The bodies of question – An anthropology of post-surgical complications
By Luke Walker Nothing is quite as ubiquitous as the body. Over the years, anthropology has dragged the body in all kinds of directions, thus making it a…
Tag: ethnography
Musings from the murky middle ground of climate science and action
Image: NASA (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glacial_lakes,_Bhutan.jpg) “There are many reasons why people in our field work remotely,” one data analytics coordinator tells me. We are talking …
Ep. #26 Mining Banaba: Katerina Teaiwa talks mining phosphate & decolonising modern anthropology
“The body of the people is in that landscape so when it’s mined and crushed and dug up, you’re not just doing it with rock, you’re also doing…
Urban Amazonian Show & Tell at #AmAnth18
At this year’s AAA meeting, I’ll be presenting a paper on a panel titled “The Cultural Work of Aesthetics: Brazilian Notions of the Beautiful and the Crafting of…
Making #AmAnth18 Manageable: The Teaching Culture Top 30
The 2018 AAA meetings are upon us and we’re looking forward to getting out from this rainy, cold Toronto weather and into some California sun! In keeping with…
1.5ºC: The Future and Present of Anthropology in an Era of Climate Change
Image: Trent Schindler, NASA/Goddard/UMBC (https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate-sim-center.html) Anthro{dendum} welcomes guest blogger Adam Fleischmann Early Saturday morning, October 6,…
The Culture of Corruption
Many of us know that political corruption is not new to the world. It is an unsavory, human practice with a history that extends far back into ancient…
Anthropology Otherwise: Thoughts on a Graphic Novel Experiment – Part 2
This is the second of a two-part blog post by Marie-Eve Carrier Moisan discussing the challenges and potentials of part of transforming ethnographic research into graphic novel form.…
Anthropology Otherwise: Thoughts on a Graphic Novel Experiment
In the first of a two-part blog post, Marie-Eve Carrier-Moisan talks about the challenges of adapting her ethnographic work on sex tourism in Brazil into graphic novel form.…
Ep. #24 Learning in disaster: Kim Fortun talks STS, knowledge politics & anthropology’s role in a crisis
“We need to be experimental because we’re not up to the task at hand; there’s a real practical and ethical call to responsibility, that drives that experimental commitment.”…
Facilitating community integration one bat at a time
By Elisa Sandri The Brighton Table Tennis Club (BTTC) is a table tennis club located in the area of Kemptown (Brighton). It was founded in 2007, aiming to…
Dis/ability to do Fieldwork
Rine Vieth is a PhD candidate at McGill University in Tio’tia:ke/Montréal, Canada. They are currently researching how UK asylum tribunals consider religion and conversion, with a focus on…
Teaching Anthropology in 2018
Recently, a colleague contacted me with a very interesting and specific question. At the time, I was on the road and too busy to address his inquiry. I…
Thinking pain by Annelieke Driessen
Care worker Annika announces that she does not want to go to Mr Moran. “He always complains.” “I’ll go”, says her colleague Robin, and turning to me he…
Taking part in and being part of giving birth: Enacting participation in a midwife-led birth situation by Annekatrin Skeide
According to her midwife Jana, Mira’s was a textbook birth: it was quite fast, even for a second birth, and proceeded without any complications. In reflecting on her…
Peripheral participants: Thinking through distortion, displacement, nullification by Henrik Vigh
Warm haze As I spoke, people looked at me worriedly. The kindness in their eyes was mixed with curiosity and concern. Rather than answering me, they turned to…
Fed up security officers and drunk policemen in Nairobi by Francesco Colona
Greenwoods is a neighbourhood in Nairobi, Kenya, dotted with diplomatic residences. At the time of my research on public-private assemblages of security provision and the reconfiguration of citizenshi…
Refraction of participation by Jeannette Pols
Refraction of participation What does it mean to participate? What does participation do?[1] The etymology of ‘participation’ traces from the Latin word participationem, which translates as ‘sharing, …
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…
Ep. #23 Decolonizing anthropology, with Sana Ashraf and Bruma Rios-Mendoza: this month on TFS
“We think we are supposed to be comfortable. As long as we are trying to do everything to be comfortable, we will never make a change.” In this…
The House by Laura Vermeulen
The question of how Willem was coping, alone in the big house, had come to concern many of those surrounding him. Over the past couple of months, Willem…
The final station by Susanne van den Buuse
The sun wakes her up. But Mrs Wijngaard keeps her eyes closed. She is 90 years old and sits quietly in her armchair in her apartment in the…
Burning down the house: When crisis becomes daily life in early-onset dementia by Silke Hoppe
For my doctoral research, I interviewed family members living with a loved one with early-onset dementia, a diagnosis that one receives under the age of 65. Jans, not…
George, the dog by Emily Yates-Doerr
Babe, my grandpa, was born on the kitchen tiles of a small Seattle home. His dad, whose own grandpa had run a seedy downtown brothel, would disappear and…