How Austerity Unravels Social Ties

The experiences of tight-knit neighborhoods in Mozambique suggest that strict belt-tightening often frays a nation’s social fabric.

The Dream of the Green Hog Revolution

Throughout North Carolina, more and more farmers are choosing to raise free-range pigs and sell pasture-fed pork. Will that solve the problems caused by industrial meat production?

How Halloween Has Traveled the Globe

Whether trick-or-treating in the United States or costume play celebrations in Japan, Allhallows Eve has taken many forms as its traditions travel the world.

Closer to Home

What can squatting—occupying otherwise unoccupied buildings without any title, right, or payment—teach us about how cities work?

Bracing for the Vanilla Boom

Some of Madagascar’s farmers, made wealthy by this year’s vanilla crop, will spend their cash in crazy “hot money” sprees. But their profligate spending may not be as illogical as it first appears.

How Globalization Has Broken the Chain of Responsibility

In today’s accelerating and overheating world, the gap between the people affected by change in local environments and the people in charge is growing ever wider.

Can Cryptocurrency Revolutionize the Rituals of Money?

Some people are turning their backs on traditional banks in favor of cryptocurrencies. Beneath the financial and technological conversations surrounding this shift is a story about how trust shapes the culture of money.

Why Political Ambiguity Appeals to the Masses

A movement in 1990s India illuminates the allure of vagueness from our leaders.

How Fracking’s Appetite for Sand Is Devouring Rural Communities

Small towns in western Wisconsin are being divided by a little-known mining boom. An anthropologist who lives in the region set out to understand why.

Meet Archaeology’s Beer Can Man

One scholar has found in the humble, rusty beer can a trusty time capsule.