Genealogy necessitates historical records, the majority of which derive from government sources, despite families’ “private” lives. State records weren’t intended to service future family historians, but were a means to state-formation and power. Consequently, records used by family historians reflect statist concerns, not state subject…[Read more]

I lay out what I believe ethnographers of AI who engage with large language models (LLMs) might want to pay attention to in the next couple of years.
My starting point is that it would be helpful to explore how people are responding to ChatGPT in terms of genre, that people’s reactions to ChatGPT is to treat it at its core as though it is a g…[Read more]

Historical Synergy: Mannheim holds that historical and political thought is determined by the socio-historical location of the thinker and the political aspirations and material ambitions of the group or groups to which he belongs.
2. Prehistoric Artic Hunter-Gatherer Synergy of Beliefs in Animal Spirits w/ Economic-Political Realities Erica Hill…[Read more]

This year marks the tenth anniversary of PoLAR‘s publication of Ilana Gershon’s “Critical Review Essay: Studying Cultural Pluralism in Courts versus Legislatures.” This essay serves as a foundation for this conversation about anthropology’s interventions into legislative studies more broadly. Gershon’s argument that anything and anyone can…[Read more]

Just how bleak is the academic job market for anthropologists? Job ads over the past twenty years reveal some surprises and point to ways departments are seeking to change themselves and the discipline

Zoom is the least of our problems

Trump Gives Fascism a Bad Name

Pyramid Scheme. #hautalk

Forget the tut-tutting of politicians: The skills you learn in the humanities are exactly the skills you use in a job search.

The quitting economy

“A Friend of a Friend” Is No Longer the Best Way to Find a Job

Job Search 101: Debunking 5 Popular Myths that No Longer Apply

Don’t Post So Close To Me

The Hebrew word “ruach” – the word connected to the idea-symbol of “spirit” translates alternately as “wind,” “breathe,” or “spirit.” In Arabic, there are two words for the words: spirit, soul or self – namely, ruH (spirit, soul) & nafs (spirit, soul, self). Both of these Arabic words are also connected to the ideas of breath or wind (e.g. ruH is…[Read more]

This paper compares psychostasia and/or kerostasia concepts from Indo-European, Semitic and adjacent cultures, and relates them to Cognitive Metaphor Theory. In the context of metaphysical weighing, the religions of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome all associated lightness with goodness and/or a favourable outcome; Hinduism does likewise. The…[Read more]

Este libro indaga en diferentes temas de la vida humana personal y social a la luz de Cristo. Su punto de partida es el acontecimiento de Jesús de Nazaret, y despliega sus implicaciones culturales, espirituales, sociales, éticas, políticas. Es original en la medida en que se dirige al mundo universitario, sin aceptar de antemano las re…[Read more]

The role of the internet in fomenting male supremacist ideology must be understood within the larger cultural context that undergirds and naturalizes such rhetoric. Traditional conservative (TradCon) sections of the manosphere valorize a patriarchal social order centering traditional gender roles. According to TradCon reasoning, men, under attack…[Read more]

The Issue of Free Will – Stephen Cave points out that the Free Will “research and its implications are not new. What is new, though, is the spread of free-will skepticism beyond the laboratories and into the mainstream. Determinism, to one degree or another, is gaining popular currency. The skeptics are in ascendance.” (There’s No Such Thing as Fr…[Read more]