As artificial intelligence and algorithmic surveillance become more ubiquitous, we should really start to think about our relationship, not just to internet tracking and data collection, but to the fundamental relationship between audiences and marketing that these technologies are products of.
Ep #96 Earthquake Temporalities & Energy Sovereignty: This Month on TFS
The Familiar Strange · Ep #96 Earthquake Temporalities & Energy Sovereignty: This Month on TFS This month we’re joined by the latest member of The Familiar Strange, Lachlan Summers! Lachlan is currently based in Mexico city and researches the 2017 Earthquake. As part of this panel, we dive a bit deeper into Lachlan’s research and … Continue reading Ep #96 Earthquake Temporalities & Energy Sovereignty: This Month on TFS
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.
Metaphysics Is a Piece of Cake
...time is not natural: it is a social product. A year might be the duration that has elapsed as the Earth circles the sun, but our planet’s orbital position tends to have little bearing on how I conduct myself as a person. However, a New Year’s Eve party? There you’ll see me reflecting, resolving, disclosing, mourning, celebrating, making amends, taking chances, jumping into new beginnings, and, above all, falling back into the same old patterns. Time is made knowable through the procession of meaningful events that we use to punctuate its abstract passage.
Ep#95: A Hex for My Ex: Witchcraft & AI Podmen: This Month of TFS
The Familiar Strange · Ep#95: A Hex for My Ex: Witchcraft & AI Podmen: This Month of TFS Welcome back to the Familiar Strange! This week we welcome Emma, one of the newest familiar strangers! For this panel, we dive into some of Emma’s work as a “Witchy” Anthropologist and how it plays into her … Continue reading Ep#95: A Hex for My Ex: Witchcraft & AI Podmen: This Month of TFS
Reflections on Novel Writing in Anthropology
Ethnographers have long struggled with the nebulous in-between spaces of science on the one hand, and story-telling on the other. It was what my frustrated seminar professor described as the tension between “a world” and “the world” in the writing of ethnography. Are we, the researchers, tasked to be faithfully re-creating the world as it actually was during our fieldwork? Or are we simply weaving a fiction; complete with dramatis personae, compelling character arcs, and promises of redemption that exist purely in a world of our own perspectives? Are we following the clues to solve our case, or are we leading our audience down a path that was already drawn from the beginning? A little of both and neither?
Ep #94 : Social clinics of solidarity: Dr Letizia Bonanno on the Practices & Modes of Care in Athens
The Familiar Strange · Ep #94:Social clinics of solidarity: Dr Letizia Bonanno on the Practices & Modes of Care in Athens This week Familiar Stranger Tim speaks with Dr Letizia Bonanno. Dr Letizia Bonanno is a medical anthropologist working on issues of care and pharmaceuticals. In March 2019 she earned her PhD in Social Anthropology … Continue reading Ep #94 : Social clinics of solidarity: Dr Letizia Bonanno on the Practices & Modes of Care in Athens
Book Review: ‘Abject Relations: Everyday Worlds of Anorexia’ (2009) by Megan Warin
From screens and tabloids, we are fed images of slender bodies. For decades sleek and angular silhouettes were said to be icons of style, fashion, beauty, youth, and desire. This trend is often blamed to be the source of anorexia. But is anorexia nervosa as simple as that? In her book 'Abject relations: everyday worlds of anorexia' (2009), Megan Warin takes us on a journey to find the answer.
Ep #93: Waterworlds, Witchcraft and Chaos: This Month on TFS
The Familiar Strange · Ep #93: Waterworlds, Witchcraft and Chaos: This Month on TFS We’re back! We’re back from our Semester break and keen to get back into creating the content you know and love. This week, we’re joined by Dr Sean Heath! The newest Familiar Stranger. In the first part of this panel, we … Continue reading Ep #93: Waterworlds, Witchcraft and Chaos: This Month on TFS
We’ll Be Right Back!
The Familiar Strange · Season Break! Hey Everyone, From everyone at the TFS team we just wanted to say a quick thank you before we take our season break. Don't worry though, we're not going anywhere and we'll be back around late July. Thank you for all your support this season and we're looking forward … Continue reading We’ll Be Right Back!
The Familiar Strange 