Interembodiment: Relational living and interconnected thinking.

ABSTRACT The Committee (later Council) on Nutritional Anthropology was organized in the mid‐1970s to bring together the anthropology of food and nutrition that spanned archeology, evolutionary biological and physical, sociocultural, and also theoretical, applied, and policy‐engaged interests. This essay, drawing on my personal and professional experiences and prior American Anthropological Association contributions, outlines the history of the Society for Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (SAFN) with reflections on its 1970s origins, 1980s institutionalization, and 1990s through 2010s transitions. As touchstones, with reference to my research, writings, and advocacy, it emphasizes changing conceptualizations and approaches to hunger and human rights, with special attention to the challenges of breaking the links between hunger and conflict.

This Letter to the Editor critically engages with the “Borrowed Magic” roundtable held at the 2025 American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting, reading it through the author’s research on the Goddess cult as a device for historiography and theology. The letter examines the unresolved tension and resulting theological aporia between the “woman-centered” symbolic continuity of Goddess traditions and emerging non-binary frameworks. It further analyzes the generational conflict between authority rooted in long-term embodied practice and performative, aesthetically driven ritual forms circulating in digital environments. Discussions on the anti-colonial ethics of “research refusal” in bio-archaeology and the reproduction of historical knowledge through multimodal methods, such as sonic alchemy, are integrated into the analysis. The letter argues that contemporary spiritual communities are not merely ethnographic objects but active “laboratories of epistemology” where authenticity, memory, and gendered power are continuously renegotiated.

Abstract This conversation began as a roundtable at the 2023 joint meeting of the American Anthropological Association and the Canadian Anthropology Society in Toronto. The roundtable was part of the Executive Program and was intended as a follow-up to Kisha Supernant’s keynote presentation, which was entitled ‘Truth before transition. Reimagining anthropology as restorative justice.’ Considering the sensitive nature of the topic, we responded to a selection of written questions from the audience rather than taking open questions. The discussion was webcast, then transcribed and redacted. This article includes a portion of the question period as well as a contextual introduction that was not part of the initial conversation.

Introduction: In this study, we aimed to explore how Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM) in post-disaster Palu, Indonesia, manage their sexual identities under religious conservatism, patriarchal norms, and heightened moral surveillance following the 2018 earthquake. Within this religiously conservative and disaster-affected context, our objective was to understand how MSM employ impression-management strategies to navigate visibility, stigma, and safety, and to analyze their implications for mental health, healthcare-seeking behavior, and overall well-being. This study addresses gaps in the literature by situating MSM experiences within Indonesia’s sociocultural and religious frameworks, thereby contributing to regional and cross-cultural analyses of LGBTQ+ identity negotiation in Southeast Asia. Methods: This qualitative phenomenological study employed in-depth interviews, photo-elicitation, and digital ethnographic observation over six months in Palu. A total of twenty-five MSM participants aged 18–40 were purposively recruited to ensure diversity of experience and social background. Sampling continued until thematic saturation was reached, meaning no new themes emerged during ongoing analysis. Data collection included semi-structured interviews and analysis of interactions on online platforms (e.g., Telegram, BlueD, and Instagram). Visual materials contributed to the coding framework by illustrating non-verbal expressions of impression management, later integrated into thematic synthesis. Ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the Faculty of Public Health, Universitas Muhammadiyah Palu, following the British Psychological Society (BPS) and American Anthropological Association (AAA) ethical codes. Participants provided verbal and written informed consent, and all identifying details were anonymized. Results: The primary outcome of the study was an understanding of how MSM in Palu adaptively navigate identity, stigma, and safety through impression management. Key findings revealed that MSM maintain dual personas—performing heteronormativity in public (front-stage) while expressing their authentic identities within digital backstage spaces. Selective disclosure of sexual orientation was governed by contextual trust, relational safety, and fear of institutional stigma. Digital platforms functioned as crucial psychosocial and health-navigation spaces, enabling solidarity and access to information. However, overreliance on digital interactions sometimes intensified isolation and reproduced inequalities linked to digital literacy and class. While these adaptive strategies ensure survival under moral surveillance, they inadvertently reinforce structural stigma by normalizing concealment and restricting public visibility. Conclusion: In conclusion, this study contributes to understanding how Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM) in Palu construct survival and well-being through impression management under conditions of religious-patriarchal stigma and disaster-induced moral tightening. It illustrates that dual personas, selective disclosure, and digital backstage practices function both as protection and as mechanisms that perpetuate invisibility. These findings inform the design of culturally sensitive, confidentiality-centered health interventions, emphasizing peer navigation, digital outreach, and faith-inclusive stigma reduction. Future studies should investigate the long-term mental health impacts of sustained concealment and digital dependency, advancing inclusive policies and provider training across Indonesia’s public health systems and the broader Southeast Asian region.

