An Anthropology Of….(Main Episode)

Among the most common phrases to appear in anthropological scholarship is “an anthropology of…” But the objects of this phrase differ wildly. A simple search of anthropology journals offers an anthropology of, variously: labor, landmines, culpability, old age, lying, parking, the multimodal, viral hemorrhagic fevers, algorithms, electricity, interior dialogue, immunology, public reasoning, and undesired buildings. With such an array of different research objects can the authors mean the same thing by what constitutes “anthropology”? Or is this turn of phrase simply a useful way to distinguish ourselves in a competitive academic market and add intellectual heft to our scholarly endeavors? Drawing on interviews with a diverse group of anthropologists, this podcast takes this phrase as a starting point to offer a playful and contemplative exploration of how the discipline understands itself today. Featuring Akhil Gupta, Kate Hennessy & Trudi Lynn Smith, Eleana Kim, Carole McGranahan, Tobias Rees and Nick Seaver.

List of articles discussed in this episode:

Gupta, Akhil. 2015. “An Anthropology of Electricity from the Global South.” Cultural Anthropology. 30(4): 555-568.

Kim, Eleana. 2016. 2016. “Toward and Anthropology of Landmines: Rogue Infrastructure and Military Waste in the Korean DMZ” Cultural Anthropology. 31(2): 162-187.

McGranahan, Carole. 2017. “An anthropology of lying: Trump and the political sociality of moral outrage.” American Ethnologist. 44(2): 243-248. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12475

Rees, Tobias. 2014. “Humanity/Plan; or, On the 'Stateless' Today (Also Being an Anthropology of Global Health)” Cultural Anthropology. 29(3): 457-478.

Smith, Trudi Lynn and Kate Hennessy. 2020. “Anarchival Materiality in Film Archives Toward an Anthropology of the Multimodal” Visual Anthropology Review 36(1): 113-136.

Seaver, Nick. 2018. “What Should an Anthropology of Algorithms Do?” Cultural Anthropology. 33(3): 375-385.