AnthroCurrents – October 17, 2014

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

if (Politics) {

• Many news outlets are writing about the international group of anthropologists calling for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions due to their alleged complicity in the human rights violations of Palestinians. More anthropologists are jumping onto the list every day–the first 230 to do so are listed after the article linked above.
• Paul Stoller writes a convincing argument for why anthropologists would make good world leaders on the Huffington Post.
• An excerpt from Janine Wedel’s book Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt Our Finances, Freedom, and Security appeared on Salon.com. The excerpt exposes our tendency to disparage corruption in the “third world” while ignoring corruption within our own political systems.

} else if (Environment) {

• The Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is an anthropologist. The Globe and Mail provides this profile of Christiana Figueres.
• The Guardian discusses the challenge of ecologically friendly laundering, including input from an anthropologist who discusses the definitions of “clean” and “dirty” and the role of routine in how we decide when to wash clothes.

} else {

• Robin Dunbar’s research around the maximum numbers people can handle in their social networks is discussed in the New Yorker. Facebook and other technological tools have renewed interest in Dunbar’s work. Sure, monkeys can only groom so many other monkeys, but that’s only because there’s no app for that.
• School lunches have become a political topic in the U.S., and this article that features pictures of some school lunches around the globe makes for interesting reading. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, it’s true, but my kids wish they were going to school in Singapore right now, where I’m sure they’ve never even heard of “Trout Treasures.”
• Turning around Kenya’s public schools is the subject of this article in the Atlantic. Whether we’re here or at home, we can’t seem to let go of silver-bullet thinking when it comes to improving education. The education company Bridge that is discussed in this article was founded by an anthropologist.

}