About Me

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My name is Nora! I'm an epidemiologist and former anthropologist. I grew up in the DC area and was educated in Baltimore and Memphis, but now call New Mexico my home! 

This blog is borne out of the desire to bring anthropology back into my life and to write "pop anthropology" articles. 

You can also find me on Medium at https://medium.com/@nfholzinger
Location: New Mexico, USA

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What the Rise of Artificial Intelligence in the Global South Tells Us About Our Future

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 Halfway through an epidemiology conference session, the last of the day and an hour before dinner, something a presenter said jolted me out of my hungry stupor:  “A lot of AI innovation is going to come out of the Global South.” I had only half paid attention to this woman’s presentation on software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) via cell phone camera to scan and digitize handwriting from paper health forms in Malawi, when I was suddenly transported back to an undergraduate anthropology class and a book titled Theory from the South (2012).  This book, written by anthropologists Jean and (now-disgraced) John Comaroff, in part posits that the Global North (Europe and America) is actually evolving to be more like the Global South (Latin America, Africa, parts of Asia). The authors go on to argue that the Global South has been treated like a “laboratory” of capitalism – where new configurations of industry, labor, and regulatory environments are tested and honed be...
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How Transphobia Harms Me, a Cis Woman

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“Ding dong - Doors opening. Step back and allow customers to exit…”  As I stand at the opening Metro train car doors, I sense another passenger behind me.  “They’re just letting men wear dresses these days, huh.”  It’s 10:30 at night and I’m coming home from work. I get a pit in my stomach and reassure myself there’s no way he’s talking to me. I’m a woman, and always have been.  However, we are the only ones in this train car, and I am wearing a dress.  --- I am over six feet tall, with a build better described as “statuesque” rather than “model-esque” – broad shoulders, flat chest, without the soft curves that would mark me as belonging to the ranks of the fairer sex.  This fact has been thrown in my face as long as I can remember – the fact that I am larger than most men and always will be.  Judith Butler, misunderstood feminist theorist, writes that gender is a performance. You are a woman because you perform the stereotypical social role of “woman”...
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What the Internet Gets Wrong About Ballerina Farm Or, a Halfhearted Defense of Hannah Neelman

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