Anti-Anti-Women’s Studies (An Open Letter to Jan Oller)

My former colleague in Women’s Studies, Jan Oller, write an op-ed piece in a local alternative weekly attacking WMST as a discipline and supporting recent budgetary decisions to terminate the program. Since I don’t have a current email address for him, I’ve decided to post my response here as an open letter. I hope he […] [Continue reading]

Whiteness as Ethnicity in Arizona’s New Racial Order

I’ve just posted a few comments on Arizona’s recent legislative attack on ethnic studies at Savage Minds. It started as a post for this site, but as I got into the argument it seemed more appropriate to post there. The nutshell version is: Traditional US history, literature, and civics classes are clearly in violation of […] [Continue reading]

Coming Soon – “Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency” from U of Chi Press

Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency, edited by John D. Kelly, Beatrice Jauregui, Sean T. Mitchell, and Jeremy Walton, is available for pre-order on Amazon and will be released in both paperback and hardcover on April 1st. Based on the proceedings of the Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency conference at the University of Chicago in 2008, the book […] [Continue reading]

Anthropology and Culture

This is part of a series of posts I wrote for an Introduction to Anthropology blog I kept for my students. That site got eaten in the Great LeafyHost Collapse of 2006, but I’ve held onto the content backups in the hopes of someday reposting it. Finally I realized that it was unlikely I’d get the […] [Continue reading]

Introduction to Anthropology

This is the first in a series of posts I wrote for an Introduction to Anthropology blog I kept for my students. That site got eaten in the Great LeafyHost Collapse of 2006, but I’ve held onto the content backups in the hopes of someday reposting it. Finally I realized that it was unlikely I’d get […] [Continue reading]

More Positive Press for Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War

Another positive review of Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War has appeared, this time in the Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (JASO). The reviewer, Iain Perdue, sees the book’s discussion of Cold War McCarthyism and militarism as a timely intervention in today’s debates, writing:

The issues of ethics and the ramifications of anthropologists performing government work are being revived in a renewed and vigorous debate in the American Anthropological Association on this very subject. [Continue reading]

New Review of “Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War”

The academic publishing world moves slowly, oh-so-slowly. After almost a year in print, Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War has received its second review, a thoughtful response by Robert Lawless at the Anthropology Review Database. Lawless focuses heavily on one of the big undercurrents in the book, the similarity between how anthropology articulated with US interests during the Cold War years and the way it does today. [Continue reading]

New Review of “Don’t Be Stupid”

Alexandra Levit has given my e-book for college students, Don’t Be Stupid a 5-star review in her column at Get the Job. Levit is the author of several career guides, including Success for Hire, They Don’t Teach Corporate in College, and How’d You Score that Gig?. [Continue reading]

The Meaning of Food

Seth Godin wanted to know:

What’s the deal with brown rice? How do people become so attached to the social implications of food that they are willing to starve or suffer from malnutrition rather than take a step backward? The price of rice has soared, yet it seems like people are still demanding white rice, instead of the more nutritious (and almost certainly cheaper) brown rice. How high does the price have to go before people make a different choice?

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The Guardian UK on Anthropology and Counter-Insurgency

In the wake of the death of one of the HTS anthropologists last week in Afghanistan, The Guardian covers some of the controversy around the use of anthropology by the military. The article discusses the “Anthropology and Global Counter-Insurgency” conference I presented at last month, and features quotes from and mentions of several of the participants, including John Kelly, Marshall Sahlins, David Price, Hugh Gusterson, Brian Selmanski, and Kerry Frosh — the latter two representing the Air Force and Marines, respectively. [Continue reading]