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…
Tag: ethnography
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…
In praise of the scaffolding
In my experience, when the ethnographic mission collapsed, this scaffolding remained standing, rich and complex, in plain view. There, the net into which I fell. (Rosaldo 2014: 112)…
Consulting, Big Data and Social Justice w/ Dr. Tricia Wang – This Anthro Life
Dr. Tricia Wang sees her work consulting as sitting at the crossroads of data and social justice. As a global tech ethnographer, Dr. Wang is obsessed with how…
The Struggle for Power by Keith Hart
Book Review: The Rise and Fall of Nations: Ten Rules of Change in the Post-Crisis World by Ruchir Sharma, London: Allen Lane, 2016; pp 464, £25. Ruchir…
反对声音自然主义 | Against Sonic Naturalism
At the end of last year, I had the privilege to be part of the best academic conference ever – full spoilers, it’s called Tuning Speculation, it’s broadly…
Review of The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism. Bianca C. Williams. Duke University Press, 2018.
By Erica Lorraine Williams I recently spent two weeks in Lisbon, Portugal. It was the end of an incredibly busy semester, and I had recently finished reading Bianca…
Living Fossils
One of the most popular jokes among anthropologists is how often our work is mistaken for palaeontology. Almost every one of my colleagues and even a few of…
Anthropology and the New Human Universal
World society today resembles nothing so much as the eighteenth century ancient régime that Kant had every reason to believe had been abolished by revolution. Now a rich,…
Ethnographic Designs for Buen Vivir: Fieldnotes from Nicaragua
Co-Authored by Alex Nading, Josh Fisher, and Chantelle Falconer What does it mean to find value in urban ecologies? This question sparked our collaborative research in Ciudad Sandino,…
Ep. #15 Designing agency: Vijayendra Rao talks development, anthropology, and making social change
Vijayendra Rao, the lead economist at the World Bank in the research department, talks to our own Ian Pollock about the role that anthropology and ethnography could play in helping…
Book Review: Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy by Richard E. Ocejo
In Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy, Richard E. Ocejo explores four traditionally working-class jobs – barbering, bartending, distilling and butchery – that have been…