Anthropology has seen major challenges regarding methods, epistemologies, and how one writes ethnographically. As practicing ethnographers and poets, we focus on one among many vibrant new styles of anthropological scholarship: ethnographic poetry. As poetry appears more regularly in scholarly venues, … Continue reading
The idea that a single population was the ancestor of all living humans is neat and convenient, but it is not consistent with the data. The origin of modern humans is one of the most popular and hotly debated topics … Continue reading
This entry takes on two subjects. First, it addresses the influence that anthropology had on the work of the mid-twentieth century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and second, the influence that Gilles Deleuze’s work has subsequently exerted on anthropology. In Deleuze’s … Continue reading
The digital’ is defined here as new technologies that are ultimately reducible to binary code. These have made many cultural artefacts easier and quicker to both reproduce and to share. The first section of this entry is concerned with populations … Continue reading
‘Culture’ is in many ways the most fundamental of anthropological concepts. Yet it has been the subject of a range of critical interventions in the course of the discipline’s history, the most recent of which is the ‘ontological turn’. Proponents … Continue reading
The essays here are not eulogies but evaluations. Their viewpoints are essentially personal and therefore by no means all the same. Their intention is to try and give, after a lapse of much more than a decade since Malinowski’s death, a clear notion … Continue reading
Throughout this historical tour of medical anthropology, a focus upon theory and practice with specific ethnographic examples demonstrates the variety of approaches that have constituted medical anthropological research over the years. Following the historical narrative, contemporary theoretical trends and controversies … Continue reading
Three theoretical approaches exist in understanding human health. First, is the epidemiological or the ecological approach. This approach examines the way culture and the natural environment interact to create the patterns of which result in health and disease. The second … Continue reading
Umhlonyane, also known as Artemisia afra, is one of the oldest and best-documented indigenous medicines in South Africa. This bush, which grows wild throughout the sub-Saharan region, smells and tastes like “medicine,” thus easily making its way into people’s lives … Continue reading
A portion of a pig’s tusk, a small sample of volcanic sediment, a battered cobble, a primate’s molar tooth: What do these seemingly unremarkable remains have in common, and more to the point, why are they of interest to paleoanthropologists and archaeologists? First … Continue reading
