When the world invades “the field:” emotion, introspection, and ethnography
It’s been years since anthropology set aside the fantasy of “the field” — a bounded research site, where the locals, and the researcher studying them, are insulated from…
Tag: Blog
Beyond Stereotypes: Success, failure, and the complexity of women’s education in Iran
During my 15 months of fieldwork in Iran, the gripe that a bachelor’s degree was now equivalent to that of a high school certificate from a few years…
Is Higher Education a “Family-Friendly” Career Choice?
At the end of a day of academic work, you may not want to talk to anybody else, and giving yourself that option is a form of self-care.…
Gender and Mental health: The need for a wider lens
As the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby powerfully put it, it would help if we didn’t start by seeing females and males as being from different planets. Experiences of…
How academic culture gives us permission not to know
Every way of knowing is also a way of not knowing. Privileging one point of view, or one form of evidence, requires the erasure of other ways of…
Biology, Race, and “Orientalism”
Edward Said published Orientalism in 1978 and is highly influential, both in post-colonial studies and social theory. Said argues that through the construction of the ‘Orient’ (the East) a…
Land, Labour & Society in Aceh: Chandra Jayawardena’s unpublished fieldnotes
This post is a little outside our usual mandate, but we are intrigued by the idea that Professor Robinson proposes: an interactive online project she is working on…
Bruce Kapferer: The Hau complicity: An event in the crisis of anthropology
Hau is a phenomenon. It burst on the scene of the relatively small academic scholarly world of anthropology capturing scholars from around the globe into its spirit. Hau…
Does Anthropology Have a Point?
Even as I attempted to (re-)present my research as anthropological, on its journey into the public sphere and a wider audience, it was interpreted and reinterpreted as ‘international…
Fiona Murphy: When gadflies become horses: On the unlikelihood of ethical critique from the academy
Something smells of bullshit. It has for a long time. Caught in the spectacular entanglements of the neoliberal university, academic work is being actively “bullshitized.” Audit cultures, the…
Forgotten Violence against Backpackers in Australia
While backpackers extensively contribute to the national economy as tourists and workers, they are only here on a short-term basis. Being temporary non-citizens there is less emotional investment…
Populations, Race, and The Sorites Paradox
The sorites paradox (also called the paradox of the heap) refers to a particular logical contradiction that arises from the analysis of vague terms (Sainsbury, 2009). Terms like…
Don Kalb: HAU not: For David Graeber and the anthropological precariate
When HAU was launched, my grad students at Central European University were celebrating. Open access! Finally, a breach in the wall that separated the haves from the have-nots.…
Last Day of Summer I
Yesterday was the last day of the first summer session. I taught a section of LBST 2213 (anthropology of science) and I had students reflect of the semester…
Patrick Neveling: HAU and the latest stage of capitalism
As anthropology assesses an increasing number of reports about abuse, bullying, sexism, and financial misconduct and fraud at its now shooting-star journal HAU, it is important to keep…
Another Life
As anthropologist Kirin Narayan put to readers of her book Alive in the Writing, the creative process of ethnographic writing can grow from ‘the impulse to find company…
Charles Dolph: The second time as farce? The IMF returns to Argentina
Argentina’s Mauricio Macri administration unexpectedly announced recently that it had opened negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a Stand-By Arrangement amid intense monetary an…
Fall Semester, 2018 Courses
I am very excited to have three new preps for Fall, 2018. Course overviews are below. LBST 2213: Now this is not a new prep as I have…
Ling-I Chu and Jinn-Yuh Hsu: Cold War islands and the rebordering of the nation/state: Kinma in the Taiwan Strait
Across the globe, the Cold War abruptly delineated new borders and defined friends and enemies. Yet, there are few regions in which this was as pronounced as in…
Hearing Indigenous Voices
The 27th of May to the 3rd of June is National Reconciliation Week in Australia. Reconciliation, for anthropology, includes reckoning with the discipline’s colonial past, and confronting the…
The Paradox of Hyper-connectedness and Solipsism in Contemporary America
Try walking around the mall, on a crowded sidewalk, or through a university campus and there is one thing that stands out: people are engulfed in their phones.…
The Limits of Academic Freedom
We need to acknowledge the role we all play in silencing research. Consider the times we have dismissed a colleague’s idea because it ‘isn’t worth it’, or immediately…
Maddalena Gretel Cammelli and Jonathan Friedman: PC Worlds: Political Correctness and Rising Elites at the End of Hegemony
Maddalena Gretel Cammelli interviews Jonathan Friedman on his new book, PC Worlds. A version of this interview has also been published in Italian on Il Lavoro Culturale. MGC:…
Saying No to the CIA… and Other Anth Fantasies
It doesn’t go without saying, so I’ll say it: I’ve never worked for the CIA, or done any intelligence or security work of any kind, nor would I.…