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Cooking Data

Cooking Data

More attention is being paid to data. In the context of the SDGs, it is the lack of data. In the broader conversation, it is about the quality of data. From these conversations, there is an emerging literature that might might classify as an ethnography of data. A recent addition to this set of literature […]

Tags: #Anthropology #Culture #Data #Development Studies #Politics

Thought Provokers
The Historical Ecology of Malaria in Ethiopia

The Historical Ecology of Malaria in Ethiopia

James C. McCann has produced some excellent works of history, and specifically on Ethiopia. This includes From Poverty to Famine (1987) and People of the Plow (1990), as well as The Historical Ecology of Malaria in Ethiopia (2014). The most recent of these books brings readers into a complex story of malaria over the centuries […]

Tags: #Ecology #Ethiopia #History #James C McCann #Malaria

Thought Provokers
People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent

People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent

In 2019, Joseph Stiglitz published “People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent.” The book covers a wide range of topics, largely on contemporary American policy while also highlighting their histories – and is overtly political (Trump comes up frequently, throughout). The author provides an analysis of the challenges as well as potential […]

Tags: #America #Economics #Economy #Policy #Stiglitz

Thought Provokers
Labor and Legality

Labor and Legality

I spent much of the summer looking for good ethnographies that would be suitable for first year undergraduate students – essentially a book that is not written for anthropologists, not heavy with theory, while still presenting the value that ethnography can offer. Gomberg-Munoz’s Labor and Legality (2011) fit that well. The book also provides insight […]

Tags: #Anthropology #Ethnography #Mexico #Migration #United States

Thought Provokers
Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine

Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine

de Waal, Alex. 2018: Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine. Cambridge: Polity Press. 264 pp. $24.95. ISBN: 9781509524679 As available: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1464993419836552 Readers with an interest in the topic of famine will have frequently come across the name Alex de Waal throughout the past three decades. As a researcher, practitioner and advocate, de Waal has […]

Tags: #Alex De Waal #Ethiopia #Famine #Food Security #Mass Starvation

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Ethiopia Engraved

Ethiopia Engraved

When European travellers and writers came to Ethiopia before the age of photography, the made engravings of what they saw. Richard Pankhurst and Leila Ingrams collected these engravings, from 1540 to 1900, and published them in “Ethiopia Engraved: An Illustrated Catalogue of Engravings by Foreign Travellers from 1681 to 1900” (1988). The period following this […]

Tags: #Ethiopia #Ethiopia Engraved #History #Leila Ingrams #Pankhurst

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