Ethan Watters, Author at Pacific Standard

Home Archives for Ethan Watters

Economics

The Organ Detective: A Career Spent Uncovering a Hidden Global Market in Human Flesh

Tracking the organ trade, anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes visited African and South American dialysis units, organ banks, police morgues, and hospitals. She interviewed surgeons, patient's rights activists, pathologists, nephrologists, and nurses. So why aren't more people listening to her?

Ethan Watters

Social Justice

The Germ Theory of Democracy, Dictatorship, and All Your Most Cherished Beliefs

Is culture just a side effect of the struggle to avoid disease?

Ethan Watters

Social Justice

The Problem With Psychiatry, the ‘DSM,’ and the Way We Study Mental Illness

Psychiatry is under attack for not being scientific enough, but the real problem is its blindness to culture. When it comes to mental illness, we wear the disorders that come off the rack.

Ethan Watters

Social Justice

We Aren’t the World

Joe Henrich and his colleagues are shaking the foundations of psychology and economics—and hoping to change the way social scientists think about human behavior and culture.

Ethan Watters