Touch Me if You Can: Intimate Bodies at Cuddle Parties
Touch Me if You Can: Intimate Bodies at Cuddle Parties Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Ahead of Print. This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on the processes and practices…
When “the state” is the absence of a sour red date: Memory, materiality, and agency
When “the state” is the absence of a sour red date: Memory, materiality, and agency Go to Source
The illusions of “magical thinking”: Whose chimera, ours or theirs?
The illusions of “magical thinking”: Whose chimera, ours or theirs? Go to Source
Place, materiality, and gender in subaltern memories of long lives in a poor Beijing neighborhood
Place, materiality, and gender in subaltern memories of long lives in a poor Beijing neighborhood Go to Source
Scales of knowing
Scales of knowing Go to Source
How to do things with worlds: A reply to responses
How to do things with worlds: A reply to responses Go to Source
Burning translations
Burning translations This essay radicalizes the call for foreignizing translation in anthropology by pushing translation beyond a reference to an anthropological self. What I recognize as “burning translations” responds to…
“Where it was, I must come into being”
“Where it was, I must come into being” This article considers the problem of translation and radical interpretation from a post-structuralist and psychoanalytic perspective, and challenges the notion of concept,…
Life in old Beijing
Life in old Beijing Go to Source
The death of urban China: Reflections on Harriet Evans’s Beijing from below
The death of urban China: Reflections on Harriet Evans’s Beijing from below Go to Source
All-encompassing ethnographies: Strategies for feminist and equity-oriented institutional research
All-encompassing ethnographies: Strategies for feminist and equity-oriented institutional research Ethnography, Ahead of Print. This article addresses the challenges inherent to conducting ethnography in all-encompassing institutions and presents strategies for equity-oriented…
Comparative urbanism and collective methodologies: Restoration projects in West Bengal and South East London
Comparative urbanism and collective methodologies: Restoration projects in West Bengal and South East London Asking who gets to compare, this paper advocates inclusive research methodologies through a discussion of comparison…
The conditions of possibility of the ethnographic gesture: A reply to Philip Swift
The conditions of possibility of the ethnographic gesture: A reply to Philip Swift This piece is a response to Philip Swift’s article in this issue, where he critiques issues concerning…
Heathen hermeneutics: Or, radical “radical interpretation”
Heathen hermeneutics: Or, radical “radical interpretation” Translation—both multi- and intra-lingual—is vital to anthropological method. Drawing a distinction between two opposing modes of translation (“domesticating” versus “foreignizing”), this paper considers the…
Reality remodeled: Practical fictions for a more-than-empirical world
Reality remodeled: Practical fictions for a more-than-empirical world Most ethnographers have little use for models and other formal abstractions, yet even a staunch empiricist such as Franz Boas could appreciate…
The psychedelic ritual as a technique of the self: Identity reconfiguration and narrative reframing in the therapeutic efficacy of ayahuasca
The psychedelic ritual as a technique of the self: Identity reconfiguration and narrative reframing in the therapeutic efficacy of ayahuasca Although so-called “psychedelic” substances have recently experienced a revival of…
The pedigree of the house: The case of Vdra-ba
The pedigree of the house: The case of Vdra-ba Vdra-ba society in western Sichuan, China, has been represented by evolutionist Chinese scholars as a primitive matrilineal society that was in…
Religion in action: How Marian apparitions may become true
Religion in action: How Marian apparitions may become true According to Latour, religion and science have nothing in common. The two are successful (or failing) in quite different ways. Religiousness…
Fateful rite of passage: Charismatic ratification of elite merit in China’s National College Entrance Exam
Fateful rite of passage: Charismatic ratification of elite merit in China’s National College Entrance Exam This article argues that China’s National College Entrance Exam, the Gaokao, provides routinized charismatic ratification…
Virtue’s cosmos: Enaction as an anthropology of eschatology
Virtue’s cosmos: Enaction as an anthropology of eschatology As youngsters in a Pakistani megacity participate in a reading group to discuss the end of time by looking at the eschatological…