Inside Mexico City’s Surveillance State
An anthropologist investigates how one city’s rapidly expanding video surveillance system is transforming criminal investigation—sometimes in deeply flawed ways. ✽ In September 2022, a criminal prose…
Tag: urban
The rumour of The Rumour of Calcutta is true
Seen in the wild in India//purchased with rupees by a close friend from a close friend who runs a bookstall – I notice the cover has with a…
Book Review: Citizen Designs: City-making and Democracy in Northeastern Thailand by Eli Elinoff
In Citizen Designs: City-making and Democracy in Northeastern Thailand, Eli Elinoff explores citizenship struggles and the political engagement of residents living in Northeastern Thailand. Unlike tra…
Excavating a 19th-Century Detroit Saloon
A filmmaker highlights the work of urban archaeologists digging a woman-owned business opened in the late 1800s. In this short documentary, Wayne State University archaeologist Krysta Ryzewski and…
The Rumour of Calcutta update
27 22 years ago my first book was typeset and laid out in the days before electronics – well, an electric typesetting machine was plugged into a wall,…
In Delhi, Women Find Their Place on the Metro
Over the past two decades, the subway system has reshaped social relations in India’s densely populated capital—especially for women, who continue to face everyday violence in public spaces.…
In Lebanon, Solar Power Is Booming. Why?
An anthropologist explores whether Lebanese turning to solar power is a story of resilience, environmental triumph, or something else. ✽ I recently returned to Lebanon, where I have…
Against Charity
I wrote my first book as a critique of charity work in Kolkata, India. I attempted a critique of western ‘charity’ workers helping those they saw as the…
in Nakon Si Thammarat
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“Saigon’s Penalscape: Interpreting Colonial Prisons in Vietnam” – first 50 Pdfs free
Your article, Saigon’s penalscape: interpreting colonial prisons in Vietnam, with Sophie Fuggle, is now published in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 23 Issue 3 Have you used your free eprints yet?…
Subhas gutted in HCMC (fire at 76 Hai Ba Trung, 1.7.2022)
July 1st, Ho Chi Minh City – 76 Hai Ba Trung – After a fire that started in an picture framing shop*, a large part of the house…
Apocalyptic end times
I have a hunch this place won’t last the decade – some sort of global cataclysm is in the offing, you can just tell. Yet despite prognostications of…
Comparative Urbanism and who gets [funded to] compare
In the current conjuncture, with the increasingly complete capture of university research by corporate interests, only the alternative incorporation of research teams that start outside the universit…
What Kenya’s Killer Cops Reveal About Police Culture
On July 7, 2021, Nairobi residents marched to protest police brutality and harassment, particularly against poor people. The date also commemorates demonstrations against authoritarian rule that …
Another Kind of Concrete – Koushik Banerjea
being ill is my excuse for catching up with novels, but I interrupt the stream of hackery to give a progress report on this as its the best…
Thesis Review: Tasting Tea, Tasting China
Photograph: by the author – Cha xi design in Hengshan Temple event Tasting Tea, Tasting China: Tearooms and the Everyday Culture in Dalian. Yingkun Hou. Ph.D. Thesis in…
Opium in HCMC
A lockdown post. Looking forward to continuing to explore the city one great meal at a time. Here are some of my notes on La Manufacture d’Opium, at…
Urban Arena – a podcast about sustainable and just cities
Urban Arena – a podcast about sustainable and just cities Cities can play a crucial role in creating just and sustainable futures. Urban Arena is a series of…
Kenyan Mothers Take on Police Violence
Lucy Wambui is a convenor of the Mothers of Victims and Survivors Network in Nairobi. Ed Ram I first met Sarah Wangari three weeks after her son Alex…
Amazon Sidewalk Needs our Trust for its Security
On June 8, 2021, Amazon deployed an “opt-in” way for people to enable the company to expand its private network into communities, creating infrastructure to peddle even more…
#Fieldnotes: Dreams and Personal Pursuits in Seoul: Part II
The partial biographies presented in this piece are situated as stoppages that mark generational experiences of structural change in South Korea. In Part I, I considered how biographies…
How Many People Lived in the Angkor Empire?
This article was originally published at The Conversation and has been republished under Creative Commons. How big were the world’s ancient cities? At its height, the world’s first…
A moral politics of blame
Modern municipal waste disposal is not limited to removal of garbage, but often involves a strategic churning out of unwanted people, and extreme events such as dump fires…