Month: January 2024

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie/Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie/Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology

The populist radical right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP / UDC) has been largely known for its xenophobic discourses and its political agenda restricting immigration through popular initiatives such as the vote against minarets (2009), the deportation…

This article introduces the special issue through a review of Francophone and Anglo-Saxon legal anthropology traditions, before situating the law of the outlaw within these and outlining its potential contribution towards the development of a pragmatic…

This article introduces the special issue through a review of Francophone and Anglo-Saxon legal anthropology traditions, before situating the law of the outlaw within these and outlining its potential contribution towards the development of a pragmatic…

As the power and influence of the “thieves-in-law” in Georgia weakened in an offensive against them that began in 2006, their parallel legal system lost some of its legitimacy in the face of the state legal system. This article, based on an ethnographi…

In the United States, some prison gangs control not only inmates, but also what happens on the street. Since most gang members eventually get detained and incarcerated, prison gangs will victimize or kill any resistors in jail and prison. In this paper…

The National Union of Road Transport workers (NURTW) is the main transport organization in Nigeria and has replaced local governments in most garages of the country. The NURTW exercises its authority in Lagos garages through its own set of rules, quali…

Belonging to the gang Los Ñetas, it is in part observing a certain number of rules which are transcribed in the Liderato, the book of the Ñetas. These rules are accompanied of trials procedure, the mesas disciplinarias, and of sanctions for those trans…

In what follows, I discuss some initial empirical findings and theoretical insights from my recent work on transnational resettlement of crime-based deportees from the US to Haiti. Haitian baz, or street organizations, are increasingly taking on the tr…

In Paris, at the beginning of the 1900s, the Apaches embodied a figure of the outlaw from the suburbs. As portrayed in the press, their gangs snuck into the French capital as a threat to the safety of “good citizens.” Combining historical and visual an…

In the current educational environment, students need transferable skills not only to graduate but also to be well-prepared for their futures. Starting in 2017, the Cleveland Institute of Art required all incoming first-year students to take a 3-credit…

Government developers have put up yet another portion of Harlem’s 125th Street for redevelopment. After a 2012 government-sponsored call for development proposals, state developers selected the National Urban League (NUL), a civil rights and urban advo…

This article explores how teaching Urban Anthropology can engender new relationships between cities, students, and classrooms. We discuss the generative connections between these actors as processes of becoming, which connect students with practices an…

This article employs Indigenous urbanism as an analytical approach, as developed by Anishinaabe and settler scholar Heather Dorries (2023), to show how pedagogical interventions employed in the teaching of an undergraduate course at Concordia Universit…

Human-animal co-habitation is a fact of urban existence, yet animals are illegible in the contemporary American city. As climate change, development, and other planetary forces disturb the more-than-human dynamics of cities, often gravely, anthropologi…

Written by a teacher and two students in an undergraduate course titled Housing: Planning and Policy, this commentary explores screenwriting as a pedagogical device used in service of experiential learning about the city in the classroom. It reflects o…

As part of a recent undergraduate seminar on infrastructure, students completed weekly exercises dubbed “infrastructure fieldnotes.” Going beyond conventional discussion board posts or reading responses, exercise prompts incorporated reading analysis, …

Over the past few decades, scholars and educators have challenged the traditional focus of architectural history on styles and formal features, placing more emphasis on user experience. This experience, however, is not common to all. Each sector of soc…

Co-written by bachelor students and their lecturer, this commentary is a critical reflection on the Materiality and Urban Politics (SOC387) course taught at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul in the summer of 2022. The course unfolded during a time of pol…

How do airy materials constitute the urban? This is an anthropological question that has been of interest to me as I teach in a university campus in Northern India. Surrounded by agricultural fields and national highways, the campus is at least 60 km f…

As a graduate student team from an applied anthropology course series, we conducted a yearlong community research project focused on an urban park for a local city government partner. This paper reflects on how learning and working as an applied, inter…

Photovoice is a research and teaching tool designed to document personal experiences and elicit applied discussions. In the classroom, photovoice brings theoretical concepts to life, empowers students to become co-creators of knowledge, sensitizes stud…

This student showcase essay explores how researching the city informs learning about the city. In it, I examine my senior thesis project for the urban studies program at Barnard College, in which I argue for the use of container farms to expand urban a…

In Spring 2021, I taught Urban Anthropology entirely online. In lieu of the interviews, participant-observation, and neighborhood tours I normally would have included in the syllabus, I asked students to carry out a series of visual exercises in their …