Anthropology for Radical Optimism
At Allegra, we strive to find alternative modes of expression, new ways of working, collaborating, knowing and inquiring. Ultimately, we seek different ways of being anthropologists: collective…
Category: English
Boob Boxes: Post-Mastectomy Prosthetics and the Artifice of Breast Cancer
I chose to go flat. But I almost wasn’t allowed to. This is largely due to the unacknowledged psychological tension that underlies deeply gendered illnesses: that it is…
Interview: Theorising Media & Conflict
In an interview for the University of Vienna’s Uni:view Magazin, I am talking about the edited volume Theorising Media and Conflict (Berghahn Books, 2020), its purpose, conclusions and…
The Rumour of Calcutta: Tourism, Charity and the Poverty of Representation
Reposted from three years ago because – the stats tell me – at least one copy has been downloaded every day this month. Either its a dedicated bot…
Links & Contents I Liked 398
Hi all, I don’t really have much to say today-so I let these great #globaldev readings speak for themselves 🙂 Enjoy!My quotes of the weekWe found that warmth…
Mobility and immobility during the pandemic: Experiences on a journey from Amsterdam to Semarang
By Pamungkas (Yudha) Dewanto As a response to the global corona crisis, authorities all over the world set strict health protocols for travelers. Focusing on the case of…
Seminar: The Materiality and Visuality of Social Media
This online course for the summer semester 2021 at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Vienna gives a critical overview about the material…
Jeremy DeSilva, “First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human” (Harper, 2021)
Blending history, science, and culture, a stunning and highly engaging evolutionary story exploring how walking on two legs allowed humans to become the planet’s dominant species. Humans are…
Wednesday Round Up #40
Neural prosthetics: understanding reach planning First understanding the task to then be able to help people with paralysis have functional prosthetics. What Popular Culture Misunderstands About Addi…
Pains, pleasures, and a new electric wheelchair by Anna Mann
A Wednesday in May 2017, Vienna, Austria The door opens. Behind it is Frau Schöbel, a tiny woman in her early seventies.[1] Through her glasses, her eyes are…
The ‘chronic’ lives of failing organs: afflictions of ambivalent care in Mexico by Ciara Kierans
Life has always been difficult, Maria del Rosario told me, but she coped. That was before all the sickness. When her mother’s kidneys began to fail, she felt…
Mucus Passports: Mobility in the Time of COVID-19
[no-caption] Bim/Getty Images GUARANTEE “Have you gotten your COVID-19 test result already?” Vijay (a pseudonym) asks me while ringing up my bill at his salon. “Yes,” I answer.…
Jonathan Herring, “Law and the Relational Self” (Cambridge UP, 2019)
The concept of the individual self – a being that is autonomous, rational and largely without vulnerability – shapes current legal frameworks, the power dynamics between individuals, and…
The Arctic Environmental Responsibility Index – oil and gas better than mining?
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bse.2698 This has been a long journey and a lot of work several years: jointly with a number of interdisciplinary colleagues, we published our arti…
Why “is this fascism?” is the wrong question: a foray into the everyday life of political concepts
Street art, Oaxaca City, Mexico. 2007. Photo: Ryan Anderson. By Louis Philippe Römer Activists, politicians, and public intellectuals have turned to the word “fascism” to analyze the intensified…
Review: Meals Matter
Michael Symons, Meals Matter: A Radical Economics Through Gastronomy Columbia University Press, 2020. 376 pp. ISBN 9780231196024. Raymond D. Boisvert (Siena College) In 1947 the American p…
Are Hotels & Destinations Ready for Pet Travel Companions?
COVID has forced many of us to work from home while limiting social interactions and travel. To fill social and travel voids, many people have welcomed pets into…
Are Hotels & Destinations Ready for Pet Travel Companions?
COVID has forced many of us to work from home while limiting social interactions and travel. To fill social and travel voids, many people have welcomed pets into…
Coloring Persia
In 1928 my mother, who was 6 years old at the time, received a coloring book from a neighbour. It was called “Big Circus Painting and Crayoning Book”…
What Problems Does Organic Cotton Solve?
[no-caption] Andrew Flachs One warm afternoon several years ago, I was walking with Korianna,* a farmer in Telangana, India, when I smelled something bad. The scent of diesel…
Christina Schwenkel, “Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam” (Duke UP, 2020)
Following a decade of U.S. bombing campaigns that obliterated northern Vietnam, East Germany helped Vietnam rebuild in an act of socialist solidarity. In Building Socialism: The Afterlife of ……
Johanna O. Zulueta, “Transnational Identities on Okinawa’s Military Bases: Invisible Armies” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019)
In Transnational Identities on Okinawa’s Military Bases: Invisible Armies (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), Johanna Zulueta considers the role of civilian workers on U.S. bases in Okinawa, Japan an… Visit New Books in…
SAR Press Top Reads: Indigenous Identity
Lara Evans, Water Keeps Moving, from the Directions for Home series, 2008. Digital print. Courtesy of the artist. Created wi…
Book Review: Beyond Tears and Laughter: Gender, Migration, and the Service Sector in China by Yang Shen
In Beyond Tears and Laughter: Gender, Migration, and the Service Sector in China, Yang Shen examines the life experiences of men and women who have migrated from rural China to…