AnthroPod

Recently, Tampa Bay has stoked controversy among U.S. anthropologists. Facing statewide rising fascism and oppressive laws targeting historically marginalized minorities, it's also the site of the 2024 American Anthropological Association (AAA) annual meeting. In this episode of AnthroPod, we visit three Tampa-based anthropologists doing community-centered fieldwork among marginalized local communities.

The second episode of our two-part mini-series, showcases a roundtable discussion held at the 2023 American Anthropological Association's Annual meeting in Toronto. In this episode, anthropology scholars gather to celebrate the work of Harsha Walia and share reflections on how her scholarship has influenced their own research, writing and activism.

A discussion featuring Harsha Walia, alongside community organizers and migrant workers representing Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), took place at the American Anthropological Association's 2023 Annual Meeting in Toronto. This episode is the first part of a two-part mini-series highlighting the impact and contributions of Harsha Walia's scholarship.

In this episode, Professor Nick Seaver, Professor Veronica Barassi, and Alex Moltzau discuss the intersection of anthropology and algorithms. What exactly can anthropology bring to the table in understanding them? How can we use anthropological concepts and methods to make sense of algorithms? And how does this research translate into practice? For show notes, please visit: culanth.org/fieldsights/anthropology-and-algorithms

In this episode, fellow podcasters, Frankie Younger and Dr. Anthony Jerry share how they combined podcasting with community engagement to create podcasts as archival spaces for the voices of historically marginalized communities.

In our latest episode in this series What Concepts Do we welcome guest producer Nazlı Özkan, who leads us through a discussion of New Media. How has newness been produced as a feature of media in different political and historical contexts, and how can anthropological approaches help us understand how technological novelty becomes a part of statecraft, activism, and everyday life?

In this episode, Dr. Willi Lempert discusses anthropology of outer space, focusing on historical and ongoing forms of colonialism on and off of Earth, as well as indigenous futurisms and alternative imaginations of outer space. Our interview with Dr. Lempert was conducted in May 2023. For more, visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/astro-colonialism-conversation-with-willi-lempert

AnthroBites: Disability with Dr. Arseli Dokumaci. AnthroBites is a series from the AnthroPod team, designed to make anthropology more digestible. Each episode tackles a key concept, text, or theme, and breaks it down into manageable, bite-sized chunks. In this episode, Dr. Arseli Dokumaci discusses disability, ethnography, and her recent book Activist Affordances. Our interview with Dr. Dokumaci was conducted in May 2023. Show notes: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/anthrobites-disability

Anthropology can be presented in various forms - what does it mean to share anthropology through podcasts? In the latest episode in the What Does Anthropology Sound Like series, we explore anthropological podcasts as method and as output. This episode features Dr. María Eugenia Ulfe Young (from the Nuestras Historias desde Cuninico podcast), PhD Candidate Anuli Akanegbu (creator of BLK IRL®), and Dr. Dominic Boyer (co-creator of the Cultures of Energy podcast). Find the transcription and show-notes here: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-does-anthropology-sound-like-podcasts Find our guests' podcasts: Nuestras Historias Desde Cuninico - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063634656075 BLK IRL® - https://www.blkirl.com/ Cultures of Energy - https://culturesofenergy.rice.edu/

In this AnthroPod episode, we provide a retrospective on the Virtual Otherwise conference from the perspective of the local node in Agria, Greece. Touching on matters of accessibility, engagement, and multimodality, we ask: Whither anthropology conferencing?

This episode is devoted to thinking through the specificity of the United States as a place in which to conduct fieldwork. For show notes, please visit : https://culanth.org/fieldsights/contributed-content/anthropod

In this episode, Professors Sophie Bjork-James, Carolyn Sufrin, and Elise Andaya share what the anthropology of abortion looks like in their fieldsites and how those sites will change in a post-Roe world, and we break down this topic with the help of other scholars of reproduction. For show notes, please visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/anthropod-talks-abortion

In part 2 of our series on sound and borders, cultural geographer Tom Western talks with Nick Smith about the work of the Syrian and Greek Youth Forum (SGYF) in Athens, Greece. Featuring sound clips created by the SGYF team, the discussion unpacks the concept of active citizenship and the ways that sound can challenge the static character of border regimes in Greece and throughout the Mediterranean. For show-notes visit

This is the second episode in the series "What Concepts Do." In this episode, Contributing Editor Sharon Jacobs unpacks the concept of solidarity, alongside anthropologists Darryl Li, Amahl Bishara, Lesley Gill, and Dimitrios Theodossopoulos. What is solidarity, and who can practice it? Is solidarity something we do within communities, or beside allies? What are some of the shortcomings and challenges of solidarity? For show-notes and resources, visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-solidarity-does

