Anthropology is the study of the human condition from the deep past to the emerging present. The field is unified by its commitment to engaged field research that seeks to enhance understanding across boundaries of culture, nation, language, tradition, history and identity. A holistic discipline, anthropology regards economy, politics, culture and society as inseparable elements of humanity’s complex long-term history. A bridge between the humanities, social, and natural sciences, anthropology documents the diversity of our communities and examines the consequences of our commonalities. Because it engages directly with communities around the world, anthropology has a unique capacity to bring the entire human experience to bear on vital questions of sustainability, equality, and mutual understanding that will shape the future of the planet.
Cornell’s Department of Anthropology is one of the most respected programs in the world with a long tradition of innovation and a legacy of leadership in the discipline. The work of its faculty traces the human career from the emergence of the species to the formation of 21st century post-colonialism. Our ethnographic, archaeological and biological research links empirical observations to critical theoretical approaches. Key themes in ongoing research projects and teaching profiles include: medicine and culture; politics, inequality and sovereignty; economy, finance, corporations and law; materiality and aesthetics; gender, personhood and identity; ethics and humanitarianism; humans and animals; colonialism and post-coloniality. Our students and faculty work around the globe from Ithaca, India and Indonesia to the Caribbean and Central America, from Japan, Africa and Nepal to China and the Caucasus, from the circumpolar North to the Global South. The Anthropology Collections, housed in McGraw Hall and used in a range of courses, include over 20,000 ethnographic and archaeological objects whose origins span the globe and represent over 500,000 years of human history.
Department website2020. Tasting Qualities: The Past and Future of Tea. Oakland: University of California Press.
2019. How Nature Works: Rethinking Labor on a Troubled Planet. Sarah Besky and Alex Blanchette, editors. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research (SAR) Press.
2014. The Darjeeling Distinction: Labor and Justice on Fair-Trade Tea Plantations in India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Forthcoming (2021). “The Plantation’s Outsides: The Work of Settlement in Kalimpong, India.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 63(2).
Forthcoming (2021). “Teawords: Experiments with Quality in Industrial Tea Production.” American Anthropologist 123(1).
2020. “Empire and Indigestion: Materializing Tannins in the Indian Tea Industry.” Social Studies of Science 50(3): 398-417.
2017. “Fixity: On the Inheritance and Maintenance of Tea Plantation Houses in Darjeeling, India.” American Ethnologist 44(4): 617-631.
2017. “The Land in Gorkhaland: On the Edges of Belonging in Darjeeling, India.” Environmental Humanities 9(1): 18-39.
2017. “Tea as ‘Hero Crop’? Embodied Algorithms and Industrial Reform in India.” Science as Culture. 26(1): 11-31.
2016. “Placing Plants in Territory” (co-authored with Jonathan Padwe). Environment and Society: Advances in Research 7: 9-28.
2016. “The Future of Price: Communicative Infrastructures and the Financialization of Indian Tea.” Cultural Anthropology 31(1): 4-29.
2015. “Agricultural Justice, Abnormal Justice? Fair Trade’s Plantation Problem.” Antipode 47(5): 1141-1160.
2015. “Looking for Work: Placing Labor in Food Studies” (co-authored with Sandy Brown). Labor: Studies of Working-Class History of the Americas 12(1-2): 19-43.
2014. “The Labor of Terroir and the Terroir of Labor: Geographical Indication on Darjeeling Tea Plantations.” Agriculture and Human Values 31(1): 83-96.
2008. “Can a Plantation be Fair? Paradoxes and Possibilities in Fair Trade Darjeeling Tea Certification.” Anthropology of Work Review 29(1): 1-9.
Forthcoming. “Seaweed.” In Solarities: Inflections and Refractions, edited by Amelia Moore, Cymene Howe, and Jeff Diamanti. Santa Barbara, CA: Punctum Books.
2020. “Can’t Get There from Here? Writing Place and Moving Narratives.” In Writing Anthropology: Essays on Craft and Commitment, Carole McGranahan, editor. Pp. 83-86. Durham: Duke University Press.
2020. “Monoculture.” In Anthropocene Unseen: A Lexicon. Cymene Howe and Anand Pandian, editors. Pp. 277-280. Santa Barbara, CA: Punctum Books.
2019. “Introduction: The Fragility of Work” (co-authored with Alex Blanchette). In How Nature Works: Rethinking Labor on a Troubled Planet, Besky and Blanchette, editors. Pp. 1-22. Santa Fe: SAR Press.
