Around the Web Digest: Week of July 12

It was my birthday weekend, so I’ll just say “Here are some blogs. Enjoy!” Send me anything you’ve written or read at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com.

The blog Sex and Psychology breaks down this American Anthropologist article: Is Kissing a Universal Sexual and Romantic Behavior Among Humans? The answer? No. Of course.

Archaeodeath actually vindicates the TV show Vikings in showing grave robbings (although of course they got the details wrong): Vikings Season 2: Floki Digs Up Dad 

This post on Phys.Org, Anthropologist Leads Global Effort to Improve Climate Change Models, features such a classic anthropologist quote: “The models are over-simplified,” [archaeologist] Morrison explained. “They are based on mathematical equations relating how many people were in a particular area and what they think that did to transform vegetation. But, they don’t integrate evidence […] about how people organized agriculture—differences such as dry versus wet crops, like rice paddies—that show the same number of people can have a very different impact on the land.”

For something different on here, Allegra Lab posted this video of a lecture by Tim Ingold on humans’ relationship to the natural world: Tim Ingold on the Correspondence of Lives

This post from Ethnography.com (“Cooling Out” the Victims of the Grad School Pyramid System) struck a personal chord with me because I’ve seen this process happen to people I care about… people who don’t necessarily “fit in” in academia due to their socioeconomic backgrounds or other factors.

The Chronicle of Higher Education similarly takes aim at those who encourage talented young people to join a system that will ultimately chew up and spit out some of them – in this case, the academic counseling service The Professor Is In: The Paradoxical Success of The Professor Is In 

The Scientific American blog Anthropology in Practice looks into an aspect of academia criticized in the previous post: conformity. Why Does Everything Look the Same?

Somatosphere is introducing a new series on the imagery of graphic illness narratives… and there’s still time for you to contribute should you choose: Image + Text – A New Series

This post on Anthropoliteia points out that viral videos can be as effective as public anthropology – if not much more so – in critiquing unjust systems of policing: Mitch Henriquez: Death by Cop in the Epicenter of Global Justice and the Virtues of Hashtag Activism

See you next week!

Rebecca Nelson

Rebecca Nelson is the executive director of América Solidaria U.S. She recently graduated with a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on volunteer tourism in Guatemala and how it is opening up new avenues for tourists and hosts to develop more cosmopolitan understandings of the world (as well as opening up new forms of friction over the circulation of knowledge).