Ti binni ruyubi, beyond binaries and median points: Methodological reflections on brownness in the field and intersectional reflexivity
Ti binni ruyubi, beyond binaries and median points: Methodological reflections on brownness in the field and intersectional reflexivity Using theoretical debates about how to deploy reflexivity in ethnographic research to…
Unable to see the diagnosis: Harmed bodies and oil extraction in Peruvian Amazonia
Unable to see the diagnosis: Harmed bodies and oil extraction in Peruvian Amazonia This article discusses two distinct notions of harm, wakllichishka and oil harm, and two distinct ways of…
Scales of subversion
Scales of subversion Go to Source
Is subversion just another version of state aversion? Notes on Herzfeld’s Subversive archaism
Is subversion just another version of state aversion? Notes on Herzfeld’s Subversive archaism Go to Source
Migration, village sociality, and mistrust: An exploration
Migration, village sociality, and mistrust: An exploration This article examines the phenomenon of migration in India’s villages. Drawing on research in Jharkhand and Maharashtra and selected village ethnographies it illustrates…
Uncanny ethics: Locating the coordinates of the ethical in the COVID-19 pandemic
Uncanny ethics: Locating the coordinates of the ethical in the COVID-19 pandemic The recent anthropological focus on “ordinary ethics” emerges out of a concern to attend to the ethical aspect…
Ethnography as creative improvisation: Exploring methods in (post) pandemic times
Ethnography as creative improvisation: Exploring methods in (post) pandemic times This article discusses the possibilities and limitations of digital creative methods developed by the author in response to lockdown and…
Video footage and the grain of practice
Video footage and the grain of practice In his essay on the cockfight, Clifford Geertz charted a now familiar course in anthropological argument. He showed how the minute details of…
There was no future in the past: Time and the environment in rural Namibia
There was no future in the past: Time and the environment in rural Namibia To explain how Namibian pastoralists envision the future of the climate and the environment, I develop…
Magic, metaphysics, and methods
Magic, metaphysics, and methods Go to Source
Economy, emulation, and equality: Sociogenesis in the postsocialist capitalocene: Gudeman Lecture, University of Minnesota, March 21, 2022
Economy, emulation, and equality: Sociogenesis in the postsocialist capitalocene: Gudeman Lecture, University of Minnesota, March 21, 2022 Economy and emulation are freighted concepts. They draw attention to universal phenomena, the…
The logic of magic: Reading Wittgenstein’s remarks on Frazer’s The golden bough
The logic of magic: Reading Wittgenstein’s remarks on Frazer’s The golden bough This article centers on a close reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer’s The golden bough, showing how…
Home as a second skin: A contribution to a theory of magic (of tidying)
Home as a second skin: A contribution to a theory of magic (of tidying) In this article, I describe a “magical” dimension in the work of home organizers (HOs) in…
The sacred unbound: Insufficient rituals, excess life, and divine agency in rural Tamil Nadu
The sacred unbound: Insufficient rituals, excess life, and divine agency in rural Tamil Nadu Dissonances between human expectations and actual experiences of sacred presence and actions—as materialized in unexplained deaths,…
In the Saunas I’m Either Invisible or Camouflaged: Colonial Fantasies and Imaginations in Sydney’s Gay Saunas
In the Saunas I’m Either Invisible or Camouflaged: Colonial Fantasies and Imaginations in Sydney’s Gay Saunas Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Ahead of Print. I analyze racism in Sydney’s gay sauna…
I am anthropologist – But where is the field? On fieldwork, intimacy, and home
I am anthropologist – But where is the field? On fieldwork, intimacy, and home Ethnography, Ahead of Print. This article was prompted by a question: how can one be anthropologist…
Close quarters. Sailing the murky waters of an ethnography ‘at-home’
Close quarters. Sailing the murky waters of an ethnography ‘at-home’ Ethnography, Ahead of Print. This paper examines the tensions, struggles, and opportunities of doing ethnographies ‘at-home’. For the purpose of…
The Janus Face of Organizational Knowing
The Janus Face of Organizational Knowing Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Ahead of Print. This article challenges our current understanding of the role of knowing for organizational participation by discussing how,…
Teaching Myanmar students under the Gaokao policy in a borderland school: Teachers’ challenges and agency
Teaching Myanmar students under the Gaokao policy in a borderland school: Teachers’ challenges and agency Ethnography, Ahead of Print. This study examines the classroom interactions and agentive practices of a…
Vulnerability-Making at Europe’s Edge: How Policies, Documents, and Spatiality Intra-Act in the Context of Young Refugees
Vulnerability-Making at Europe’s Edge: How Policies, Documents, and Spatiality Intra-Act in the Context of Young Refugees Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Ahead of Print. When young refugees who arrive in the…