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, …
Tag: ethnography
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…
Strangers in unfamiliar environments: Struggles for subjectivity in a dementia care ward by Ingunn Moser
During fieldwork on dementia care in a nursing home, I was struck by the complex and layered orderings of space, time and subjectivity in daily life on the…
Thinking with spirits by Kristine Krause
During my first visit to Ghana in 1998, I was involved in a research project that looked at possible co-operations between healers and psychiatric clinics. I stayed in…
Refraction of daily life by Jeannette Pols
Attending to what makes up ‘the everyday’ has long been a challenge for scholars in the social sciences. [1] Researchers from different disciplines and perspectives have explored how mundane…
The fool with the watering can, or asynchronous time travelling by Jeannette Pols
One of the most bewildering and fascinating things about spending time with people with dementia is that they can rapidly travel through time. This was most clear with…
Six photos of my father at 91 by Alessandro Duranti
I have chosen to tell a story based on six photographs I took of my father, Ivio Duranti (1918-2009) in the last year of his life. He was…
Re-enacting memories by Elinor Ochs
One way to ‘think with dementia’ is to phenomenologically shift from ‘memory’ to ‘remembering’ and to mine ‘remembering’ for its qualities and potentialities as socio-culturally limned experience. Whe…
“I do want euthanasia, but not now.” Timing a request for euthanasia with dementia in the Netherlands by Natashe Lemos Dekker
Sitting on orange seats in the corridor, Ms Verbeek, her niece Hannie and I are waiting for the general practitioner. Ms Verbeek seems a little restless and is…
Folding time: walk-talking joint moments in the nursing home by Laura Vermeulen
We knew each other from the drop-in centre. Aspects of our daily life concerns had been shared. ‘We’ were drop-in centre participants: the majority had been diagnosed with…
Refraction of time by Jeannette Pols
On a Thursday evening, five men gather around a dinner table. Their host, a scientist from Surrey, England, has left them a note telling them to begin eating…
Ep. #22 Just the way things are: Steve Woolgar talks mundane governance, & the rules that run our lives
“Although this stuff is very ordinary, very day-to-day, very unremarkable… it’s actually quite dangerous, too.” Steve Woolgar, emeritus professor at the Saïd School of Business…
Drawing as Possibility: A Review of Andrew Causey’s Drawn to See: Drawing as an Ethnographic Method
By Karina Kuschnir This review was first published in Portuguese by Mana, 24 (1), 271-275. During these somewhat discouraging times, Andrew Causey offers us a gift. Drawn to…
There’s Something in the Water
A recent death in the family necessitated a return to the United States after living abroad for the past ten years. A family member in Miami has a…
Ethnographic Ableism: Structural Silencing of Physical Disability in Anthropological Research
Micha Rahder is Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Geography & Anthropology at Louisiana State University. Her research centers on the intersection of science and social…
Book Review: Cooking Data: Culture and Politics in an African Research World by Crystal Biruk
In Cooking Data: Culture and Politics in an African Research World, Crystal Biruk offers an analysis of the production of data within HIV-AIDS quantitative survey research conducted in Malawi. This…
Its Only an Evil Cactus if Donkeys Chase You: Ethics and Psychedelics with Hamilton Morris – This Anthro Life
When TAL first interviewed Hamilton Morris, it was shortly after he and his production team had finished season 1 of Hamilton’s Pharmacopoeia. Now, Morris has completed two seasons…
A Ludicrous Relationship? A Conversation between Anthropology and Game Studies
Editor’s Note: This is a co-authored piece written by Spencer Ruelos and Amanda Cullen, both PhD students in the Informatics department at UC Irvine. Introduction Most work at…