Tag: ethnography
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…
Ep. #14 Thesis writing, picturing cults, Muslims with caste, & fieldwork boredom: this month on TFS
Ian (1:25) starts us off by asking, just how well-written does a thesis need to be? “As anthropologists, basically what we do is write… whether it’s writing your field notes,…
Gun Violence in American Schools
There is something terribly wrong going on in American schools today. A silent epidemic is spreading throughout the country like a cancer. What does it say about a…
Ep. #13 TFS presents Anthropod: “Podcasts and Pedagogy: audio in the anthropology classroom”
“Storytelling: that’s part of the power of podcasts, and just the power of ethnography in general, to really have people tell their own stories. And I think it’s…
“Living Art” and aesthetic learning – An interview with filmmaker Tina Krüger
Living Art is a sensory oriented film that uses audiovisual methodologies to study the aesthetics and embodiment of contemporary art. I became interested, as a researcher on the…
Competitive Hardship: ethnographic guilt and early-career pressure to conduct ‘authentic’ fieldwork
Jennifer Cearns is currently conducting ethnographic research in Miami, USA, and Havana, Cuba, focusing on practices of material and digital exchange, sharing and reciprocity within and between capita…
Ep. #12 Cultural imaginaries, deepfake videos, hatred in anth, & social dissociation: this month on TFS
This month, Ian (1:12) asks how we should engage when people describe their culture one way, but our observations of their behavior don’t match those descriptions. What is…
From the Field: A drive through north western Afghanistan
by Magnus Marsden I am often asked what it is like to do fieldwork in Afghanistan. To give a sense of doing fieldwork in the country today, I…
Stephen Hawking, Dis-Incorporated
As Helene Mialet’s ethnography examines the role of his assistants, his students, and the media in the social construction of ‘Stephen Hawking: the great genius’, she also shows…
Hadas Weiss: Reflections on Moishe Postone’s legacy for anthropology
As anthropologists, we strive to speak up for the often marginalized and underprivileged populations we study. Aiming to do so rigorously by heeding the structures that create and…
Book Review: Fragile Conviction: Changing Ideological Landscapes in Urban Kyrgyzstan by Mathijs Pelkmans
In Fragile Conviction: Changing Ideological Landscapes in Urban Kyrgyzstan, Mathijs Pelkmans offers an ethnography of everyday life in a former mining town in southern Kyrgyzstan that focuses on the…