The Familiar Strange · #63 Culture Shock, Storytelling, Pungent Masculinity & Rule Based Imagination For the panel this week we welcome Luke Corbin from Myanmar Musings and Familiar Strange alumnus Jodie Lee Trembath! Simon starts us off [1:31] by discussing his recent culture shock in moving to Germany from Australia. Simon thought that experiences during … Continue reading Ep#63 Culture Shock, Storytelling, Pungent Masculinity & Rule Based Imaginations: This Month on TFS
ANZAC Cookies
If you’re an Australian, the title of this blog post likely felt kind of strange to you. Perhaps it just felt a bit wrong or maybe it made you feel a bit uncomfortable in the tummy. Maybe it even made you angry and you’ve already skipped reading this and jumped to the comments section to complain about ‘Americanization’.
Anthropology in the “real world”: A Roundtable Discussion About Applied Anthropology
This week we bring you a very special episode! Last year we collaborated with the Australian Network of Student Anthropologists, or ANSA for short and recorded their roundtable at the AAS held at the Australian National University. The roundtable discussion featured the likes of Dr Marcus Barber, Dr Sophie Chao, Dr Jayne Curnow, Derek Elias, … Continue reading Anthropology in the “real world”: A Roundtable Discussion About Applied Anthropology
The Fallible and the Untrustworthy: Writing Culture as the Unreliable Narrator
The notion of the Unreliable Narrator is, for me, not a critique of the perceived moral failings of the anthropological project, but a methodological narrative construct integral to the work of writing culture. The question of unreliability is not a question of believability but of what parts of a complex and convoluted truth we the readers are willing to sign on to and invest in. It reflects an understanding and acceptance that no single truth is wholly accurate but also that no individual account is without some measure of reality.
Ep#62 Job Fantasies, Working with Others, Extractive Calls & Reciprocity Revisited:This Month on TFS
The Familiar Strange · #62 Job Fantasies, Working With Others, Extractive Calls & Reciprocity Revisited This week we bring you another zoom panel! Featuring Mike Dunford who is a Phd candidate in anthropology at the Australian National University and Sophie Chao who you might remember from our last panel and her interview on her work … Continue reading Ep#62 Job Fantasies, Working with Others, Extractive Calls & Reciprocity Revisited:This Month on TFS
Strange Work in Familiar Places: Inside Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Border Hotels
The new appreciation of previously dismissed types of work may be short lived, and their ongoing fight for a living wage is certainly not won. However, this crisis has opened a space in which broader conversations about the value of the work of someone like Rose may become unavoidable. If the lessons of these hotels are to be translated to national politics, it is that we cannot afford to return to the pre-COVID economy that tolerated people like Rose not receiving a living wage and rough sleepers lining Auckland Queen Street while warm rooms and homes sit empty.
Ep #61 Switching Hats: Sverre Molland on Anti-Trafficking Initiatives in the Mekong Region
The Familiar Strange · #60 Switching Hats: Sverre Molland On Anti-Trafficking Initiatives In The Mekong Region A content warning before we get into this week's interview. Today’s topic centres around human trafficking activites in the Mekong reagion and our guest does mention some of the physical abuse that does take place in these situations. “I’m … Continue reading Ep #61 Switching Hats: Sverre Molland on Anti-Trafficking Initiatives in the Mekong Region
Blurred lines and dead chooks in fieldwork
My own fieldwork experience, like many others, demonstrates a blurring in what is ‘professional’ and ‘personal’, what is ‘leisure’ and ‘work’, whether you are researcher, student, or known by another identity. While researchers may strive to draw boundaries, distinctions in field research are blurry, because the nature of fieldwork means an element of the unknown and the out-of-control, and the intersection of different people, things, position, gender, power, knowledge and culture. As feminist geographers and anthropologists note, fieldwork is messy.
Ep #60 Adapting Methods, Human Difference, Virtual Dojos and Foggy Field notes:This Month on TFS
Welcome back to a new season! With Covid-19 restrictions still in place, we bring you another Zoom panel! For this reason, the audio quality will be a little different to our usual studio sound. This week, we are joined by Sophie Chao, who we interviewed previously about her use of multispecies ethnography during her time … Continue reading Ep #60 Adapting Methods, Human Difference, Virtual Dojos and Foggy Field notes:This Month on TFS
End of Season Message: June 2020
The Familiar Strange · End of Season Message: June 2020 Just like that, we have already made it through half of what can only be described as a crazy year. To bring this season to a close, we recorded a short message from our homes (hence the differing audio quality ... we are KEEN to … Continue reading End of Season Message: June 2020
The Familiar Strange 