Image: Inō Tadataka (1745-1818), the famous Japanese surveyor and cartographer whose bronze statue resides in the Tomioka Hachiman Shrine grounds in present-day Monzen Nakacho, joined…
This afterword reflects on the practice of ethnography through the metaphor of the anthropologist as a tuning fork—an embodied instrument attuned to the subtle or violent vibrations of…
What do we owe the people who hand us their stories? The post Notes From Unsettling Ground appeared first on Allegra Lab.
This essay examines the social life of silence in the Lake Chad Basin after years of insurgent violence. The post “There is Nothing to See”: Silence and the…
By Romy de Vos and William Arfman – Friday the 28 th of November 2025. “Feel your feet on the ground. Look each other in the eyes. Give…
With all the difficult geopolitical news related to Greenland, the obvious anthropological gaze on autonomy is from the ground, based on people’s lived experience on land and sea.…
The Modern has seen better days. Astronomical sums would buy it. Raju is caretaking, but, well, unlike most of Kolkata which has a certain sheen of relevance and…
by Sophie Leegwater – A few minutes before 4:30 pm on a Monday afternoon in early January 2024, I hop into the yellow cab that takes me to…
2026 AJJ Annual Conference May 23-24th, 2026 Akita University Conference Theme Entanglements and Embodiments: Anthropology, Ethnography and Sensing Japan Location The conference will be held …
“Multimodal anthropology gives a name to something that many of us have actually been doing for long, but maybe as side projects”, says Christine Moderbacher, soon new Professor…
Recently I have been thinking about how I learnt to transition from fieldwork to writing. Like many graduate students, mid-way through my thesis research I found myself with…
I want to begin not with theory, but with a moment. It is early June 2016, and I am in […] The post Holding Space: On Risk, Rupture,…
By Beth Bento – The day began with the high stakes of a long-awaited interview. After nearly a month in Altamira, Pará, I finally felt more connected to…
By Beth Bento – The day began with the high stakes of a long-awaited interview. After nearly a month in Altamira, Pará, I finally felt more connected to…
I. Hair as an Opening I first met her in the summer of 2020. An elderly woman, her silver hair […] The post She braids, I listen appeared…
Sednaya Prison, long cloaked in secrecy and fear, has stood as a stark symbol of the Asad regime’s repression. For […] The post Seeing Sednaya: Echoes of a…
Introduction In the short story Before the Law, Franz Kafka writes about a man from the country who attempts to […] The post At the state’s gate: The…
by Emma van der Tak – “I saw that you have written for newspapers before,” Albert remarks as the waitress puts down our coffee. While I did so…
Each day weaves its own tale, and no two days unfold alike in the Mandal Valley. The Mandal Valley is like any central Himalayan valley, rich and teeming…
One of the main strengths of ethnographic methodologies is immersed, long-term research, which enables in-depth learning and a holistic vision of a given issue. Restricted or volatile access…
Abstract: Reviewing the Takhayyul Team’s long journey of ethics approvals by various institutional bodies, this paper questions the ethics of […] The post Ethics without the Ethics: The…
Conducting field research in the Global South comes with its own challenges in various stages: pre-field, during fieldwork, and post-fieldwork. […] The post Introduction: Conducting Ethnographic…
Our colleague Peter Finke will launch a new project on the production, processing and trade of food in Kazakhstan. The project offers a really generous 4 full years…
By Anja Hofer – Bojan sits opposite me, playing nervously with his water bottle when he tells me: “Our son, Krastio, was in a bilingual daycare but he…