Shadows, Ambiguity, and More-Than-Human Politics
My first glimpse of a peccary/javelina at one of my fieldsites. I am currently working on a manuscript exploring the ways that both literal and metaphorical shadows produce…
Tag: ethnography
Writing Life No. 1: An interview with Rachel Prentice by Andrea Wojcik
Figure 1: Rachel’s writing space with friend Jasper (2007-2019) (Photograph by Rachel Prentice) Rachel E. Prentice is a no muss, no fuss anthropologist of medicine, technology, and the…
How the informal economy took over the World by Keith Hart – Finale
The Euro crisis: an episode in the history of money The monetary crisis that has overwhelmed the eurozone of late needs to be seen in this context. The…
How to Make a Zine
Feeling boxed in by traditional professional or academic publishing outlets? A zine—a small self-published pamphlet or booklet—can be a powerful tool for unlocking creativity and expanding the reach…
Thinking Without a Concept
How an artistic method can challenge and enrich our understandings of vision and knowledge. Imagine […] an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but…
The Anthropologist as Artist
A deeply interdisciplinary visual artist creates objects that are both art and ethnography. Her installations produce space for immersive, social forms of understanding. As a visual artist and…
Collaborative Ethnography in the Digital Age: Towards a New Methodological Framework*
Monika Palmberger & Philipp Budka Digital ethnography has become a very vibrant research field, as the growing body of literature indicates (e.g. Hjorth et al., 2017; Pink et…
Gone in a Quibi: A case for anthropology in business?
Quibi founders Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman in the company’s office (fortune.com) Quibi’s demise—just six months after the premium short-form smartphone-focused streaming service went live…
How the informal economy took over the World by Keith Hart – Part 3
The demise of national capitalism To talk of the world economy being “informalized” suggests that there is a global rule-system, whereas effective rules are now absent at all…
Ep #64 “Can I speak to the manager”: Caitlin Setnicar on customer abuse, ThinkPlace & cartoons
The Familiar Strange · #64 “Can I speak to the manager”: Caitlin Setnicar on customer abuse, ThinkPlace & cartoons ‘The reasons why uniforms exist is for various reasons.…
How the informal economy took over the World – Part 2 by Keith Hart
The dialectics of form “General Forms have their vitality in Particulars, and every Particular is a Man” (William Blake). Most readers of this book live substantially inside…
Interview: On COVID-19 & digital technologies in everyday life
In May 2020, I was asked by the European Science-Media Hub of the European Parliament to participate in a short written interview about COVID-19 and digital technologies in…
On Gutters and Ethnography
In a departure from more conventional communication methods in academia, I’m exploring how comics–a medium I love to read and am learning to make (thank you to my…
#Failures: When things don’t hold: Anthropologies of failure, breakdown, and dysfunction
The fragility of our infrastructures and modes of living seldom become as ubiquitously palpable as they have with the current COVID-19 pandemic. The spread of the corona virus…
Reworking the Cognitive Bias – a Brainstorm by Matthew Wolf-Meyer
Can we change the way that we think about thinking? Can we rework our thoughts about thought? If so, what would reworking thought open up, analytically and ethnographically?…
How the informal economy took over the world by Keith Hart
A la recherche du temps perdu (In search of lost time) The idea of an informal economy was born at the moment when the post-war era of developmental…
How can anthropological research impact the populations it studies? Six steps for creating inclusivity and accessibility with ethnographic monographs
The ethnographic monograph is the primary medium for communicating anthropological research. However, its circulation has traditionally been confined to university environments. Professor Daniel Mille…
In the Journals – Conflict and Captivity
POW release to UN authorities was the first step in repatriation. Here, communists turn over UN troops at the POW receiving center at Panmunjon, on the border of…
Panel: Digital Ethnography: Revisiting Theoretical Concepts & Methodological Approaches
Panel “Digital Ethnography: Revisiting Theoretical Concepts & Methodological Approaches” @ Vienna Anthropology Days 2020 (VANDA2020, Sept. 28 – Oct. 1), convened by Philipp Budk…
Blurred lines and dead chooks in fieldwork
My own fieldwork experience, like many others, demonstrates a blurring in what is ‘professional’ and ‘personal’, what is ‘leisure’ and ‘work’, whether you are researcher, student, or known…
Seeing Culture Everywhere: A Book Review by Keith Hart
The authors of this well-written book tell how they were pushed by their editor into writing for a general audience. They have succeeded without sacrificing analytical rigor. They…
Ezgi Güler: Trans Sex Workers’ Collective Struggle in Urban Turkey
Facing family rejection and domestic violence, many transgender (trans) people leave their hometowns especially for large cities in search for greater acceptance and opportunities (Engin 2018). Due t…