In this episode, anthropologist and artist Alex Chavez talks about performance, migration and nationalism in the United States. For show-notes, please visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/the-sound-of-borders-a-conversation-with-alex-chavez

Cassandra Hartblay, Cristiana Giordano, and Greg Pierotti discuss performance as ethnographic medium in the third installment of What Does Anthropology Sound Like, an Anthropod Series. For transcriptions, visual content, and other resources related to this episode of Anthropod, please visit: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-does-anthropology-sound-like-performance

In this episode, Contributing Editors Joyce Rivera-González and Michelle Hak Hepburn unpack the concept of resilience, alongside anthropologists Roberto Barrios, Elizabeth F.S. Roberts, Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, Andrew Wooyoung Kim, and Jason Cons. Where did the concept of resilience originate from, and how is it so widespread? What are the benefits and shortcomings of the concept? And how do anthropologists engage with resilience ethnographically? For show notes, please visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-resilience-does

Professor Kamari Clarke reflects on her ethnographic work in Africa, her thinking on the legacies of colonialism in the discipline of Anthropology, and her recent work with the Radical Humanism Initiative. For the transcription and show-notes of this episode, please visit:

The Ottoman archives contain just over a hundred photographs that look like old family portraits, but they were created for an entirely different purpose. They document the renunciation of Ottoman nationality, "terk-i tabiiyet," by Armenian emigrants bound for the US and elsewhere. As our guest Zeynep Devrim Gürsel explains, the photographs were "anticipatory arrest warrants for a crime yet to be committed"--the crime of returning to the Ottoman Empire. Gürsel's research goes far beyond the story of the small number of photographs that remain as she has documented over four thousand individuals who went through the process of "terk-i tabiiyet." In this Ottoman History Podcast-AnthroPod collaboration, we talk to Gürsel about her research project on the production, circulation and afterlives of these photographs titled "Portraits of Unbelonging." It is a double-sided history that explores not only the context of Armenian migration and policing during the late Ottoman period but also the experiences of those pictured and their descendants following their departure from the Ottoman Empire. (Recorded August 2019) In memory of Mary Lou Savage (née Khantamour) Contributors: Beth Derderian (AnthroPod), Zeynep Devrim Gürsel (Rutgers University), and Chris Gratien (Ottoman History Podcast).

Katherine Verdery reflects on working through her Securitate file and ethnographers' positionalities, her research in Eastern Europe prior to the fall of communism, and what anthropology offers at moments when the episteme shifts.

Writing ethnographic poetry with Darcy Alexandra and Ather Zia. This is the second installment in the What Does Anthropology Sound Like series, in which we ask anthropologists to share their work and insights with us on the different forms their anthropological practice takes. In this episode, the theme is poetry.

The "Anthropology and/of Mental Health" series is a two-part exploration of anthropologists' experiences with mental health. In this episode, Anar expands the conversation about mental health in anthropology through conversations and contributions about attention, grief, and unexpected changes to our plans for fieldwork and research.  For more information, as well as a transcript of the episode, visit the shownotes page at: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/anthropology-and-of-mental-health-pt-2 Musical intro and outro: All the Colors in the World by Podington Bear. Transitions: Entwined Oddities by Blue Dot Sessions. Sound Effects: Radio Transition by psyckoze. Logo designed by Janita van Dyk.

Hunleth and Yount-André discuss Hunleth's research on children's caregiving amid Zambia's tuberculosis (TB) outbreak and trace parallels with today's COVID19 pandemic. They look at the role of proximity, recognizing the different ways children offer care, how to discuss disease with children and problematize the idea of disclosure, and the moral valences that become attached to disease and the people who suffer from them - particularly around privilege and vulnerability.

Jonathan Rosa discusses raciolinguistic ideologies, a framework developed by Rosa and Professor Nelson Flores (University of Pennsylvania) to critique the racialization of various speaking subjects and their linguistic practices. The interview begins with a focus on this concept and related themes in Rosa’s book, then turns to a consideration of broader implications of this work for academia, anthropology in particular. A common thread throughout this interview is the issue of coloniality, both broadly construed and more specifically with regard to how it shapes and manifests within educational contexts. In particular, Rosa comments on the question of decolonizing or unsettling anthropology, reflecting in some closing remarks on the usefulness and concerns around platforms such as #AnthroTwitter for challenging the colonial logics within our own discipline. For more information and a transcript of this episode, visit: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/raciolinguistic-ideologies-and-decolonizing-anthropology-a-conversation-with-jonathan-rosa

Sophie Chao and Bianca Williams discuss activism, organizing, and anthropology in the first installment of a new Anthropod series: What Does Anthropology Sound Like.

