By Bhargabi Das The summer months in the chars of western Assam, India where my ethnographic fieldwork was based, are only of respite because of the calm breeze…
I could not find a single volume biography, which seems like a gap, but this special issue of Anthropologica from 1993 is a welcome find. Since it is…
Editorial Note: This post is part of our series highlighting the work of the Anthropology and Environment Society’s 2021 Roy A. Rappaport Prize Finalists. We asked them to outline the…
Listen to an audio recording of this post read by P V This browser does not support HTML5 audio When I landed in Bangalore in early 2020, it…
being ill is my excuse for catching up with novels, but I interrupt the stream of hackery to give a progress report on this as its the best…
On concepts and consequences: Can we take the concepts of speech and silence, and care and disregard, which you outline throughout the book, outside the context of Delhi…
One tweet asks for help finding a hospital bed in Delhi, India’s capital. Another asks where to find oxygen. These tweets joined a sea of similar pleas for…
In the business of selling cultures for quids, and other random translations Once upon a long ago, there was a time when I was more rebelliously young, and…
RAHUL ADVANI In April and May 2021, the deadly second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in India, driven largely by the delta variant, saw the country’s collapsing healthcare…
Though the music from the film Sholay won’t be part of this week’s lecture on music and allegory (Adorno and Jazz), it probably should be. If you watched…
Over the last two decades, India has become a popular global destination for what is commonly referred to as reproductive tourism, wherein clients travel from one part of…
As it so happens, page 99 of my dissertation is the conclusion of my first body chapter following the introduction. My dissertation, “Producing Prosperity: Language and the Labor…
Sucharita Kanjilal, 2021 Student Research Award Winner SAFN is pleased to award the 2021 Student Research Award to Sucharita Kanjilal for her project, “A homemaker’s diary: Caste, clas…
The British diplomat Sir Valentine Chirol (1852-1929) wrote a memoir entitled Fifty Years in a Changing World (New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1928). Among the areas in the…
Gathering information through our devices. Photo credit: https://unsplash.com India is among the top three internet markets internationally with nearly seven hundred million users. What can debates in…
This paper analyses three different types of displacement – social, cultural and economic – in the lives of three women and their families which have been affected by…
Screenshot of the Instagram profile of the influencer discussed in the blog. Social media content creator Ishita Mangal (@ishitamangal) uploaded a post with multiple slides on her Instagram…
Plastics in the oceans. Beaches littered with plastics. Images of whales and cows with plastics in their bellies. Calls for citizens not to litter, to throw away trash…
I never expected that laughter would be part of the solution. I had set out on fieldwork with rather vague notions about the importance of sensitivity and silence…
On a regular day, a Hindi soap opera production set in Mumbai is home to upwards of 100 artists and technicians – production associates, actors, make-up artists, costume…
Natasha Raheja (Cornell University) will present on ‘Mediating mobility: Migration and brokerage at the borders of the State’. Elizabeth Challinor (Universidade NOVA de Lisboa) will ac…
An introductory note: In the short space of time that has elapsed since I first drafted this essay – in the last week of March 2021 – and…
Mounica Tata, Doodleodrama. “How are you today?” Wysa starts the conversation. “Not well,” I reply. “Sounds like today didn’t go well. I’m here for you. Describe how you’re…
NINTH ALL-INDIAORIENTAL CONFERENCE TRIVANDRUM DECEMBER 20th to 22nd 1937Observations taken more than acentury ago, these* papers describe many things which areno longer actual, and they are become rec…