search expand

Food and social change: Anthropology students take food tours of Boston

Boston University

To observe the city’s changing cuisines, Anthropology Professor Merry White White and her students travel to some of the best-known and least-known ethnic neighborhoods in the city, where they have a chance to study food as it relates to migration and community-building. They visit the North End, of course, where Italian food has become enmeshed in the promotion of Italian culture, and Chinatown, less of a tourist destination, but a neighborhood with a strong “food identity,” White says.

For White, it is a sign that her studies of cooking and culture have finally been deemed a legitimate and important part of academia. “It’s a matter of how food has come into acceptance in the curriculum in general,” she says. “In the late 1980s, I think the world wasn’t ready for it yet.” changing food trends reveal a lot about changing cultures >> continue

Boston University

To observe the city’s changing cuisines, Anthropology Professor Merry White White and her students travel to some of the best-known and least-known ethnic neighborhoods in the city, where they have a chance to study food as it relates to…

Read more

From Popcorn to Parkas: 16 American Indian Innovations

National Geographic News

Imagine our world without chocolate or chewing gum, syringes, rubber balls, or copper tubing. Native peoples invented precursors to all these and made huge strides in medicine and agriculture.

They developed pain medicines, birth-control drugs, and treatment for scurvy. Their strains of domesticated corn, potatoes, and other foods helped reduce hunger and disease in Europe—though Indians also introduced the cultivation and use of tobacco.

As the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., readies for its grand opening Tuesday, bone up on Indian innovations in food and candy, outdoor gear, and health and exercise. >> continue (LINK UPDATED 11.9.2020)

National Geographic News

Imagine our world without chocolate or chewing gum, syringes, rubber balls, or copper tubing. Native peoples invented precursors to all these and made huge strides in medicine and agriculture.

They developed pain medicines, birth-control drugs, and treatment for scurvy.…

Read more

“It will take a long time for people to grasp the illusory nature of race”

Washington Post

A hundred social scientists and geneticists gathered this week in Alexandria to sort out the meaning of race, and didn’t, quite. When Leith Mullings, an anthropologist from the City University of New York, sardonically said that “only people of color have race, and only women have gender,” everyone knew what she meant.

A professor who argues that race is a biological myth sat next to a professor who wants the U.S. government to pay reparations to African Americans. Their positions are not inconsistent, but they require a bit of explaining. Race is complicated.

“It doesn’t exist biologically, but it does exist socially,” said Alan Goodman, incoming president of the American Anthropological Association, which sponsored the meeting at the Holiday Inn in Old Town. It will take a long time for people to grasp the illusory nature of race at the biological level, Goodman said. It’s like understanding that the Earth isn’t flat >> continue

Washington Post

A hundred social scientists and geneticists gathered this week in Alexandria to sort out the meaning of race, and didn't, quite. When Leith Mullings, an anthropologist from the City University of New York, sardonically said that "only people of…

Read more

African Voices – a Multimedia Online-Exhibition

Smithsonian Institution

African Voices is a permanent exhibition that examines the diversity, dynamism, and global influence of Africa’s peoples and cultures over time in the realms of family, work, community, and the natural environment. Video interactives and sound stations provide selections from contemporary interviews, literature, proverbs, prayers, folk tales, songs, and oral epics. >> visit the exhibition

Smithsonian Institution

African Voices is a permanent exhibition that examines the diversity, dynamism, and global influence of Africa’s peoples and cultures over time in the realms of family, work, community, and the natural environment. Video interactives and sound stations provide selections…

Read more

Festivals and Cultural Change in Kathmandu, Nepal

Nepal News

With the increase in the population, Kathmandu valley’s dynamics and structures of population have changed. New migrant families are coming up and the structures of old families are transforming from extended ones to nucleus. The family relation is no more confined to a particular locality and caste as it has become heterogeneous in nature. Many families even have married relations to international families.

Since valley has turned into a metropolitan, one can witness the transformation taking place in our age-old rituals, festivals and cultures. From celebrating rituals to marriage, the valley has seen drastic and dramatic transformation. Traditional systems are fading away and new system is gradually replacing the older one. As usual, Kathmandu valley is embracing change keeping intact its tradition of harmony and accommodation >> continue

READ ALSO
Interview with Professor Dr. RAMESH RAJ KUNWAR, an anthropologist at Tribhuwan University Kirtipur on various issues on changing mode of festivals

LINKS UPDATED 12.8.2020

Nepal News

With the increase in the population, Kathmandu valley's dynamics and structures of population have changed. New migrant families are coming up and the structures of old families are transforming from extended ones to nucleus. The family relation is no…

Read more