Re-vaulting
Everybodyism – see footnote 1. New Poetics/from the Re-vaults of almost forgotten heroes Nobody finishes everything – here are some that won’t get done soon… I gue…
Tag: media
E. Gabriel Dattatreyan on his book, The Globally Familiar
https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-globally-familiar Eléonore Rimbault: Much of the energy of The Globally Familiar derives from your candid and involved focus on the young b-boys and rappers …
Why Shoes Do Not Make the Runner
East African runners wearing “super shoes” have outpaced global marathon records. But the shoe fervor—alongside older stereotypes about African runners’ “natural” abilities—means athletes’ hard work o…
Antti Lindfors Interviews Nicole Starosielski on Media Hot and Cold
This is a conversational interview between Professor Nicole Starosielski (UC Berkeley) and me, Dr. Antti Lindfors (University of Helsinki), discussing Nicole’s book Media Hot and Cold (2022, Duke…
Authorship in the post-academic, post-human age
In 1964, when describing the threshold for obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio, the US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said that while he couldn’t define precisely what constituted…
Migration, Logistics and Unequal Citizens in Contemporary Global Context
Happy to share that the article collection from the GHI special issue of Social Identities is now live at the following URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/csid20/collections/Migration-Logis…
Frank Cody on his book, The News Event
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo190464205.html Shikhar Goel: Describe for us some intellectual motivations behind writing this book. What were some significant moments th…
Through Film, Discovering Hope in the Face of Environmental Destruction
In the midst of acute eco-anxiety, can community-based filmmaking help young people imagine a different future? FILMMAKING IN THE ANTHROPOCENE A group of 12-year-olds enters a decrepit building…
Bringing Nhakpoti, the Kayapó Story of Star Girl, to the Screen
Over years and across long distances, an international filmmaking team collaborated to bring to life the origin story of how agriculture came to Kayapó communities, Indigenous peoples in…
Subcontinental Media
I am very happy to have got this out, thanks to all at and in the journal: Please email me to get a pdf if you have not…
Junk Anthropology: A Manifesto for Trashing and Untrashing
It is currently held, not without certain uneasiness, that 90% of human DNA is ‘junk.’ The renowned Cambridge molecular biologist, Sydney Brenner, makes a helpful distinction between ‘junk’…
What Indiana Jones Gets Right About Archaeology
As Dr. Jones returns to the big screen, a real archaeologist acknowledges the movie franchise’s shortcomings while espousing its merits. DR. JONES RETURNS Pop culture’s most famous archaeologist…
Do Washing Machines Belong in Kitchens? Many Brits Say “Yes.”
An anthropologist moves from Canada to the U.K. and finds herself reflecting on what home design patterns reveal about a society. Excerpted from Silent but Deadly: The Underlying…
Godard’s “British Sounds” link updated
Godard “British Sounds” From 2009: You can find Jean-Luc Godard’s “British Sounds” in all its glory now. It is worth watching all the way through – from the…
Going beneath the surface: The subtler messages about forced displacement in ‘The Swimmers’
The screen is dark, the music sombre. There are sounds of muffled voices and explosions. The dark screen breaks to reveal blue skies as the words “2011: A…
Five Highlights From the 2023 RAI Film Festival
This March, SAPIENS is partnering with the Royal Anthropological Institute’s RAI Film Festival to celebrate anthropological documentaries. ✽ The art of anthropological documentary filmmaking is thriv…
Picturing the Deep Universe Is Deeply Human
The James Webb Space Telescope’s stunning photos require extensive image processing—revealing as much about humanity as about the universe. In July 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled “Webb’s…
When Life Imitates Art in Ukraine
Photographs from Russia’s war on Ukraine dissolve an archaeologist’s fondness for a Soviet-era sculpture. ✽ On February 24, 2022, the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine. Counter to Russian President…
New in Paperback: Theorising Media & Conflict
The edited volume Theorising Media and Conflict (Berghahn Books, 2020) is now available in paperback.The volume’s introduction by Birgit Bräuchler and me remains openly accessible. Abstract …
Pawn or War Crime? – you choose who gets voted off the island (two votes allowed per person)
Secret weapons sales (not so secret) and fancy dress panto season – really beyond the pale (white supremacy evil tricksters all). Justification here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/1…
Against Charity
I wrote my first book as a critique of charity work in Kolkata, India. I attempted a critique of western ‘charity’ workers helping those they saw as the…
Elizabeth Ellcessor on her book, In Case of Emergency
Interview by Volha Verbilovich New York University Press Volha Verbilovich: Emergency media are cultural and temporal. In Case of Emergency develops these definitions, revealing the history…
Oct 22 1965 Sydney arrests
The report on this 1965 anti-war protest is marginally better than most current press release churnalism, of course it favours the Police and the future PM McMahon (who…
The Dangers of Ancient Apocalypse’s Pseudoscience
Reviewing Netflix’s Ancient Apocalypse, an anthropologist explains how its host Graham Hancock devalues both archaeology and Indigenous heritage. This article was originally published at The Conversa…