2019. “Exhaustion and Endurance in Sick Landscapes.” In How Nature Works: Rethinking Labor on a Troubled Planet, Besky and Blanchette, editors. Pp. 23-40. Santa Fe: SAR Press.
2018. “Subnational Occupations: Managing Darjeeling Tea.” In Darjeeling Reconsidered: Histories, Politics, and Environments. Townsend Middleton and Sara Shneiderman, editors. Pp. 197-218. New Delhi: Oxford University Press India.
2010. “Colonial Pasts and Fair Trade Futures: Changing Modes of Production and Regulation on Darjeeling Tea Plantations.” In Fair Trade and Social Justice: Global Ethnographies. Sarah Lyon and Mark Moberg, editors. Pp. 97-122. New York: NYU Press.
2020. “What’s in a Cuppa?” Queen’s Quarterly (Winter): 554-565
2020. “Afterword: Work, Place, and the Value of Ethnography.” Anthropology of Work Review 41(2): 129-132.
2020. “Tea Time for the Pandemic.” University of California Press blog, May 21.
2018. “The Naturalization of Work” (co-edited with Alex Blanchette). Collection for Cultural Anthropology’s website series “Theorizing the Contemporary.”
2018. “Introduction: The Naturalization of Work.” In “The Naturalization of Work,” edited by Besky and Blanchette. Theorizing the Contemporary, Cultural Anthropology website. July 26.
2018. “Sickness” In “The Naturalization of Work,” edited by Besky and Blanchette. Theorizing the Contemporary, Cultural Anthropology website. July 26.
2017. “Monoculture.” In “Lexicon for an Anthropocene Yet Unseen,” edited by Cymene Howe and Anand Pandian. Theorizing the Contemporary, Cultural Anthropology website. June 28.
2017. Preface to the Chinese edition of The Darjeeling Distinction. Chapati Mystery. May 16.
2017. “Ten Questions with Sarah Besky.” Chapati Mystery. January 27.
2016. “The Materiality of Finance: An Interview with Sarah Besky” (with Ned Dostaler). Dialogues, Cultural Anthropology website. March 17.
2016. Response to Daniel Münster’s review of The Darjeeling Distinction on Allegra Laboratory. January 25.
2015. “Inheriting the Hill Station.” Essay on “Edge Effects.” May 19.
2015. “Can’t Get There from Here? Writing Place and Moving Narratives.” Essay in the
“Writer’s Workshop” Series on “Savage Minds.” March 26.
2014. “The Promise of Fair Trade for Plantation Laborers.” For a Better World. Fair World Project: Portland, Oregon. Issue 9 (Fall): 15-16.
BBC Radio 4. “Thinking Allowed.” December 2, 2020.
CaMP Anthropology Interview on “Tasting Qualities.” October 23, 2020.
“Science for the People” Podcast. October 5, 2020.
“The Slowdown” June 13, 2020.
World101x: University of Queensland MOOC module, July 13, 2017.
Al Jazeera’s “The Stream” episode on tea plantations. December 14, 2016.
“Working Concepts.” Interview and podcast on “Edge Effects.” March 29, 2016
“New Books in South Asia.” January 14, 2015.
BBC Radio 4. “Thinking Allowed.” October 22, 2014.
“The Farm Report.” Heritage Radio News. May 22, 2014.
“It’s Hot in Here.” WCBN Ann Arbor. January 17, 2014.
“Against the Grain.” KPFA Berkeley, CA. November 22, 2010.
Books
Futures after Progress: Hope and Doubt in Late Industrial Baltimore. 2024. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Edited Collections
“Fieldwork Confessionals.” 2023. American Anthropologist 125(3): 623–72. (Co-edited with Ali Feser, Alix Johnson, Erin McFee, and Amy Leia McLachlan.)
“Vacancy.” 2022. Anthropological Quarterly 95(2): 241–474.
“Breathing Late Industrialism.” 2020. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 6: 416–590. (Co-edited with Alison Kenner.)
Peer-Reviewed Articles
“The Little Things.” 2023. Part of a peer-reviewed collection called “Hundreds for Katie.” Eduardo Hazera, ed. Anthropology and Humanism 48(2): 401.
“Fieldwork Confessionals.” 2023. American Anthropologist 125(3): 623–8. (Co-authored with Ali Feser, Alix Johnson, Erin McFee, and Amy Leia McLachlan.)
“I know I shouldn't say this, but...” 2023. American Anthropologist 125(3): 633–7.
“Uncertainty in Motion: Rumors of a Proxy War in Late Industrial Baltimore.” 2023. Cultural Anthropology 38(3): 303–33.
