The imponderabilia of our COVID times As medical anthropologists well versed in the social grammar of infectious disease, the global spread of the coronavirus has pressed us to the edges of history. Writing from the centre, the ground keeps…
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated both the unsustainability and the fragility of our current food system, across multiple scales. COVID-19 has proven to be the litmus test for the current industrialized food system, one that has, in certain circles,…
When the first cases of infection started to appear in southern Germany, Jens Spahn, the Federal Minister of Health, was optimistic about the ability of German health authorities to contact trace and isolate infected persons (n-tv 2020). Everyday life would…
When Steven Robins delivered his inaugural lecture as a Professor of Social Anthropology at Stellenbosch University near Cape Town a few years ago, he related his motivation for a career in anthropology to his biography and family background. Now Robins,…
In the city of Johannesburg hundreds, perhaps thousands, of blind and otherwise disabled cross-border migrants – mostly from Zimbabwe – try to survive in the city. They live under conditions of extreme precarity, many residing in unlawfully occupied buildings, subject…