C. William Campbell

The stories we tell shape our cultures and sense of the sacred. Join us Thursday as Peter Evans and Tommy Happynook explore Coast Salish myth and how it does and does not fit the
'theoretical mold'. @uvic-rcs.bsky.social @uvicanthro.bsky.social #coastsalish #sacredmyth

Congratulations to Dr. William Campbell who successfully defended his #PhD dissertation on Friday!

@uvic.ca @uvicsocialsciences.bsky.social #anthropology

RNS’ top 10 religion and spirituality books of 2025 (RNS) — This year's books suggest that faith remains a source of creativity, resistance and renewal.

Paul Bramadat's Yogalands is named one of the top 10 religion books of 2025! Congrats Paul! religionnews.com/2025/12/29/r... @uvichumanities.bsky.social @uvichistory.bsky.social @rns.org #readlikeayogi

Research just published by Marla MacKinnon and Helen Kurki looks at how environmental factors impact growth of the pelvis in forager populations

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Classic "humans seem to do these bad things a lot, so it must mean they're in our nature" type of argument. Which is understandable, but misses the mark. It ignores all the myriad ways humans invent to mitigate or avoid doing those bad things. What's in our nature is problem solving, not villainy.

If you haven't seen 28 Years Later yet, and you're an anthropologist, then before seeing it go re-read the chapter on myths from Levi-Strauss' Structural Anthropology. 'Cause that was the most Levi-Straussian myth I've seen in a while. #28yearslater #anthropology

Very cool revelation (pun)! For many LDS I speak with, polygamy hasn't been "revoked" so much as "postponed," sort of like a strong Law of Consecration. While for others polygamy is just a "next life" thing, if not something that's been fully rejected. How do you read the Taylor/Woodruff disparity?

The LDS historical department just published an 1886 polygamy revelation (RNS) — After denying that the 1886 pro-polygamy 'Taylor revelation' existed, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints quietly published it on Saturday.

Last week, the LDS church made available a document that it had long denied even existing: an 1886 revelation in John Taylor's own hand that prophesied polygamy would never be revoked.

I wrote an essay about the background to & significance of the document.

Amen

Devil's in the details. This is why journalists =\= social scientists, and why news media should hire more of us.

Carbon Banking, Climate Change, and the Future of Money: a conversation with Gustav Peebles - Society for Economic Anthropology (SEA) This podcast discusses Dr. Peebles’s forthcoming book, The First and Last Bank: Climate Change, Currency, and a New Carbon Commons, co-authored with the

Prof. Daromir Rudnyckyj is co-hosting a series of the “Mergers & Acquisitions” podcast with Counter Currency Lab research associate Ferdi Nur Demirci. The first episode “Carbon Banking, Climate Change, and the Future of Money” is available at econanthro.org/podcasts/car...

Using a huge archaeological dataset, this cool new study indicates that inequality is not an inevitability owing to a society's "complexity", scale, use of agriculture, etc.. Inequality is a choice we've made. Graeber and @davidwengrow.bsky.social would approve. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

Becoming Religious as an Education of Attention A vast literature in the social scientific study of religion demonstrates that religious people are made not born. More specifically, researchers have shown that becoming religious is something that ...

NEW ARTICLE 🚨 - OPEN ACCESS
What's involved in learning to become religious? Here, I make the case that learning and being taught how to pay attention is an essential but ironically overlooked aspect of religious socialization. Scholars of religion, let's pay more attention to attention!

The latest issue of, "Current Anthropology," is out now! buff.ly/cLPUDeN

This is a good time of year to live where I live

NEWLY RELEASED @harvarddataverse.bsky.social CES data show the LDS/Mormon vote swung D +2 vs. 2020:
Remarkable D +8 LDS trend vs. R +6 USA swing

🔵2004-2024 LDS swing = D +28
2004: Bush 80% - Kerry 19% (R +61)
2024: Trump 65% - Harris 32% (R +33)

Related: Utah was only state where %Harris > %Biden

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | Season 3 Official Teaser | Paramount+ YouTube video by Paramount Plus

Have a long & prosperous summer, everyone! #StrangeNewWorlds youtu.be/PjAWSIJCcmY?...

