AnthroPod

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.