The work of plants
Though plants are indispensable for human survival, their contributions to human existence and history are often underappreciated. To underline some of the contributions of plants to wider environmen…
Tag: series
Metabolism and capacity: history and labour in post-apartheid South Africa
I start with the question, why was it necessary, from 2008, for Mondi South Africa to spend R50 million (USD 8 million) a year on a nutrition intervention…
Miscommunicating metabolism: hunger, method and the practice of public health
Over the past five years I have been conducting research on everyday eating and the emergence of Non-Communicable Diseases in the West African city of Dakar, Senegal. Working…
‘How pesticides enter the body’: Porosity and growth in Western Kenya
Skin, nose, mouth In a remote church building in the Southwest of Kenya, Arthur Ouko was training farmers on ‘responsible use of pesticides.’ He was instilling the importance…
“When the city eats the forest”
Kinshasa, its traffic and street vendors, receded as we drove past the international airport on the national road following the Congo River. “It’s been recently re-asphalted”, said the…
Introduction: Metabolic thinking and the predicaments of growth in Africa
Metabolic thinking deals in bounded organisms, regulated systems, and the calculated (self)-optimisation of responsible, profitable, and healthful nutritive and energetic transactions. But critical s…
The toxic imperial metabolism of Senegalese peanuts
The identification of aflatoxin in the 1960s troubled plans for Senegalese peanuts. Blamed for the acute poisoning of English poultry fed with Brazilian peanut meal, this fungal metabolite…
Technologies of Equal Participation: Formats, Designs, Practices. Introduction.
This browser does not support HTML5 audio Listen to an audio recording of this piece read by Svetlana Borodina Photo by Gareth David on Unsplash Only tod…
Reactions and Ruptures: Ethnographies of Nuclear Life
Recording of Reactions and Ruptures This browser does not support HTML5 audio In one sense, nuclear materials direct our attention to the vibrancy and reactivity…
Fetishes or Cyborgs? Religion as technology in the Afro-Atlantic space
(Editor’s Note: This blog post is part of the Thematic Series Data Swarms Revisited) Exú, the trickster god, Axé Ilé Oba – São Paulo (photo by Giovanna Capponi)…
On Drones and Ectoplasms: Breath of Gaia
(Editor’s Note: This blog post is part of the Thematic Series Data Swarms Revisited) Painting form the art project On Drones and Ectoplasms: Breath of Gaia. ©Angeliki Malakasioti…
Swarming Syphilis: On the Reality of Data
(Editor’s Note: This blog post is part of the Thematic Series Data Swarms Revisited) Treponema pallidum spirochetes under microscope using a modified Steiner silver stain. Obtained from the…
Multiple Modes of Being Human
(Editor’s Note: This blog post is part of the Thematic Series Data Swarms Revisited) Evolution (photo by and copyright of Oliver Berger) In the last couple of years,…
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…
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…
Un espejo donde reflejarnos
Una de las cuestiones que más me inquietan de la juventud son los referentes de éxito que manejan, ya que esos referentes son los espejos en los que…
“Would You Come With Me to the Line?”: Lawfare and Legal Accompaniment at the US-Mexico Border
Between July 2015 and July 2018, when I did ethnographic fieldwork on the politics of care, hospitality…
Waiting for LGBTQI+ Asylum Seekers in Germany: A Form of State Control and Resistance
Since 2016, the European Union has made efforts to streamline and simplify the administrative procedure for international refugee protection…
Restricting and Shaping Women’s International Migrations from Indonesia
ases of abuse and violence against Indonesian migrant domestic workers abroad regularly make headlines nationally and internationally…
Business as Usual in the DR Congo: Patriarchy, Authoritarianism, and Global Complicity
“In much of Africa, ‘wife’ is a four-letter word,” writes Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyèwùmí (2000: 1096, emphasis in original). “[Instead] Mother…
Editorial Introduction: Migration, Mobility, and Displacement
On the Gender and the Sexual Politics of Contemporary Patriarchal Ethnonationalist Authoritarianism by María Lis Baiocchi – On March 23rd, 2019, the state of Texas banned…
The Specter of Gender Discrimination in the Removal of Kashmir’s Autonomy
On August 5, 2019, the quasi-autonomy of Indian administered Kashmir was removed militarily without consulting the Kashmiri legislature or the people. This move was as illegal (Parthasathy 2019)…
Kashmiri Goats, Imaginaries of Freedom, and the Planetary Pandemic
Weeks after governments around the world imposed travel restrictions and quarantine orders that removed humans from typically busy markets, roads, and…