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
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…
Insecurities of nativism: A woman ethnographer studying her own community
Insecurities of nativism: A woman ethnographer studying her own community This article, through various ethnographic encounters, highlights the advantages and explores the challenges of fieldwork for a female researcher studying…
Deception-based knowledge in Indigenous and scientific societies: American Indian tricksters and experimental research designs
Deception-based knowledge in Indigenous and scientific societies: American Indian tricksters and experimental research designs The emerging movement to decolonize the sciences, social sciences, and humanities has emphasized the differences between…
Claiming the bodies of Kurdish women: Kurdish women’s funerals in Northern Kurdistan/Turkey
Claiming the bodies of Kurdish women: Kurdish women’s funerals in Northern Kurdistan/Turkey The Turkish state strictly bans funerals and other forms of public mourning for Kurdish guerrillas, considering them to…
Contemporary Shuar beliefs: The indigenous use of a vexed anthropological concept in post-conversion Amazonia
Contemporary Shuar beliefs: The indigenous use of a vexed anthropological concept in post-conversion Amazonia The critique of belief as an analytical tool in anthropology has overshadowed belief as an ethnographic…
Uywasiña in Aymara cosmopraxis: Ontogenesis and attentionality
Uywasiña in Aymara cosmopraxis: Ontogenesis and attentionality This article revolves around the theoretical and ethnographic experiences of an ongoing anthropological study with contemporary Aymara families about how “education by attention”…
Emotivity and excess of spirits in the Andes
Emotivity and excess of spirits in the Andes In the Quechua community of Coipasi (Bolivia) relations between the living and the dead (almas—souls) swing between excess and containment, remembrance and…
Turkish Islam and Kurdish difference
Turkish Islam and Kurdish difference In this article I discuss the ways in which the Turkish state uses Islam as a weapon to delegitimize and render unnecessary Kurdish distinctiveness and…
Spreading whose word? Militarism and nationalism in the transnational Turkish mosques
Spreading whose word? Militarism and nationalism in the transnational Turkish mosques In this article, I explore the role of religious discourses and practices in the diasporic Kurdish-Turkish conflict and investigate…
Kurdish transformative politics in Turkey
Kurdish transformative politics in Turkey This article discusses the transformative potential of Turkey’s pro-democracy movement which has emerged out of a long history of Kurdish political struggle. It looks at…