“Vacancy: An Introduction.” 2022. Anthropological Quarterly 95(2): 241–76.
“Postindustrial Futures and the Edge of the Frontier.” 2022. Anthropological Quarterly 95(2): 277–310.
“Dissociation.” 2022. Part of a peer-reviewed forum called “The Vertiginous: Temporalities and Affects of Living in Vertigo.” Daniel M. Knight, Fran Markowitz, and Martin Demant Frederiksen, eds. Anthropological Theory Commons, June 3.
“Atmospheric Coalitions: Shifting the Middle in Late Industrial Baltimore.” 2020. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 6: 462–85.
“Breathing Late Industrialism.” 2020. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 6: 416–38. (Co-authored with Alison Kenner.)
“Unbelonging: The Politics of Address.” 2020. Part of a peer-reviewed forum called "Futile Political Gestures." Galina Stjepanovic, ed. Anthropological Theory Commons, October 16.
“Waste-to-Energy: Garbage Prospects and Subjunctive Politics in Late-industrial Baltimore.” 2019. American Ethnologist 46(3): 328–42.
“‘It’s exhausting to create an event out of nothing.’ Slow Violence and the Manipulation of Time.” 2018. Cultural Anthropology 33(1): 142–71.
“Accountable Talk: ‘Real’ Conversations in Baltimore City Schools.” 2017. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 48(1): 77–97.
“‘…And That’s Why I Teach For America’: American Education Reform and the Role of Redemptive Stories.” 2016. Text & Talk 36(2): 111–31.
“Teach For All: Storytelling ‘Shared Solutions’ and Scaling Global Reform.” 2015. Education Policy Analysis Archives 23(45): 1–27.
Book Reviews
“The Sustainability Myth: Environmental Gentrification and the Politics of Justice by Melissa Checker.” 2021. Political and Legal Anthropology Review 44(2): 106–8.
“Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity by Mahmood Mamdani.” 2013. Anthropological Quarterly 86(3): 927–33.
Essays, Podcasts, and Public Scholarship
Author of “Curtis Bay Residents Deserve a Coal-free Future.” 2024. Op-ed for the Baltimore Sun, February 18.
Interviewed (by Fern Shen) for “After a Century of Industrial Accidents and Toxic Exposures, Curtis Bay Residents Say They’ve Had Enough.” 2022. Baltimore Brew, December 5.
Author of public and written testimony on the CSX coal terminal explosion. 2022. Baltimore City Council Investigatory Hearing, June 15. (Beginning at 56:30 minutes into linked recording.)
Guest (with Rasheeda Green) on “Geographies of Privilege.” 2021. Episode of Crossroads podcast, May 19.
Interviewed (by Kate Blackwood) for “Ahmann Co-edits Journal Issue on 'Late Industrialism.’” 2020. Cornell Chronicle, November 30.
Work featured on “Let it Burn.” 2020. Episode of Crossroads podcast, June 16.
Author of “Toxic Disavowal.” 2020. Somatosphere, January 20.
Interviewed (by Alize Arıcan) for “Features.” 2019. American Ethnologist, September 20.
Author of “America’s Post-industrial Futures.” 2018. Photo essay for Sapiens. November 28.
Interviewed (by Alexandra Vieux Frankel) for “This Was An Event.” 2018. Dialogues, Cultural Anthropology, June 19.
Guest (with David Giles and Elana Resnick) on “Episode 8.” 2018. Conversations in Anthropology podcast, February 11.
Author (with Vincent Ialenti) of “Trump’s Slogan: More About the ‘Make’ Than the ‘Great.’” 2017. Op Ed for Sapiens. April 25.
Author of “The Incinerator Does Not Exist: Sensory Engagement with Toxic Potentials.” 2017. Part of a series called “Sensory Engagements with a Toxic World.” Chisato Fukuda, ed. Second Spear, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, March 29.
Author of “On Not Being Seen.” 2016. Part of a series called “Ethnographer as Advocate.” Haley Bryant and Emily Cain, eds. Anthropology News. February 17.
Interviewed (by Diane Stopyra) for “The Great Garbage Fire Debate: Should We be Burning Our Trash into Energy?” 2017. Salon, January 2.
Author of “Curtis on the Bay: Failed Development and the Mythology of Trump.” 2016. Part of a series called “Crisis of Liberalism.” Dominic Boyer, ed. Hot Spots, Cultural Anthropology. November 30.
