The Dirt
The Dirt is a monthly compilation of recent publications, positions, opportunities, and calls for proposals in the field. Here is The Dirt for June, 2021.
Category: English
Margaret MacMillan, “War: How Conflict Shaped Us” (Random House, 2020)
“…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any…
Talking Digital Ethnography and Netnography: In Conversation with Marta-Marika Urbanik
As our research subjects increasingly live their social lives on and through virtual platforms, how can ethnographers incorporate digital methods into our research? On this episode we speak…
Season Break: A Message from TFS
The Familiar Strange · Season Break: A Message from TFS The team at TFS would like to say thank you to all our listeners this season and to…
抖音拓扑：网关、筛子、圆顶 | A topology of TikTok: Gateway, sieve, dome
An article with a rather long history has come out on the International Journal of Communication: titled Gateways, sieves and domes: On the infrastructural topology of the Chinese…
Canay Özden-Schilling, “The Current Economy: Electricity Markets and Techno-Economicss” (Stanford UP, 2021)
Electricity is a quirky commodity: more often than not, it cannot be stored, easily transported, or imported from overseas. Before lighting up our homes, it changes hands through…
Alessandro Testa, “Rituality and Social (Dis)Order: The Historical Anthropology of Popular Carnival in Europe” (Routledge, 2020)
Rituality and Social (Dis)Order: The Historical Anthropology of Popular Carnival in Europe (Routledge, 2020) is the first comparative historical anthropology of popular European Carnival in t… Visit New Books in Anthropology…
Baghdad and Iraq in 1901
The British traveler Sir Edgar Collins Boehm was one of many travelers up the Persian Gulf and elsewhere more than a century ago. His narrative is rather meager,…
Archaeology and Place at Chaco Canyon
Photograph of Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon, courtesy of Robert Adams. Archaeology and Place Archaeologists have been paying attent…
Aging in a Digitalized World: Beyond a User/Non-User Framework*
Sophie Colas** Engagement with digital technology takes numerous, often very abstract and tenuous forms that sometimes involve the intervention of other people. Such multiple engagement with digit…
How Apes Reveal Human History
Except for humans, every great ape is endangered—many at great risk of going extinct. There are fewer than 300,000 chimpanzees living in the wild. USAID Africa Bureau/Wikimedia Commons…
Writing Life No. 15: An Interview with Kalindi Vora by Alberto Morales
Kalindi’s laptop sits inside her car, which serves as a writing space sometimes. The last time I spoke to Kalindi in person was at the Society for the…
Spotlight! “Global STS: Transnational Network Building – Asia, Oceania, and Beyond” hosted by the STS Futures Initiative
This week as part of our “ReAssembling Asias through Science” series, we would like to highlight an event held by the STS Futures Initiative last month. This panel…
Mediated Intimacies: Teletherapy and the Changing Face of American Mental Healthcare by Rebecca J. Lester
“Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?” “I can, but your head is cut off. I just see your neck. Can you hear me?” “Yeah, yeah, I hear you. &nb…
Wednesday Round Up #55
The Black Cemetery Network: Black Cemeteries Are Black History. We created a network to tell these stories. Help us share them. Submit your site today. The African American…
In the Journals, June 2021, Part 1 by Hayley Ip
Medical Humanities Hostile environments? Down’s syndrome and genetic screening in contemporary culture (open access) Lucy Burke This essay explores the complex entanglement of new reproducti…
Six Reasons to Save Archaeology From Funding Cuts
Archaeology offers a detailed look at humanity’s past and important insights into the present and future. Jo Ahmet/Kent County Council This article was originally published at The Convers…
Traditional Seafaring in the Gulf
The online event “Under the Sails – Maritime Conversation on Trade and Seafaring. Perspectives from Iran and Kuwait” held on May 26, 2021 is now available to view…
What’s Behind the U.S. War on Science?
Thousands of demonstrators joined the March for Science in Washington, D.C., in 2017 against then-President Donald Trump’s attacks on science. Astrid Riecken/The Washington Post/Getty Images …
On The Culture of Harassment in Archaeology: An interview with Barbara L. Voss
[Content advisory: This article discusses harassment and discrimination in archaeology, including discussion of sexual assault.] On the morning of March 30, 2021, three articles on the culture of…
Women on the Cutting Edge. Logging and Gender in Solomon Islands
Over the past weeks, The Guardian featured a mind-boggling series called Pacific Plunder, which focuses to a large extent on the effects of logging in Solomon Islands. In…
Women on the Cutting Edge. Logging and Gender in Solomon Islands
Over the past weeks, The Guardian featured a mind-boggling series called Pacific Plunder, which focuses to a large extent on the effects of logging in Solomon Islands. In…
Samuli Schielke, “Migrant Dreams: Egyptian Workers in the Gulf States” (AU in Cairo Press, 2020)
A vivid ethnography of Egyptian migrants to the Arab Gulf states, Migrant Dreams: Egyptian Workers in the Gulf States (AU in Cairo Press, 2020) is about the imagination which migration…
Jane Ward, “The Tragedy of Heterosexuality” (NYU Press, 2020)
Heterosexuality is in crisis. Reports of sexual harassment, misconduct, and rape saturate the news in the era of #MeToo. Straight men and women spend thousands of dollars every…