The concept of objects and artefacts as documents has been explored by a variety of academics including Briet, Buckland, Latham and Lund from a broad conceptual perspective, with work undertaken by others considering how different object and artefact types can be considered documents. This project explores the existing literature relating to…[Read more]

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 has threatened ethnographic inquiry, undermining its quintessential characteristic. Participant observation, then, has been thoroughly dismembered by the radical measures implemented to prevent the spread of the virus. This phenomenon, in short, has dragged anthropologists to a liminal state within which ethnography is…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: Unas notas sobre el final del libro ‘El lugar del hombre en el cosmos’ de Fred Spier, sobre la sostenibilidad de la actual comunicación globalizada. La Gran Historia sitúa al ser humano en el contexto de la evolución cósmica y de la ecología de los recursos. Vivimos hoy en la Era de los Combustibles Fósiles. Con esta energ…[Read more]

The Cowpastures emerged as a regional concept in the late 18th century, starting with the story of the cattle of the First Fleet that escaped their captivity at the Sydney settlement. The region was a culturally constructed landscape that ebbed and flowed with European activity. It grew around the government reserve established by Governors…[Read more]

This presentation was an overview of an ongoing project on how material culture across the Macarthur region of NSW is a store of collective memories of early colonial New South Wales and the Cowpastures region from 1795 to 1840. There are monuments, memorials, murals, and other items of material culture that prompt collective memories and tell…[Read more]

The period of masonic internationalism in the last third of the 19th and first third of the 20th centuries saw the most visible – and controversial – attempts to organisationally model the “cosmopolitan imperative” of freemasonry. The various freemasonries in Europe saw themselves as links in a world-spanning “chain of brothers” forged by the…[Read more]

We are all Mahsa! * Artwork by PRURITUS MIGRANS * CC: BY-NC-ND

In two very influential papers from 2008, Tamar Gendler introduced the concept of “alief” to describe the mental state one is in when acting in ways contrary to their consciously professed beliefs. For example, if asked to eat what they know is fudge, but shaped into the form of dog feces, they will hesitate, and behave in a manner that would be…[Read more]

WE ARE ALL MAHSA AMINI! * Artwork by PRURITUS MIGRANS * CC: BY-NC-ND

Early European settlers were the key actors in a place-making exercise that constructed an English-style landscape aesthetic on the colonial stage in the Cowpastures district of New South Wales. The aesthetic became part of the settler colonial project and the settlers’ aim of taking possession of territory involved the construction of a c…[Read more]

Based on a discussion of the theoretical contributions of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Pierre Clastres, this article explores social relationships as more than a human dimension. Though strongly analysed by both anthropologists, these relationships appear to involve indigenous societies’ whole ecological and cosmological system. In this sense, re…[Read more]

The screen as an interface immerses audiences in an alternate universe. As a result, that interface seems transparent. Through analyses of performances that call attention to filmic genres, such as Edgar Wright’s parody film, Hot Fuzz (2007), and the Wooster Group’s multimedia production, Hamlet (2007), as well as (meta)theatrical operations on…[Read more]

London Bridge is down * QRt by PRURITUS MIGRANS * CC: BY-NC-SA

Spanish abstract: Reseño aquí el capítulo “In the Wilderness of Forms: Ideas and Things in Thomas Browne’s Cabinets of Curiosity”, de Claire Preston, publicado en el libro de estudios mediáticos retrofuturistas ‘The Renaissance Computer: Knowledge Technology in the First Age of Print’ (ed. Neil Rhodes y Jonathan Sawday, 2000). Los sabios y est…[Read more]