Posts by Gill

Africa Needs You!

Return of the Live Aid Legacy

Posted by Gill on Jan 27, 2012 in Blog | 1 comment

I was disappointed to find, in a rare moment when I found myself watching live television the other day, this advertising campaign from VSO: Yes, that’s right viewer. *Children in West Africa are dying right now* and the *only way we can save them* is to send *qualified white volunteers* to help. It has to be one of the worst examples of this kind of post-colonial...

Cracks in Everything

The death of philosophy or the beginning of a beautiful friendship?

Posted by Gill on May 27, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments

Philosophy is dead. At least, it is according to renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, who believes the discipline hasn’t kept up with modern developments in science to the extent that it has nothing relevant to say about the meaning of life any more. But has science really replaced philosophy as the means that people use of interpreting their experiences and answering the “big...

Uncontacted.

Old myths and new photos

Posted by Gill on Feb 2, 2011 in Blog | 1 comment

An old favourite of anthropological romanticism hit the news this week, with the release of a new set of photos of one of the “uncontacted tribes” in the Brazilian rainforest whose existence is under threat from illegal logging. This coincides with the broadcast of the jungles episode of BBC pop-anth documentary Human Planet during the filming of which the photos and some footage of the tribe...

Skin Deep

Beauty and Status

Posted by Gill on Oct 23, 2010 in Blog | 4 comments

Skin whitening is big business in the Philippines – in fact it is pretty difficult to find beauty products such as moisturisers, anti-perspirants and even soaps, that don’t contain bleach or some other whitening agent. All over Manila there are giant billboards expounding the whitening properties of scientific-sounding products like “placental protein” and “glutathione”, all...

I like it underneath my huge “BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH” poster.

Posted by Gill on Oct 10, 2010 in Blog | 6 comments

The Internet is rapidly changing the way people communicate and connect with each other, and the “Internet meme”, has fast become an efficient tool for quickly spreading small doses of cultural information between users. Obviously the implications for charitable campaigners are huge – there’s never been a better way to spread their messages amongst so many people – but they tread a...