(via Savage Minds) Can a discussion about the use of music in torture shed new perspectives in our debates about the use of anthropological knowledge in torture, askes Kerim Friedman on Savage Minds. Jason Baird Jackson points in his comment to the Soci…

Wear red for Burma: Several thousand people at the demonstration in Oslo "Wear a red t-shirt in solidarity this friday!" "Light candles in your windows on Friday night to honour the victims of the demostrations." Pro-democracy protest marches in Burm…

The debates about the militarisation of anthropology have recently made the front page of the New York Times and several other newspapers (f.ex. The Boston Globe) and blogs discussed the story. Are more and more (American) anthropologists willing to…

For Jews, not only food needs to be kosher, the New York Times explains in an interesting article about Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox. There are even kosher mobile phones. You cannot send text messages with them, take photographs or connect to the Internet…

More and more people live in mega cities. Rather than fixating on investing in the countryside, donor agencies need to recognize that people want to come to the big cities. And rather than demolishing squatter developments one should integrate these sel…

While new media can foster participatory ethnography and enhance access, one also has to reflect on the implications of the Internet’s openness and availability. This was one of the lessons of a session at the annual meeting of the American Anthropologic…

Is female circumcision violence against women or a feminist act? Are critics of this practice guilty of cultural imperialism? Those questions were debated at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting in Washington - among others by Africa…

Paul Pimomo reviews in The Morung Express a book that might not only be interesting for area specialists. The History of Naga Anthropology is, he writes, "a valuable contribution to the broad area of postcolonial studies". In History of Naga Anthropo…

Will Buddism die out in Japan? Across Japan, Buddhism faces a confluence of problems, the New York Times reports. Interest in Buddhism is declining in urban areas. The religion’s rural strongholds are being depopulated. Successors to chief priests a…

Today was the fifth and last day of the 10th Biennial Conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) in Ljubljana, Slovenia. There are no news stories yet, but anthropology students at the University of Ljubljana have already wr…

What is it like being at a conference with anthropology students from many different countries? Daren Williams from Macquarie University in Sydney has written a review for antropologi.info about the 6th conference of the Moving Anthropology Student Netw…

"Fiction's more fun. It lets you look inside people's heads in a way you wouldn't dare to do if you stuck to anthropology", anthropologist Nigel Barley says in an interview with the Telegraph: "As an anthropologist you're always asking questions such…

"They’re natural born killers. They’re good, they’re lethal, they’re fantastic. I love working with them", says Major Robert Holbert. He was part of the first Human Terrain Team in Afghanistan in 2007 and tells his story in a fascinating interview with L…

What impact has war on children? What has anthropology to say on this? This autumn I watched the movie "Buddha collapsed out of shame" by the Iranian film maker Hana Makhmalbaf. It tells the story of children who reproduce the violence of the adults. For…

(via 'Ilm al-insaan) An anthropologist embedded with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan to help soldiers understand local customs has died more than two months after she was doused with fuel and set on fire, according to ap. Anthropologist Paula Loyd, 36,…

Shalamar Gardens, Lahore I have been back from Lahore, Pakistan's cultural center and "City of Poets", for a while now. It was one of the most inspiring journeys I've been to. Just a few weeks ago we've been at the same place where - a few days a…

Many US-anthropologists protested against the Vietnam war in the 60s. Why have anthropologists been so reluctant to engage with the "immense tragedy" and "waste of resources by our governments" in the Iraq war, Antonius C.G.M. Robben and Marshall Sahlins…

300 000 people have been killed and 2.5 million been made refugees in the war in Darfur. In his new book, anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani describes the Save Darfur campaign as representing a refracted version of the moral logic of the "War on Terror" with…

Caste, Occupation and Politics on the Ganges is the title of a new book by anthropologist Assa Doron that Tessa Valo reviews here for antropologi.info. It is a book about the life of a marginalized group of people in India - the boatmen at the river Gang…

My most recent post Army-Anthropologists call Afghans "Savages" received a lot attention, so it might be necessary to write a new post after the debates in the comment field and via email. It seems that the Sydney Morning Herald reporter misunderstoo…