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…
Tag: Fieldwork
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…
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…
When the world invades “the field:” emotion, introspection, and ethnography
It’s been years since anthropology set aside the fantasy of “the field” — a bounded research site, where the locals, and the researcher studying them, are insulated from…
What’s in Your Bag, Anthropologists?
From the Andean highlands to Appalachia, anthropologists from across the discipline open their field bags to reveal favorite pens, recording equipment, emergency granola bars, and—of course—scarves. W…
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)…
‘Wasted hours in the field’ as a key to understanding the research topic
By Herbert Ploegman Originally attributed to Winston Churchill, the statement “never waste a good crisis” has become an aforism that, by now, has been appropriated by many voices.…
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…
Saying No to the CIA… and Other Anth Fantasies
It doesn’t go without saying, so I’ll say it: I’ve never worked for the CIA, or done any intelligence or security work of any kind, nor would I.…
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,…
Disciplinary Violence
#MeToo is an opening for change—but can anthropologists look beyond the media moment to confront sexual violence and transform the discipline? Those who speak up to share stories…
The Disavowal of Henrietta Schmerler
Anthropology’s decades-long misrepresentation of this story of sexual violence should inform the discipline’s relationship to #MeToo. This is the story of a story that matters to us. In…
Intimacy and Violence
A shaft of afternoon light began to stream through the window of the clinic room. Observing the light reflected in my eyes, she now saw in them 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…
Learning From Design Researchers: Jan Chipchase’s Field Study Handbook
Jan Chipchase is a leading design researcher. Some of you may have come across his work on the anthropology of mobile phones. I discovered it by chance while…
What should you do?
(if the United States collapses, that is) This series has been examining the question of When will the United States collapse? The decline of US hegemony is usually…
Assessing damage to indigenous cultures by industrial development with maths?
I just read an interesting post by the Russian news agency TASS (in Russian) announcing proudly the launch of a new method for assessing damage to indigenous culture…
Volunteer Tourism
Reading Suggestions? I am posting this as a request for helpful readings and sources on Volunteer Tourism. The request comes via a Twitter message from Claire Hoeschele, an…
Воспоминания коренных жителей Севера о национальных и вспомогательных школах-интернатах – Testimonies about boarding schools among indigenous people in Russia’s North
Текст на русском языке см. ниже In this contribution, which will be mainly in Russian, I want to give the floor to the numerous voices about boarding schools…