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Anthro Log

Author: Anisa Mukhtar

  • Existentialism and the Ethics of Freedom

    I just finished reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism, and it kind of broke my brain. The idea that “existence precedes essence” or, that humans are not born with a predetermined nature but define themselves through actions, feels both liberating and terrifying.

    At its core, existentialism asks what it means to be free in a world without inherent meaning. Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus all grappled with this. If there is no God, no cosmic plan, then we are radically responsible for what we do. No excuses. No blaming fate. That freedom is both a burden and a gift.

    But existentialism is really about authenticity. Sartre’s idea of “bad faith” (self-deception) warns us against outsourcing our moral decisions to social norms, religion, or tradition. Beauvoir applied this to gender: women must transcend their roles, not just inhabit them passively.

    Camus added a twist: even if life is absurd (think Sisyphus), we can still find meaning through rebellion and solidarity. His image of Sisyphus smiling, even as he rolls the boulder, has stayed with me.

    When you think about it, Existentialism has influenced everything from therapy (logotherapy) to literature to civil rights movements. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X both used existential themes (think freedom, authenticity, & moral choice) to speak to Black liberation.

    In our age of algorithmic nudging, cultural polarization, and inherited ideologies, existentialism remains radically relevant. It reminds us: we are free, but not free from the responsibility of that freedom.

    I often return to one of Sartre’s lesser-known quotes: “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.” In a world full of external pressures, remembering that may be the most liberating thought of all.

  • Historical Amnesia: What Happens When Nations Forget?

    One of the most unsettling trends I’ve noticed in modern politics is the deliberate forgetting of history, a kind of national amnesia. Whether it’s erasing colonial atrocities, downplaying slavery, or recasting fascism in nostalgic terms, many societies are rewriting their pasts to serve present political needs.

    Historian Tony Judt once said, “When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.” That resonates with me deeply. In countries like the U.S., debates about history (Critical Race Theory, Confederate statues, textbook content) aren’t really about the past. They’re about who gets to define national identity.

    Germany, for instance, took a very different route. After World War II, the country invested heavily in what it calls Vergangenheitsbewältigung -literally, “working through the past.” Holocaust education is mandatory; Nazi symbols are banned; memorials are prominent. While not perfect, this model reflects a willingness to confront and learn from historical evil.

    Contrast that with Japan’s handling of its World War II legacy. There’s still political controversy over apologies to Korea and China, and many textbooks gloss over wartime atrocities like the Nanjing Massacre. The result? Lingering tensions and unresolved trauma.

    Historical memory is not just academic, it’s moral infrastructure. When nations forget, they often repeat. When they remember selectively, they often marginalize.

    The philosopher George Santayana’s famous line –Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”—rings true. But I’d argue there’s more: how we remember is just as important as whether we do. Selective memory breeds nationalism; honest memory builds humility.

    I think confronting uncomfortable truths isn’t unpatriotic, it’s mature citizenship. And in our current moment of culture wars and revisionism, fighting for accurate historical memory may be one of the most vital tasks we face.

  • The Role of Science in Gender & Sexuality Programs in Faith Institutions

    I recently read about the University of St. Thomas in Houston launching graduate certificate and master’s degree programs in Catholic Women’s and Gender Studies that explicitly aim to integrate scientific disciplines, philosophy, and theology.

    These programs respond to what many see as a lack in religious education: students often feel ill‑equipped to engage cultural debates about gender and sexuality because they notice contradictions or gaps between scientific understandings (biology, psychology), philosophical anthropology, and Church teaching. The UST program seeks to ground discussions of gender and sexuality in robust theological and anthropological tradition while engaging contemporary science.

    What do I think is key here? Balance. It’s dangerous when any one dimension dominates -if theology ignores science, or science ignores ethics/spiritual formation. These programs are experiments in harmony: cultivating leaders who can speak with intellectual depth and compassionate clarity.

