Beauty standards are everywhere we look, every day. In these times of photo-shopped images, and social experiments such as the Dove Real Beauty stunt, the detrimental effects of media portrayals are at the forefront of everybody’s minds.
Read MoreWorrying over Booze in East Africa
In East Africa, alcohol and alcoholism are themes of considerable worry. This blog post reviews some of these concerns as they are expressed through everyday conversation and in the media.
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Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Proof that the paranoia political thriller can be filled with action, the exquisitely enjoyable The Winter Soldier should be viewed not as another Marvel film, but as a standalone commentary on contemporary security issues.
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Politics, Philosophy and Hollywood
George Ligon recently approached the IANS Editorial Team with an exciting proposition. "IANS editorial team", he said, "I want to write movie reviews; movie reviews with a twist; movie reviews which use political and philosophical theories; I want to create a great amalgam of movie-review-theoretical goodness which will elucidate and illuminate both the films in question and the ideas discussed".
Read MoreThe Isolation of Cancer
Can illness only be defined as the human experience of symptoms and suffering? I personally think there is more to illness, more to the experience, and more positivity which can be taken from it.
Read MoreCriticising the Criticism of the Ice Bucket Challenge
Like it or loath it, the ice bucket challenge was a massive success for Motor Neuron Disease (MND) associations. As of September, the challenge had raised over £6million for the UK MND Association and a cool $100million for the American ALS Association.
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IndyRef 2014
In what follows, the best and the brightest of IANS editors, staff writers and contributors discuss why they intend to vote the way they do. We then finish off our discussion with a short consideration of the alternative: devo plus.
Read More“Money is evil” To be honest….
Leon is a tour guide at the lodge where I camp in between village visits, and where I have stayed for the last two or three weeks (I shudder to think of the bill coming my way). When I am there, Leon comes to visit in the morning.
Read MoreFirst Impressions of the Horrors I Did Expect
I just started fieldwork with the San (sometimes referred to as "Bushmen", known through the film “The Gods must be crazy”,countless other documentaries and my recent post) in Tsumkwe, Namibia. During Apartheid the area used to be the designated “Bushmanland”.
Read MoreThe Alarming Banality of Racism
As my train rolls through the Scottish borders and into England’s green and pleasant land, I read news of a furore surrounding a so-called plot by ‘extremist Islamists’ to ‘hijack’ the school curriculum in Birmingham.
Read MoreKýprioi Aganaktisménoi: Marking Three Years Since A Movement Nobody Heard About
It was a period of general upheaval and anger around the shores of the Mediterranean. The “Arab Spring” was taking hold on the southern bank, while on the northern bank, from Spain and Catalonia to Greece, mass demonstrations rocked capital cities for months.
Read More“It’s all a pile of bourgeois shite”: Class, Culture, and the Edinburgh Festivals
A few weeks ago I visited the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh for the first time to see part of the Art Festival and GENERATION – a Scotland-wide celebration of Scottish art.
Read MoreFiltered Realities: Instagram, Photo Filters, and Postmodern Images
Yes, I outwardly judge you for posting overly filtered photos on your social media page. But inwardly, I kind of really love it. I love the imagined nostalgia that converts bland mobile phone images into a romantic narrative. I love that photo filters bring design into daily life.
Read MoreThe Gift of Life: A Soldier’s Death as Sacrifice
In his 2011 speech (9) to declare the end of the Iraq War, the current President of the United States, Obama, used a common, but not trivial, phrasing: he conceptualised a soldier’s death in war as a gift to the nation.
Read MoreOn Culturally In/appropriate Fashion
Cultural appropriation in fashion and dress is not often associated with the everyday clothing of Western consumers, but it should be.
Read MoreThere Are No Bystanders in Ukraine's Search for Self
When, on 17 July flight MH17, a passenger liner was shot down over Ukraine, the search was on for those responsible. Or was it? Within twenty-four hours the western media had reached its verdict: Putin’s puppeteering was to blame for the 298 lives lost.
Read MoreSpaces and Technosociology: I.T. Ain’t Necessarily So
Having spent the past several months writing up a Master’s dissertation on Actor-Network Theory and its potential for expanding and developing the field of cybercrime research, I have had the eternal social science student experience of watching as an exciting, newly devoured work of social theory worms its way throughout my consciousness.
Read MoreStop being racist: on articulating racial discourses
A new fashion is in town. It’s reminiscent of the trends of previous decades but it has something new; it’s catchy and being adopted by many: its racism!
Read MoreWINNER of the Edinburgh Fieldwork Prize: Ginger, Viscera Suckers, and the Anthropological Self
In my red backpack, you’ll find a small plastic bag with two fingers of ginger. I’ve been carrying this bag with me everywhere I go for two weeks now: to the field, to the malls and the grocery shop, even to the local Starbucks. It’s a must-bring whenever I know I’ll be getting home late. At night, before I go to bed, I make sure it’s beside me.
Read MoreEdinburgh Fieldwork Prize Runner Up: Abortion in Translation
For my dissertation research I spent a month in Nepal, a country with breathtaking scenery and an entrancing and diverse cultural landscape. Nepal is the land of Mount Everest and the Himalayas, it is also a country affected by widespread poverty and social issues, including gender inequality
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