- Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Basic Science, Department Memberadd
- Anthropology of Security, Police and Policing, Urban Studies, Visual Anthropology, Brazil, Conspiracy Theories, and 40 moreAnthropology of water, Anthropology of Media, New Media, Anthropology of the contemporary, Anthropology of Police & Policing, Surveillance Studies, Philosophy of suspicion, Transnationalism, Globalization, American Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, The Lusophone World, Luso-Afro-Brazilian Studies, Paulo Freire, Ethnobotany, Global Health, Climate Change, Francophone Africa, Medical Anthropology, Psychological Anthropology, Drugs And Addiction, Anthropology of Policy, Counter terrorism, International Law, History of Science, Philosophy of Science, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Niklas Luhmann, Philosophy of Time, Subjectivity, Ethnobiology, Antropología Visual, Cognitive Anthropology, Hashtags, Twitter, Anthropocene, Cultural Criminology, Security, and Policing Studiesedit
- I am associate professor of anthropology at the University of Ottawa where I teach courses on visual anthropology, ne... moreI am associate professor of anthropology at the University of Ottawa where I teach courses on visual anthropology, new media, theory, and Brazil. | Je suis professeure agrégée d'anthropologie à l'Université d'Ottawa où je donne des cours sur l'anthropologie visuelle, les nouveaux médias, la théorie et le Brésil.edit
Making “the familiar strange and the strange familiar” is what anthropology has long claimed as its expertise. The Internet and its broader technological problem space pose methodological challenges, however, for a discipline that has... more
Making “the familiar strange and the strange familiar” is what anthropology has long claimed as its expertise. The Internet and its broader technological problem space pose methodological challenges, however, for a discipline that has traditionally drawn on the authority of “being there” to ground its claims to knowledge.
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Open access http://somatosphere.net/2020/infodemics-zika.html/ Scholars have come to use the words misinformation (unintentionally inaccurate), and disinformation (intentionally false or misleading) to distinguish what, in an older, more... more
Open access http://somatosphere.net/2020/infodemics-zika.html/
Scholars have come to use the words misinformation (unintentionally inaccurate), and disinformation (intentionally false or misleading) to distinguish what, in an older, more explicitly moralized language, were simply called untruths and lies. Misinformation is common early on during heath events, when a lot is genuinely unknown. No one was sure if Zika was really the cause of microcephaly when cases began appearing, or how the virus might produce such an effect. Many tried to explain the mystery. Their mistakes were untrue, but not lies. As data is produced and errors corrected, however, circulating misinformation is often fed into disinformation narratives, mixed with prejudices, politics, and conspiracies. Actors, from clickbait entrepreneurs to propaganda services and heads of state, intentionally spread disinformation. They may be motivated by profit or ideology, the hope of discrediting an opponent, or for a laugh. Sometimes the goal is to foster trust in something–a charlatan’s cure, for example–but it may also be to create mistrust: to undermine expertise, disorient, generate uncertainty. Disinformation is not just a matter of making up sham facts. There are operations that try to create an impression of popular support or opprobrium with fake grassroots activism, called astroturfing. Other kinds of false narrative can be produced by skewing search results, manipulating by emphasis or omission.
Scholars have come to use the words misinformation (unintentionally inaccurate), and disinformation (intentionally false or misleading) to distinguish what, in an older, more explicitly moralized language, were simply called untruths and lies. Misinformation is common early on during heath events, when a lot is genuinely unknown. No one was sure if Zika was really the cause of microcephaly when cases began appearing, or how the virus might produce such an effect. Many tried to explain the mystery. Their mistakes were untrue, but not lies. As data is produced and errors corrected, however, circulating misinformation is often fed into disinformation narratives, mixed with prejudices, politics, and conspiracies. Actors, from clickbait entrepreneurs to propaganda services and heads of state, intentionally spread disinformation. They may be motivated by profit or ideology, the hope of discrediting an opponent, or for a laugh. Sometimes the goal is to foster trust in something–a charlatan’s cure, for example–but it may also be to create mistrust: to undermine expertise, disorient, generate uncertainty. Disinformation is not just a matter of making up sham facts. There are operations that try to create an impression of popular support or opprobrium with fake grassroots activism, called astroturfing. Other kinds of false narrative can be produced by skewing search results, manipulating by emphasis or omission.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In this article, we explore some of the roles of cameras in policing in the United States. We outline the trajectory of key new media technologies, arguing that cameras and social media together generate the ambient surveillance through... more
In this article, we explore some of the roles of cameras in policing in the United States. We outline the trajectory of key new media technologies, arguing that cameras and social media together generate the ambient surveillance through which graphic violence is now routinely captured and circulated. Drawing on Michel Foucault, we suggest that there are important intersections between this video footage and police subjectivity, and propose to look at two: recruit training at the Washington state Basic Law Enforcement Academy and the Seattle Police Department's body-worn camera project. We analyze these cases in relation to the major arguments for and against initiatives to increase police use of cameras, outlining what we see as techno-optimistic and techno-pessimistic positions. Drawing on the pragmatism of John Dewey, we argue for a third position that calls for field-based inquiry into the specific co-production of socio-techno subjectivities.
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This article analyzes the role of key visual technologies in contemporary media activism in Brazil. Drawing on a range of media formats and sources, it examines how the aesthetic politics of activists in protests that took place in 2013... more
This article analyzes the role of key visual technologies in contemporary media activism in Brazil. Drawing on a range of media formats and sources, it examines how the aesthetic politics of activists in protests that took place in 2013 opened the way for wider sociopolitical change. The forms and practices of the media activists, it is argued, aimed explicitly at producing transformative politics. New media technologies were remediated as a kind of equipment that could generate new relationships and subjectivities, and thereby access to intentionally undetermined futures.