  • Myth, Ritual, and Identity: The Anthropology of Religious Festivals

    One of my favorite areas in anthropology is exploring how religious festivals shape identity, memory, and community cohesion. Rituals are not just symbolic; they’re social glue. I mean why else would cultural traditions remain such an important part of human societies given the technological and social advancement we’ve made since the inception of these rituals?

    Take, for instance, festivals tied to harvests, lunar calendars, or historical remembrance. Anthropologists study how these rituals reproduce collective narratives: who we are, our origins, our values. They also mark liminality -times when ordinary social structures loosen, allowing inversion (e.g. carnival traditions), renewal, or transformation.

    I’ve observed in case studies (across Latin America, Africa, Asia) that festivals often serve double roles: maintaining continuity (tradition, ritual forms) and offering space for innovation (performance, new participants, hybrid practices). When diasporic communities celebrate traditional festivals in new countries, those rituals become sites of negotiation: between heritage, adaptation, assimilation.

    From theology, ritual is also sacramental: material, sensory, textual. They overlap how people feel, sing, eat, pray, and that matters deeply. Festival anthropology helps us see religion not only as belief but embodied practice.

  • The Vatican’s “Infinite Dignity” & the Debate over Gender Theory

    A recent theological document from the Vatican, titled Infinite Dignity, has stirred debate. Approved by Pope Francis, it describes gender‑affirming surgeries and surrogacy, along with what it calls “gender theory,” as “grave violations of human dignity” (see AP News).

    “Gender theory” is criticized in the document as an ideology that threatens the understanding of biological sex, identity, and relationality. The Vatican argues that biological sex is immutable, and adopting gender identity inconsistent with birth sex conflicts with what they see as God’s design.

    This document doesn’t exist in isolation. It reflects longstanding tensions between religious institutions, LGBTQ+ advocates, and scholars. It raises questions about how theology, ethics, science, and pastoral care intersect. How do religious communities respond to gender dysphoria? What about compassion, equity, psychological well‑being, versus doctrinal claims?

    For me it’s painful to see how people seeking identity, wholeness, or affirmation can feel under attack. But I also see how believers feel responsibility toward theological consistency. The challenge is huge: how to hold both compassion and truth in tension, how to dialogue rather than condemn, and how to integrate scientific, medical, psychological realities with theological convictions.

  • Indigenous Knowledge Systems & Environmental Sustainability

    As climate change intensifies, I’ve been drawn to how indigenous knowledge systems can offer resilient, sustainable practices. For centuries, indigenous communities have developed deep ecological knowledge related to weather patterns, soil health, and seasonal cycles, that is often undervalued in modern policy.

    For example, ethnobotanical knowledge (how plants are used medicinally) has yielded many pharmaceuticals. Also, traditional agricultural methods like polyculture, agroforestry, or rotational burning (used carefully) maintain biodiversity better than monocultures.

    Anthropologists document how loss of land, displacement, or cultural suppression undermines those knowledge systems, that’s not just loss of culture, but loss of sustainability tools. I believe integrating indigenous perspectives isn’t optional, but indeed essential for environmental ethics, theology of creation, and our future.

  • Cultural Relativism vs Universalism: Navigating Moral Anthropology

    One tension that always intrigues me is between cultural relativism (the idea that moral values and practices are meaningful only within cultural contexts) and universalism (some moral truths are common to all humans). In anthropology, this is central: when do we respect cultural difference, and when do we say a practice violates universal human rights?

    For example, anthropologists study rituals or practices that from outside seem oppressive (e.g. female genital cutting, child marriage). Cultural relativists argue that condemning such practices without understanding their role in local social structure can be paternalistic and destructive. Universalists counter that some harms are too great to be tolerated, regardless of cultural meaning.

    I’ve found that useful frameworks often try to balance: engaging deeply with local meanings, listening to those inside the culture, and only speaking for change when harm is acknowledged and alternatives are locally viable. Tools like participatory research or collaborative anthropology help.

