One of the first lessons I learned in graduate school was how to characterize an ethnography in a single phrase or sentence. These characterizations followed a predictable pattern: X is a book about Y in Z — witchcraft in the Sudan, adolescence in Samoa, AIDS in Haiti — as if the phenomenon, its place, and its people could be captured …
At the end of 2009, linguists around the world collected words to characterize the first decade of the new millennium. “Aporkalypse” appeared at the top of their list, describing a swine-inspired end of days ushered in by the threat of bird flu. Though playful, this term points to a growing recognition that animals –and their diseases –have determining …
Science, Medicine, and Anthropology