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Open access http://www.metropolitiques.eu/You-Can-t-Kill-Marielle.html Marielle Franco was part of a new generation of progressive activists in Brazilian politics. She was assassinated point-blank on March 14, 2018 by an elite shooter. In... more
Open access http://www.metropolitiques.eu/You-Can-t-Kill-Marielle.html
Marielle Franco was part of a new generation of progressive activists in Brazilian politics. She was assassinated point-blank on March 14, 2018 by an elite shooter. In this piece, Meg Stalcup and Erika Robb Larkins examine how Marielle’s death is revealing of the issues that she fought for in her life. They also ask how she continues to be present in and beyond the unfolding investigation into who killed her.
Marielle Franco was part of a new generation of progressive activists in Brazilian politics. She was assassinated point-blank on March 14, 2018 by an elite shooter. In this piece, Meg Stalcup and Erika Robb Larkins examine how Marielle’s death is revealing of the issues that she fought for in her life. They also ask how she continues to be present in and beyond the unfolding investigation into who killed her.
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In our study of U.S. counterterrorism programs, we found that anthropology needs a mode of analysis that considers security as a form distinct from insecurity, in order to capture the very heterogeneity of security objects, logics and... more
In our study of U.S. counterterrorism programs, we found that anthropology needs a mode of analysis that considers security as a form distinct from insecurity, in order to capture the very heterogeneity of security objects, logics and forms of action. This article first presents a genealogy for the anthropology of security, and identifies four main approaches: violence and State terror; military, militarization, and militarism; para-state securitization; and what we submit as “security analytics.” Security analytics moves away from studying security formations, and how much violence or insecurity they yield, to identifying security forms of action, whether or not they are part of the nation-state. As a framework for anthropological inquiry, it is oriented toward capturing how these forms of action work and what types of security they produce. We then illustrate this approach through our fieldwork on counterterrorism in the domains of law enforcement, biomedical research and federal-state counter extremism. In each of our cases, we use security analytics to arrive at a diagnosis of the form of action. The set of conceptual distinctions that we propose as an aid to approaching empirical situations and the study of security is, on another level, a proposal for an approach to anthropology today. We do not expect that the distinctions that aid us will suffice for every situation. Rather, we submit that this work presents a set of specific insights about contemporary U.S. security, and an example of a new approach to anthropological problems.
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Com base na coleta de espécimes e entrevistas etnográficas realizadas numa feira semanal do bairro da Tijuca na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, este trabalho procura relatar as relações encontradas entre o meio ambiente, os vendedores e... more
Com base na coleta de espécimes e entrevistas etnográficas realizadas numa feira semanal do bairro da Tijuca na cidade do Rio de Janeiro, este trabalho procura relatar as relações encontradas entre o meio ambiente, os vendedores e compradores do mercado. O nível inesperado (40%) de espécies extraidas da Floresta da Tijuca e remanescentes da mata atlântica corresponde à profuda interação entre a floresta e as populaces locais. Os ervatórios coletam plantas para seram utilizadas por familiars, colegas e para vender. 75% das plantas foram descritas como sendo medicinal, o restante sendo vendido para simpatias e ceremoniais religiosas afro-brasileiras. Os vendedores providenciam os ingredientes para remédios caseiros que em termos culturais e de custa são alternativos importantes à biomedicina, além de forneceram as plantas de uso ritual. Encontra-se no mercado um contato afastado da violência e da violação que caracteriza a interação entre residentes das comunidades do morro, de onde vêm os ervatários, e seus clientes da classe média. Neste sentido, o mercado exerce um papel vital e positivo na vida cultural e econômica dos moradores da cidade.
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Research Interests: Botany, Urban Geography, Medical Anthropology, Ethnobotany, Environmental Anthropology, and 11 moreBrazilian Studies, Taxonomy, Local Economic Development, Brazil, Ethnobiology, Candomblé, Etnobotánica, Citizen participation, Microenterprise Development, Anthropology of Religion, and International Development Planning
[the complete chapter with correct pagination is available at the Google books link above] Several of the men who would become the 9/11 hijackers were stopped for minor traffic violations. Mohamed Atta was cited for driving without a... more
[the complete chapter with correct pagination is available at the Google books link above]
Several of the men who would become the 9/11 hijackers were stopped for minor traffic violations. Mohamed Atta was cited for driving without a license in Florida near the end of April 2001. When he failed to appear in court, a warrant was issued for his arrest. The warrant, however, seems not to have been flagged properly, since nothing happened when Atta was pulled over again, for speeding.
In the government inquiries that followed the events of 11 September 2001, and in the press, these brushes with the law were missed opportunities. But for many police officers in the United States, they were moments of professional revelation and were also personally fraught. “It is always a local cop who saw something,” said the deputy director of an intelligence fusion center. He replayed for me how the incidents of contact had unfolded with the men and the uncertainty of every encounter, whether a traffic stop or someone taking photos of a landmark.
Shortly after 9/11, major professional organizations for US law enforcement mobilized a series of working groups. Funded by the Department of Justice, these brought together leading city- and state-level law enforcement from around the country, and representatives from federal agencies. The groups worked on designing policies to include police officers in national intelligence, producing detailed recommendations and plans. Among these was what would eventually come to be the Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. Through its operation, police officers, as well as members of the public and industry, could submit tips and incidents of note from the ground. In turn, the federal government would communicate to participants timely information on security threats. While state, local, tribal, and federal governments; citizens; and those in the private sector were all included in the initiative, the network was organized around fusion centers and the work of police, who centrally designed both.
Several of the men who would become the 9/11 hijackers were stopped for minor traffic violations. Mohamed Atta was cited for driving without a license in Florida near the end of April 2001. When he failed to appear in court, a warrant was issued for his arrest. The warrant, however, seems not to have been flagged properly, since nothing happened when Atta was pulled over again, for speeding.
In the government inquiries that followed the events of 11 September 2001, and in the press, these brushes with the law were missed opportunities. But for many police officers in the United States, they were moments of professional revelation and were also personally fraught. “It is always a local cop who saw something,” said the deputy director of an intelligence fusion center. He replayed for me how the incidents of contact had unfolded with the men and the uncertainty of every encounter, whether a traffic stop or someone taking photos of a landmark.
