Dog keeping is a polluted, unholy, and prohibited practice in rural Pakistan. Many Sunni Muslims belonging to Hanfi jurisprudence consider the dog’s mere presence in a house a symbol of misfortune and distance from God. If a person touches a dog, s/he is asked to wash hands seven times, and if they touch a wet dog, they must take a bath.
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.
Ep. #31: Field ties, clear truth, cringy rap & liminal states: This month on TFS
In this panel, we welcome Shamim to the Familiar Strange podcast. Shamim is working with Dee on a TFS video project that they hope will be released later this year - exciting! This month Ian (1:15) starts us off by asking how we maintain relationships with people that we met in the field. Whether it’s … Continue reading Ep. #31: Field ties, clear truth, cringy rap & liminal states: This month on TFS
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.
Ep. #30 Bringing your heart home: Tiffany Cain talks Tihosuco identity and heritage projects
"Especially when you’re dealing with questions of representation of the past, politics around the past, especially when you’re dealing with not just the past, but a violent past, right, it’s ethically irresponsible to not recognise your own position in that conversation, in that space. And that doesn’t mean that you necessarily take sides, but I … Continue reading Ep. #30 Bringing your heart home: Tiffany Cain talks Tihosuco identity and heritage projects
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.
Ep. #29 TFS at AAS: Multimodal ethnography, monolithic China, online bans & the ‘anthro helmet’ – Guest panel with Viktor Baskin, Sacha Cody & Katherine Giunta
We, at The Familiar Strange, would like to acknowledge and celebrate the First Australians on whose traditional lands we recorded and produced this podcast, and pay our respect to the elders of the Ngunnawal, Ngambri, Yindinji and Yirrganydji peoples past, present and emerging. This month on TFS, we bring you a special panel episode recorded … Continue reading Ep. #29 TFS at AAS: Multimodal ethnography, monolithic China, online bans & the ‘anthro helmet’ – Guest panel with Viktor Baskin, Sacha Cody & Katherine Giunta
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.
End of 2018: A message from TFS
As 2018 draws to a close, this week on TFS we bring you a special ‘End of Year’ message from our own Ian Pollock, Julia Brown, Simon Theobald and Jodie-Lee Trembath. This past year has been an incredible one for us, with 27 podcast episodes and almost 60 blog posts. We have touched on topics … Continue reading End of 2018: A message from TFS
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.
The Familiar Strange 