Erin B. Taylor
Ph.D. (University of Sydney)
Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, University of Lisbon
Research Fellow, Digital Ethnography Research Centre
PopAnth Author, Editor, Founding Member
Erin is PopAnth's Managing Editor. She is currently living in Lisbon, Portugal, where she has a full-time research position at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais (ICS). Erin received her PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Sydney, Australia, in June 2009. She conducted her fieldwork in a squatter settlement in Santo Domingo, writing on the relationship between poverty and residents’ use of material things, including the houses and communities in which they live. This research resulted in the book Materializing Poverty: How the Poor Transform their Lives (2013, AltaMira). Apart from being an editor and author for PopAnth, Erin blogs regularly on her website.
Bibliography
Poverty is generally defined as a lack of material resources. However, the relationships that poor people have with their possessions are not just about deprivation. Material things play a positive role in the lives of poor people: they help people to build social relationships, address inequalities, and fulfill emotional needs. In Materializing …
Amazon.com
What is it really like to do fieldwork? Answers to this question are as diverse as the researchers and the field sites they choose. Anthropologists no longer fit the stereotype of white Westerners going to exotic places to study people very different from themselves. Rather, anthropologists now come from a variety of backgrounds, and their identities are complicated, even to them. This book …
Local Lives contests dominant trends in migration theory, demonstrating that many migrant identities have not become entirely diasporic or cosmopolitan, but remain equally focused on emplaced belonging and the anxieties of being uprooted. By addressing the question of how migrants legally and symbolically lay claim to owning and belonging to place, it refocuses our attention on the micro-politics …
Archaeologists and anthropologists have long studied artifacts of refuse from the distant past as a portal into ancient civilizations, but examining what we throw away today tells a story in real time and becomes an important and useful tool for academic study. Trash is studied by behavioral scientists who use data compiled from the exploration of dumpsters to better understand our modern …
"With all entries followed by cross-references and further reading lists, this current resource is ideal for high school and college students looking for connecting ideas and additional sources on them. The work brings together the many facets of global studies into a solid reference tool and will help those developing and articulating an ideological perspective." — Library …
PopAnth Articles
How to be a tourist in Ireland
How to be a tourist in Ireland
Irish author David Slattery talks with Erin Taylor about his attraction to Irish culture and his advice for intrepid tourists to the green isles.Read on »
Swimming with Joris Luyendijk
Swimming with Joris Luyendijk
Joris Luyendijk speaks with Erin Taylor about journalism, anthropology, and writing about cultural difference.Read on »
Crossing the sexes with friendship
Crossing the sexes with friendship
Cross-sex friendships can be stressful if society views them with suspicion. But some individuals vastly prefer them to same-sex friendships. How can we stop standing in the way of other people's happiness?Read on »
What do the things you carry say about you?
What do the things you carry say about you?
Ask someone to tip the contents of their bags onto the table. What do you see? The results can be surprising. The things people carry say a lot about their society and culture, as well as their finances and personal preferences.Read on »
Imaginary currencies
Imaginary currencies
Dealing in multiple currencies can be confusing. What happens when one of them is imaginary?Read on »
Calm down and cheer up
Calm down and cheer up
Why do we say that we 'feel up' when we feel happy, but when we are sad we 'feel down'? Metaphors we live by.Read on »
Who are you calling fundamentalist? Inside Rastafarianism
Who are you calling fundamentalist? Inside Rastafarianism
Smoking pot in the name of Jah might not actually be that different to drinking wine for Jesus.Read on »
Hug, hit or ignore? Cultural differences in dealing with strangers
Hug, hit or ignore? Cultural differences in dealing with strangers
Do you feel threatened by strangers, or are you happy to urinate next to them? Your attitude might depend on your country of origin.Read on »
Alone in the city
Alone in the city
People: can't live with them, can't taser them. How do you create personal space in the city?Read on »
Greed is good
Greed is good
Don't bother feeling guilty, your mass consumption at Christmas is part of what makes you a moral person. Why greed is good for humanity in all times and places.Read on »
Humans of SoCal's wineries
Humans of SoCal's wineries
Studying the wine industry seems like a sweet job. But anthropologist Kevin Yelvington went beyond wine tasting and worked alongside labourers in the vineyards. What did he discover?Read on »
What do Eurovision, sport, and ritual warfare have in common?
