Culture Matters for Health: Exploring cultural epidemiology & related
approaches in [...]

Business Anthropologist in Sydney Hospital

Yesterday I had a chance of observing organisational space in a Sydney hospital as I joined a UTS Centre for Health Communication group. Rick Iedema and his staff do wonderful ethnographic research in hospitals filming professional collaboration around patient care. Yesterday’s topic was the designed spatial settings in hospital. In our group was apart from [...]

Call for papers: “Beauty and Health”

Call for papers – Medische Antropologie, Dutch journal of medical anthropology – “Beauty and Health”
Please submit papers to Alex Edmonds at a.b.edmonds@uva.nl by January 30
Beauty and health. In most societies beauty can be seen as a sign of health, presenting the body as the materialization of wealth and power. But as anthropologists we are also [...]

Doctors complain about ethics oversight – just like anthropologists! (well, almost)

I have been working on an ethics teaching module and just came across this December 2007 editorial in the NY Times by Atul Gawande. Medical anthropologists might have encountered Gawande through his articles for the New Yorker or for his book of collected essays, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science — which [...]

CFP: Global Food Crisis

The US National Association of Practicing Anthropologists has just released a call for papers on the subject of the global food crisis.  Here are the details:
Global Food Crisis: Perspectives from Practicing and Applied Anthropologists
Sponsor: NAPA Bulletin, National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA)
Contact Information:
David A. Himmelgreen
Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida
4202 E. Fowler [...]

Some articles on the NT Intervention

Several articles have appeared in today’s The Australian regarding the Northern Territory intervention, and on indigenous health and welfare more generally.  Of most interest to me was a report on calls to soften some aspects of the new government regime.  The article notes that while there have been some reported positive outcomes of the new [...]

Guest post: Current Indigenous Debates, CDEP and the culture of Cultura Nullius

I am happy to present this guest post by ANU PhD Student Bree Blakeman and environmental economist, Dr Nanni Concu.  This article deals with a number of themes that we have focused on at CM: the concept of culture and how it is applied in real life contexts, engaged anthropological commentary on current events, and [...]

Anthropologist helps sell hand-washing habit

The New York Times has run a story about Val Curtis, an anthropologist who directs the Hygiene Center at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine: Warning: Habits May Be Good for You by Charles Duhigg. The story discusses how Curtis turned to consumer goods manufacturers like Procter and Gamble and Unilever in [...]