Ep. #40 Robot Reflections: Inger Mewburn on researching researchers & welcoming our robot overlords
“Machine learning is a broad area of study, and that’s one thing you don’t see from a distance, is how broad it is. We like to do what…
Tag: research
White Fans, Liberal Ideologies, and the Erasure of Black Stories in Gaming
Last month, the highly anticipated video game Mortal Kombat 11 (MK11) was released to an excited yet wary fighting game community. Game studio NetherRealm’s newest incarnation received praise…
Born to Be Cute: Charisma and Niche Construction
As a multispecies ethnographer and evolutionary anthropologist, I am interested in the ways in which ecological interaction between various taxa affects their selection pressures and evolutionary traj…
The Story of a Mass Shooting Survivor and Anthropologist
On April 30, my Liberal Studies class, framed as Anthropology and Philosophy of Science (Syllabus), was the site of a horrific event. Two of my students were…
Meet nitrous oxide: the fun drug that, because of prohibition, is terrible for the environment
The War on Drugs is an expensive, harmful disaster. It’s the most destructive and racist set of policies that exist in the modern era. But! Did you know that…
A Fieldpoem for World Poetry Day
How we practice and write ethnography matters. Poetry is one way to understand what it feels like to be human at a particular time and place. The difference…
Towards a Queer Art of Surveillance in South Korea
Editor’s Note: This post was co-written with Timothy Gitzen. When is a face not a face? With the launch of the iPhone X that boasts facial recognition capabilities,…
When your research is attacked
Attacks on research have become routinized and institutionalized. Here is our step-by-step guide on what to do if you and your research are attacked.
#CollectiveLetter Against the Eradication of Polish Anthropology
Allegra Lab asks its readers to please consider giving their signatures to a collective letter we have drafted to the Minister of Science and Higher Education in Poland,…
Infrastructure after disasters
On October 21, 1868, at approximately eight o’clock in the morning, a major earthquake on the Hayward Fault near Oakland, California shook the Bay Area. The earthquake caused…
Sexbuyer laws: War on clients, says Israeli MP
Sexbuyer laws now exist in eight countries at the national level: Israel, France, Canada, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden. I use the term sexbuyer laws because in…
Tweaking Narratives of War
Este contenido está disponible en español aquí. Stories of war and violence have permeated the daily life of Colombians for more than half a century. However, in the…
Do We Inherit Abandoned Game Worlds?
When you’re playing an online game and it gets shut down, typically a message flashes on the screen that says something like: “You have been disconnected from the…
Decolonizing Primatology: Part I
We all have texts that are formative in our academic, professional, spiritual, personal, mental, and philosophical lives. There are a few books that I can point to as…
Sugar Cane in Bolsonaro’s Brazil
When now Brazilian president-elect Jair Bolsonaro promised during his campaign to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, putting development ahead of environmental protection, many in the agribusines…
A Feeling for Robotic Skin
Ethnographic explorations with sex dolls, robots, and their makers “I hate it when her eyes flick open. This one, her eyeballs sometimes go in different directions and it…
Inhabiting Public Space: Guerrilla Music on YouTube
Este contenido está disponible en español aquí. *Many of the names and places mentioned below have been changed.* While the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia or Revolutionary…
Dis/ability to do Fieldwork
Rine Vieth is a PhD candidate at McGill University in Tio’tia:ke/Montréal, Canada. They are currently researching how UK asylum tribunals consider religion and conversion, with a focus on…
Art, neuroscience and ethnography
Neuroscience The brain is a wild and wonderful thing. Even in a damaged, broken, or diseased state, it performs wonders. Oliver Sacks, neurologist and prolific writer, knew this…
Ep. #23 Decolonizing anthropology, with Sana Ashraf and Bruma Rios-Mendoza: this month on TFS
“We think we are supposed to be comfortable. As long as we are trying to do everything to be comfortable, we will never make a change.” In this…
The Value of Anthropology: My Story
Dr. Agustín Fuentes argues that it is human creativity that is the defining characteristic of our species ( see my review of The Creative Spark here: Book Review- The Creative…
Ep. #22 Just the way things are: Steve Woolgar talks mundane governance, & the rules that run our lives
“Although this stuff is very ordinary, very day-to-day, very unremarkable… it’s actually quite dangerous, too.” Steve Woolgar, emeritus professor at the Saïd School of Business…
Race, Rural Livelihoods, and Contested Conservation Landscapes
A visit to Basu Farms in Pembroke Township, about 60 miles south of Chicago, provides a glimpse into the entanglement of land tenure, black history and self-determination in…
Ghosts in the Machine: On losing control to the technoscape
“There have always been ghosts in the machine. Random segments of code that have grouped together to form un-expected protocols. Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions of free…