This week we’d like to introduce you to our newest Familiar Stranger, Ruonan Chen! Ruonan is currently doing her fieldwork around hospitals and healing practises in the Tibet autonomous region. In this episode, the strangers dive into Ruonan’s work and learn more about how “healing” can take on many different forms. Ruonan describes her work and details a run in with a particularly insightful fortune teller.
Next, familiar stranger Joe brings up the topic of shopping malls, and how certain elements are signifiers of class and social status. Alex regales us with tales of being a listless teenager heading to “Chaddy” and Carolyn describes the in-depth instagram stalking she has been doing on various shopping centres around Melbourne.
Just a note on sound quality: We are still conducting our panels over Zoom so the internet and audio quality might not be as clear in some places. The podcast editing team is working on a solution!
Don’t forget to head over to our Facebook group The Familiar Strange Chats. Let’s keep talking strange, together!
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Our Patreon can be found at www.patreon.com/thefamiliarstrange
This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.
Links and Citations:
Check out Ruonan’s work here:
https://archanth.cass.anu.edu.au/people/ms-ruonan-chen
Check out the book Alex mentioned here
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520299290/state-of-health
Read El Mall here:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt19632h7
Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com
Shownotes by Matthew Phung
Podcast edited by Alex D’Aloia and Matthew Phung
Feature Image: “Finestrelles Shopping Centre” by Jorge Franganillo (2020)
https://flic.kr/p/2ivveMi