Recent recorded talks
“Time Bomb: Two Hundred Years of Toxic Disavowal in Late Industrial South Baltimore.” 2022. Johns Hopkins University, Department of Anthropology, December 6.
“Hope at the End of the World: Two Views from Late Industrial Baltimore.” 2022. University of Delaware, Department of Anthropology, October 27.
“How Waste Became Renewable in Baltimore: A Cautionary Tale.” 2022. Cornell University, Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, May 9.
Book
2014. Mosquito Trails: Ecology, Health, and the Politics of Entanglement. Oakland: University of California Press.
Edited Journal Issues
2021. “Pollution and Toxicity.” Environment and Society: Advances in Research, Vol. 12 edited with Josh Fisher, Mary Mostafanezhad, and Sarah Wiebe
2020. "Medical Anthropology and Covid-19," Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 34.4, edited with Vincanne Adams
2019. “Human Animal Health in Medical Anthropology,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 33.1, edited with Hannah Brown
Journal Articles
2023. Yates-Doerr, Emily and Alex M. Nading. “Introduction: Citational Politics in Medical Anthropology,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 37(3): 177-181.
2023. Nading, Alex M. “The Plantation as Hot Spot: Capital, Science, Labor, and the Earthly Limits of Global Health,” Medicine Anthropology Theory 10(2): 1-26.
2022. Fisher, Josh and Alex M. Nading. “Playing Ethnographically, Living Well Together: Notes from an Experiment in Collaboration,” Ethnography.
2021. Fisher, Josh and Alex Nading. “The End of the Cooperative Model (As We Knew It): Commoning and Co-Becoming in Two Nicaraguan Cooperatives,” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 4(4): 1232-1254.
2021. Fisher, Josh, Mary Mostafanezhad, Alex Nading, and Sarah Wiebe. “Pollution and Toxicity: Cultivating Ecological Practices for Troubled Times.” Environment & Society: Advances in Research 12: 1-4.
2020. “Living in a Toxic World,” Annual Review of Anthropology 49: 209-224.
2019. “Ethnography in a Grievance: Documentary Mechanisms in Nicaragua’s Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemic,” Medicine Anthropology Theory 6(2).
2019. (with Hannah Brown) “Introduction: Human Animal Health in Medical Anthropology,” in “Human Animal Health in Medical Anthropology,” invited special issue of Medical Anthropology Quarterly 33(1): 5-23.
2018. (with Lucy Lowe). “Social Justice as Epidemic Control: Two Latin American Case Studies,” Medical Anthropology 37(6): 458-471.
2018. (with Josh Fisher). “Zopilotes, Alacranes, y Hormigas (Vultures, Scorpions, and Ants): Animal Metaphors as Organizational Politics in a Nicaraguan Garbage Crisis,” Antipode 50(4): 997-1015.
2017. “Orientation and Crafted Bureaucracy: Finding Dignity in Nicaraguan Food Safety,” American Anthropologist 119(3): 478-490.
2017. (with Abigail Neely). “Global Health from the Outside: The Promise of Place-Based Research,” Health and Place 45: 55-63.
2017. “Local Biologies, Leaky Things, and the Chemical Infrastructure of Global Health,” Medical Anthropology 36(2): 141-156.
2016. “Evidentiary Symbiosis: On Paraethnography in Human-Microbe Relations,” Science as Culture 25(4): 560-581.
2015. “Chimeric Globalism: Global Health in the Shadow of the Dengue Vaccine,” American Ethnologist 42(2): 356-370.
2015. “The Lively Ethics of Global Health GMOs: The Case of the Oxitec Mosquito,” BioSocieties 10(1): 24-47.
2013. “Humans, Animals, and Health: From Ecology to Entanglement,” Environment and Society: Advances in Research 40(1): 60-78.
2013. “‘Love Isn’t There in Your Stomach:’ A Moral Economy of Medical Citizenship among Nicaraguan Community Health Workers,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 27 (1): 84-102.
2012. “‘Dengue Mosquitoes are Single Mothers:’ Biopolitics Meets Ecological Aesthetics in Nicaraguan Community Health Work,” Cultural Anthropology 27 (4): 572-596.
2011. “Foundry Values: Artisanal Aluminum Recyclers, Economic Involution, and Skill in Periurban Managua” Urban Anthropology 40(3-4): 319-360.
Chapters in Edited Volumes
2021. “Eradication against Ambivalence,” in Mosquitopia? The Place of Pests in a Healthy World, edited by Marcus Hall and Dan Tamir. London: Routledge Press.