Front and back cover caption, volume 41 issue 5 Front cover caption, volume 41 issue 5 WHEN EMPATHY BECOMES REVOLUTIONARY In December 2014, at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, hundreds of anthropologists transformed the lobby of Washington's Marriott Wardman Park Hotel into a site of collective mourning and protest. Bodies sprawled across the marble floor, participants held signs declaring ‘Black lives matter’. One invoked anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston's searing words: ‘If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it.’ This die‐in, organized in response to the killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and countless others, marked a moment when the discipline, built on crossing cultural boundaries to understand different ways of being, refused to remain silent about state‐sanctioned violence against Black communities. A decade later, Chip Colwell's guest editorial in this issue reminds us why this moment of professional witness has acquired a new urgency. In an era when empathy itself has become politically contested, dismissed as weakness by authoritarian movements, stripped from government vocabulary as ‘woke’, anthropology's methodological commitment to suspending judgment and entering other worldviews becomes a revolutionary act. As Hurston knew, and as Colwell affirms, silence equals complicity. The die‐in embodied the first act of empathy: identifying with humanity's suffering. Yet Colwell challenges anthropologists to undertake a second act: using ethnographic methods to understand injustice ‘in all its dimensions’, examining not only victims but also the systems and worldviews that perpetuate harm, including those of perpetrators. A third act demands empathy toward ourselves, recognizing the limits of what any single individual can achieve, and the risks associated with immersing oneself in others’ pain. This deeper empathy transforms protest into sustained ethnographic engagement. The bodies on that lobby floor embody anthropology's distinctive tradition of bearing witness across difference, from Cushing's defence of Zuni land rights to contemporary struggles for racial justice. In times when authorities deride understanding ‘the other’, ethnography becomes essential revolutionary work towards a new future. Back cover caption, volume 41 issue 5 GLOBAL FRAGILITY In this photograph from Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Melissa Demian consults with a local community group on violence prevention work that, until recently, was supported by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). Local practitioners methodically planned for sustainable peace‐building while their distant institutional partner was being dismantled overnight. In her article in this issue, Demian reveals how USIP's sudden collapse exposes the fiction that fragility is confined to certain geographical regions. USIP partners in Papua New Guinea spent months developing violence prevention strategies, building community networks, and translating abstract policy into concrete local actions, believing they were part of a 10‐year American commitment to addressing conflict drivers in Papua New Guinea, a partnership framed through contemporary security concerns and historical obligations dating to the Second World War. Yet in March 2025, these partners suddenly lost their access to USIP resources, the project suspended in administrative limbo. Ironically, those designated as requiring ‘stabilization’ continued their work while the stabilizers proved unstable. The community members gathered here, deemed vulnerable to state fragility by international policy, have demonstrated more resilience than the Washington‐based organization meant to assist them. Who truly occupies positions of precarity in the global development landscape? Local peace‐builders in Morobe Province, despite operating in a so‐called ‘fragile state’, maintained their networks and secured alternative funding. Meanwhile, USIP, with its half‐billion‐dollar headquarters and congressional mandate, was shut down at executive whim. Perhaps the real fragility lies not in the grassroots organizing of Papua New Guineans, but in the fickleness of distant powers whose commitments evaporate as quickly as their geopolitical anxieties shift.

ABSTRACTThis article is a slightly revised version of the 2021 Past President's address delivered virtually at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. I reflect on refusing the terms of dominant sensemaking in education and suggest that one of the most productive parts of our work is when it calls us into relationships and to engage deeply with the diverse desires for life and justice that children, families, and communities hold.

ABSTRACTThe papers presented in this special section were originally prepared for the American Anthropological Association's fourth annual symposium on anthropology and entrepreneurship, held in Toronto in November 2023 and sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. This special section follows two compilations from earlier Foundation‐sponsored symposia. The Foundation has provided support to the Association to recognize innovative ways of thinking about entrepreneurship, with a particular focus on (1) entrepreneurial behavior and the social, cultural, and economic institutions that facilitate the emergence and ongoing support of such behavior; (2) innovative approaches to entrepreneurship training and development; (3) partnerships and financial instruments that support new enterprises; and (4) innovative approaches to enterprises that explicitly aim to serve public interests and/or urgent social needs.