Shortly after 9/11, major professional organizations for US law enforcement mobilized a series of working groups. Funded by the Department of Justice, these brought together leading city- and state-level law enforcement from around the country, and representatives from federal agencies. The groups worked on designing policies to include police officers in national intelligence, producing detailed recommendations and plans. Among these was what would eventually come to be the Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative. Through its operation, police officers, as well as members of the public and industry, could submit tips and incidents of note from the ground. In turn, the federal government would communicate to participants timely information on security threats. While state, local, tribal, and federal governments; citizens; and those in the private sector were all included in the initiative, the network was organized around fusion centers and the work of police, who centrally designed both.
Research Interests:
Accès libre https://www.metropolitiques.eu/Bresil-on-ne-peut-pas-tuer-Marielle.html Appartenant à une nouvelle génération brésilienne de militants progressistes, Marielle Franco a été assassinée le 14 mars 2018. Elle est devenue un... more
Accès libre https://www.metropolitiques.eu/Bresil-on-ne-peut-pas-tuer-Marielle.html
Appartenant à une nouvelle génération brésilienne de militants progressistes, Marielle Franco a été assassinée le 14 mars 2018. Elle est devenue un symbole politique. Rédigé au moment de la campagne mouvementée des élections présidentielles, cet article éclaire l’histoire politique contemporaine du Brésil et l’emprise de la corruption et des violences policières qui ont sapé la démocratie.
Appartenant à une nouvelle génération brésilienne de militants progressistes, Marielle Franco a été assassinée le 14 mars 2018. Elle est devenue un symbole politique. Rédigé au moment de la campagne mouvementée des élections présidentielles, cet article éclaire l’histoire politique contemporaine du Brésil et l’emprise de la corruption et des violences policières qui ont sapé la démocratie.
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This article explores the process of “re-imagined scenarios,” through which the moments of contact with the 9/11 hijackers were developed into scenarios that came to play a central role in U.S. counterterrorism training and policy.... more
This article explores the process of “re-imagined scenarios,” through which the moments of contact with the 9/11 hijackers were developed into scenarios that came to play a central role in U.S. counterterrorism training and policy. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews with trainers, government officials, and police officers, it is argued that these scenarios do not recreate previous encounters, or conjure up possible futures, but instead rely on “the elasticity of the almost” (Manning 2009) to reactivate the past. The re-imagined scenarios call forth "a certain array of recognizable elastic points," through which options for alternative movements are invented.
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Research Interests:
Neste capítulo, analisa-se a documentação visual dos protestos de 2013, contrastando a cobertura da grande mídia em São Paulo e Rio de Janeiro com a de ativistas usando as tecnologias de nova mídia. Os temas centrais são a forma como o... more
Neste capítulo, analisa-se a documentação visual dos protestos de 2013, contrastando a cobertura da grande mídia em São Paulo e Rio de Janeiro com a de ativistas usando as tecnologias de nova mídia. Os temas centrais são a forma como o exercício do poder político é mediado através de novas tecnologias de mídia e a racionalidade política que anima os ativistas. Dito de outro modo, pergunta-se: por que os atores criaram imagens da forma que o fizeram e que objetivos políticos estavam em jogo? No que se segue, consideram-se principalmente as utilizações de filmagens feitas à mão com telefone celular, a difusão de tais imagens pelas redes sociais (mídia social) e a interação entre os ativistas e os governos municipais. Sugere-se que as novas tecnologias de mídia, através da qual a linguagem visual dos ativistas foi criada, eram postas a serviço de um tipo de política radical, no sentido de almejar algo diferente na raiz. Em vez de um modo de ação política com objetivos governamentais definitivos, os ativistas re-mediaram novas tecnologias de mídia como um tipo de equipamento que poderia gerar novas relações e subjetividades e, assim, acesso a um futuro intencionalmente indeterminado.
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Research Interests:
The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) set time-bound targets that are powerful shapers of how and for whom health is pursued. In this paper we examine some ramifications of both the temporal limitation, and maternal-child health... more
The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) set time-bound targets that are powerful shapers of how and for whom health is pursued. In this paper we examine some ramifications of both the temporal limitation, and maternal-child health targeting of MDG 4 and 5. The 2015 end date may encourage increasing the number of mass campaigns to meet the specific MDG objectives, potentially to the detriment of a more comprehensive approach to health. We discuss some ethical, political, and pragmatic ramifications of this tendency, and show that these are not unique to the MDGs but rather have a long history in health policy debates. We also examine attempts to counter a narrow focus on vertical interventions in campaigns through integrated health system delivery platforms. We argue that the way forward is not to assume that evidence is value free, but rather to make explicit the political and ethical decisions in the design of metrics and evaluation research. We propose an index of five factors that should be included in research designed to inform decision making about providing interventions as part of routine services or periodic campaigns, toward serving more members of the population, and long-term strengthening of the health system via integrated health interventions.
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Objective Two randomised controlled trials showed that pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) reduces HIV transmission between heterosexual men and women. We model the potential impact on transmission and cost-effectiveness of providing PrEP in... more
Objective Two randomised controlled trials showed that pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) reduces HIV transmission between heterosexual men and women. We model the potential impact on transmission and cost-effectiveness of providing PrEP in sub-Saharan Africa.
Methods We use a deterministic, compartmental model of HIV transmission to evaluate the potential of a 5-year PrEP intervention targeting the adult population of 42 sub-Saharan African countries. We examine the incremental impact of adding PrEP at pre-existing levels of male circumcision and antiretroviral therapy (ART). The base case assumes efficacy of 68%; adherence at 80%; country coverage at 10% of the HIV-uninfected adult population; and annual costs of PrEP and ART at US$200 and US$880 per person, respectively.
