by: Suzanne Preston Blier
Egbé eja leja ?wè tò, egbé eye leye ?wò lé
Fish swim in a school of their own kind;
Birds fly in a flock of their own kind.
Yoruba Proverb
We mention nature and forget ourselves in it.
Friedrich Nietzsche
So engrained is the trope of the animal in the West that animal truisms are seared into
Continue reading Animalia: the Natural World, Art, and Theory
by Mark Stoneking
As a molecular anthropologist, my research involves using genetic data to address questions of anthropological interest about the origins, history, migration, structure, and relationships of human populations. I frequently am asked to give lectures to nonspecialist audiences on insights from genetics into human evolution, and invariably during the ensuing discussion period the viewpoint
Continue reading Does Culture Prevent or Drive Human Evolution?
by Stuart A. Marks
Independent Scholar
“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
Tennessee Williams
To understand portions of one’s own culture demands a lifetime; to become familiar with another’s depends upon a host of enthusiastic interpreters, attentive listening, experiencing a multitude of unfamiliar activities, a receptive heart, and good fortune. Throughout my
Continue reading Wild Animals and a Different Human Face
by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
I am an anthropologist and primate sociobiologist who seeks to understand, step by Darwinian step, how apes could have evolved to imagine and care about what the lives of others might be like. I believe that such questing for inter-subjective engagement laid the foundations for significant later developments such as language and
Continue reading How Humans Became Such Other-Regarding Apes
by Paul Rabinow
Whatever the terms “biopower” and “biopolitics” might mean, and they are being used in a growing number of simplistic ways, most of which bear scant relation to how Michel Foucault deployed them. Foucault’s genealogical elaboration of these terms had been conceptual, historical and non-totalizing. Above all, Foucault deployed concepts like “biopower” or “governmentality”
Continue reading Biopower, Dignity, Synthetic Anthropos