ABSTRACT At the 2022 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Seattle, WA, we organized a session called “Landscapes of Surveillance Care in Reproductive Health.” This introduction to our special issue represents a sustained conversation among panelists and other scholars regarding the complicated ways that surveillance and care play upon each other in our own ethnographic research and what we might learn from them.

The article is devoted to the theoretical and applied aspects of the martial anthropology and its formation as a separate scientific branch at the late 20th – early 21st century. In Western European and American anthropological studies, scientists often complain that little attention is paid to military topics. The main reason for ignoring military problems by academic science in Western democracies is the fear of researchers that they will be suspected of cooperation with state security agencies, since this sometimes contradicts ethical norms, for example, the code of the American Anthropological Association (hereinafter – AAA). However, after the events of 2001 (terrorist act in New York), the issue of cooperation between anthropologists and state authorities have become more relevant. These events have made it clear that the existing AAA code of ethics is insufficient in a situation where anthropology is of a great importance to the national security of a state, and a significant community of «practicing anthropologists» may face ethical dilemmas. At the late 2000s, in the process of constant scientific discussions about the significance of anthropological methods in modern wars and about the specifics of cooperation between anthropologists and the military, the formation of martial anthropology as a separate discipline has taken place. Militarism today is an integral part of a global society, and it is especially typical for modern Ukraine, which for ten years has been forced to defend its territory from aggression by the Russian Federation. Military culture is inherent in constantly operating armies and paramilitary formations, as well as for the entire Ukrainian society, because military efficiency today is the key task for the state. One way or another, Ukrainians are constantly forced to think about war, even when they are in relative safety (in particular, abroad). Therefore, a thorough study of the military cultural and historical traditions of Ukrainians and their modern life is one of the priority areas for modern ethnological science. Analysis of various approaches to the study of military culture, theoretical and applied aspects developed in the world humanities is critically necessary for modern ethnological research.

The researchers who are part of this dossier are members of the Working Group on Anthropology of Communities, Futures and Utopias in Latin America, affiliated to the Latin American Anthropological Association (ALA), and of the Research Network on Communities, Utopias and Futures (RIOCOMUN). The studies and reflections contained in this dossier are nourished by the discussions provoked by meetings and dialogues that have been taking place in the network for more than three years. The texts strung together for this issue of Encartes show different historical and cultural contexts in different states of the country and abroad: Baja California, Jalisco, Michoacán, Veracruz, Chiapas; and in the north Patagonian region of Argentina. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

In 1928, the American Anthropological Association declared that "Anthropology provided no scientific basis for discrimination against any people on the ground of racial inferiority, religious affiliation, or linguistic heritage" (Guthrie, 1976/1998/2004, p. 30). In 1945, Jung denounced race theory as a pseudo-science. In 1950, UNESCO released its statement denouncing race. Long discredited as scientifically invalid, the race concept still holds uncanny value and significance for Americans and Europeans. In effect, the concept seems to be mysteriously linked to the limited accessibility and the limited economic support that is allotted to people of colour, internationally. This paper will explore the global implications of Jung's expressed attitude towards people of colour prior to 1945, which I identify as an attitude of white supremacy, an attitude that stands in direct contrast to the analytical ethos, as expressed by the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP). This attitude may promote the continuance of racialized beliefs and behaviours within the planning and provision of care to individuals in need of medical and mental health services. It is requested that a written acknowledgment of harm be added to the works of C. G. Jung.

Abstract The articles in this special issue are the outcome of the panel: “Papers in Honor of Faye Ginsburg: Visual and Media Anthropology in the Middle East,” which was held virtually for the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings of November 2021. The reach of Ginsburg's work as well as her mentorship through the creation of NYU's Graduate Program in Culture & Media has shaped the ethnography of media and visual anthropology across a diversity of geographic regions. In this particular issue, we bring together scholars of SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa, a term that more broadly encompasses what is often referred to as the Middle East) whose projects are deeply influenced by Ginsburg's scholarship on shared anthropology, collaborative media practices and cultural activism. This introduction includes excerpts from a conversation with Ginsburg.

Abstract American anthropology is engaged in significant self‐reckonings that call for big changes to how anthropology is practiced. These include (1) recognizing and taking seriously the demands to decolonize the ways research is done, (2) addressing precarious employment in academic anthropology, and (3) creating a discipline better positioned to respond to urgent societal needs. A central role for ethnographic methods training is a thread that runs through each of these three reckonings. This article, written by a team of cultural, biocultural, and linguistic anthropologists, outlines key connections between ethnographic methods training and the challenges facing anthropology. We draw on insights from a large‐scale survey of American Anthropological Association members to examine current ethnographic methods capabilities and training practices. Study findings are presented and explored to answer three guiding questions: To what extent do our current anthropological practices in ethnographic methods training serve to advance or undermine current calls for disciplinary change? To what extent do instructors themselves identify disconnects between their own practices and the need for innovation? And, finally, what can be done, and at what scale, to leverage ethnographic methods training to meet calls for disciplinary change?

