From outer space this world appears borderless, a vast expanse of land populated by organisms ranging from the microscopic to the gigantic. Sharing the same space, it is easy to imagine how humans, animals, and pathogens are intertwined in a perpetual cycle of life and death.
Read MoreFieldwork Impressions: Living with Letting Die
With my fieldwork diary coming to a close, I would like to reflect on an experience I had very early in my fieldwork. This is not going to be a long post. I will talk about death, or rather letting people die – and I think there is only so much that can be gracefully said about that.
Read More‘Without your head you’re nothing’: Helmets and road safety in Uganda.
Having lived in Kampala, Uganda’s capital city for 9 months, I have had ample time to test the many different modes of available transportation. With never-ending traffic jams, poorly maintained roads, and rarely enforced laws, getting from A to B sometimes presents major challenges.
Read MoreGenitals
In June earlier this year, in Nyeri County, Kenya, there were two separate incidents where wives attempted to chop off their husbands’ penises. In the first incident, Anne Njeri attacked Daniel King'ori, her husband of seven years, after she found condoms in his pockets when he returned home from a late-night drinking session.
Read MoreThe Double-Edged Sword of Cultural Tourism
During my summer field research, I traveled to the Maasai Mara, the Kenyan half of the incredible Serengeti-Mara ecosystem, and the home of the Maasai ethnic group. For many of us, this probably evokes a sense of timelessness, and a society untouched by the ‘evils of modernity’. It is also one that many National Geographic documentaries and glossy tourist brochures continue to perpetuate. However, it is but a small sliver of the reality there, like looking at one pixel of an entire photograph; beautiful, perhaps, but incomplete.
Read MoreDoes our indigenous media project “destroy” tribal people?
Let’s have a debate… Whilst doing anthropological fieldwork in Tsumkwe I got involved with/co-founded a project which, in my humble opinion, is pretty exciting: CEDU is a grassroot organisation which is helping the Ju/’hoansi San, one of the oldest indigenous groups in the world, claim back their public image by producing their own media.
Read MoreNo Bob Geldof, I Won’t Give You My F***ing Money
This week saw the latest incarnation of the Bob Geldof charity juggernaut that is Band Aid, with the 1984 single ’Do They Know It’s Christmas’ being updated and re-recorded by a new generation of musicians and pop stars. And Bono.
Read MoreWould an Anthropology of Ebola (help) find its ultimate cure?
The Ebola River has meandered through the Democratic Republic of Congo for eons, yet only recently has its name burst beyond its banks to flood the world. When the Ebola virus was first discovered in 1976 in a village close to the River’s banks it received little global attention or funding to find a treatment or cure.
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.
Read MoreEdinburgh Fieldwork Prize Runner Up: Becoming a Development Insider
As a conscientious 1st year PhD student preparing for fieldwork, I diligently reviewed the relevant literature. Since I had chosen to effectively intern with two British NGOs while undertaking ‘participant observation’ of their work, the writings of David Mosse seemed particularly useful.
Read MoreContemporary Namibians reading Stone Age Tracks: Advances in- and the flipside of - applications of indigenous knowledge
In 2011, two German pre-historians started a project called “Tracking in Caves” [i]. The premise of their idea was simple: Pastoors and Lenssen-Erz invited three San hunter-gatherers from the Kalahari in Namibia to help them interpret some human footprints they had found in a cave in the Pyrenees.
Read MoreMutual Estrangement: Of Flycatchers and Walking Dollars
In Arusha and Moshi, Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania, tourism is the bee’s knees to a degree. Tanzania, with Mount Kilimanjaro and the Northern Safari Circuit (with National Parks like Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Lake Manyara) being key attractions, has attracted more than a million tourists in recent years.
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