The H3N2 epidemic didn’t really take off until early January 2018—at least as far as US media coverage is concerned. A crucial marker was the New York Times‘ publication of an op-ed by a prominent germ cold warrior, Michael Osterholm, along with Mark Olshaker, co-author of Deadliest Enemy: Our War against Killer Germs. Osterholm, extensively profiled by Andrew …
Tag Archives: Politics
We Need to Talk About “Gun Violence”: Reflections on Terminology and Contexts of Violence
This article is part of the series: Notes on guns and violence
Among the many political challenges of our time, gun violence in America has emerged as one of the most divisive. A retreat into partisan communities prevents us from considering the complexity or lived experiences of our political opponents. The fears and insecurities of each group are projected onto the other. Both consume media that influences how they are likely to …
Is Health Activism a Collective Responsibility?
This article is part of the series: Experiments with pedagogy
During the tumultuous “repeal and replace” frenzy in the spring and summer of 2017, the US House of Representatives and Senate moved quickly to consider bills intended to either eliminate the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) or restrict its various provisions. The American Health Care Act (AHCA) in the House and the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) in …
Digital Food Activism – a book review
Tanja Schneider, Karin Eli, Catherine Dolan and Stanley Ulijaszek (eds.)
Routledge Series in Critical Food Studies, 2018, 234 pages
A Swiss academic scans the barcode on her plastic water bottle. The bottle touts itself as ‘Swiss mountain water’, but the app that decodes the barcode quickly dispels that image: the company is a subsidiary of …
On Thinking with People and their Escapes: A Review of Unfinished through Storytelling
Unfinished: The Anthropology of Becoming
João Biehl and Peter Locke, editors
Duke University Press, 2017. 400 pages.
If hierarchy is the key to sociological knowledge production, what might it mean to refuse the hierarchy of intelligences between those who know the world, those who can allegedly theorize the world, and those who have to survive the world, or …
Gun Cultures Reflect Broader Changes in American Society
This article is part of the series: Notes on guns and violence
Author’s Note: I originally wrote this article for my institution’s student-run literary magazine after the Parkland shooting. Our little community was engaged in passionate debate about “gun culture” and I had long wanted to write on the issue given my socialization and scholarship. This essay is an attempt to examine my own family’s social dynamics relative to larger societal shifts. …