Written by the Convenor of the Anthropology of Tourism Interest Group (ATIG) at the American Anthropological Association on behalf of the Board and membership, this memorial article celebrates the life and multifaceted work of Dr. Valene Smith, the pioneering founder of the subdiscipline of the anthropology of tourism. It examines her prescience throughout her life that made her the pathbreaking scholar, teacher, traveler, and tourism practitioner that she was. Such foresight led to her convening the first anthropology of tourism panel at the AAAs in Mexico City in 1974, the product of which became the classic volume, Hosts and Guests. his and her subsequent publications are put into broader context of other classic tourism-focused social scientific works at the time, revealing her role in the development of tourism studies more broadly. As anthropologists are particularly keen on tracing kinship and lineage, the article argues that she rightly is considered anthropologists’ and tourism scholars’ “foremother”, or ancestral mother, who paved the way for generations of anthropologists to begin taking tourism seriously, recognizing its nature as a “total social fact” that can shed light on the holistic human experience.

Abstract We use a mix of qualitative and quantitative analyses to examine 1354 survey responses from members of the American Anthropological Association about their practice and teaching of cultural anthropology research methods. Latent profile analysis and an examination of responses to open‐ended survey questions reveal distinctive methodological clustering among anthropologists. However, two historical approaches to ethnography remain prominent: deep hanging out and a mixed methods toolkit, with the former remaining central to the practice and teaching of all forms of contemporary cultural anthropology. Further, many anthropologists are committed to advancing research methods that account for power imbalances in fieldwork, such as through community‐based and participatory approaches. And a substantial number also teach a wider array of methods and techniques that open new career pathways for anthropologists. Overall, our study reveals a core set of ethnographic practices—loosely, participant‐observation, informal interviews, and the experiential immersion of the ethnographer—while also highlighting the great breadth of cultural anthropological research practice and pedagogy. The findings presented here can help inform how current and future anthropological practitioners and educators position themselves to meet the ever‐changing demands of community members, funders, clients, collaborators, and students.

Withdrawal: “Fossil Futures in Europe” by Bilge Firat, Anthropology News 2023; 64(5): 25–27. The above article, published online on October 10, 2023 in Wiley Online Library (https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/AN.1608) has been withdrawn by agreement between the author and the magazine's owner (American Anthropological Association) due to privacy and consent concerns about the information contained in the article.

Abstract Academic anthropology is a paradoxical realm. On the one hand, opportunities for creatively exploring the human condition are hemmed in by administrators and bureaucracy. On the other hand, scholars in the academy have the space to call for justice—in Palestine and elsewhere, as they did in 2023, when the American Anthropological Association passed a resolution to boycott Israeli institutions. This paradoxical quality suggests some parallels between anthropology and the human rights system, especially in their logics and activities. Drawing from my experiences as I step off the professional academic ladder, I reflect on how this complex academic environment can lead to cynicism and resentment, yet also produce launching pads to collective action.

Abstract In July 2023, the American Anthropological Association's (AAA) members voted to boycott Israeli academic institutions until they end their complicity in violating Palestinian rights as stipulated in international law. The AAA's adoption of this resolution shows the potential good of anthropology, both within and beyond the academy. Anthropology's disciplinary scholarly processes, methods, and theoretical frameworks paved the way for this resolution, providing one answer to the question, What good is anthropology?

This editorial reflects on the controversy at the American Anthropological Association and the Canadian Anthropology Society's conference, where a session on the fixity of biological sex was cancelled. Retracing developments from Simone de Beauvoir's foundational ideas to the theories of second‐wave feminism it emphasizes how the gender concept was posed as a dynamic cultural construct. rather than a fixed biological fate, then shows that biological sex is also more complex than earlier characterizations of it as given, fixed, and immutable. Underscoring the complexities of academic debate and inclusivity, the piece highlights anthropologists’ work in revealing gender diversity and spotlights the role of young LGBTQI researchers in reshaping our concepts of sex and gender, which have moved from fixed binaries to a more fluid understanding in contemporary thought. The editorial concludes with a call for an integrated, non‐dichotomous approach to (cultural) gender and (biological) sex, a nuanced understanding that recognizes their interplay.