Why do people hoard and socialize during a pandemic?
“Proximity is usually associated with intimacy, and distance with strangeness,” explains Rochester anthropologist Robert Foster. “The public challenge at the moment is that we must learn to express our care and concern by maintaining distance, which is counter-intuitive.”
‘Lewis Henry Morgan at 200’ reintroduces a landmark scholar
A new digital project and exhibitions on and off campus mark the bicentennial year of one of the founders of social and cultural anthropology.
In remote regions of the South Pacific, cell phones have transformed daily life
In a new book, The Moral Economy of Mobile Phones, Rochester anthropologist Robert Foster describes the sometimes surprising developments when governments open up the telecommunications sector to competition.
The future is calling in the South Pacific
Anthropologist Robert Foster began visiting Papua New Guinea as a doctoral student in the 1980s, when long lines at payphones were the norm. When he returned in 2010, he found a familiar place transformed.