Anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Margaret Mead could not have achieved success without their local assistants’ insider knowledge and…
In Spain, Scapegoating Spikes During the PandemicAn anthropologist and a Rroma activist investigate the rise in prejudice and abuse toward Rroma people during the COVID-19 crisis.…
An Archaeology of Personhood and AbortionOpinions about fetal personhood and abortion have fluctuated enormously throughout history and differ in surprising ways between cultures. ✽ After…
Peeling Back the Myth of a “White” MidwestThe popular image of the U.S. heartland as only a place of rural, hardworking white farmers has always been a…
We All Love RosesSAPIENS Poet-in-Residence Jason Vasser-Elong reflects on horrific cycles of violence—and highlights injustices that are often papered over. We All Love…
Wisdom From the Winding PathAn anthropologist dreams of his work with Songhay sorcerers in Niger and of French poet Edmond Jabès, fictionalizing conversations and…
Crystal Worl’s Countermural Tells a Different History of AlaskaIndigenous artist Crystal Kaakeeyáa Worl’s new public mural honoring Tlingit activist Elizabeth Peratrovich places Alaska Native peoples’ resistance to colonialism at the center of Juneau’s history.
Indigenous Mapmaking, or Bringing a Dead Map to LifeIn a new book, an anthropologist explores how oil palm plantations in West Papua are upending Indigenous Marind communities’ ways of life. In this excerpt, Marind villagers call upon their plant and animal kin to confront a map used by the oil palm industry.
What Kenya’s Killer Cops Reveal About Police CultureAnthropologists studying police violence in Nairobi are uncovering systemic problems that shed light on brutal law enforcement tactics around the world.
Was the Acropolis a Harem? A Myth of OrientalismNew research makes a case for reexamining the way 15th-century Turks used the Acropolis of Athens—and the role of Western beliefs in exoticizing the people of the Ottoman Empire.