Chasing the Myths of Mexico’s “Superrunners”

The Rarámuri people’s ancient traditions of footracing have captured global attention. New research by a biological anthropologist and his colleagues debunks stereotypes and contextualizes the community’s famous races.

A Letter From COVID-19

An anthropologist imagines COVID-19 as a wise representative of Earth who is sharing a vital message with humans.

Unlikely Blessings

When the unthinkable happens, how do we even speak? A poet-anthropologist finds a way through a poem written during his infant son’s chemotherapy treatments, caught in the haunting terrain between hope and despair.

Death as Something We Make

An anthropologist dives deeply into how “medical aid-in-dying” is transforming the ethics and aesthetics of death.

Can Social Scientists Help Control Epidemics?

New collaborative efforts, such as the Social Science in Humanitarian Action Platform, are allowing anthropologists and other scholars to help align public health efforts with the on-the-ground knowledge and lived experience of people facing epidemics.

When Kinship Is Traced Through Women, Their Health Follows

A study finds that there may be health benefits when family ties are linked through mothers and women head households.

What Is Vaccination Equity?

With the COVID-19 vaccine rollout now underway, some immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers are being left behind.

Social Distancing in a Sumatra Rainforest

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Orang Rimba, hunter-gatherers in Sumatra’s rainforests, are trying to preserve traditions—including isolating the sick and keeping away from outsiders—despite being displaced from much of their ancestral lands.

What Does the American Dream Have to do With the COVID-19 Vaccine?

An anthropologist explains how conspiracy theories and recent protests in the U.S. over COVID-19 vaccines can’t be untangled from American dreams of freedom and prosperity.

How Imperialism Gave Us 2020

News headlines suggest that the problems of 2020 were unprecedented, but the collision of a pandemic and racial violence is nothing new under imperialism.