Tag: ethnography

Role-playing urgency: bridging climate change knowledge and action?

Role-playing urgency: bridging climate change knowledge and action?

“What does it mean to know climate change?” ask Henderson and Long in a 2015 piece for this site’s Anthropologies #21. Researchers on science education, they ask this question to explore what we can do to ensure “knowledge of climate change” becomes “knowledge for social action.” This is no small task—for educators or anthropologists. It has largely shaped my own research, the preoccupations of those with whom I work and climate politics in North America writ large. As Henderson and Long duly explain, {+}

Feelings in the field: reflections on fieldwork in murk-o

Feelings in the field: reflections on fieldwork in murk-o

My lower back is sore. There’s a tension that’s rising from the place where my neck meets my scalp, and my eyes feel baggy. I’ve just woken up, am standing in my friends’ apartment. M and F have graciously agreed to host me for umpteenth time in what feels like as many months. It’s not yet 8am. F is in the shower, M is making a weak cup of coffee. M and I are discussing what the hell it is {+}

Musings from the murky middle ground of climate science and action

Musings from the murky middle ground of climate science and action

“There are many reasons why people in our field work remotely,” one data analytics coordinator tells me. We are talking on the phone one afternoon, me from the far East Coast, him from the flat Midwest, having met each other at the Global Climate Action Summit on the West Coast. He continues. For one, it’s more sustainable. Plus it’s 2018, he says, we have the technology, so why not? This allows them to draw from a diverse and well qualified {+}

1.5ºC: The Future and Present of Anthropology in an Era of Climate Change

1.5ºC: The Future and Present of Anthropology in an Era of Climate Change

Anthro{dendum} welcomes guest blogger Adam Fleischmann Early Saturday morning, October 6, 2018, push notifications lit up phones across the eastern half of North America just as the rising sun hit the weekend coast. Messages were coming in from a time zone more than half a day away–from Incheon, South Korea. The 48th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had just come to a close. North American climate civil society organizations—never a cohort accused of respecting normal business {+}

Review of The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism. Bianca C. Williams. Duke University Press, 2018.

Review of The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism. Bianca C. Williams. Duke University Press, 2018.

By Erica Lorraine Williams I recently spent two weeks in Lisbon, Portugal. It was the end of an incredibly busy semester, and I had recently finished reading Bianca Williams’ breathtaking ethnography, The Pursuit of Happiness: Black Women, Diasporic Dreams, and the Politics of Emotional Transnationalism. I was reminded of how international travel offers an opportunity to fully immerse oneself in another environment. Despite being in Lisbon for work, I felt free and unencumbered. I was able to enjoy a temporary {+}

Private Messages from the Field: Confessions on Digital Ethnography and Its Discomforts

Private Messages from the Field: Confessions on Digital Ethnography and Its Discomforts

anthro{dendum} welcomes guest bloggers Crystal Abidin and Gabriele de Seta who will be editing a series of blogposts titled Private Messages from the Field. To kick off the series, today’s post features an introduction and backstory to this collection of essays. Private Messages from the Field: Confessions on Digital Ethnography and Its Discomforts by Crystal Abidin & Gabriele de Seta Here’s a first confession about ethnographic work: All professional things have personal beginnings. We are today writing this introduction as editors {+}

Mobile Apps for Ethnographic Research – #RoR2018

Mobile Apps for Ethnographic Research – #RoR2018

Ethnographic research is difficult. It’s a challenge to find the right assistants, get access, recruit the right people, keep a schedule, make time for note-writing and transcription, and be self-motivated through it all. In Dakar, I depend on a number of mobile apps to help me keep the project together. Some of these apps may or may not be available on your phone or where you do research, but as I have done with these apps, I recommend finding something {+}

What flying a drone above the Agung volcano in Bali teaches us about the computerisation of the earth

What flying a drone above the Agung volcano in Bali teaches us about the computerisation of the earth

For the 100,000 or so people who had to leave their homes last month, and the equal numbers of travellers stuck on, or unable to get to Bali—the eruption of the Agung volcano has been devastating. But this has been a fascinating time for a scholar like myself who investigates the use of drones—unmanned and unwomanned aerial vehicles—in social justice, environmental activism, and crisis preparedness. Amazon drone delivery is developing in the UK, drone blood delivery is happening in Rwanda, {+}