On October 27, I presented some of my preliminary research at the Royal Anthropological Institute’s 2021 Anthropology and Conservation conference at the “Living with Diversity in a More-than-human World” panel. In this talk, I discuss a multispecies community in the Texas Hill Country, centering on human-javelina relations.
Tag: Biology
“Of People and Peccaries: Perception and Politics in the Texas Hill Country” Transcript (RAI Anthropology and Conservation 2021)
Presentation Slides: INTRODUCTION On my first day of fieldwork, I climbed a steep hill where my collaborator, Roger, reported a group of javelinas lived on his property. As I crested the hill, I noticed shapes obscured in the shade of the Ashe juniper trees. Unsure at first, I was met by a musky smell followed…
Adventures with Peccaries pt. 2
I spent time out in the Hill Country, north of San Antonio ,Texas. The clan that I worked with on this trip was made up of 8 total members (4 adults, 2 subadults, and 2 juveniles). I worked on top a hill to determine their home site and bedding patterns. I also tracked them around…
Teaching Evolution in the South: Framing Evolutionary Theory for Religious Students
I am a biocultural anthropologist and teach at a university in the southern United States of America. This means that many of my students are religious and haven’t been taught evolution correctly. Students come in to my introduction to anthropology, anthropology of science, and epidemiology classes with a scant and incorrect notion of natural selection…
Hummingbirds are Nature’s…
One of my passions is studying multispecies entanglements. As an anthropologist, the ways in which human activities affect the lives of other living organisms are of central interest but the ontological relationships of other organisms goes deep. A few weeks ago I was having a conversation with my partner (who is a gender scholar) and…
Spring 2019 Introduction to Anthropology Syllabus
Intro to Anthropology (ANTH 1101-001) UNC Charlotte, Spring 2019 Mon/Wed/Fri (10:10-11:00am) in Rowe 161 Instructor: Adam Johnson Office Hours: M/W 12:30-1:30pm ajohn344@uncc.edu by appointment in Barnard 244A This syllabus contains policies and expectations I have established for this course. Please read the entire syllabus carefully and refer to it regularly throughout the semester. Course Description…
Decolonizing Primatology: Part I
We all have texts that are formative in our academic, professional, spiritual, personal, mental, and philosophical lives. There are a few books that I can point to as turning points in my intellectual life. For example, Orientalism by Edward Said, Le Suicide by Émile Durkheim, Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas, Why I’m Not a Scientist by Jon Marks are all…
Revisiting Geno-colonization: Senator Warren and “Native DNA”
I woke up this morning to the news that Senator Elizabeth Warren has released a DNA test “providing strong evidence” that she has a Native American ancestor 6-10 generations ago (I’ll unpack that later). While I appreciate Senator Warren’s take-down of banking executives and much of her politics, this is a misguided tug-of-war with Trump….
The Value of Anthropology: My Story
Dr. Agustín Fuentes argues that it is human creativity that is the defining characteristic of our species ( see my review of The Creative Spark here: Book Review- The Creative Spark). I agree with his position and there is no better way to see this than to focus on one of the most stark expressions of our…
Biology, Race, and “Orientalism”
Edward Said published Orientalism in 1978 and is highly influential, both in post-colonial studies and social theory. Said argues that through the construction of the ‘Orient’ (the East) and the other the ‘Occident’ (the West) defines itself. Western representations of the orient are merely a pseudo-intellectual endeavor of justifying and exalt its own existence instead of a sincere…
Anthropology 365 