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Becoming Experts: Activists Working Against Science Based on Misinformation
In County Donegal, Ireland, an estimated 30,000 buildings are crumbling due to governmental and commercial mishandling of building materials such as concrete. A lack of urgency in governmental response has left homeowners living with severe mold, electrical risks, structural cracks and the impending threat of their homes collapsing, see image below. Homeowners have described living in these homes as being in a constant state of fear—fear their homes will crumble on top of them but also fear that the government they once trusted “to do right by them” will never fix their homes. (more…) (read more...)
“Tech-ing” the “Justice Gap” and/or (Re)imagining Access to Justice in Africa
“What would we say if a health system did not cure 60 to 70 per cent of health problems properly? And I can tell you more, this gigantic justice gap affects more people in the world than some of the big diseases we all know and read about – malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis!” a speaker exclaimed at an international conference called “Tech the Justice Gap” in 2020. Drawing a comparison between healthcare and access to justice, he continued, “5.1 billion unmet justice needs,” emphasizing that the lack of access to justice requires greater international attention. (more…) (read more...)
Salt: A Provocation
Salt. That everyday thing we use to season our meals, relax our muscles, or make our icy roadways safer to traverse. Salt is an inescapable part of human experience, and yet, as anthropologists, it often escapes our attention. In recent years, anthropologists have turned their attention to what Cymene Howe (2026) calls the ‘elemental’, referring to the objects and processes – often simultaneously both – that constitute the world. Ongoing environmental crisis means coming to experience the elemental in new ways, both within and around the body. Salt, or sodium chloride, is one of these elements. (more…) (read more...)