Liminality: Unfixed Culture, Unfixed Selves
by Gertrude Lamare It was June of 2015, and we were on the road, travelling down to Umwang village in Assam, to witness the completion of a much-delayed…
Author: guestanthropologist
China’s Uyghur re-education centres in Xinjiang will not produce a loyal and obedient population
by James McMurray **Previously published on The Conversation UK.** The Chinese government’s denials of its mass interment of Xinjiang’s Uyghur citizens have evaporated as international pressure has pi…
Desperately Seeking Futurity: Precarity and the Desire(s) of Higher Education Participation
by Matthew Clark Discourses on graduate employability have increasingly gained a prominent position in higher education (HE). Although a bemoaned topic for many and a source of melancholic…
Freedom, Probation, and The American Dream: Some Thoughts from a New Mexican Factory Floor
by Jonny Craig In his 2016 release, Interstate: Hitchhiking through the State of a Nation, travel-writer Julian Sarayer chronicles his unorthodox and remarkable journey from New York to…
A Rise in Vulnerability? Academic Studies, Paid Work and Mental Health
**This is the second of three posts on student experience, debt and austerity in higher education; see the other posts published on October 8th and 22nd.** by Anne-Meike Fechter…
How Does the Necessity of Paid Work Impact Our Students?: Learning from the Global Studies Student Employment Survey
by Paul Robert Gilbert **This is the first of three posts on student experience in higher education; the next two posts will published on October 15th and 22nd.** There is…
Review: Le plus beau métier du monde
** This article first appeared in Allegra. Republished here with permission ** by Miriam Odoni Giulia Mensitieri’s book “Le plus beau métier du monde” Dans les coulisses de…
Ghana, Electronic Waste, and the Circular Economy
By Tim Perkin As the demand for ICT increases worldwide, it is surprising how little is known about what happens to our electronic goods that are thrown away.…
“Red-carpet catholicism”: gendering the heavenly body
by Mac Spencer Three decades after the fallout from Like A Prayer, the relationship between pop culture and Catholicism seems on more stable ground if the pinnacle of…
Closer to Home: Yiwu in the UK
by Magnus Marsden While conducting research for the TRODITIES project in China, Afghanistan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine I regularly meet traders from Afghanistan who talk about…
Not That Innocent: fertility, vengeance and serpentine symbolism within pop music
By Mac Spencer In the summer of last year, globally scrutinised pop star Taylor Swift quietly deleted every piece of content from her online accounts. A brief social…
From the Field: A drive through north western Afghanistan
by Magnus Marsden I am often asked what it is like to do fieldwork in Afghanistan. To give a sense of doing fieldwork in the country today, I…
Review: Cultivating Development
by Esther Mulders David Mosse’s groundbreaking book, Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice (2005, Pluto Press), focuses on the complex link between policy and practice in…
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
…May ’68, Nuit Debout and Romanticizing Struggles by Jade Ascencio In 2016, the Nuit Debout movement in Paris installed its headquarters only two stops away from my place.…
From the Field: Persian New Year in Yiwu and Iranian Special Tea in Karachi
by Magnus Marsden One of my most memorable evenings while conducting fieldwork in Yiwu, China in 2016 fell on 20th March, the evening of Nowruz, Persian New Year.…
Fame, femininity, financial vitriol: a methodology of Kommercial success
by Mac Spencer We begin at one of this century’s most infamous ascents to celebrity status, which I assume needs little retelling. In 2007, a leaked sex tape…
Union revitalisation and women workers at the intersection of gender and class
by Hannah Loosley **A version of this post was published at ecnmy.org.** Women working in care, catering, cleaning, cashier and clerical jobs (the 5 Cs) have long been…
Rethinking chronic illness and ethnography
by Luke Walker Since my diagnosis with Crohn’s disease in 2015, I have started to re-think the relationship between chronic illness, disability, and protest in a series of…
Creating a World Without Poverty?
By Hannah Feldman Sat on the floor of a small shared room on the outskirts of Metro Manila, Mae* and her sisters are hurriedly crafting necklaces, while their…
After Bukhara: Central Asian trading networks in Afghanistan and Beyond
By Magnus Marsden Several tombs of Afghanistan’s historic figures have been restored in recent years. In the Bagh-e Babur park – elegantly restored by the Aga Khan Foundation…
Chivalry Isn’t Dead…But it Should Be?
By Jonny Craig Let’s begin with a scenario: It’s the end of his lunch hour, and Gary from IT is walking the short distance back to his place…
Is the United Nations Broken?
By Ronald Niezen When the United Nations General Assembly convened its annual meeting this September, amid growing nuclear tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, U.S. President Donald…
Our tribute to Kim Wall
Kim Wall was a Swedish journalist who was killed this summer while reporting. Although she was not an anthropologist by education, her work explored subcultures and what she…
Agency, Upkeep, and Neglect in North Carolina Farm Labor Camps
by Bennett Heine In a recent article in Human Organization, co-authors Thomas Arcury, Sarah Quandt, and I draw from interviews with migrant farmworkers to conclude that agency matters.…