Results After 5 years, 390 000 HIV infections (95% UR 190 000 to 630 000) would be prevented, 24% of these in South Africa. HIV infections averted per 100 000 people (adult) would range from 500 in Lesotho to 10 in Somalia. Incremental cost-effectiveness would be US$5800/disability-adjusted life year (DALY) (95% UR 3100 to 13500). Cost-effectiveness would range from US$500/DALY in Lesotho to US$44 600/DALY in Eritrea.
Conclusions In a general adult population, PrEP is a high-cost intervention which will have maximum impact and be cost-effective only in countries that have high levels of HIV burden and low levels of male circumcision in the population. Hence, PrEP will likely be most effective in Southern Africa as a targeted intervention added to existing strategies to control the HIV pandemic.
Methods We use a deterministic, compartmental model of HIV transmission to evaluate the potential of a 5-year PrEP intervention targeting the adult population of 42 sub-Saharan African countries. We examine the incremental impact of adding PrEP at pre-existing levels of male circumcision and antiretroviral therapy (ART). The base case assumes efficacy of 68%; adherence at 80%; country coverage at 10% of the HIV-uninfected adult population; and annual costs of PrEP and ART at US$200 and US$880 per person, respectively.
Results After 5 years, 390 000 HIV infections (95% UR 190 000 to 630 000) would be prevented, 24% of these in South Africa. HIV infections averted per 100 000 people (adult) would range from 500 in Lesotho to 10 in Somalia. Incremental cost-effectiveness would be US$5800/disability-adjusted life year (DALY) (95% UR 3100 to 13500). Cost-effectiveness would range from US$500/DALY in Lesotho to US$44 600/DALY in Eritrea.
Conclusions In a general adult population, PrEP is a high-cost intervention which will have maximum impact and be cost-effective only in countries that have high levels of HIV burden and low levels of male circumcision in the population. Hence, PrEP will likely be most effective in Southern Africa as a targeted intervention added to existing strategies to control the HIV pandemic.
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We have two goals in this paper: first, to provide a diagnosis of global health and underline some of its blockages; second, to offer an alternative interpretation of what the demands for those in global health may be. The assumption that... more
We have two goals in this paper: first, to provide a diagnosis of global health and underline some of its blockages; second, to offer an alternative interpretation of what the demands for those in global health may be. The assumption that health is a good that requires no further explanation, and that per se it can serve as an actual modus operandi, lays the foundations of the problem. Related blockages ensue and are described using HIV prevention with a focus on vaginal microbicides as a case study. Taking health as a self-evident, and self-explanatory “good” limits other possible goods; and prevents inquiry into the actual practices of creating good. We propose that to create conditions under which global health could be reconstructed, problematization be taken up as a practice, around a series of questions asked in conjunction with those ever-urgent ones of how to ameliorate the condition of living beings.
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O trabalho analisa o patrimônio etnobotânico da feira livre, com base em um estudo feito no bairro da Tijuca, na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Analisa-se o papel das plantas na saúde e na vida religiosa das pessoas do bairro, o conhecimento... more
O trabalho analisa o patrimônio etnobotânico da feira livre, com base em um estudo feito no bairro da Tijuca, na cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Analisa-se o papel das plantas na saúde e na vida religiosa das pessoas do bairro, o conhecimento dos ervatários e a coleta das plantas da Mata Atlântica.
This article discusses the ethnobotanical patrimony of urban markets, drawing on a study conducted in Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro. An analysis is presented of the role of the herb vendors in the health and religious life of the neighborhood, the knowledge
of the venders and the collection of plants from the Atlantic coastal rainforest.
This article discusses the ethnobotanical patrimony of urban markets, drawing on a study conducted in Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro. An analysis is presented of the role of the herb vendors in the health and religious life of the neighborhood, the knowledge
of the venders and the collection of plants from the Atlantic coastal rainforest.
Research Interests:
In this article we propose a mode of analysis that allows us to consider security as a form distinct from insecurity, in order to capture the heterogeneity of security objects, logics and forms of action. We first develop a genealogy for... more
In this article we propose a mode of analysis that allows us to consider security as a form distinct from insecurity, in order to capture the heterogeneity of security objects, logics and forms of action. We first develop a genealogy for the anthropology of security , demarcating four main approaches: violence and state terror; military, militarization, and militarism; para-state securitization; and what we submit as 'security assemblages.' Security assemblages move away from focusing on security formations per se, and how much violence or insecurity they yield, to identifying and studying security forms of action, whether or not they are part of the nation-state. As an approach to anthropo-logical inquiry and theory, it is oriented toward capturing how these forms of action work and what types of security they produce. We illustrate security assemblages through our fieldwork on counterterrorism in the domains of law enforcement, bio-medical research and federal-state counter-extremism, in each case arriving at a diagnosis of the form of action. The set of distinctions that we propose is intended as an aid to studying empirical situations, particularly of security, and, on another level, as a proposal for an approach to anthropology today. We do not expect that the distinctions that aid us will suffice in every circumstance. Rather, we submit that this work presents a set of specific insights about contemporary US security, and an example of a new approach to anthropological problems.
Research Interests:
From the end of 2014 through the end of 2015, a scientific mystery unfolded in Brazil. An infection was circulating, which doctors recognized as a virus most likely transmitted by the familiar Aedes aegypti mosquito. The disease was in... more
From the end of 2014 through the end of 2015, a scientific mystery unfolded in Brazil. An infection was circulating, which doctors recognized as a virus most likely transmitted by the familiar Aedes aegypti mosquito. The disease was in due course identified as Zika, the first twist in a larger plot. Within months, maternity wards in northeastern Brazil were filled with babies severely affected with microcephaly (abnormally small heads, indicating problems with brain development). This became the next riddle, one far more terrible. In a slim new book, Zika: From the Brazilian Backlands to Global Threat, Brazilian anthropologist and professor of bioethics Debora Diniz tells this story with all its characters. A scientific mystery, the detectives were not only virologists using samples and polymerase chain reactions to sequence and identify the culprit. They were also obstetricians and pediatricians, listening to their patients’ stories, working to translate the messages delivered by obstinate bodies, as well as patients and their families.
