“Migration issues in Europe are a hot topic right now - it's not news that they have been used in the last 50 years as a way to steer public opinion into right wing positions...they are mobilised as elements in a narration of invasion, losing cultural specificities - not only individuals are mobilised in discursive terms, but there are also infrastructures that create people as migrants - not having access to proper work, or being put into certain infrastructures from which it’s virtually impossible to get out, creates people as migrants, as outsiders to society.” In Episode 7 of our STS Interview Series, Jodie is interviewing Annalisa Pelizza, Professor in Technology Studies of Communication at the University of Bologna in Italy about how migrants shape Europe and are shaped by European infrastructures.
The arguments against climbing Uluru… and why people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones
Author: Dr. Yasmine Musharbash, senior lecturer in anthropology at the Australian National University. The focus of her ethnographic work has been on Warlpiri people living in Yuendumu, in the Northern Territory, Australia. Her interests include the anthropology of the everyday, human/other-than-human interactions, and the anthropology of emotion. Editorial note: On July 15th 2019, an Australian … Continue reading The arguments against climbing Uluru… and why people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones
Ep. #43: Deepfakes, words vs actions, hatred in anthropology and social dissociation: This month on TFS (Re-Release)
On this month's panel episode, digital anthropologist Dr Stephanie Betz (5:50) discusses “deepfakes”. It's been possible to doctor images to a very high degree of believability for a long time - Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, was fooled by fake images of two young girls playing in their garden with a community of fairies back in 1917! But deepfake technologies are now making it possible to create fake video footage so realistic that it's almost impossible to detect with the naked eye, and so easy to create that all you need is a smart phone. How will society adapt to these changes?
The one thing that changed everything: Complex illness & the functional fallacy of a singular cause
When I asked my research participants what they felt had caused theirs or their patient’s schizophrenia, it was often put down to one thing or another, rather than one thing and another:
"It was because of this one bad acid tab”
“It was hereditary”
“It was the trauma”
... But when it came to the solution, it tended to be a multitude of things.