A Tale of Two Rooms: Debt, Success, and Freedom in Indian Microfinance
“See, I don’t have a TV or an almirah [wardrobe],” said Ilina, pointing to her sparse one-room flat, while in one corner—the makeshift kitchen—her husband squatted over a…
Tag: India
Why Vote?
Elections in India are a loud, rambunctious, great equalizer in public life. Elections in India are the world’s biggest festival and Indians clearly like to vote. Evidence shows…
Book Forum––Harris Solomon’s Metabolic Living: Food, Fat and The Absorption of Illness in India by Todd Meyers
Harris Solomon’s Metabolic Living traces patterns of consumption, calories, and chronic disease to tell a story about the enfolding––the absorption and regulation––of food in and about the bod…
Decolonizing archaeological practice in Northeast India: Towards a community-based archaeology at Chungliyimti, Nagaland
This entry is part 17 of 17 in the Decolonizing Anthropology series. By Tiatoshi Jamir I was born on a land declared an ‘Excluded Area’: a previously colonized region.…
Winston
War criminal notes. Someone scratched out his eyes. Apparently when the note is wet and rubbed with a coin, the ink comes off. Still legal tender – money…
Orientalism for kids – again
Am gearing up for another round of kiddy tv and hoping there are new programmes since the mind worms of Iggle Piggle and Peppa Pig did their damage. This…
5 Homophobic Myths Destroyed by Anthropology
After the horrific mass murder in June focusing on the LGBTQ community at an Orlando club, the only thing worse than the massacre has been the thread of…
Awakenings by Bharat Jayram Venkat
Tuberculosis is curable. Figure 1: Propaganda materials rehearsing the curability of tuberculosis are produced by a variety of institutional actors across India. From left to right: poster from…
Apple and the Smartphone market in India
Photo Courtesy: CC: Wikimedia Commons: Kārlis Dambrāns from Latvia Less than a fifth of the Indian population might own a smart phone, but India is now the second…
Michele Friedner’s “Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India” by Cassandra Hartblay
Valuing Deaf Worlds in Urban India by Michele Friedner Rutgers University Press, 2015, 216 pages An Indian coffee shop franchise advertises their practice of hiring deaf baristas –…
Some Organs of My Primate Body
By Daniel Allen Solomon, De Anza College and Cabrillo College § The “monkey temple” on Jakhoo Hill in Shimla hosts a rowdy but well integrated bunch of rhesus…
On the margins of politics
I am going slightly out of depths with this post, traversing into the territory of yet-to-be-formed thoughts, which could either be speculations or reflections; responses, or idiosyncratic musings.…
Silo as System: Infrastructural Interventions into the Political Economy of Wheat
Ateya Khorakiwala, Harvard University § This post underscores how the seemingly straightforward and yet iconic American silo evolved into a different kind of storage infrastructure when it encountered…
Nuclear Hallucinations with Raminder Kaur, Joram ten Brink, Rosie Thomas and others
FD-zone London Fifth Edition a collaboration between the Faculty of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster, and the Films Division, Government of India Imagining Facts: Documentary Narrativ…
Between Obsolescence and Necessity: The Abiding Nature of Dhalao Infrastructures in Urban India
By Aman Luthra, Johns Hopkins University § If you happen to frequent the broad tree-lined avenues of Chanakyapuri—an upscale neighborhood in New Delhi, India dominated by diplomatic missions and…
Revisiting the Human in These Multispecies Landscapes
By Jared Margulies, University of Maryland Baltimore County, photographs by Indra Kumar, reproduced with permission § Indra shows me some photographs he’s taken recently of a variety of animals. I’m…
The future of work is consumption
One hears a lot of exuberant talk these days about the futures of work. Offices will go away, we’re told, or be significantly scaled back as employees work…
Transactions in Taste: The Collaborative lives of Everyday Bengali Foods
Manpreet K. Janeja. Transactions in Taste: The Collaborative lives of Everyday Bengali Foods. London: Routledge, 2010. 185 pages, ISBN 978-415553742. Reviewed by Meraz Rahman New Mexico State Universi…
Build Karma Points on Social Media
Everyday salutations such as ‘Good Morning’, ‘Good Afternoon’, ‘Good Evening’ etc. are common social media interactions of the people of Panchagrami, used to keep …
Radiating Globality: Old Histories and New Geographies
Draft programme International CONFERENCE « RADIATING GLOBALITY / OLD HISTORIES AND NEW GEOGRAPHIES » 20-21 February 2016 Salle Viseoconférence UCAD 2, Cheikh Anta Diop Dakar, Senegal ************** …
Laughter is Social Glue
“Humor Versus Color” by Mita Roy ~ This cartoon was created in the spirit of generativity similar to the Raagmala paintings of India, in which visual art was…
The Anti-Camera
Christopher Pinney, UCL Anthropology I recently came across M.N. Srinivas’ observation that his enthusiastic engagement with photography, during his fieldwork in Mysore in the late 1940s, earned him…
“Free Basics” – does it really matter to the poor in Panchagrami?
Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons: Facebook The launch of Facebook’s ‘Free Basics’, a rebranding of internet.org, has been a hot topic in India for the past few months as Facebook tries to…
anthro in the news 12/21/2015
Source: Google Images/Creative Commons Syrian refugees in poverty Marketplace (American Public Media) published a piece on the dire economic situation of Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon….