This episode, Kylie interviews a very familiar guest ... Dr Jodie-Lee Trembath (aka Jodie from TFS)! Now, Jodie's no stranger to qualifications, but this year she completed her PhD - which is a MAMMOTH achievement - so we thought it was about time to pick her brain to understand more about universities and fieldwork. They … Continue reading Ep. #50 An Anthropology of Universities: Jodie Trembath on Selling Academia
Academia
Making an Academic ‘Coven’
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.
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.
Ep. #27 TFS at AAA: Elevator pitches, problem labels, public anthropology, & estrangement in practice – Guest panel with Dr Esteban Gómez & Dr Carie Little Hersh
This month we bring you a special panel episode straight from the AAA (American Anthropological Association) Conference in San José, California. In this episode, our own Julia Brown and Ian Pollock are joined by Dr Esteban Gómez, a professor at University of Denver and co-host of the Sapiens podcast, and Dr Carie Little Hersh, an associate … Continue reading Ep. #27 TFS at AAA: Elevator pitches, problem labels, public anthropology, & estrangement in practice – Guest panel with Dr Esteban Gómez & Dr Carie Little Hersh
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.
The neoliberal university is making us sick: Who’s to blame?
Outside the academy, I’m sure the perception remains that academics sit in leather armchairs, gazing out the gilded windows of our ivory towers, thinking all day.
That has not been my experience, nor that of anyone I know.
My colleagues and peers have, however, experienced levels of anxiety and depression that are six times higher than experienced in the general population. They report higher levels of workaholism, the kind that has a negative and unwanted effect on relationships with loved ones. The picture is often even bleaker for women, people of colour, and other non-White, non-middle-class, non-males. So whether you think academics are ‘delicate woeful souls’ or not, it’s difficult to deny that there is a real problem to be tackled here.
Stephen Hawking, Dis-Incorporated
As Helene Mialet’s ethnography examines the role of his assistants, his students, and the media in the social construction of ‘Stephen Hawking: the great genius’, she also shows the subtle ways that some part of Hawking the man remains present, imposes himself on each interaction within his extended network.
Ep. #11 Alternative worlds: Ghassan Hage talks multiculturalism, teaching the enemy, & thinking in public
“Any concept -- capitalism, neoliberalism, etc. -- leaves an excess that it is the aim of anthropology to unearth. These are spaces that are not dominated by whatever’s dominating at a specific time. So there are existing alternatives, there are not just imaginary alternatives.... Anthropology in this sense does provide the possibility of thinking of … Continue reading Ep. #11 Alternative worlds: Ghassan Hage talks multiculturalism, teaching the enemy, & thinking in public
Ep. #8 Savage Bitcoin, hamster flushing, scholars at work, and New Mandala: this month on TFS
This month, Ian (1:25) digs into Bitcoin, arguing that the cryptocurrency is no different than regular currencies, and can be analyzed along all the same lines: symbolically, materially, institutionally, relationally. “The same material problems of decay that would affect some other kind of material currency like a coin or a bill still applies to Bitcoin.” … Continue reading Ep. #8 Savage Bitcoin, hamster flushing, scholars at work, and New Mandala: this month on TFS
Ep. #7 The knowledge we value: Dipesh Chakrabarty talks the contentious politics of knowledge production
“Doing history ideally is like doing anthropology of people who are gone, except that you don’t have native informants, you only have these written fragmentary sources. But the same hermeneutic struggle goes on: you’re trying to understand somebody from their point of view.” Dipesh Chakrabarty, the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of history and … Continue reading Ep. #7 The knowledge we value: Dipesh Chakrabarty talks the contentious politics of knowledge production
The Familiar Strange 