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All ethnographies, perhaps, contain some mystery: of how humans understand each other, or the way that words and glances, observations and encounters are turned into insights about what it means to be human at a given moment in history.... more
All ethnographies, perhaps, contain some mystery: of how humans understand each other, or the way that words and glances, observations and encounters are turned into insights about what it means to be human at a given moment in history. But Sareeta Amrute’s Encoding Race, Encoding Class: Indian IT Workers in Berlin begins with a proper mystery, a person who has disappeared, and this literally missing body adroitly stages the subsequent exploration of IT workers’ missing bodies in scholarship on cognitive labor.
Global software and service is often thought of as “immaterial,” a traffic of ideas in which effort is a matter of the mind, rather than a muscled arm. Without collapsing cognitive and manual labor, Amrute argues that both are nonetheless embodied ––and formidably marked by social difference, in particular post-genomic notions of race, and class.
Global software and service is often thought of as “immaterial,” a traffic of ideas in which effort is a matter of the mind, rather than a muscled arm. Without collapsing cognitive and manual labor, Amrute argues that both are nonetheless embodied ––and formidably marked by social difference, in particular post-genomic notions of race, and class.
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The question is not only: What are practices of science today? The question is: How do we become capable of naming anthropological problems of the sciences today? Vocationally, what work on ourselves as anthropologists might we need to do... more
The question is not only: What are practices of science today? The question is: How do we become capable of naming anthropological problems of the sciences today? Vocationally, what work on ourselves as anthropologists might we need to do in order to be capable of carrying out this activity? (Stavrianakis, Bennett, Fearnley, 11) 1. I have a distinct memory of my first graduate presentation: a visceral sense of anxiety felt acutely from my stomach to neck. A fear that I'd be unable to articulate what I'd been thinking; that my thoughts weren't even worth articulation in the first place. Learning to engage with the texts (to read, speak about, and think with) was an experience that was part panic, part excitement. They led me to inhabit a space where I constantly questioned and reflected on how I understood myself, my capabilities, and my limitations. That research methods seminar was organized around many of the same texts (https://www.academia.edu/15386387/Research_Methodology_in_Anthropology_Syllabus) as Science, Reason, Modernity: Readings for an Anthropology of the Contemporary, and we (at the time, three students starting graduate school and their professor) traced one possible variation on the " genealogical line " and " pedagogical legacy " (p. 33) to which this reader is extended as an invitation. The spirit of that invitation is, in our understanding, not to a canon that would replace any number of others, but to a set of equipment. We take this book forum as an opportunity to reflect on Science, Reason, Modernity through our experiences, exploring how these texts served as our tools, and to what end. [1] (#_ftn1) 2. I remember my initial surprise, in the seminar as in this reader, at the relative lack of texts disciplined into anthropology. Learning to become a " subject of truth under the conditions of modernity " requires as much unlearning as it does thinking about new concepts and ways of conduct. The works in the twentieth-century human sciences collected in Science, Reason, Modernity have brought, in the words of Paul Rabinow, to whom the reader is dedicated as the editors' teacher (and directly or indirectly ours), " philosophical learning, diagnostic rigor, and a practice of inquiry that operates in proximity to concrete situations into a productive relationship " (p. 250). That is, the reader's texts demonstrate a mode of inquiry that is identifiably anthropological in Rabinow's sense, and share key characteristics of the anthropology he has come to conceptualize and practice. Of course, as Rabinow notes in a different section of Anthropos Today, " it is worth forcefully repeating that there are a multitude of other practices anthropologists might pursue " (emphasis in the original, 2003, 85).
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Open Access at somatosphere Neuropsychedelia operates on several levels. The book is a historical account of research on psychedelics, and on that score contributes with original material from interviews with those who played central... more
Open Access at somatosphere Neuropsychedelia operates on several levels. The book is a historical account of research on psychedelics, and on that score contributes with original material from interviews with those who played central roles. Equally, it is an ethnographic account of laboratories where this work is being done: the practices of neuroscience, and what science as a vocation, fulfilled or frustrated, looks like today. Finally, it embodies an undertaking of fieldwork in philosophy, and, as the result of this exploration of the long tradition of philosophia perennis, a proposal for an anthropology of the perennial.
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monograph exploring governmental and material technologies of suspicion in the post-9/11 United States
Research Interests: American Studies, Political Theory, Media Anthropology, Political Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology, and 13 moreComputer Networks, Surveillance Studies, Socio-legal studies, Policing Studies, Critical Media Studies, Michel Foucault, Intelligence and Espionage, Databases, Anthropology of the contemporary, Software, Anthropology of the United States, Governmentality Studies, and Science and Technology Studies
Official Course Description The development of digital technologies. New media as a research tool on social networks, digital technology, blogs, etc. Organized around multimedia projects and class exercises, this course will show how... more
Official Course Description
The development of digital technologies. New media as a research tool on social networks, digital technology, blogs, etc. Organized around multimedia projects and class exercises, this course will show how different groups use new media in the construction of new identities, virtual communities, and new forms of political participation.
Additional Course Description
From the changing nature of work and fame to algorithmic profiling, digital technologies have come to play an ever more important role in the world around us. To understand the ways that they are shaping the contemporary, this course locates in history certain fundamental questions while turning to empirical, anthropological inquiry as an antidote to both techno-optimism and pessimism. We ask, what is a medium? What role do media play in producing or shaping digital identities, or bifurcating reality? What is the relationship between technological advances and precarity? How are media implicated in social change? The course will provide an overview of some of the key concepts structuring research into these questions across a range of disciplines, and of the growing literature about how these technologies shape human capacity for knowledge, practices of governance, and ethical formation. Students will design and undertake a semester-long research project on a digital technology topic of their choosing, toward developing skills that will serve them in future research and in their careers going forward.
