Chronic Experimentation by Kane Race
The introduction of effective combination antiretroviral therapy for HIV disease in 1996 was commonly narrated as a major event that transformed HIV from an inevitable death sentence into…
Tag: activism
On Wishcycling
Wishcycling is the process of placing discards into the recycling bin even when there’s little to no chance for their recovery. The term entered common use over the…
The Spectrum of Research and Practice in Guatemalan Science Studies
On November 21, 2020, protestors flooded the historic and political center of Guatemala City over the congressional approval of a budget bill of nearly twelve billion dollars (or ninety-nine billion…
Mobilizing Cemeteries, Representing Ancestors: The Infrastructure of Protest and the Anti-Petroleum Complex Movement in Pengerang, Malaysia
Resisting the “Rotterdam Port of the East” In 2011, the prime minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, and the CEO of the national oil company Petronas, Shamsul Azhar Abbas,…
Snake Oil: A Memoir on the Rise of ‘Trafficking’
When future historians try to understand what ‘trafficking’ meant in the first 20 years of the 21st century, I hope this memoir gives them pause. Recording how my…
Sexworkers’ long history as political experts, English translation: Thierry Schaffauser
I’ve translated Thierry’s reflections published the other day as faithfully to his tone as I could and checked with him, so here’s the piece with the same title,…
Sexworkers’ long history as political experts: Thierry Schaffauser
The other day Thierry Schaffauser posted some reflections on facebook on the history of sexworkers as thinkers and leaders in activism for social change. Objecting to the exclusion…
Mourning while fighting for justice: The first months of the NOI DENUNCEREMO association, Bergamo, Italy by Chiara Alfieri
This post was co-authored by members of CoMeSCov program who contributed to the development of research questions, data collection tools and data analysis: Firmin Kra, Francesca Mininel, Fleur…
There’s no such thing as “We”
Put simply, evoking the universal “we” is a way to discard differences and maintain business as usual.
Staying (at Home) with Brain Fog: “Un-witting” Patient Activism by Emily Lim Rogers
Scene 1: It’s Sunday afternoon, around one o’clock, and a group of a dozen or so people log onto a video call from their apartments. Occasionally someone’s cat…
Black Latinx Activists on Anti-Blackness
A few weeks ago, the Association of Latina/o & Latinx Anthropologists (ALLA) released a statement condemning anti-Black violence and calling for “an intimate reckoning with anti-Blackness and whit…
“Islands in a sea of disbelief” – Militant activism in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany
It took us six years, but I’m very pleased to announce that, at last, our book: Islamic Militant Activism in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany – ‘Islands in…
Films & videos on media activism & more
This is a selection of films and videos on mediated activism, anthropological perspectives on media and culture, and globalization and (de)colonization in relation to media.Compiled by Philipp Budka…
Towards anthropological self-de-confinement #PostCoronaUniversity
While we now seem to be approaching post-confinement, and after the closure of campuses and improvised conversion to online teaching, there has been much discussion regarding the long-term…
Remembering Dr Abhay Xaxa, 1983-2020
“So I draw my own picture, and invent my own grammar, I make my own tools to fight my own battle, For me, my people, my world, and…
My Petrochemical Love
For women of color on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, everyday environmental and climate activism is entangled with intimate lives. It is April, and it is hot and humid in…
How are Foreign Domestic Workers Implicated in the Pro-Democracy Protests in Hong Kong?
by Charlotte Brill ‘’My eyes were very painful’’, said an Indonesian migrant worker who was caught in a cloud of tear gas on her day off. This tear…
Discard Studies Solidarity Strike
The field of discard studies is united by a critical framework that questions premises of what seems normal or given, what is valued and not valued, and the…
Ep #52: An exploration of truth & trust: This month on TFS
Welcome to our first podcast of 2020! And to kick of the new year season of TFS, we are joined by the lovely Kirsty Wissing, PhD candidate from…
Sending surplus food to charity is not the way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
While giving food that would otherwise go to landfill to hungry people may be a convenient part of a solution to reduce greenhouse gases, it will do little…
Sujatha Fernandes talks about her new book, Curated Stories
https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190618049.001.0001/acprof-9780190618049 Interview by Ben Ale-Ebrahim Ben Ale-Ebrahim: What led you to first start thinking about storytel…
Book Forum: Daniel Renfrew’s Life Without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay by Andrés Romero
Introduction Daniel Renfrew’s Life Without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay (2018) is a masterful undertaking on the anthropology of disaster and its everydayness. An ethnograp…
Before They Erase It: Memory and the social media archive
Disponible en español aquí. This afternoon, I began to notice increasingly alarming images, posts, and tweets from my interlocutors in Santiago. It appeared that Santiago was on fire,…
The power (and disempowerment) of Menstrual Hygiene Management
Development initiatives focused on menstrual health and sanitary pads in Southern countries actually disempower women as knowers and innovators.