In this episode, AnthroPod Contributing Editor Anar Parikh talks to Prof. Beatriz-Reyes Foster and Prof. Rebecca Lester about their blog series "Trauma and Resilience in Ethnographic Fieldwork" on Anthrodendum. For more, visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/contributed-content/anthropod

Ruth Behar speaks with Kristen Ghodsee about how anthropologists can be public intellectuals: They discuss how can anthropologists maintain credibility as scholars within the academy while also speaking to broader audiences; the necessity of patience and thinking of a career over the long duree; the productive spaces and possibilities within the discipline to reach out; and tips and suggestions for how to write in ways that appeal to non-academic audiences.

Guests Camilla Ida Ravnbøl and Marie Kolling explore the impact that digitalizing economies have on communities that are poor and highly cash dependent. The episode features Ravnbøl's research with Roma migrants at the Roskilde Festival, a music festival in Denmark that went cashless in 2017 but has developed accommodations for cash-dependent Roma migrants who collect bottles for refunds. Rich soundscapes anchor the listener in the ethnographic context of this research.

Mark Schuller on anthropological work in, with, and on NGOs.

Guests Namita Dharia and Tulasi Srinivas discuss the possibilities for an anthropology of wonder. Their conversation builds out from Srinivas’s latest book, "The Cow in the Elevator: An Anthropology of Wonder," and explores questions of positionality in the field, canonical inheritances, and experiments with ethnographic writing. Sonic landscapes from Srinivas’s fieldsite weave in and out of their discussion, opening listeners to encounters with ritual and aesthetic practices and renewing Srinivas’s assertion that “deep listening is the quality of a great ethnographer.”

In "When Fieldwork Breaks Your Heart," guest producer Aisha Sultan considers the question: what do you do when fieldwork threatens to break your heart? While graduate seminars and methodological reflections within anthropology often focus on the possibilities ethnography affords as the cornerstone of the discipline, Sultan here contends with its bleaker and more difficult dimensions: the toll it takes on the minds and bodies of ethnographers; experiences of mental illness; persistent feelings of distrust, frustration, and exhaustion. Sultan’s conversation with Helen Lee and Shoshanna Williams is interspersed with excerpts of poetry and fieldnotes from each of their fieldwork experiences. Together, these reflections offer a candid, vulnerable, and realistic insight into the quotidian experience of doing ethnographic fieldwork.

“(W)Rap on: Gender/Sexuality” is the third episode of the (W)Rap On series at AnthroPod, which brings anthropologists into conversation with artists, activists, and scholars from other disciplines and perspectives. The series is loosely inspired by James Baldwin and Margaret Mead’s 1970 conversation Rap on Race, and was conceived by Hilary Leathem in collaboration with AnthroPod. Our format attempts to identify and confront some of the problems that Mead and Baldwin’s conversation embodied, such as white fragility, complicity with power structures, and the struggle to create space for different groups to speak openly. We provide a platform for thoughtful and incisive discussions that highlight solidarities and shared commitments. We also highlight frictions and tensions between anthropological and other approaches. In this episode, anthropologist Mary Weismantel discusses writing about bodies, relating to readers, memory, and truth with fiction writer Samuel Delany. V Chaudhry moderates the conversation.

Anthropologist Jason De León and journalist Maria Hinojosa discuss migration, U.S. border militarization, and teaching and writing in political times. Journalist Julio Ricardo Varela moderates the conversation. This episode is part of the (W)rap On: Series, inspired by the original 1970 conversation between writer James Baldwin and anthropologist Margaret Mead.

This roundtable discussion explores the recently published Reading List for a Progressive Environmental Anthropology. The crowdsourced reading list is a project organized by Bridget Guarasci (Franklin and Marshall College), Amelia Moore (University of Rhode Island), and Sarah Vaughn (University of California, Berkeley). Crafting this reading list around themes such as toxicity, globalization, waterscapes, and economies, Guarasci, Moore, and Vaughn aim to offer theoretical and regional breadth that pushes at the intellectual and practical boundaries of environmental anthropology. In this roundtable discussion held at the 2018 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Guarasci and Moore are joined by collaborators Jessica Cattelino (University of California, Los Angeles), Eleana Kim (University of California, Irvine), and Laura Ogden (Dartmouth College) for a conversation on how the reading list came about, the motivations behind it, and possible applications and future directions. As well as offering insightful commentary on environmental anthropological theory over the years, the discussion highlights the political implications of who we choose to read now and what concepts and discourses we engage in our conversations about the environment—in other words, why citation matters.

