Hierarchies persist, which is why factions, such as covens, coalesce in the first place. They emerge from a place of need. A need to counteract isolation, disparate power within disciplines, or the worlds anthropologists inhabit as part of fieldwork, and the worlds that meld and twist as part of the analytical process.
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Compassionate Cannibalism
Returning again to the ethnography by Conklin that started my thinking on this issue, the experience of compassionate cannibalism of the Wari spoke to the collective experiences of saying goodbye in a way that is supported culturally and emotionally. This exemplified a place of grief where both individual and collective experience were privileged equally.
Misinterpreting People
Anthropology has long ago dispensed with the notion that there is any ‘one’ truth. But I think most ethnographers still hope that in describing a group, the people within that group still see at least a reflection of themselves; still understand it as describing something that is legible to them.
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.
MeToo Anthropology
I’ll spare you the worst of it but I will tell you that, some agonizing moments later, I was able to reach my field knife while he was momentarily distracted. With it, I finally fought him off [...] The entire ordeal probably lasted no more than a few minutes but it changed a great many things afterwards.
Participant Observation from a First-Timer at the AAA Conference 2018, San Jose
This first experience of a really big conference makes me want to go to smaller conferences, where it would be easier to find the people who share my own interests. But it also makes me want to engage with AAA more as an institution. Why isn’t there an interest group for anthropology communications?
A Feminist Analysis of Orthodox Dogspotting
Dogspotting, arguably, was a tenuous thematic precursor to real-world crossover Pokémon Go. Instead of catching cutesy pocket monsters, group members went about spotting (and appreciating) as many canines as possible during the course of their day-to-day lives. The group aims at the time were simple...
Anthrocasts: some things I learned starting an anthropology podcast
If you can, cultivate relationships with some people who will give you honest feedback, always make it clear to your listeners that you welcome their point of view, and try to guess before you publish something what the worst criticisms of it might be.
Observing Real America: A Beginners Guide to Nantucket
From whence do our myths come, and how do they bear similarities across continents and generations? Anthropologists continue to speculate. Meanwhile, the scenes of contemporary odysseys – be they of tourists, scholars, spouses, or refugees; patterned according to taste, décor, algorithms, or despair – are most complete when we have never been, like unrequited loves.
On the Heartbreak of Leaving the Field: Falling in love and going home again
My heart was broken not by leaving individual people, but by leaving something much bigger. It takes us too long in anthropology to learn that the communities we study keep on going without us. They don’t stop mid lifetime waiting for us to return and press play again. Things will be different if we return, so when we leave, a certain something is left behind forever.
The Familiar Strange 