AnthroCurrents – July 10, 2015

A biweekly look at recent stories on anthropology and practicing anthropologists in the popular media

• In case you’re sleeping too well at night, read anthropologist Hugh Gusterson’s piece on the American cultural traits that make us most vulnerable to a nuclear accident. It’s an unsettling laundry list of human weaknesses that includes America’s tendency to have computers do the job of surveillance (presumably because we fear human weaknesses).
• Anthropologist and film maker Samar Minallah Khan’s documentary on the Pakistanian practice of swara led to a law against the practice over ten years ago.
• Having just gotten off a plane myself, I enjoyed being schooled by Leslie Turnbull on how Americans can become better travelers. Cringe along with me as you recognize yourself in her article.
• LandUse6K is an ambitious research effort seeking to study human impact on the climate using a richer set of data than has been used previously. Anthropologist Kathleen Morrison is leading the group employing social sciences to analyze the problem.
• The BBC reports on how Greeks liken the current economic disaster there to World War II. The content of this article is interesting from an anthropological perspective (one person quoted blamed the current state of affairs squarely on Germany), but it’s in AnthroCurrents because anthropologist Neni Panourgia is quoted.