Religious Ritual at the Credit Card Machine
Ritual Shrine Offerings Among the Exotic Nacirema Tribe While it may seem that anthropologists have documented the most exotic rituals across the globe, the strangest rituals are still…
Tag: research methods
An urgent and important initiative to move forward with EU support of Arctic research together with Indigenous communities
I would like to encourage you with this post to fill in a short anonymous survey on your experiences and challenges with the co-creation of knowledge here: https://survey.hifis.dkfz.de/351545…
Wicked Science
Wicked problems defy easy resolution and are plaqued by disagreements over their fundamental nature and cause (Credit: image by Via Sannevanderbeek) A recent article I published with colleagues…
Guest Post: Teaching Self-Representation through Collaborative Visual Ethnography [Embodying Reciprocity Series]
[Footnotes is excited to present a guest post by Rebecca Gearhart Mafazy. This post is a part of the Embodying Reciprocity series. Mafazy…
Guest Post: Teaching Self-Representation through Collaborative Visual Ethnography [Embodying Reciprocity Series]
[Footnotes is excited to present a guest post by Rebecca Gearhart Mafazy. This post is a part of the Embodying Reciprocity series. Mafazy’s research over the past thirty years…
What Anthropology Teaches Us about COVID-19, Part 4: A Conversation with Physician-Anthropologist, Dr. Bjørn Westgard
Recently, I checked in with Dr. Bjørn Westgard, to see how he was doing. Back in the ‘90s, Bjørn was enrolled in a wildly demanding, combined M.D./Ph.D. program…
What Anthropology Teaches Us about COVID-19, Part 4: A Conversation with Physician-Anthropologist, Dr. Bjørn Westgard
Recently, I checked in with Dr. Bjørn Westgard, to see how he was doing. Back in the ‘90s, Bjørn was enrolled in a wildly demanding, combined M.D./Ph.D. program…
Development for somebody else, by Alexander Öbom
Motorcycle-taxi driving: one of few new jobs in Kisoro district. Drivers often rent their vehicle from someone else, who can afford to buy it. Alexander Öbom graduated from…
Hawthrone effect: first contacts between anthropology and business
Between 1924 and 1932 members of the School of Human Relations conducted research to evaluate the impact of changes in working conditions on the productivity of workers. The…
U.S. Academic Anthropology’s Hiring Network
A paper I authored with several colleagues titled “The Social Network of U.S. Academic Anthropology and Its Inequalities” was recently accepted by American Anthropologist and will be publ…
Diasporic Fields of Belonging
I collect stories about U.S. anthropology graduate training experience from racially minoritized individuals across color lines and borders. I document these narratives emerging from this broad collec…
Book Review: Among Wolves: Ethnography and the Immersive Study of Power by Timothy Pachirat
In Among Wolves: Ethnography and the Immersive Study of Power, Timothy Pachirat offers an experimental contribution to scholarship on social science methodology. Written in the form of a play,…
The Anthropology/Poetry Nexus–An Interview with Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor
Can artists and social scientists inhabit the same universe? Melisa (“Misha”) Cahnmann-Taylor embodies that nexus. Her advanced degrees include an MFA in poetry . . . and a…
Everything You Thought You Knew about Orphans in Africa Is Probably Wrong
Policy makers, development workers, orphanage voluntourists, missionaries, prospective adoptive parents: ignore this book at your peril. “AIDS orphans” are commonly imagined as the…
Experimental Ethnography: 31 Prompts | 实验民族志：31个提示
Not all experimentation is ethnographic. Not all ethnography is experimental. The intersection of ethnography and experimentation collapses into a black hole with a fluctuating event horizon, swallo…
Is History Over? How Can Power be Soft? Ask Ulf Hannerz
The end of history The clash of civilizations The coming anarchy Soft power We’ve all heard these trendy mottos, and most of us have probably cringed. Anthropologists…
Interview with Perry Gilmore about “Kisisi (Our Language): The Story of Colin and Sadiki”
Kisisi (Our Language): The Story of Colin and Sadiki chronicles a charming and, indeed, remarkable friendship that developed between two five-year-old boys—one (Sadiki), the son of a traditionally…