Section
Anthropology & Religion
-
Can Centuries-Old Nuns Really Save Us from Ourselves?
“Can looking to women beholden to God help us escape a society so fixated on itself? Or does it simply package those devout lives as the latest content for a culture industry desperate for the next trending topic?”
-
Arabic ≠ Latin: Sacred Language in a Secular Age
Lienau’s exposition illustrates that the Orientalist position of Quranic Arabic’s essential untranslatability is rooted not in historical fact but racist fantasy.
-
The Multiplication of Monsters: Misinformation from Gutenberg to QAnon
Throughout history the introduction of new technologies has increased the circulation and acceptance of rumors and disinformation.
-
Humans Are Nature’s Eccentrics—Laughing and Crying Show Why
Remarkably, the acts of laughing and crying reveal there are no givens for individual behavior nor blueprints for human society.
-
Who’s Afraid of al-Andalus?
In Spain, the Catholic Church tries to erase the era of Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula called al-Andalus. Two authors problematize the church’s efforts.
-
Can a Revolution Endure Even after It Fails?
For a few years in Oman, revolutionaries freed slaves, founded water cooperatives, and sent women to school. Then came the counterrevolution.
-
“It Is Not How You Feel”: Batja Mesquita on How Different Cultures Experience Emotions
“We define ourselves more by certain emotions. I’ve never heard anybody say, ‘I’m trying to get over my embarrassment and I feel so inauthentic.'”
-
Andrea Hornick and Timothy Ingold: Designs for the Anthropocene
“We bring our own creativity into what we see—the seams get filled in, smoothed over, by our looking.”
-
Marshall Sahlins’s “Original Affluent Society” 50 Years Later
Capitalism seeks wealth to meet desires. But foraging societies follow “the Zen road to affluence”: not by getting more, but wanting less.
-
The 21st-Century Social Scientist
“If we want technologies that will not undermine our humanity, social analysts must join with other researchers.”
-
How to Be a Prophet?
The US Religious Right wins elections, but advances nationalism and white supremacy. Why, then, should the Religious Left seek to emulate them?
-
Borders Cast Long Shadows on Nations: Talking with Malini Sur
“Borders continue to gather life’s promises, even when walls and checkpoints brutally divide nations and societies.”
-
Embracing George?
In painting immigrants, George W. Bush seeks to ingratiate himself with the American public. But his crimes must be remembered.
-
To Air Is Human
An aerodynamicist and an anthropologist discuss the world of “Dune,” finding it as aesthetically beautiful as it is functionally implausible.
-
Tolerance by Accident, Trust by Design
Today, trade and globalization often reinforce the incentives for coercion and violence. But what might the history of India reveal about the economic conditions of toleration?
-
Can Anthropology Look to the Future?
Transhumanists want to transcend humanity. Where does that leave anthropology?
-
Thoreau in Good Faith
The writer went to Walden to reorient his world, so that the woods, rather than the town, centered his spiritual map.
-
What Will Be Impossible?
Why excavate these Reformation characters—the preacher and the werewolf—now? What do they have to teach us?
-
Leaving Orthodoxy, Again
Losing faith in Orthodox Judaism is an old story. But today it’s often the “heretics” who rely on faith, and the “faithful” who draw on science.
-
Ethnographic Fictions: Talking with Megha Majumdar
Anthropology’s attention to the granular texture of someone’s life is a beautiful training for being a fiction writer.[none-for-homepage]
-
Philanthropy and the “Jewish Continuity Crisis”
Today, Jewish philanthropy—like all philanthropy—is big business, thanks to US philanthropy’s torturous entanglement with US capitalism.[none-for-homepage]