The development of digital technologies. New media as a research tool on social networks, digital technology, blogs, etc. Organized around multimedia projects and class exercises, this course will show how different groups use new media in the construction of new identities, virtual communities, and new forms of political participation.
Additional Course Description
From the changing nature of work and fame to algorithmic profiling, digital technologies have come to play an ever more important role in the world around us. To understand the ways that they are shaping the contemporary, this course locates in history certain fundamental questions while turning to empirical, anthropological inquiry as an antidote to both techno-optimism and pessimism. We ask, what is a medium? What role do media play in producing or shaping digital identities, or bifurcating reality? What is the relationship between technological advances and precarity? How are media implicated in social change? The course will provide an overview of some of the key concepts structuring research into these questions across a range of disciplines, and of the growing literature about how these technologies shape human capacity for knowledge, practices of governance, and ethical formation. Students will design and undertake a semester-long research project on a digital technology topic of their choosing, toward developing skills that will serve them in future research and in their careers going forward.
Research Interests:
If philosophy is, as one of our first readings proposes, ‘the ability to make friends through the medium of a written text’, then this course aims to help you develop friendships. As is the nature of friends, you’ll be drawn more to some... more
If philosophy is, as one of our first readings proposes, ‘the ability to make friends through the medium of a written text’, then this course aims to help you develop friendships. As is the nature of friends, you’ll be drawn more to some writers, less to others. This experience of affinity goes for those we read too: they think with certain thinkers, either by building on or remediating those earlier scholars’ work. We will lean into this recursivity ourselves as a technique of learning. Each week we read one or more thinkers, and often we read secondary literature on those thinkers (‘secondary literature’ is underrated – think of Marx’s writings on Hegel, or Freire’s writings on Marx). This approach follows how scholars read and work with texts, rather than that of seminar in which you seek to learn a specific body of literature around a specific theme or topic (impossible in any case, for something as open-ended as ‘contemporary theory in anthropology’). My aim is for you to practice being a scholar yourself, because this is my view on what it means to be a graduate student. The structure which is provided aims to help you do this. It also aims to create another set of intellectual friendships, as we collaborate in these explorations.
Research Interests:
This course is designed as a collaborative workshop that will produce a polished research proposal and presentation for committee defense at the end of the semester. We will alternate weekly between writing, and rewriting and editing.... more
This course is designed as a collaborative workshop that will produce a polished research proposal and presentation for committee defense at the end of the semester. We will alternate weekly between writing, and rewriting and editing. Class time will be divided into two parts, beginning with discussion of the assigned texts, then feedback sessions with rotating partners.
The texts have been chosen to explain (‘how to’), demonstrate, or reflect on the week’s proposal component, and also to provide an intellectual scaffolding for inquiry into what it means to do anthropology, as a science and a vocation, that is, as way of producing knowledge that is linked to a process of ethical self-formation.
Thus, we will move together through the key stages of the design and writing process, with classes held in this combined seminar-workshop format. Activities will include presentations by the professor, collective discussion of the parameters of each section of the proposal, and peer critiques for the written sections. Each week we will read texts related to the part of the proposal in preparation, while students will also, in consultation with the professor and thesis supervisor, create an individualized list of readings. This means that each week students will have both shared and individual texts. Collaborative work will involve learning how to identify and share what is useful from individual projects with the group, as well as how to insightfully and constructively critique each other’s writing.
After an initial, intensive period of brainstorming and workshopping individual topics and research questions, we will spend two weeks on each major section of the proposal, roughly: Literature Review; Methods/ Research Design; Conceptual Tools /Theory; the refined Research Question / Outline; and finally, the Introduction. Then these sections will be compiled, revised and submitted for the final assignment. Note that the exact name and content of the sections may vary between students, in accordance with the expectations of different thesis supervisors.
Weekly, students will produce part of a section, which will be read and critiqued in class, and then have a week to elaborate, refine, and/or rewrite that same section. By the end of the semester, students will have a solid draft of their thesis project proposal, a presentation prepared for the proposal defense, and be ready to proceed after defense with submitting an application to the university’s research ethics board.
The texts have been chosen to explain (‘how to’), demonstrate, or reflect on the week’s proposal component, and also to provide an intellectual scaffolding for inquiry into what it means to do anthropology, as a science and a vocation, that is, as way of producing knowledge that is linked to a process of ethical self-formation.
Thus, we will move together through the key stages of the design and writing process, with classes held in this combined seminar-workshop format. Activities will include presentations by the professor, collective discussion of the parameters of each section of the proposal, and peer critiques for the written sections. Each week we will read texts related to the part of the proposal in preparation, while students will also, in consultation with the professor and thesis supervisor, create an individualized list of readings. This means that each week students will have both shared and individual texts. Collaborative work will involve learning how to identify and share what is useful from individual projects with the group, as well as how to insightfully and constructively critique each other’s writing.
After an initial, intensive period of brainstorming and workshopping individual topics and research questions, we will spend two weeks on each major section of the proposal, roughly: Literature Review; Methods/ Research Design; Conceptual Tools /Theory; the refined Research Question / Outline; and finally, the Introduction. Then these sections will be compiled, revised and submitted for the final assignment. Note that the exact name and content of the sections may vary between students, in accordance with the expectations of different thesis supervisors.
Weekly, students will produce part of a section, which will be read and critiqued in class, and then have a week to elaborate, refine, and/or rewrite that same section. By the end of the semester, students will have a solid draft of their thesis project proposal, a presentation prepared for the proposal defense, and be ready to proceed after defense with submitting an application to the university’s research ethics board.
Research Interests:
Theoretical trends and debates around the notion of popular culture: analyses in different countries on how context shapes the meaning of mass consumption, symbolic exchanges, and cultural and media productions. General Course Objectives... more
Theoretical trends and debates around the notion of popular culture: analyses in different countries on how context shapes the meaning of mass consumption, symbolic exchanges, and cultural and media productions.
