Notes on violence, human rights, social movements, open data, and anthropology

Posts

Teaching Notes

Anthropological grounds for a “revolution in kinship”

Situating Gayle Rubin’s “The Traffic in Women” for Week 14 of the History of Anthropological Theory

Carwil Bjork-James

Nov 24, 2025

Gifts, Boundaries, and Taboos

Situating readings for Week 12 of the History of Anthropological Theory

Carwil Bjork-James

Nov 4, 2025

Landmarks in conceptualizing the ethnographic field by Malinowski and Gluckman

Situating readings for Week 10 of the History of Anthropological Theory

Carwil Bjork-James

Oct 26, 2025

Margaret Mead

Situating readings for Week 11 of the History of Anthropological Theory

Carwil Bjork-James

Oct 26, 2025

Boas, Rivet, and the End of the Craniometry of Race

New empirical approaches gradually undermined “race science,” but the process took decades

Carwil Bjork-James

Oct 14, 2025

Nineteenth-century North American ethnography by Mooney and Morgan

Briefly situating readings for Week 5 of the History of Anthropological Theory

Carwil Bjork-James

Sep 19, 2025

Ninetenth-Century Evolutionary Anthropology

Situating readings for Week 4 of the History of Anthropological Theory

Carwil Bjork-James

Sep 12, 2025

Anthropology and the Enlightenment

Situating readings for Week 3 of the History of Anthropological Theory

Carwil Bjork-James

Sep 11, 2025

When did anthropology begin in the Western Hemisphere?

Situating readings for Week 2 of the History of Anthropological Theory

Carwil Bjork-James

Aug 28, 2025

“Life and Debt” Follow-up: Jamaica and Structural Adjustment

Nick Dearden writing in The Guardian (London) offers an overall update on Jamaica, debt and development,¹ which continues to be heavily shaped by the neoliberal policies…

Nov 19, 2014

Some updates on the Three Gorges Dam

Since Manufactured Landscapes was released in 2006, the Three Gorges Dam (Wikipedia entry) in China has been completed and made operational. Several of you mentioned its…

Carwil Bjork-James

Nov 10, 2014

Filmmaker Stephanie Black on “Life and Debt”

These pieces about Stephanie Black’s 2001 film provide more context about the director, the film, and her artistic and political intentions.

Carwil Bjork-James

Nov 6, 2014

Posts

The Palestine Archipelago

Anthropological grounds for a “revolution in kinship”

Gifts, Boundaries, and Taboos

Landmarks in conceptualizing the ethnographic field by Malinowski and Gluckman

Margaret Mead

Boas, Rivet, and the End of the Craniometry of Race

Nineteenth-century North American ethnography by Mooney and Morgan

Ninetenth-Century Evolutionary Anthropology

Anthropology and the Enlightenment

When did anthropology begin in the Western Hemisphere?

Panel on Researching Violence for AAA 2025

Links on Artificial Intelligence

Welcome

Palestinian fatalities surpass 40,000 in under 11 months

Conflict deaths in Bolivia, 2023–24

Conflict deaths in Bolivia, 2022

What do you do to avoid sexual assault?

Teaching Notes

Anthropological grounds for a “revolution in kinship”

Gifts, Boundaries, and Taboos

Landmarks in conceptualizing the ethnographic field by Malinowski and Gluckman

Margaret Mead

Boas, Rivet, and the End of the Craniometry of Race

Nineteenth-century North American ethnography by Mooney and Morgan

Ninetenth-Century Evolutionary Anthropology

Anthropology and the Enlightenment

When did anthropology begin in the Western Hemisphere?

“Life and Debt” Follow-up: Jamaica and Structural Adjustment

Some updates on the Three Gorges Dam

Filmmaker Stephanie Black on “Life and Debt”

Invocation