Having meaningful conversations about systemic racism and social immobility can connect people as much as the act of absorbing someone else’s microcosm of grief and relating to it. Ideally, I think, the conversations should encompass both the macro issues and the micro everyday scenes: acknowledging the social values that might hinder social change and communicating the process of witnessing everyday pain that reminds us of our shared humanity.
Author: thinkingthroughambiguity
Ep #57 Narratives of Loss: Baptiste Brossard talks Alzheimer’s Disease & Social Dimensions of Ageing
The Familiar Strange · #57 Narratives Of Loss: Dr Brossard on Alzheimer’s, Looping Effects & Resuscitating Past Personhood “I’m giving mundane examples here, but it can be a matter of life or death in a sense. Whether people are believed or not, it changes their destiny.” In this episode, we bring you an interview with … Continue reading Ep #57 Narratives of Loss: Baptiste Brossard talks Alzheimer’s Disease & Social Dimensions of Ageing
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.
Ep. #42: Economies of Openness: Ros Attenborough on cultures of trust, exclusion & generosity in STS
"All of these questions deserve...just that little bit extra thought about what would openness look like for my study and in my discipline? What would it achieve? What effects would it have? And you know that when you have research interview data it's never going to be as simple as just 'publishing it on the internet'. There … Continue reading Ep. #42: Economies of Openness: Ros Attenborough on cultures of trust, exclusion & generosity in STS
BONUS EPISODE: ‘The scariest word in the English language: a public lecture on schizophrenia’
In this public lecture, Gabrielle Carey and Julia Brown hope to achieve at least two things. First, to humanise and reduce fear around the condition of schizophrenia (a heavily neglected social issue in Australia). Second, to show how two disciplines (literature and anthropology) can complement each other in the name of better communicating lived experiences of difficult subject matter.
Ep. #38 When good intention isn’t enough: Jacqui Hoepner on morally repulsive public health research & academic freedom
“I went into this thinking that objectivity and neutrality were the Name of the Game. That you couldn’t do good research if you were in any way biased or if you had your own opinions or experiences or values that might influence the research.” In episode number 4 of our STS Series, Dr Jacqui Hoepner, … Continue reading Ep. #38 When good intention isn’t enough: Jacqui Hoepner on morally repulsive public health research & academic freedom
Ep. #34 Knowledge Making: Emma Kowal talks Indigenous health care, difference & genomics
“A lot of what individual white anti-racists, as I called them, but also the broader policy frameworks are struggling with is the question of how do we enact Indigenous equality; how do we make the lines on the graphs that we draw of Indigenous versus non-Indigenous; how do we make those lines converge and ‘close the gap’, while maintaining Indigenous difference?”
5 Tips to Smash out Your PhD in Anthropology
I suspect thesis writing progression is a bit like sustainable weight loss. Calorie or step counting isn’t nearly as effective as getting in touch with how you feel in your body when you eat or exercise. But the latter takes more patience and attention to what is happening.
Ep. #24 Learning in disaster: Kim Fortun talks STS, knowledge politics & anthropology’s role in a crisis
“We need to be experimental because we’re not up to the task at hand; there’s a real practical and ethical call to responsibility, that drives that experimental commitment.” Kim Fortun, professor of anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, author of ‘Advocacy After Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New World Orders’ which won the 2003 Sharon Stephens … Continue reading Ep. #24 Learning in disaster: Kim Fortun talks STS, knowledge politics & anthropology’s role in a crisis
Is Life What You Make of It?
In regard to how much pre-determined ‘luck’ compares to perceptions of social mobility, it is useful to remember that both luck and feelings of free-will play into social inequities. Social security measures that aim “to help people help themselves” could better acknowledge whether people really feel like they have a choice to contribute to their own and others’ circumstances, and then care for ‘being’ part of that change.
The Familiar Strange 