Some of the most recent articles from open access anthropology journals (beta)
In October 2018, the storm Vaia hit the Fiemme valley (Italy), causing extensive damage to its forests. As in other catastrophic events in the Anthropocene, this disaster was enhanced by the anthropogenic impact on wind patterns. It represents a strong…
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
This article explores practices of witnessing global warming developed in recent years by climate movements in Poland. Timothy Morton’s concept of the “hyperobject” acts as a starting point for a discussion of the ontological assumptions that underlie …
This article offers a conceptual and historical introduction to the significance of witnessing in relationship to environmental questions for the Hau special section “Witnessing Environments.” The articles in this special section take as their focus th…
By hearing and identifying a noise problem, residents in Taiwan transmute the visceral experience of noise in relation to neighbors, the state, and others. In the countryside, in the city, and in the ocean, the challenges of negotiating noise speak to …
This article analyzes the relationship between media, fire ecology, and Indigenous fire management in the context of Australia’s catastrophic fire events of 2020. How might ethnographic attention to fire’s mediatization allow us to apprehend the distin…
The last “global coral bleaching event” lasted three years (2014–2017), solidifying the plight of the world’s coral reefs as a defining problem of the Anthropocene. The catastrophe inspired countless media stories, becoming common knowledge in parts of…
Water stories told in Kilimanjaro Region, such as Mami Wata narratives conveyed across Africa and the Atlantic, give horrific insights into morally problematic forms of wealth acquisition through environmental destruction. This paper approaches farmers…
This article reflects on ten years of ethnographic work investigating concerns about mining industry-produced environmental and social change in hyperarid territories experiencing long-term drought. The ecological and social effects of groundwater extr…
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
In this essay, I propose a process of humbling anthropology in order to counter the (re)production of White ignorance. I argue that anthropology’s epistemological foundation, in its contemporary liberal guise of an ego reflexivus, remains firmly rooted…
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
This essay introduces the translations of two articles by Gao Bingzhong on the topic of “overseas ethnography” in China. In these essays, Gao attempts to create more space for Chinese anthropologists to do ethnographic research outside of China, rather…
This account dates from 1985, originally a companion piece to “Discovering ‘social control’” (1985), but not published in this form then. The ethnographic milieu is Hagen, in Papua New Guinea, under the colonial regime of the 1960s and 70s, and the Aus…
With Detroit as its principal site, this essay examines the possibility and the hope for developing a decolonial practice as part of the research in and of a “Black” city. What can we learn from Detroit and what needs to change about ethnography in ord…
Through the notions of distance, double critique, and colonial difference, this essay suggests a decolonization through a novel usage of colonial ethnographies. Analyzing the case of Morocco to reflect on the question of language(s) used in writing eth…
By looking at the vestiges of the scientific archive destroyed by the fire that reduced Brazil’s National Museum to ruins in September 2018, this essay seeks to explore what Isabelle Stengers () described as “another look” at artifacts and the historie…
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Convinced that ethnography still provides a critical tool for studying and understanding our ever-changing and complex world, I present here a case for approaching ethnographic work through “listening.” I extend the notion of listening to include readi…
Calls to “decolonize” the social sciences have reverberated in academia since at least the 1950s. Anthropology, in particular, has been marked as the “child of colonialism” and “handmaiden of imperialism” (Gough ). Over the course of eight decades now,…