Land, Property, Technology: Exploring Blockchain as Infrastructural Promise
A view from the Rift Valley escarpment, illustrating a landscape that far exceeds official registries. Photo by author. In my work, I explore the ways in which blockchain…
Tag: research
Angelology and Technoscience
(Editor’s Note: This blog post is part of the Thematic Series Data Swarms Revisited) Scene of angels at Karlskirche, Vienna, Austria (Photo by Lukas Meier on Unsplash) The…
My Reflections Two Years After Surviving a Classroom Shooting
Today marks two years since a classroom shooting happened while teaching my final class at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Six students were shot, two of which…
How Can You Approach the Field Digitally? Reflections on Using Social Media Profiles in Ethnographic Research*
Simone Pfeifer** Smartphone. Image by Ulf Neumann. As contact restrictions tightened last year with the developing pandemic, ever more colleagues began asking me for advice on “how t…
Restorying Ma’ohi Nui with Island Lives, Ocean States
Vehia Wheeler introduces the Ma’ohi Nui project, a collaboration with the Island Lives, Ocean States project aiming to uplift voices, knowledge and perspectives on the ocean among indigenous…
The Shifting Borders of Value: Water and Wellbeing along the U.S.-Mexico Border
Is access to water a right? Should water be free? Have you ever stopped to ask yourself that? This is exactly what surrounds the discourse of water use…
Girls, Gadgets, and Gatekeepers: What is Ethical Feminist Fieldwork When Working with Children?
There is no Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent body in India. The ethics of research are left to the purview of researchers, their supervisors, and departments. Therefore,…
Cargo Ships and Comrades: On the Occasion of the Beached Ever Given
In 2018, we took a cargo ship from Barcelona to New York City and made a short film called Slop Chest [1] about the blurry distinction between work…
On Online News Making, Cultural Translation, and Journalism Industry in Exile
Journalism is under attack in many contexts from Hungary to the United States. In Turkey, the situation is not different. Autocracy changed the profession radically and forced some…
Entrepreneurship and Technologies
Everyone is an entrepreneur – a new ethos is sweeping through our economic world. While the promises of ‘being your own boss’ and ‘deciding about your working hours’…
A Brief Lindbergh Update
One of my more popular posts of late has been The Fall and Rise of Lindbergh: A Javelina Story. In that post, I tell the story of a…
Smartphones and public anthropology
Sanderien Verstappen* Report on the RAI conference panel “Critical play: Smartphones as a mode of creative engagement with crisis” during the RAI Film Festival 2021. Anthropology students Jacob…
Screenshots of the Field: Viral Loads and the Contagious Potentials of Digital Ethnography
Over the course of the past six months, I have been actively doing fieldwork on HIV care in Turkey on Zoom. Believe it or not, for an anxious…
The Fall and Rise and Lindbergh: A Javelina Story
I have been working with javelinas in Texas for nearly a year. My first encounter with them occurred at Big Bend National Park and I have since visited…
The Ugliness of Multispecies Intersubjectivity: Pandemic Racism and the Love of Animals in the U.K.
Content and Trigger Warning: This post contains profanity and strong references to violence against Black Lives Matter protesters, but more specifically, protesters who are Black, Indigenous, and peop…
Data Swarms Revisited – New Modes of Being
Editor’s Note: The new Platypus Thematic Series entitled “Data Swarms Revisited” will feature posts form computer science, philosophy and anthropology and connect to the Thematic Series Anthropos Tomo…
Human as the Ultimate Authority in Control
Illustration of algorithmically simulated flocking behavior (2021, created by Anna Lukina) With the growing size of historical data available to researchers and industrial practitioners, developing al…
Localising the Pandemic: Understanding Global Disruption through Online Media
by Maddalena Conte It does not happen every day that a worldwide crisis completely overturns a discipline’s research methods, giving no choice but to experiment with new practices.…
How Plants Become Bits: The Politics of Harmful Algal Bloom Mitigation in Lake Erie
The Power of One While seated at my kitchen table in my apartment in Columbus, OH, the site of my dissertation fieldwork, I attended an Ohio Agribusiness conference…
Authenticity and Digital Intimacy Between Influencers and Researchers*
Marie Hermanova** Person holding smartphone – free mobile phone image on Unsplash Ethnography of and on social media, in which my own research on female influencers on Czech…
Envisioning a Different Park: Border Walls, Transborder Ties, and Militarized Ecologies
When news broke out on January 20th, 2021, that newly inaugurated President Joe Biden signed a proclamation ending Trump’s Executive Order 9844, which declared a national emergency at…
Only Half the Story – Rethinking the Relationship Between Digital Ethnographers and Their Devices*
Franziska Weidle** “Digital cinema is pre-computational” – from Quelic Berga’s presentation at ECREA 2018; author of original image: DRs Kulturarvsprojekt; title: Steenbeck…
Smartphones “In-Between” or: What Do Smartphones Have in Common With Doors?*
Suzana Jovicic Credits: Thomas Sobottka It is Friday night in a youth centre on the outskirts of Vienna; the lights are dim, and loud local Rap music is…
Snake Oil: A Memoir on the Rise of ‘Trafficking’
When future historians try to understand what ‘trafficking’ meant in the first 20 years of the 21st century, I hope this memoir gives them pause. Recording how my…