National Geographic – ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Empire and the Liberation of Veiled Women: Lutz & Collins

In “The Color of Sex: Postwar Photographic Histories of Race and Gender,” by Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins (reprinted in The Anthropology of Media: A Reader, 2002, pps. 92-116), we encounter this very illuminating passage dealing with the figure of the veiled, non-Western woman, photographed by National Geographic, placing the apparent obsession with […]

Video Propaganda: Human Terrain System on National Geographic

In terms of American mainstream media propaganda at the service of U.S. wars of occupation, and particularly favourable to the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System, my vote for the most generous treatments, in descending order, are first the piece in the San Francisco Chronicle, second this prize in The Atlantic, third this recommendation to Obama […]

Does Wade Davis Do Gaza?

A former student was kind enough to draw my attention to the following video, a very interesting TED talk by anthropologist Wade Davis, a National Geographic “Explorer-in-Residence”: I have a lot of respect for Wade Davis and I have long been an admirer of his work on zombification in Haiti, which he calls the “ethnobiology” […]