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
Masks and Their Moralities
For some, instructions to wear masks in public places have been an opportunity to chart new courses in fashion or have simply been a minor inconvenience in the effort to prevent the further spread of Covid-19. Alternatively, for others in more libertarian and sometimes conspiratorial groups, the face mask has become a symbol of the overreach of the state. I suspect for many of those reading this blog post the opposition to wearing masks seems deeply irrational and perplexing. Likewise, I have found these sentiments troubling and an affront to my own sense of community and ethics. For myself, wearing a mask has become a way of publicly presenting my commitment to stopping the spread of viruses and an acknowledgement of science and evidence as a guide to public health policy. So how has the face mask become a symbol of such divergent meanings?
Ep #78 Alternative Healing Practises & The Social Status of Shopping Centres: This Month on TFS
The Familiar Strange · Ep #78 Alternative Healing Practises & The Social Status of Shopping Centres: This Month on TFS This week we’d like to introduce you to our newest Familiar Stranger, Ruonan Chen! Ruonan is currently doing her fieldwork around hospitals and healing practises in the Tibet autonomous region. In this episode, the strangers … Continue reading Ep #78 Alternative Healing Practises & The Social Status of Shopping Centres: This Month on TFS
Jathilan Dance: Experiencing the Spirits
yelling, crawling and rolling. Later, they begin to show some animal-like behavior: hissing, roaring and moving on all fours. This is my fieldwork. The place is Java, the Special Region of Yogyakarta. Pawang is a kind of ritual specialist believed to be capable of controlling animals, spirits, and other invisible forces. But more commonly, or so it seems, pawangs apply their powers in controlling possession or inducing and then ending the state of trance during jathilan dance. This dance is the focus of my attention. And this research is my second shot at trying to have an academic career. I came a long way: from the field as abstract as the history of Western philosophy and the land as distant as Russia. Running away from minimal wages, long teaching hours, and impossibly high expectations about presenting and publishing, I found my new passion as far away from the notions of enlightened modernity or cynical postmodernity as possible.
Special Episode: Caroline Schuster, Sarah Abel & Catherine Frieman on The Archaeology of F*****g
The Familiar Strange · Special Episode: Caroline Schuster, Sarah Abel & Catherine Frieman on The Archaeology of F*****g Before we dive into today’s episode we’d just like to add a content warning for this episode for mentions of slavery and sexual assault This week, we’re bringing you an extra special interview/panel. Familiar stranger Alex Zoomed … Continue reading Special Episode: Caroline Schuster, Sarah Abel & Catherine Frieman on The Archaeology of F*****g
Understanding My Mom’s Unorthodox Healing Practices
Sheets of newspaper cover a portion of the floor of our house in Manila, and on top of those thin pieces of paper sits a white candle, a box of matches, a metal spoon, and a metal basin filled with water. The doors are locked. We’re huddled around the basin, and the room plunges into silence. Rest assured, this is not some scene from a B-rated supernatural horror movie. This is just what happens whenever anyone in my family gets sick. We call an albularyo—Tagalog for witch doctor or folk healer—to come and conduct either tawas or hilot depending on the degree of illness. All my life, I’ve never really understood nor tried to understand why my mom rarely sends us for check-ups, opting instead for tawas, hilot, and the occasional pharmaceutical drugs we self-medicate ourselves with. That is, until I took an Introduction to Anthropology course, where I encountered the term “structural violence” and the whole world of medical anthropology.
Ep #77 Mutual Assistance & The “Value” of the Olympics: This Month on TFS
The Familiar Strange · Ep #77 Mutual Assistance & The “Value” of the Olympics: This Month on TFS And we’re back! This week we’d like to introduce our newest Familiar Stranger, Joe Clifford. Joe has just completed his Masters in Development Studies from the University of Auckland! To kick off his first panel, Joe discusses … Continue reading Ep #77 Mutual Assistance & The “Value” of the Olympics: This Month on TFS
Season Break: A Message from TFS
The Familiar Strange · Season Break: A Message from TFS The team at TFS would like to say thank you to all our listeners this season and to everyone who has listened in to our podcasts and read the blog! We are taking a short season break and we will return with some new and … Continue reading Season Break: A Message from TFS
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 #76 The Sounds of Fieldwork & Choosing Your Field Site: This Month on TFS
The Familiar Strange · Ep #76 The Sounds of Fieldwork & Choosing Your Fieldsite: This Month on TFS This week we’d like to introduce a new Familiar Stranger, Jarrod Sim! Jarrod is a PhD student at the school of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University. His current research is an anthropologically-led study of … Continue reading Ep #76 The Sounds of Fieldwork & Choosing Your Field Site: This Month on TFS
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