More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus causing the disease remains uncertain. The predominant theory is that its emergence in human populations was the result of zoonotic transmission, via an as-yet to be determined animal host. A competing (if still marginal) theory holds that a more likely source of the initial outbreak was an …
Tag Archives: Pandemics
COVID-19 and The Lessons Anthropology Learned from HIV/AIDS
On April 24, 1980, Ken Horne, a San Francisco resident, was reported to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) as a young man suffering with an old man’s disease, Kaposi’s sarcoma. Subsequently, in 1981, the CDC identified Horne as the first patient in the US of what would (in 1982) come to be called AIDS. By June 5, 1981, a …
COVID-19 and the extraordinary normality of the War on Drugs
As if it were not challenging enough during the “normal emergencies” [1] of the United States-led War on Drugs, research and advocacy for sane drug policies becomes even more complicated during a global pandemic.
COVID-19 has exposed the deep and enduring health and social inequities that mark our biopolitical moment, and the punitive ways that we govern people who use …
Defining Wellbeing: Tensions in the World Bank’s approach to Universal Health Coverage

“Health for All?” critically explores global moves towards Universal Health Coverage and its language of rights to health, equity, social justice and the public good. Highlighting emerging ethnographic and historical research by both young
…What Does Toilet Paper Teach Us about Our Defecation Habits?

An Australian photographer embarks on a jungle expedition in search of a “critically endangered species.” With a Canon camera on his shoulder and a pair of khaki shorts, he walks through a forest, occasionally stepping in puddles and crossing creeks. “It is harder to find than I thought,” he says, looking straight into the camera. “There …
“The Measles from the Time of My Grandfather”: Amazonian Ethnocide Memories in Times of Covid-19

Two weeks ago, Kanari Kuikuro called me from Canarana, a small town in the Brazilian Amazon, where he now lives with his wife and many children. He is originally from the Xingu Indigenous Land, which lies …