    Thinking about theology here adds another dimension: many religious traditions claim universal moral norms. When anthropology interacts with theology or ethics, the challenge becomes honoring both particular cultural expressions and shared human dignity.

  • Theology & Language: The Gender of the Holy Spirit in Early Christianity

    Something that caught my theological interest recently is how the Holy Spirit was referred to in early Christian texts, especially in the Syriac tradition. In many Semitic languages, the word for “spirit” is grammatically feminine.

    In liturgical and theological works from early Syriac churches (e.g., the Syriac Orthodox), feminine images of the Spirit appear, sometimes maternal or likened to care and nurture. This challenges later theological traditions that uniformly male‑gender Father, male Son, and masculine pronouns or metaphors.

    Why does this matter? Language shapes theology. How believers imagine God affects worship, doctrine, and spirituality. If the Spirit is imagined with feminine metaphor, that opens space for different understandings of gender, relational images in divinity, and even gender identity in human communities.

    It also invites reflection: are metaphors fixed or malleable? How do cultures and languages inform what theological categories come to dominance? When I reflect on this, I see that theological traditions are often more plural than we might assume.

  • Gender Differences in Scientific Careers: Representation, Recognition & Gaps

    As someone deeply interested in gender equity, I found a 2021 study analyzing millions of academic careers from 1996–2018 across disciplines both enlightening and disheartening. The researchers wanted to understand how men and women differ in publishing output, career length, and leadership roles.

    The findings? Women now represent about 40% of early-career publishing scientists (a huge increase from just a couple of decades ago). However, they are slightly less likely than men to persist in academic publishing over the long term. When it comes to publishing volume, men still produce about 15–20% more papers, on average. In many fields, particularly biomedical science, men are significantly more likely to be the last author—a position typically associated with senior leadership or lab direction.

    This data underscores persistent issues around mentorship, institutional support, parental leave, and bias in recognition. From my experience, the challenge isn’t solely numbers. It’s about the culture of science: who gets funded, cited, promoted, or taken seriously in conference rooms.

    Beyond quantitative metrics, qualitative research has shown that women often experience “invisible labor” and are held to higher standards in peer review. This aligns with the broader concept of the “leaky pipeline” where systemic barriers cause disproportionate attrition for women and underrepresented groups.

    What gives me hope is that transparent data like this drives policy. Universities can’t ignore the disparities once they’re exposed. Equity audits, mentorship networks, and bias training are part of the solution, but real change requires systemic commitment.

    Gender equity in academia isn’t about “helping women catch up”, it’s about redesigning systems so that all researchers, regardless of gender, have equal opportunities to thrive.

  • Word Embeddings & Culture: How Language Reveals Implicit Biases

    One of the most mind-blowing ideas I’ve encountered lately is that computers can help us measure cultural meaning. Specifically, researchers use a method called word embeddings (a type of natural language processing that places words in a mathematical space based on how often they appear near other words). Words with similar meanings tend to cluster together. But here’s the fascinating part: this method reveals our cultural biases, both past and present.

    A 2018 study titled The Geometry of Culture analyzed massive text corpora, such as books, newspapers, and academic journals, spanning more than 100 years in the U.S. and U.K. The researchers measured how semantic relationships between concepts like “man-woman” or “rich-poor” changed over time.

    The key insight? Culture exists in the space between words. By analyzing how “doctor” relates to “man” versus “woman” in different decades, you can quantify shifting gender norms. These semantic shifts reflect real social changes -even before they show up in law or policy.

    This method has also been used to study racial bias, political ideology, and even the evolution of religious language. For example, how closely “God” is associated with “king” versus “parent” across time reveals changes in theological imagination.

    Of course, word embeddings have limitations. They can reproduce harmful stereotypes if used uncritically. But when paired with critical theory and context, they become powerful tools for cultural anthropology and gender studies.

    Language isn’t neutral, it’s a mirror of our shared assumptions. And with these tools, we can now watch that mirror shift in real time.