General Course Objectives
What's popular culture? How do we study it anthropologically? From American country music to K-pop, tourism and beauty in Brazil to online gaming, popular culture offers ways to access key insights into contemporary lives. We will take up popular culture today as expressive forms which emerges through the relation between what are often ordinary, yet intimate and particular, everyday acts, and spectacular forms of mass culture. Anthropology brings a uniquely fieldwork-based perspective, which can overlap, but more commonly complements, work done in other disciplines. In this class, we focus on learning specifically anthropological approaches and contributions to the study of popular culture. The course is divided into four equal parts. The first examines ways that folklore and contemporary popular culture have been defined, and their commodification. Then we will do two country case studies, South Korea and Brazil, followed by an in-depth look at what is nonetheless a global form of popular culture, video games. While this work will be done through readings and in class, with weekly analytic memos, we will also be getting practical experience in how to study popular culture by doing a folklore collecting project, and then developing this into participant-observation research on a popular culture phenomenon of your choice.
General Course Objectives
What's popular culture? How do we study it anthropologically? From American country music to K-pop, tourism and beauty in Brazil to online gaming, popular culture offers ways to access key insights into contemporary lives. We will take up popular culture today as expressive forms which emerges through the relation between what are often ordinary, yet intimate and particular, everyday acts, and spectacular forms of mass culture. Anthropology brings a uniquely fieldwork-based perspective, which can overlap, but more commonly complements, work done in other disciplines. In this class, we focus on learning specifically anthropological approaches and contributions to the study of popular culture. The course is divided into four equal parts. The first examines ways that folklore and contemporary popular culture have been defined, and their commodification. Then we will do two country case studies, South Korea and Brazil, followed by an in-depth look at what is nonetheless a global form of popular culture, video games. While this work will be done through readings and in class, with weekly analytic memos, we will also be getting practical experience in how to study popular culture by doing a folklore collecting project, and then developing this into participant-observation research on a popular culture phenomenon of your choice.
Research Interests:
The city has been represented as the apotheosis of human achievement, a fantastic ensemble of skill, sociality, and creativity. It is also described as an abyss of privation, disease, and degradation, both human and environmental. The... more
The city has been represented as the apotheosis of human achievement, a fantastic ensemble of skill, sociality, and creativity. It is also described as an abyss of privation, disease, and degradation, both human and environmental. The anthropology of cities (or urban anthropology––we’ll use these terms synonymously) seeks to understand the changing nature of urban social life, the influence of urban space and place, and more broadly what constitutes a city in the context of global flows and connections (Rivke and De Koning, 2015). While anthropology is typically characterized as having started with a focus on small-scale communities in non-urban settings, cities have long since become common sites for anthropological research. Simply the fact of being conducted in a city, however, does not make a study “urban anthropology.” Instead, anthropologists of cities study a broad range of social phenomena, and what unites their work is an explicit reflection on the implications of the urban context in which these phenomena occur. In this course we explore the conceptual and empirical parameters of the city, asking a series of questions that aim to move beyond paeans, alarmist narratives, and “best practice” fixes. How did cities start? Why did and do people move to them? In what ways are cities being planned, modeled, and redesigned in light of migration, urbanization, new economic forms, and climate change? What does it mean to live in a city today? How do we approach the city anthropologically, as a site, an object, and a concept? And how do cities offer, restrict, or shape the multiple, diverse ways of being human?
Research Interests:
We do not undertake analyses of works because we want to copy them or because we suspect them. We investigate the methods by which another has created his work, in order to set ourselves in motion (Paul Klee, 1961) This course provides... more
We do not undertake analyses of works because we want to copy them or because we suspect them. We investigate the methods by which another has created his work, in order to set ourselves in motion (Paul Klee, 1961)
This course provides beginning graduate students with a set of conceptual tools and methodological approaches to pick amongst in designing and carrying out anthropological research projects. Methods in anthropology are often considered a purely technical process for collecting data, and nonetheless a nearly mythical rite of initiation. Given that times have changed since the advent of anthropology, and continue to do so, the question of method is also one of how to study a dynamic world with unsettled anthropological objects, including those that students will develop in their own forays into research. If there is a set of technical methods and also a genuinely experiential basis to anthropological knowledge, our task is to create a methodology adequate to the contemporary world.
Over the course of the semester, we will reflect on a variety of traditional and innovative research methods in anthropology, and trace the debates that have accompanied them, that with an eye to how students will undertake their upcoming fieldwork. Readings cover philosophical and anthropological critiques of method and different phases of research: concept work; the conditions under which one chooses a topic; participant-observation; fieldnotes; interviewing; the path that inquiry may take; and the documentation and report of those activities, including the representation of others in and through various genres of writing. In particular, we will critically explore the genres of “ethnography” and the journal article, and new approaches to both in visual anthropology and digital ethnography. Materials include films, articles and book chapters, and three books. Students will also analyze and emulate a research article of choice.
This course provides beginning graduate students with a set of conceptual tools and methodological approaches to pick amongst in designing and carrying out anthropological research projects. Methods in anthropology are often considered a purely technical process for collecting data, and nonetheless a nearly mythical rite of initiation. Given that times have changed since the advent of anthropology, and continue to do so, the question of method is also one of how to study a dynamic world with unsettled anthropological objects, including those that students will develop in their own forays into research. If there is a set of technical methods and also a genuinely experiential basis to anthropological knowledge, our task is to create a methodology adequate to the contemporary world.
