Hugh Gusterson is a professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. With a Ph.D. from Stanford University, he has conducted fieldwork among nuclear weapons scientists, anti-nuclear activists, and polygraphers (for a new project). He writes about nuclear culture, drone warfare, counterinsurgency, international security, and ethics. His books include Drone: Remote Control Warfare, People of the Bomb: Portraits of America’s Nuclear Complex, and Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War. Gusterson is a regular contributor to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and his essays have appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, Science, Nature, and New Scientist. He recently was awarded the Anthropology in Media Award by the American Anthropological Association. From 2015–2017, he was president of the American Ethnological Society. Follow him on Twitter @GustersonP.
Written rules about how to govern only work if they are backed up by unwritten values shared across the political spectrum. Over the past four years, Donald Trump’s relentless attacks on U.S. democratic norms have taken a toll.
Universities are planning to open across the United States with strategies based on fantasy documents and magical thinking.
An anthropologist asks whether U.S. police are people serving the people—or are anonymous drones of state violence.
From bogus miracle cures and dangerous conspiracy theories to powerful shows of weaponry, across the globe, the coronavirus pandemic is evoking all manner of magical thinking.
One of the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis is taking serious action against a threat that seems so abstract and intangible.
An anthropologist explores the controversial labels for COVID-19.
