Some of the most recent articles from open access anthropology journals (beta)
Africa Spectrum, Ahead of Print. How can infrastructure structure interstate co-operation when regional authority is contested? This article examines the African Atlantic Gas Pipeline (AAGP), a proposed gas corridor from Nigeria to Morocco. Drawing on …
Africa Spectrum, Ahead of Print. Media plays a crucial role in constitutionalism and democracy. Research on the linkages between these concepts is critical, especially in the postcolonial African context, where presidential term limits and the subversi…
Africa Spectrum, Ahead of Print. Contemporary common-pool resource (CPR) theories recommend self-governance as an effective management approach. This article investigates the implications of rapid urbanisation on CPR self-governance, using Lake Hawassa…
When I, as a new graduate student, first walked into Renato’s office in Fall 1983, I could not help noticing that it was full of cardboard boxes with file folders and books. I did not know it at the time, but the boxes were a manifestation of Renato’s rebirth as he engaged academics after a […]
The post Our Gregorio Cortez appeared first on Anthropology News.
Hitesh was twenty years old when he received a thick envelope at his door in a western Indian city. It was not like the official kinds from the bank but looked like a long letter from an old friend. He checked the address, the postcode, the house number. All his. But something was unfamiliar on […]
The post What Is Your Mother’s Name? appeared first on Anthropology News.
Editor’s Note: This piece is the third in SAFN’s 2026 Anthropology News series on Temporality in Food Anthropology. If you haven’t already, check out the previous installments by Janita Van Dyk, and by Janet Chrzan. Orders-In Nico and I have been standing awkwardly in the kitchen for what feels like an eternity. This is the first time I’m joining […]
The post Temporal Distortions in the Time of Ghost Kitchens appeared first on Anthropology News.
I am a PhD student who studies language, culture, and processes of youth marginalization and belonging in London schools. In this article, I reflect on how ethnographic methods have shaped my engagement with grassroots education networks, drawing on two summers of preliminary linguistic ethnographic fieldwork in East London from 2024-2026. Before turning to research, I […]
The post Using Ethnography to Listen and Learn from London Grassroots Educational Justice Networks appeared first on Anthropology News.
Dam-associated violence has shaped villagers’ lives since the launch of Thailand’s Pak Mun Dam project 35 years ago. This slow violence—manifesting through ecological degradation, livelihood loss, and cultural disruption—has prompted equally enduring f…
My “news” is at least two-hundred-years old. However, as current news can only mean something in relation to context and history, we can use my old news to place the recent attack on Anthropology in the “Vanderbilt Report” within a longer historical arc. Looking squarely at the early formation of anthropology one must admit that […]
The post Conflicting Nineteenth-Century Paths to North American Indigenous Languages and Voices appeared first on Anthropology News.
La Ruan said he was destined to live a lonely life. It would be better, he told me, to find a wife, secure companionship, and perhaps raise children. During my visits to his hometown, we spent long afternoons talking in his adobe house at the center of a Mixtec community nestled in a valley of […]
The post Citizenship Before Love: Queer Desire, Duty, and Indigenous Sovereignty appeared first on Anthropology News.
Research on monstrification has broadly examined how Western rhetoric targets marginalized groups, including Muslim immigrants. Much less attention has focused on how religiously conservative Muslim immigrants, especially those affected by war, displac…
Chancery records of medieval England record an interaction between two men, one disguised as a monster. The first man, William, asks the second to disclose his real identity and when he only growls, William kills him. The details of this case are recor…
This introduction to the special issue on Monsters and the Law for Culture Unbound breaks down both how the editors see monsters within human lives and stories, real and fanciful, and how the authors in this collection explore themes within monster stu…
Technological innovations are often perceived as something alien, terrifying, and monstrous. Blockchain technology that creates shared “blocks” of information, which are interconnected and verified by the network comes as no exception. Two main feature…
Cryptids – animals that are sometimes observed but have not been scientifically verified – can be said to belong to the realms of myth or imagination. They are often strongly associated with particular regions and landscapes, and are therefore frequent…
This article explores how invasive alien species are imagined, represented, and regulated in contemporary Sweden, focusing on the entanglement between biological threat, cultural fear, and bureaucratic control. Drawing on ethnographic material, policy …
This article investigates how the Norwegian police’s Online Patrols contribute to the cultural production of monstrosity through their posts on social media. Drawing on theories of monstrosity as a shifting moral and cultural category, the study examin…
Today, the phenomenon of the golem becomes a symbol of technological progress, especially in the form of modern android robots, raising important questions about technological singularity, subjectivity, and authorship (as presented in a number of legis…
Borders cannot be avoided and will always be present in everyday life. Border issues may vary, starting from politics, geography, socio-economics, culture, and nature. Not to mention, much literature and films expose border issues as the main themes. M…
As artificial intelligence, robotics, and hybrid embodiment become increasingly embedded in daily life, legal systems are struggling to address the status, rights, and responsibilities of these posthuman entities. This article argues that such difficul…
This study explores the socio-spatial dynamics surrounding the creation and perception of Sara kulturhus, a flagship cultural centre in Skellefteå, Sweden. While initially being framed within a discourse of urban attractivity, the project later became …
Sustainability in agriculture is as much a policy goal as a cultural and political project: privileging scientific expertise, innovation, and entrepreneurship, it defines what counts as competent farming, sidelining the everyday, hands-on skills that a…
This article offers a critique of the lord and bondsman scene from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (2004[1807]). The scene depicts the struggle between these two protagonists for recognition and material possessions. The outcome of the strug…
In 2021, the BBC News released a video about a Chinese father making medicines at home to save his son. The father, Xu Wei, was around 30 years old, living in southwestern China. In 2020, his nine-month-old son had been diagnosed with Menkes syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that prevents the body from absorbing copper. Doctors told […]
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We write at a moment when the violence of war is reverberating across regions, institutions, and everyday life. Ongoing wars in the Middle East have laid bare the genocidal tendencies of both global and regional powers. In Gaza, Israel’s ongoing assault—enabled and sustained by Western military and financial support—has involved the systematic destruction of the […]
The post Political and Legal Anthropology at Times of War, Rising Authoritarianism, and Resistance: APLA Section Co-Editors’ Introduction appeared first on Anthropology News.