The Hebrew word “ruach” – the word connected to the idea-symbol of “spirit” translates alternately as “wind,” “breathe,” or “spirit.” In Arabic, there are two words for the words: spirit, soul or self – namely, ruH (spirit, soul) & nafs (spirit, soul, self). Both of these Arabic words are also connected to the ideas of breath or wind (e.g. ruH is…[Read more]

In 2023, a new museum opened in Tbilisi, at the Writer’s House of Georgia that previously house the Soviet Writers’ Union: The Museum of Repressed Writers. The museum honours the executed poets from Georgia’s Soviet past, poets whose identities Soviet authorities tried to destroy. This article examines the story the museum tells about Soviet l…[Read more]

Kongruenz, Sorge und Technologie. Tricks des Verschwindens: Dienstleistung als eine Kulturtechnik des Delegierens. #Syllabi und Schattenbibliotheken: Mittel der kollektiven Gestaltung. Eine durch das Wissen um ihre Werkzeuge und Quellen definierte Gemeinschaft werden.

Heschel refers to a “deeper knowledge” and observes that “what is we cannot say.” Heschel states about the ineffable aspect of consciousness which is beyond conscious expression: “Essential to human thought is not only the technique of symbolization but also the awareness of the ineffable. In every mind there is an enormous store of not-knowi…[Read more]

“Dystopian Surface, Utopian Dream” examines the postethnic and the posthuman in fiction by Maxine Hong Kingston, Octavia Butler, and Isaac Asimov.

La question du libre arbitre – Stephen Cave souligne que la recherche sur le « libre arbitre » et ses implications ne sont pas nouvelles. Ce qui est nouveau, cependant, c’est la propagation du scepticisme du libre arbitre au-delà des laboratoires et dans le grand public.

Les recherches menées par Kathleen Vohs et Jonathan Schooler ont montr…[Read more]

The Issue of Free Will – Stephen Cave points out that the Free Will “research and its implications are not new. What is new, though, is the spread of free-will skepticism beyond the laboratories and into the mainstream. Determinism, to one degree or another, is gaining popular currency. The skeptics are in ascendance.” (There’s No Such Thing as Fr…[Read more]

In der Einleitung zum Sammelband Auditive Wissenskulturen – Das Wissen klanglicher Praxis stellen die Autoren zuerst die Diskrepanzen der jeweiligen Beziehungen des Visuellen und des Auditiven zu Wissen anhand einiger Beispiele vor. Sie exemplifzieren auch, wie sowohl auditive Praxis als auch die Hervorbringung und Vermittlung von Wissen in s…[Read more]

In this homage to David Graeber, I turn to Americans’ experiences working in person during the pandemic as an ethnographic lens for understanding how workers respond when implicit social contracts are violated and when ideas about the common good are being contested. Because the United States federal government and many state governments refused t…[Read more]

Digital Economy and Labor

Planning Your Research

In the early decades of the internet, many saw new channels of communication as potentially beneficial disruptions, analyzing largely through a utopic lens, albeit often with a technolibertarian bent. This did not last, and by the 2020s, scholars were increasingly pessimistic about how neoliberal logics structured the ways these technologies…[Read more]

Every fall, some lucky anthropology departments get to hire. The search for a new colleague happens behind the scenes for a while before it goes public—five-year plans have been written, external reviews have been navigated, lots of conversations have occurred, and some pleading with a dean has taken place. But the first public hint that the d…[Read more]

Many job applicants spend an inordinate amount of time struggling with the task of fashioning the most appealing biography of the increasingly skillful self out of interwoven genres that can also circulate individually. These struggles are most frequently articulated as questions of how best to manage different genres’ chronotopic expectations. U…[Read more]

How to Know When Not to Know: Strategic Ignorance When Eliciting for Samoan Migrant Exchanges

Converting Meanings and the Conversion of Meaning in Samoan Moral Economies

In independent and American Samoa, Samoan representatives have historically been successful at furthering their communities’ interests when dealing with various colonial regimes. Yet during my fieldwork in California, I kept witnessing failed encounters between Samoan migrants and government officials. I argue that government officials helped…[Read more]

This article explores what long-standing analytical traditions in Pacific ethnographies can offer Pacific diaspora studies. In particular, I advocate researchers’ reconceptualizing their unit of analysis when interrogating the relationships between families and diasporas, and argue that family networks fashion diasporas’ longevity and tangibility.…[Read more]

Indigeneity for Life: Bro’town and Its Stereotypes