2019. “The Heat of Work: Dissipation, Solidarity, and Kidney Disease in Nicaragua,” in How Nature Works: Rethinking Labor on a Troubled Planet, School for Advanced Research Advanced Seminar, edited by Sarah Besky and Alex Blanchette. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press.
2019. “Heat,” In Anthropocene Unseen: A Lexicon, edited by Cymene Howe and Anand Pandian. New York: Punctum Books, pp. 226-230.
2018. “How to Build Rapport with Cats and Humans,” in Living with Animals: Bonds across Species, Edited by Natalie Porter and Ilana Gershon. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, pp. 29-40.
2017. “Resistance or Parasitism? Waste Scavengers and Dengue Mosquito Control in Nicaragua,” in Thinking Through Resistance: A Study of Public Oppositions to Contemporary Global Health Practice, Edited by Nicola Bulled. New York: Routledge Press, pp. 58-74.
2015. “Ebola, Chimeras, and Unexpected Speculation.” Limn, Issue 5, “Ebola’s Ecologies,” Edited by Andrew Lakoff
Podcasts, Online Journals, and Blogs
2023. “Cosmic Conversation: The Anthropocene as Disaster and Disease,” Humanities Research Group in the Ecology of Practices, Haus de Kulturen de Welt and Max Planck Institute for the History of Science “Anthropocene Campus” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWLWKshRxWM
2023. Fisher, Josh and Alex Nading “Plantation Palimpsests in Urban Nicaragua,” Theorizing the Contemporary, Fieldsights, January 24.
2022. Interview on “The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast” with Aaron Goodman, April 14
2021. Sarah Besky, Ilana Gershon, Alex Nading, Christopher Nelson, Katie Nelson, Heather Paxson, Brad Weiss, “A Statement on AAA’s Publishing Future,” published simultaneously on the SCA, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, APLA, and SAW website
2021. Nading, Alex. “Editor’s Introduction,” in “Resistance, Resilience, and the Sojourner Syndrome: A Forum in Honor of Leith Mullings,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly online, March 10
2019. (with Ann Kelly) “Life/Non-Life Revived,” in Life/Non-Life: A Forum, in Somatosphere.
2019. “Epicrisis and ‘My Shriveled Plant Moment,’” Theorizing the Contemporary, Fieldsights, April 25.
2019. “Filtration,” in an online series on “Volumetric Sovereignty, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space blog
2018. “Dams and Dialysis.” Theorizing the Contemporary, Fieldsites, July 26.
2018. (with Josh Fisher and Chantelle Falconer). “Ethnographic Designs for Buen Vivir: Fieldnotes from Nicaragua,” Platypus, blog of the Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing
2018. “Is There a Place for Environmental Justice in Global Health?” Edge Effects, blog of the University of Wisconsin Center for Culture, History, and Environment
2017. “Can Microbes Give Gifts?” in a Book Forum on Ed Yong’s I Contain Multitudes, Medical Anthropology Quarterly “Critical Care” blog
2017. “Chemicals Sit in Places,” in Sensorial Engagements with a Toxic World, edited by Chisato Fukuda. Medical Anthropology Quarterly “Second Spear” blog
2016. “Heat,” Fieldsights, Cultural Anthropology website
2016. “Zika, Hype, and Speculation,” in Forum on the Zika Virus, in Somatosphere
2014. “Bleach,” in Commonplaces, edited by Tomas Matza and Harris Solomon, in Somatosphere
Book:
Articles and Book Chapters:
Book:
Edited Books:
Articles and Chapters:
"Ethnography after Anthropology: Become Moles not Mining Corporations." 2023. American Ethnologist 50(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13201
"Afterward: Ecological Inqueeries." Co-authored with Nicole Seymour. 2022. Environmental Humanities 14 (3). https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-9962992
"Pronouns for an apocalyptic future: asymmetrical terms for a new era." 2021. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 4 (1): 1989849. https://doi.org/10.1080/25729861.2021.1989849
"Power, Care and Species Difference in Orangutan Rehabilitation in Sarawak: A Roundtable." Co-written with Alicia Izharuddin, Monamie Bhadra Haines, Faizah Zakaria, and Robert Cribb. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 94, no. 1 (2021): 203-215. https://doi.org/10.1353/ras.2021.0019
“From Decolonial Indigenous Knowledges to Vernacular Ideas in Southeast Asia.” September 2020. History and Theory. 59(3):413-420. https://doi.org/10.1111/hith.12169
“Specificity.” April 2020. Indonesia. 109: 65-70. https://doi.org/10.1353/ind.2020.0008
Public Scholarship: