The Familiar Strange · Ep#110: Brooms Not Cutlases: Guyana’s Histories with Dr Oneka LaBennett In this episode Familiar Stranger Emma Quilty sat down with Associate Professor Oneka LaBennett to talk about her most recent book, Global Guyana: Shaping Race, Gender, and Environment in the Caribbean and Beyond. Global Guyana develops a powerful set of heuristics … Continue reading Ep#110: Brooms Not Cutlasses: Guyana’s Histories with Dr Oneka LaBennett
ethnography
Net Zero & Bullsh*t: Corporate Sustainability Metrics with Dr Matthew Archer
The Familiar Strange · Ep107# Net Zero & Bullsh*t: Corporate Sustainability Metrics with Dr Matthew Archer This week Emma Quilty sat down with Matthew Archer, Assistant Professor at Maastricht University to discuss his brand new NYU Press book Unsustainable: Measurement, Reporting, and the Limits of Corporate Sustainability. In this brilliant and incisive new book, Matthew … Continue reading Net Zero & Bullsh*t: Corporate Sustainability Metrics with Dr Matthew Archer
Ep#103 Handwraps & Hijabs: Dr Jasmijn Rana on Kickboxing & Piety in the Netherlands
https://soundcloud.com/thefamiliarstrange/ep103-handwraps-hijabs/s-ZZRWhVqjk0r?si=6fd5ac88c0ee45f9a37bffe010f8abae&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing Welcome back to the Familiar Strange. We’re kicking off 2023 with an interview with Dr Jasmijn Rana from Leiden University. Dr Jasmijn’s research interests include, gender, race-ethnicity, religion, embodiment and movement. Jasmijn is currently (2022-2023) a Marie-Sklodowska Curie Global Fellow at University of California, Berkeley. This week, Familiar Stranger Sean discusses Dr Rana’s latest … Continue reading Ep#103 Handwraps & Hijabs: Dr Jasmijn Rana on Kickboxing & Piety in the Netherlands
Choosing Your Own Adventure: My Life as a Teenage Dungeon Master and How It Prepared Me to Become an Anthropologist
In many ways, Dungeon Masters are the ethnographers of their own worlds. Granted, we’re not exactly interviewing the people who populate them, and we’re inventing most of the traditions and customs out of the content in our own imaginations. But when it comes to building a narrative about people and their ways-of-being, there isn’t all that much difference between narratives of “a” world and narratives of “the” world. This is something we actually have in common with fiction writers as well. Ethnographies share, to an extent, certain characteristics of novels; such that both the author and the anthropologist are setting out to involve their readers in a particular time and place, with a particular group of people (set up as pseudonymous dramatis personae), all who will hopefully tell us something about ourselves in the end.
Ep #85 Photography Through An Ethnographer’s Lens: Image Making with Jason De León
The Familiar Strange · Ep #85 Photography Through An Ethnographer’s Lens: Image Making with Jason De León This week Carolyn sits down with Jason De León, anthropologist, photographer and author. He is currently the director of the Undocumented Migration Project (UMP) and his research interests revolve around violence, materiality, Latin American migration, photoethnography, forensic science, … Continue reading Ep #85 Photography Through An Ethnographer’s Lens: Image Making with Jason De León
Too Fat to Be an Anthropologist
In what now feels like a lifetime ago, I was having one last catch up with a mate from my PhD cohort before we both set off for the field. We’d grabbed burgers at a burger bar in Canberra and were nursing a couple of pints. As I returned to the table after a brief visit to the bathroom, my mate said to me, “Ah, Alex, I’m glad you’re back. I was just about to say to Sarah (my partner) that we have so much in common – neither of us originally studied anthropology, both of us are from a development studies background, and we’re both too fat to be anthropologists.”
EP#81 Lifeworlds & Studying Aotearoa: Susanna Trnka on Traversing Multiple Lifeworlds & Publics
The Familiar Strange · EP#81 Lifeworlds & Studying Aoetorea: Susanna Trnka on Traversing Multiple Lifeworlds & Publics We’re back this week with Joe’s first interview! For this episode, Joe sits down with Susanna Trnka from the Anthropology department at the University of Auckland. Susanna is an associate professor in the anthropology department at the University … Continue reading EP#81 Lifeworlds & Studying Aotearoa: Susanna Trnka on Traversing Multiple Lifeworlds & Publics
Ep# 79 A Journey to the West: Nicholas Ng on the Music of the Teochew Diaspora in Western Sydney
The Familiar Strange · Ep# 79 A Journey to the West: Nicholas Ng on the Music of the Teochew Diaspora in Western Sydney We're back this week with familiar stranger Jarrod's first interview! For this episode, Jarrod sits down with Dr Nicholas Ng, from the Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture, and Institute … Continue reading Ep# 79 A Journey to the West: Nicholas Ng on the Music of the Teochew Diaspora in Western Sydney
Ethnographic Poetry and Academic Writing: A Reflection
“Whatever your eye can see, it's vecik.” This line resonated with me while I was conducting my fieldwork in Taiwan with the indigenous Paiwan village known as Paridrayan. Good friend and prolific artist, Etan Pavavaljung, once mentioned to me this Paiwan concept known as vecik. The concept, briefly speaking, implies an interconnectedness that links all tangible things with each other. From humans, rocks, and trees to winds and words, they are connected to each other through vecik...“However,” he added, “something like poetry can be vecik.”. He continued, “let’s take for example, a village elder reciting a poem about his childhood. He recites verses about his flower garden from his childhood home as well as reminiscing his childhood days. These words become vecik.”
Ep #75 The Anthropologists Perspective on Nomadland & Commodified Mothers: This Month of TFS
The Familiar Strange · Ep #75 The Anthropologists Perspective on Nomadland & Commodified Mothers: This Month of TFS This month familiar stranger Tim kicks us off by pondering the ethnographic and anthropological nature of the award winning film Nomadland directed by Chloé Zhao. The strangers discuss the almost anthropological origins of the film and other … Continue reading Ep #75 The Anthropologists Perspective on Nomadland & Commodified Mothers: This Month of TFS
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