“I was at the right place at the right time”: The neglected role of happenstance in the lives of people and institutions
“I was at the right place at the right time”: The neglected role of happenstance in the lives of people and institutions This paper presents coproduced ethnographic material concerning the…
Invaluable enmeshments in pedagogy: An autoethnography of an anthropologist in the classroom
Invaluable enmeshments in pedagogy: An autoethnography of an anthropologist in the classroom This article explores the enmeshments and vulnerabilities that emerge in undergraduate courses on gender and sexuality. In these…
Iconoclasm and the restitution debate
Iconoclasm and the restitution debate Go to Source
Iconoclasms in Africa: Implications for the debate on restitution of cultural heritage
Iconoclasms in Africa: Implications for the debate on restitution of cultural heritage This article demonstrates that a long history of iconoclastic struggles exists in numerous countries of sub-Saharan Africa and…
Making Food Manageable – Packaging as a Code of Practice for Work Practices at the Supermarket
Making Food Manageable – Packaging as a Code of Practice for Work Practices at the Supermarket Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Ahead of Print. While packaging-free stores are in the uptake,…
Lebensphilosophie and the revolution in anthropology: Uncovering the original “turn to life”
Lebensphilosophie and the revolution in anthropology: Uncovering the original “turn to life” In two recent themed collections in this publication, numerous contributors have explored the term and concept of “life”…
Viktor Shklovsky, Bronislaw Malinowski, and the invention of a narrative device: Implications for a history of ethnographic theory
Viktor Shklovsky, Bronislaw Malinowski, and the invention of a narrative device: Implications for a history of ethnographic theory The advent of Malinowski’s ethnographic theory is inscribed in a wider modernist…
Missionary conversions: How missionary encounters pushed fundamentalists towards evangelicalism
Missionary conversions: How missionary encounters pushed fundamentalists towards evangelicalism Missionary encounters stimulate cultural change, although not always in ways one might expect. Throughout the mid-twentieth century, among missionaries from the…
Searching for the new human: Glacier melt, anthropogenic change, and self-reflection in Andean pilgrimage
Searching for the new human: Glacier melt, anthropogenic change, and self-reflection in Andean pilgrimage Arguing in favor of anthropology’s humanity-centered research tradition, this article examines how the encounter with human…
Witchcraft after modernity: Old and new directions in the study of witchcraft in Africa
Witchcraft after modernity: Old and new directions in the study of witchcraft in Africa What are the current trends in the study of witchcraft in Africa? Twenty years ago, the…
“We got citizenship but nothing else”: Love, (be)longing, and betrayal in the context of India’s citizenship regime
“We got citizenship but nothing else”: Love, (be)longing, and betrayal in the context of India’s citizenship regime While recent amendments to India’s Citizenship Act are designed to exclude Muslims from…
Abrogation and assertion: The fault lines of the Indian Constitution with regards to Kashmir
Abrogation and assertion: The fault lines of the Indian Constitution with regards to Kashmir In this article I look at the responses of Indians to political events in 2019 regarding…
Shaheen Bagh and the hermeneutics of Muslim identity in South Asia
Shaheen Bagh and the hermeneutics of Muslim identity in South Asia This article locates the unique discursive contribution of women’s protests against India’s Citizen Amendment Act in 2019–2020 in the…
Researching India’s Muslims: Identities, methods, politics
Researching India’s Muslims: Identities, methods, politics This article maps out the relationship between the academic/intellectual work and political positioning of a Muslim researcher in contemporary India. It is divided into…
On embracing the vague
On embracing the vague At the same time as, in Paris, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl experimented with the concept of “participation,” at Harvard, William James undertook a parallel trajectory by taking recourse…
Hindu nationalism’s crisis machine
Hindu nationalism’s crisis machine This essay looks at Hindu nationalism’s investment in a crisis machine linked closely to digital media networks in India. Media infrastructures have provided right-wing populism with…
Hindu majoritarianism, forms of capital, and urban politics: The making of a new ordinary citizen in India
Hindu majoritarianism, forms of capital, and urban politics: The making of a new ordinary citizen in India This article explores the remaking of ideas of the “ordinary citizen” in India…
Mobilizations around the law, iconoclasm, and the (a)moral
Mobilizations around the law, iconoclasm, and the (a)moral Go to Source
Reclaiming the sublime: The (un)making of the people’s constitution in India
Reclaiming the sublime: The (un)making of the people’s constitution in India The Currents section foregrounds the work of Indian scholars who examine the ramifications of state responses and counterresponses regarding…
Resisting the configurations for a Hindu nation
Resisting the configurations for a Hindu nation The protests against the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) and a nationwide NRC (National Register of Citizens) have emerged as an important challenge against…