Over the course of the semester, we will reflect on a variety of traditional and innovative research methods in anthropology, and trace the debates that have accompanied them, that with an eye to how students will undertake their upcoming fieldwork. Readings cover philosophical and anthropological critiques of method and different phases of research: concept work; the conditions under which one chooses a topic; participant-observation; fieldnotes; interviewing; the path that inquiry may take; and the documentation and report of those activities, including the representation of others in and through various genres of writing. In particular, we will critically explore the genres of “ethnography” and the journal article, and new approaches to both in visual anthropology and digital ethnography. Materials include films, articles and book chapters, and three books. Students will also analyze and emulate a research article of choice.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In this course we equip ourselves to engage new media as both anthropological topic and tool. “New media,” for our purposes, refers not to a set of technologies, but those technologies (now and yet-to-be) that allow for bi-directional... more
In this course we equip ourselves to engage new media as both anthropological topic and tool. “New media,” for our purposes, refers not to a set of technologies, but those technologies (now and yet-to-be) that allow for bi-directional interactivity and which assemble groups, undefined in size, composition and potential, in participatory sociality. Should the name (perhaps inevitably) be replaced, these characteristics would nonetheless serve as markers. This class considers some of the many questions around power, mediation, and subjectivity that new media technologies present by reading and critically engaging articles, three ethnographic monographs, and undertaking a small ethnographic multi-media research project. Our focus will be on significant debates in new media scholarship; the uses of new media in research; and the growing literature about how these technologies affect human capacity for knowledge, practices of governance, and ethics.
Research Interests:
Popular culture is all around us. From fairytales to urban legends, blue jeans to online gaming, the study of popular culture is a way to access key insights into how contemporary lives are lived. This course takes popular culture today... more
Popular culture is all around us. From fairytales to urban legends, blue jeans to online gaming, the study of popular culture is a way to access key insights into how contemporary lives are lived. This course takes popular culture today to be that which emerges through the relation between the ordinary yet intimate and particular ways that we undertake everyday acts, and spectacular forms of mass culture. Through readings that include articles, chapters and a recent book, as well videos and films, we cross geographic areas in order to addresses what it means to study popular culture anthropologically, and what popular culture brings to anthropology, from the study of urban space as well as the intimacy of the home, with people ranging from graffiti artists to professional organizers. The first part of the course covers significant approaches and
Research Interests:
The camera does not record objective reality and yet it tells its own kind of truths. How, then, do still and moving images create meaning through particular techniques, forms, and styles? And what are the politics and ethics... more
The camera does not record objective reality and yet it tells its own kind of truths. How, then, do still and moving images create meaning through particular techniques, forms, and styles? And what are the politics and ethics of such practices? Visual anthropology explores the use of visual technologies and media in the production of anthropological knowledge, and is also the field of inquiry into visual arts and representations. In this course, we examine the ways that critique, cinema and diverse domains of documentary photography and film have shaped each other and the kinds of questions this has raised for anthropologists.
Research Interests:
From urban legends to hip-hop diplomacy, fairy tales to cultural counterterrorism, the study of popular culture is a way to access key insights into how contemporary lives are lived. If popular culture is, as some define it, “the culture... more
From urban legends to hip-hop diplomacy, fairy tales to cultural counterterrorism, the study of popular culture is a way to access key insights into how contemporary lives are lived. If popular culture is, as some define it, “the culture of the people for the people,” in today’s world it is inevitably also part of circulating media and cultural production, consumption and reception across regional and national contexts. As we’ll approach it in this course, popular culture is not simply a representation of existing beliefs or ideas through a given medium (music, television, film etc), or a set habits and traditions (sports, holidays etc). Rather, as we’ll explore in two case
Class schedule: Professor’s office hours:
mstalcup@uottawa.ca

studies, on music and climate change, popular culture can be generative and constitutive of what comes to be important, how that is understood and a mechanism for opening up new and different ways of being human today.
The semester is dived into two parts, with the first half focusing on the complex ways that music has served as a tool of power and the second half turning to the question of how climate change is addressed in popular culture. The readings focus on material from these cases, while lectures will provide an overview of scholarly approaches, including folklore, culture studies, cultural history and subsets of cultural anthropology. Key concepts to use in describing and analyzing popular culture will be introduced, including ethos, zeitgeist, moral panics, and bridging metaphors. In class, we will also draw on multimedia materials that complement the assigned texts, and will provide the basis for exercises analyzing popular culture.
Class schedule: Professor’s office hours:
mstalcup@uottawa.ca

studies, on music and climate change, popular culture can be generative and constitutive of what comes to be important, how that is understood and a mechanism for opening up new and different ways of being human today.
The semester is dived into two parts, with the first half focusing on the complex ways that music has served as a tool of power and the second half turning to the question of how climate change is addressed in popular culture. The readings focus on material from these cases, while lectures will provide an overview of scholarly approaches, including folklore, culture studies, cultural history and subsets of cultural anthropology. Key concepts to use in describing and analyzing popular culture will be introduced, including ethos, zeitgeist, moral panics, and bridging metaphors. In class, we will also draw on multimedia materials that complement the assigned texts, and will provide the basis for exercises analyzing popular culture.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Introduction to the ethnographic method. Principles and techniques in the collection of fieldwork data: modes of observation, interview techniques, questionnaires, field journal and field reports. Research ethics. Students will use these... more
Introduction to the ethnographic method. Principles and techniques in the collection of fieldwork data: modes of observation, interview techniques, questionnaires, field journal and field reports. Research ethics. Students will use these methods of data collection to examine a specific issue.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil were denounced as genocidal. There was consensus on this accusation, although it was lobbed by opposing camps. On one side, it came from those who accused President Bolsonaro's... more
The first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil were denounced as genocidal. There was consensus on this accusation, although it was lobbed by opposing camps. On one side, it came from those who accused President Bolsonaro's administration of causing avoidable deaths by refusing to support mainstream scientific guidance on personal protective equipment and social distancing; and for promoting the off-label use of hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and a rotating cast of other medications and supplements that came to be known as "early treatment" (tratamento precoce). But on the other side, "genocide" referred to the measures for containing the pandemic, notably opposed by Bolsonaro, and instead enacted by ministries or at the state and municipal level. As one protest sign summed up the position: "Genocidal is the one who stays at home with guaranteed income and wants the other to die of hunger." People decried lockdowns, masking, and-above all-withholding support for "early treatment."