Margot Weiss explores the origins, presents and futures of queer anthropology.

“(W)Rap On: Race” features anthropologist Shalini Shankar discussing race, social activism, and pedagogy with Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson. Christien Tompkins moderates the conversation. (W)Rap on Race is the inaugural episode of the new (W)Rap On series at AnthroPod, which brings anthropologists into conversation with artists, activists, and scholars from other disciplines and perspectives. The series is loosely inspired by James Baldwin and Margaret Mead’s 1971 conversation Rap on Race. Yet the format attempts to identify and confront some of the inherent problems that this conversation embodied and only further crystallized, such as white fragility, difficulties with confronting complicity in larger power structures, and struggles to create space for different groups to speak openly (instead of being spoken over or spoken for). Our goal for this series is to provide a platform for thoughtful and incisive discussions that highlight solidarities and shared commitments but also, and perhaps more importantly, highlight where frictions might emerge between anthropological approaches and those of different disciplines or of work outside the academy.

Maria Frederika Malmstrom on the Sound of Economic Collapse in Egypt

Vijayendra Rao, an economist with the World Bank, talks with anthropologist Ian Pollock about the theory and practice of development, anthropology’s relationship to development, and how ethnography might help the disenfranchised engage with powerful institutions and effect social change.

Graeme Warren explains what we can learn about histories and cultures through Hunter & Gatherer research.

Damien Sojoyner on race, education, imprisonment, and their intersection in the United States.

Teresa Caldeira discusses her recent research on urban practices and forms of cultural production from the peripheries of São Paulo, Brazil that are reshaping public space, including rap music, graffiti, ostentation funk, and pixação Producer: Liliana Gil Music: Excerpts from “Soldado Sem Bandeira” by Emicida (00:00, 08:20), “Fim de Semana no Parque” by Racionais MC’s (06:25), a birthday song recorded at the Jardim das Camélias’s Parish Church (14:05), and “Se Identifica” by A’s Trinca (17:20, 23:05). Thanks to the artists for granting permission to use these excerpts in the episode.

Christa Craven discusses feminist anthropology in this episode of AnthroBites, the podcast that makes key concepts in anthropology more digestible.

Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar discuss their recent book, Anthropology's Politics: Disciplining the Middle East (2015). They touch on how political and economic pressures shape how U.S.-based scholars research and teach about the Middle East, how certain topics and regions are embraced or pushed back on, and how those pressures and incentives impact scholars working in the Middle East from graduate school to teaching and public engagement. Producer: Beth Derderian Music: Sweeter Vermouth by Kevin MacLeod

Angela Jenks shares her approach to anthropological pedagogy and offers thoughtful insights into how anthropologists might begin thinking about how to incorporate podcasts into their syllabi.

Anthropologists of media and journalism reflect on the current post-truth era in the United States means for research and teaching. This episode features a panel from the the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association with Naomi Schiller, Robert Samet, Natalia Roudakova, Alexandra Juhasz, Amahl Bishara, and Faye Ginsburg. Music: “Bit Rio” and “Caravan” by Podington Bear

Guest producers Stine Krøijer and Astrid Oberborbeck Andersen take up a debate that is central to current environmental and political anthropology: namely, how ethnographers can identify and describe the political when earth beings, spirits, or nonhuman others become part of the ethnographic equation? Marisol de la Cadena’s 2015 book _Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds_ is the point of departure for the conversation. The episode is built around a recording of a workshop on “More than Human Politics,” which was held in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen in April 2015.

Yarimar Bonilla discusses the concept of sovereignty and its anthropological applications in this episode of AnthroBites, the podcast that makes key concepts in anthropology more digestible.

Hugh Gusterson, Kim Garcia, and a U.S. military drone operator on active duty discuss the representation of drone warfare. Their conversation engages the ways we think about communities of expertise and war, as well as how we represent the experiences of others.

Rachel Watkins discusses the origins and legacies of scientific racism for AnthroBites, the podcast that makes key concepts in anthropology more digestible.

Lilly Irani discusses the human labor behind artificial intelligence technology. Irani helped create a platform called Turkopticon to support workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk, a website that outsources micro data processing work. Irani also talks about her current book project on entrepreneurialism and national development in India.

Keith Murphy discusses the anthropology of design through his work on Swedish design as well as bringing design methods into ethnography through ethnocharrettes.