Monstrous Matter, Out of Place
The following is an autoethnographic comic about my experiences re-understanding a new diagnosis through revisiting Mary Douglas’s Purity and Danger. (And yes, the final panel is from a…
Tag: Theory
Writing Life No. 13: An interview with Matthew Wolf-Meyer by Matthew Wolf-Meyer
From the bottom left, clockwise: my writing board (which currently has a note from my kids and a note about a future paper to be written), a stack…
Guest Post: Embracing Affect in the Classroom [Embodying Reciprocity Series]
[Footnotes is excited to present a guest post by Schuyler Marquez. This post is a part of the Embodying Reciprocity series. Schuyler Marq…
Guest Post: Embracing Affect in the Classroom [Embodying Reciprocity Series]
[Footnotes is excited to present a guest post by Schuyler Marquez. This post is a part of the Embodying Reciprocity series. Schuyler Marquez’s work focuses on bringing classical anthropological…
“Innovation, Habitus, and Heritage”: A New Paper Out Now in JFR
Hi all. I am happy to note that a new paper, co-authored with Johannes Müske and Lijun Zhang, has just been published in the Journal of Folklore Research.…
What is Anthropology? A Summary Review of the Second Edition by Thomas Hylland Eriksen
I found it helpful when Eriksen drew the line in the sand about the fundamental questions that anthropology concerns itself with. Here’s his Big Three: 1) What is…
Marxism is amphetamines, biopolitics is cocaine: Social science theories as drugs.
Okay so hear me out, I have a new bit: Social science theories as drugs. Biopolitics is cocaine. I like it in small doses, and I can see…
Homage to Those Who Hollered before Me/Meditations on Inheritances and Lineages, Anthropological and Otherwise
Homage to Those Who Hollered before Me Silence chose me I didn’t choose silence silence immobilized me I could not breathe in my own skin without breaking the…
How Race & Gender Interact To Shape Inequality
INTRODUCTION Inequality can be best understood in the context of how humans conceptualize ‘equality’. In the United States, a nation that projects an image of democracy and fairness,…
Modalities of Culture Change: A Query
A hybrid flower photographed by makamuki0 and circulated under a CC0 license. Hybridization as a mode of cultural change was discussed prominently in Theorizing the Hybrid, a 1999…
Ep. #21 Misogyny, irrational politics, the ontological turn, and multi-media learning: this month on TFS
Jodie (1:04), drawing on the book Down Girl by Australian philosopher Kate Manne, starts us off by asking what misogyny is, and how we should tackle it as…
Designs for the Pluriverse — [book review]
In Designs for the Pluriverse : Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, theorist and distinguished critic of development Arturo Escobar joins a chorus of works that…
On Thinking with People and their Escapes: A Review of Unfinished through Storytelling by Onur Günay
Unfinished: The Anthropology of Becoming João Biehl and Peter Locke, editors Duke University Press, 2017. 400 pages. If hierarchy is the key to sociological knowledge production, what…
“To Peace, Because the Awful Alternative is the End of All Life”: Build Bomb–Explore Space(s)–Save World! (Part 2)
This two-part post is a collaborative authorship between Taylor R. Genovese and Martin Pfeiffer, a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. For more on…
Psychoanalysis, primitivism and reality testing
I realize it is meaningless to harp on the failures of past authors, but I was still struck by this very blithe statement from a psychoanalytic scholar in…
insult, injury, & imagination
after reading an article about DeVos’ Dept. of Educ hinting at rolling back the gainful-employment rule & how it would be more costly to tax payers i thought…
An encounter with theory #Anthroadvice
Today we will reflect on what it means to ‘encounter, dwell in, read, critique and make use of theory’. The idea of an ‘encounter’ with theory is particularly…
The masculinity of Marxist theory
It is an exaggeration to say that all Marxist theory people are men. But the historical masculinity of that little world — let’s face it —is hard to underestimate. I’m not talking…
Cocina, música y comunicación: Tecnologías y estética en el Yucatán contemporáneo. Presentación por Marina Alonso Bolaños
Cocina, música y comunicación: Tecnologías y estética en el Yucatán contemporáneo, de Steffan Igor Ayora Diaz, Gabriela Vargas Cetina y Francisco Javier Fernández Repetto (UADY / CONACYT 2017) Mar…
Supporting the Resistance
Well, 2017 has certainly burst out of the gates, with Trump signing executive orders the way a bull wreaks havoc in a china shop, and the resistance using…
Being a grad student with ADHD: An ode to constant ontological uncertainty.
[Hi. I’m back. I’m digressing from my usual topics to get a little cathartic and personal for a bit. Don’t worry, for the next post we’ll be back…
Structure & Agency In Contemporary Social Theory
One of the main concerns of theorists of society in the 20th century has been the question of the relation between structure and agency. Describe three different schools…
Labour & The Self
What is Karl Marx’s conceptualization of the self? How is it shaped by labor processes? According to Karl Marx, an individual’s self-identity influences their local context or is…
Summary of Classical Sociological Theory
The basic premise of all classical sociological theory is that the contemporary world is the outcome of a transition from “traditional” to “modern” societies. Explain how Karl…