Congrats Hilary!

A closer look at Canada’s growing number of religious ‘nones’ As Canada becomes increasingly secular, younger generations are redefining spirituality and community outside traditional structures.

Researchers in #Canada in conversation about #Religious and #Nonreligious identity transmission, with a particular focus on what's happening among Gen Zers on the @carleton.ca campus.

charlatan.ca/theyre-havin...

Do Archives Matter? There has been much talk lately of defending BC and Canada. Canadian flags are flying in apartment windows and on lawns. There’s a giant maple leaf pinned to...

'Do Archives Matter?'

My latest Left Coast Dispatch: buttondown.com/leftcoastdis... #yyj #BChist #CdnHist #BCpoli #archives

Finance Finance is a critical dimension of life for most contemporary human beings. Finance refers to the management of money as debt, credit, or capital. Financial practices and techniques date to the dawn o...

Just published the entry on "Finance" for the Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology
www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/finance

Wheatley Seminar on Religion and Politics

Grad students: The Wheatley Seminar on Religion and Politics at BYU offers "advanced training on the intersection of religion and public life," with a stellar Faculty lineup.

Apply by March 31, 2025 to attend the funded summer seminar, June 16-21 in Provo, Utah.

wheatley.byu.edu/religionsemi...

In the current issue of Anthropologica
Vol. 66 No. 2 (2024): Sounding the alarm

Book Review
The Trauma Mantras: A Memoir in Prose Poems, by Adrie Kusserow
@lukekernan.bsky.social

cas-sca.journals.uvic.ca/index.php/an...

@alexandrinebf.bsky.social #cdnanth

Excited to share the beautiful poster by artist Morgan Holder to promote our event "Sailing the Sonic Sea" (funded by SSHRC Connection) that will take place on the Salish Sea and at the University of Victoria @uvic.bsky.social @uvicanthro.bsky.social in June 2025. Stay tuned!

Anthropology colloquium Picking Up the Pieces – The Making of the Witness Blanket and ongoing Creative Research. A conversation between Hayalthkin’geme Carey Newma...

please visit us on Monday Feb 3rd at 11:30 to hear from @blueravenart.bsky.social about the journey of making the Witness Blanket and the film events.uvic.ca/anthropology...
witnessblanket.ca

UVic Department of Anthropology on LinkedIn: Reframing crisis: Hope and future-making in contemporary Cuban photographs New anth MA thesis published on UVic space by Graydon Smith: Reframing crisis: Hope and future-making in contemporary Cuban photographs

www.linkedin.com/posts/uvic-d...

But I'm trying to get a job in Canadian academia haha... What might be good for universities might not be good for Canadians, after all. An influx of American thinking into our institutions might only contribute to us becoming more like them - which we clearly don't want.

Collective action in wild chimpanzees provides further insight into the evolution of cooperative ritual behavior Published in Religion, Brain & Behavior (Vol. 14, No. 4, 2024)

Collective action in wild chimpanzees provides further insight into the evolution of cooperative ritual behavior

A. K. Kalan

Religion, Brain & Behavior 2024 Vol. 14 Issue 4 Pages 416-418

DOI: doi.org/10.1080/2153...

Colour photo. Aerial photo of a patch of cleared land surrounded by a lake and forests. Log booms sit in the lake. Text placed over the image reads “Public History and the Great Land Grab on Vancouver Island. UVic Anthropology Colloquium Series. Dr Kelly Black. 20 January 2025. BC Archives image I-0773.

If you’re in Victoria, join me 20 January for a public talk about the great land grab and our upcoming travelling exhibit on the subject. Details ➡️ www.uvic.ca/socialscienc...

thanks to @iainmckechnie.bsky.social for the invite!

Someone else's