The Enawenê-nawê people of the Amazon rainforest make beautifully engineered fishing dams. Living alongside this indigenous community, Dr Chloe Nahum-Claudel observed how the act of trapping fish shapes their minds, bodies and relationships. The proximity of life and death brings human vulnerability sharply into focus.
India is home to one of the most vibrant, engaged and mystifying democracies on the planet. Cambridge academics, across a wide range of disciplines, are working on the ground – with citizens, charities, NGOs, fellow scholars and politicians – to try to untangle it.
Anthropology looks at human differences in its study of the ‘other’ and at human commonalities in its more recent focus on the ‘suffering’. In identifying ways that anthropology can contribute to solutions for world problems, Professor Joel Robbins proposes an approach he calls the ‘anthropology of the good’.
A study by Tibetan scholar Lobsang Yongdan revisits a long-ignored section of a historic text to reveal how Tibetans were engaging with western scientific knowledge two centuries ago. His research into a geography of the world, first published by a lama in 1830, challenges stereotypical views of Tibet as an isolated and inward-looking society.
The Zimbabwean elections will quickly drop off the international news agenda. In her third and final report, anthropology student Rowan Jones ponders Zimbabwe’s place in world politics and its complex relationships with the West.
In the township of Mbare, anthropology student Rowan Jones finds a complex picture of poverty and propaganda - plus a baffling level of support for Mugabe. In her second report from this troubled nation, she digs into recent political history to make sense of what she encounters.
A student photography competition showcases some of the stunning visuals that result from modern Social Anthropology research
When radical feminists took their cause from Europe to North Africa, the outcome was a deepening of the divides they sought to break down. Social anthropology student Raffaella Taylor-Seymour argues for greater reflection about the meaning of freedom.
A new project based in Cambridge’s Division of Social Anthropology is looking at interactions between China, Mongolia and Russia at the point where these nations meet – on the immense border that separates them.
At first glance, reasons for researching locations as different as the Arctic and Mexico are not self-evident. But comparison is at the core of Social Anthropology and, for Dr Barbara Bodenhorn, a dual focus on these remarkably different environments is shaping a cross-cultural exchange programme between young members of three indigenous communities.
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