What do Eurovision, sport, and ritual warfare have in common?
Giant hamster wheels. Drag. Key changes, peasant costumes, and voting blocs. Sometimes it seems that the Eurovision Song Contest is about anything but the music. So what's going on?Read on »
Missionaries, mercenaries, and misfits
Missionaries, mercenaries, and misfits
According to one Catholic priest, foreigners in Haiti can be classified into three types: missionaries, mercenaries, and misfits. Whether you come to Haiti with good or bad intentions, the end result is often the same: trouble.Read on »
Ten things I've learned about the Portuguese
Ten things I've learned about the Portuguese
Portuguese people insist that they are not at all like the Spanish: neither in food, language, nor behaviour. Is this true? If so, what makes them distinctive?Read on »
If the home team always wins, is it really sport?
If the home team always wins, is it really sport?
Cricket in the Trobriand Islands is different. There's no limit to how many people can be in a team, players dress up in traditional costume, and the home team always wins. So, is it really a sport?Read on »
An anthropologist's guide to choosing an engagement ring
An anthropologist's guide to choosing an engagement ring
You might be surprised to realise how much your engagement ring actually conveys: it's far more than a signal of love and a promise to get married sometime down the track.Read on »
PopAnth Reviews
Swimming with Sharks
In 2011, anthropologist and journalist Joris Luyendijk embarked upon a quest to find out why people were so apathetic about the 2008 global financial crisis. Was it that people were indifferent? Or was the financial system simply too complicated for people to understand?Read on »
Dreaming of Money in Ho Chi Minh City
Allison Truitt's "Dreaming of Money in Ho Chi Minh City" demonstrates how money impacts our lives in ways that are cultural, and personal, as well as economic.Read on »
Haiti After the Earthquake
Why the earthquake was so catastrophic and describes the efforts of Haitians and the international community to "build back better."Read on »
Watching the English
The cultural bases of curious English behaviours, such as their obsession with the weather, their talent for queuing, why they invented so many games, and how their social class system is maintained.Read on »
The Comfort of Things
In this age of mass consumption and global trade, we have an amazing personal freedom to choose — but our choices are still always social acts.Read on »
Fool's Gold
Is Wall Street motivated solely by greed, or do its bankers have humanity's interests at heart?Read on »
How to Be Irish
Is being Irish really all about shamrocks, drinking fifteen pints of Guinness and telling tall tales? A review of David Slattery's comedic, yet culturally nuanced, account of life in the Emerald Isles.Read on »
Boom! - a baby boomer memoir, 1947-2022
Think you know yourself? You might be surprised how much you've been shaped by the previous generation. Review of 'Boom! A Baby Boomer Memoir, 1947-2022', by Ted Polhemus.Read on »
Hollywood Blockbusters
Godfathers, monsters, baseball and bowling: Mass-market movies can tell us a lot about ourselves in cross-cultural context.Read on »
Debt
Do we really have a moral obligation to pay our debts? According to anthropologist David Graeber, the answer to this question is a resounding 'no.'Read on »
The World Until Yesterday
Modern life has brought many benefits to humanity as a result of discoveries in medicine and technology. But do we do everything better than our ancestors who lived in tiny groups?Read on »
PopAnth Multimedia
Archaeology from space
Sarah Parcak describes how her team used satellite data to find an ancient Egyptian city that has been missing for thousands of years. It was ancient Egypt's capital and was a centre of art, architecture and religion.Read on »
The brain in love
Forget your heart — it's your brain that takes you to the heights of romantic love and causes you to crash when it fails. In this TED talk, Helen Fisher describes what happens inside our brain when we are in love.Read on »