Anthropology cover girl

I am looking forward to reading Alfons’s posts; meanwhile, a PhD student at VU’s anthropology department, Erella Grassiani, has made it to the cover of the student newspaper, Advalvas.  I am not clear yet whether this paper is really edited by students, but at least it does discuss political controversies. In this instance, it is [...]

USA Today covers anthropology and the military

A couple of people (thanks Greg and Laleh) sent me this link: USA Today has an article on anthropology and the military that covers debate over the Human Terrain System (HTS) at the last AAA meeting.  The article situates the anthropology-military relationship within the history of colonialism, reports that two HTS social scientists were killed [...]

Upcoming lecture: Anthropology in the Age of Securitization

One of the main themes of this blog is the application of anthropological methods and insights to matters of concern to the wider world.  An upcoming lecture by Prof John Gledhill at Latrobe University is directed at this very issue by focusing on a specific anthropological contribution about “securitization”.  Sounds interesting.  I won’t be able [...]

CTlab virtual symposium on the Hamdan trial

[cross-posted to Khaldoun]
CTlab is hosting a virtual symposium on the Hamdan trial, and they’ve got a lot of people, including myself, poised to comment on Dr Brian Glyn Williams’ fascinating account of the trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s driver. Williams was an expert witness for the defense.
This week, Williams has been [...]

Pentagon officially begins project ‘Minerva’

Wired magazine has just reported that the Pentagon has kicked off ‘Minerva’, its project to include social scientists and other academics into the “War on Terror”.  The article also mentions the debate that has been going on in anthropology over the US military’s new-found enthusiasm for culture and social science methods.
Wired also has covered this [...]

Racism in Bolivia: a less sexy indigenous story

As Greg has noted, the “Lost Tribe of the Amazon” have received a massive amount of media attention since their “discovery” (the drive-time hosts were making jokes about them on the radio this morning — a sure sign they have achieved their 15 minutes of fame).  It’s interesting to compare this avid fascination with the [...]

Another presidential candidate with anthropology in the family

[cross-posted at Khaldoun]
Ralph Nader has announced that he is again running for president in the United States. As the BBC notes, the 2% of votes that he received in the 2000 elections when he represented the Green Party was a deciding factor in Bush’s win over Gore, and this time around, Republicans again welcome [...]

Homo Politicus

Dana Milbank’s recent book,  Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes that Run Our Government (Doubleday, 2007), plays on the jargon of classical anthropology to send up “Potomac Man, that strange indigenous tribe inhabiting the area in and around Washington, D.C.“  Here’s an excerpt from the official book synopsis:
Deep within the forbidding land encircled by [...]

A round-up of news coverage of the AAA meetings

Usually anthropology is only in the news when some new theory about Neanderthals is announced. But in the past week, anthropology has been all over the news, thanks to the American Anthropological Association meetings in Washington, D.C. which just ended a few days ago.
Before I left for the meetings, I fantasized that every night [...]

Marcia Langton on the NT Intervention

In the wake of Labor’s stunning victory over the weekend there is a lot of speculation about the future of the Northern Territory Intervention. One indigenous commentator on this is Professor Marcia Langton, who has never been one to mince her words. She has written the following article, published in today’s Sydney Morning [...]