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…
Tag: research
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…
Shadows, Ambiguity, and More-Than-Human Politics
My first glimpse of a peccary/javelina at one of my fieldsites. I am currently working on a manuscript exploring the ways that both literal and metaphorical shadows produce…
Speaking for the Dead: Narratives of Genomics and Colonization
This is a paper that I wrote for a Ph.D. course: Nature and Capitalism. I’ve been sitting on it and I don’t think I am going to do…
Collaborative Ethnography in the Digital Age: Towards a New Methodological Framework*
Monika Palmberger & Philipp Budka Digital ethnography has become a very vibrant research field, as the growing body of literature indicates (e.g. Hjorth et al., 2017; Pink et…
Sexworkers’ long history as political experts, English translation: Thierry Schaffauser
I’ve translated Thierry’s reflections published the other day as faithfully to his tone as I could and checked with him, so here’s the piece with the same title,…
Adventures with Peccaries pt. 3
Here is some javelina video during fieldwork on October 30, 2020.
Adventures with Peccaries: pt. 1
I am currently in the early stages of designing a multispecies project working with the Cofán, an Indigenous people of Amazonian Ecuador, and two species of peccaries (white-lipped…
REDUX: The Privileged Discomfort of Border Crossings
First published December 6, 2018 As social scientists our work often directly grows out of our personal journeys—journeys that are physical, emotional, intellectual and political. However, this is…
#PostCoronaUniversity: an opportunity for Argentine and Brazilian social sciences?
Nowadays, most people are asking themselves what will happen in the coming months. In this time of COVID-19, it is not just the present that is under threat…
Upcoming Pilot Research
As of today I have submitted all of the required paperwork (IACUC, Occupational Health, Special Use Permit Application) . I will be collecting data on behavior and the…
Research ethics, violated
Recently on a scholar’s email listserv dealing with Myanmar (Burma) issues, I learned that at some universities in Australia, Singapore, and beyond, scholars intent on doing work in…
Texas Herping: May 2 & 4, 2020
Dr. Sarah Pollock and I braved the scorching heat (>95F) to look for snakes around little water around Culebra Creek Park. Special Guests: Lots of ribbons snakes and…