Category: English

This article draws on ethnographic material from life stories and nonfiction literature and is complemented by fieldwork vignettes. The material is used to discuss how experiences of connections and disconnections between past and present, self and int…

The Tzen oil palm plantation in the northwestern corner of Wide Bay in Pomio District, East New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea is a highly infrastructured space. Roads surround and order the oil palm plantings into a grid-like space and connect the…

As the dramatic consequences of climate change finally begin to motivate governments around the world to explore how to move away from a dependence on fossil fuels, nuclear power is back on the agenda in the UK as a potential energy source. However, th…

Fredrik Barth called attention to two ways ritually transmitted knowledge gains value: knowledge he associated with the figure of the ‘Guru’ valued for being widely shared versus knowledge associated with the figure of the ‘conjurer’ or ‘initiator’ val…

Jones, Reece. White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall. Beacon Press. 2021. 239 pp. ISBN: 9780807054062 (hardcover), ISBN: 9780807007266 (softcover), ISBN: 9780807054123 (ebook).

This paper looks at the theme of collaboration through the prism of game design, and especially the example of serious games. At its heart, this is a consideration of two collaborative projects between experts. The first is a current collaboration betw…

Every day around the globe, people go missing for any number of reasons. Some disappearances are intentional, others are enforced by oppressive political regimes or the result of natural disasters. Whatever the reason, these disappearances produce fami…

A lectio præcursoria is a short presentation read out loud by a doctoral candidate at the start of a public thesis examination in Finland. It introduces the key points or central argument of the thesis in a way that should make the ensuing discussion b…

People go missing all over the world, but the reasons for disappearances are enormously diverse. Some people are intentionally disappeared by the state: totalitarian and military governments as well as various paramilitary and criminal organizations ha…

Growing numbers of children are moving between countries because of their parent(s)’ careers. The temporary labour migration of highly educated professionals – sometimes called career expatriates or transnational corporate elites (Amit 2002; Fechter 20…

In this essay, I examine the ‘politics of infrastructure’ by looking at the sociomaterial connections and disconnections, and the implications of wetland infrastructure promises and failures in Central Kalimantan (Anand et al. 2018; Harvey et al. 2017;…

Krause, Franz. Thinking Like a River: An Anthropology of Water and Its Uses Along the Kemi River, Northern Finland. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. 2023. 294 pp. ISBN: 9783837667370 (paperback); 9783839467374 (E-book).

Sustaining lives in urban environments depends on infrastructures – buildings, water pipes, sewers, energy distribution, or roads, among others. Their availability is particularly acute in Africa due to rapid urbanization, entrenched inequalities and p…

Once a large-scale infrastructure such as a railroad, sewage system or power plant is put into place, it not only tends to enjoy a long life, but often also a forceful afterlife. Abandoned railroads may find new uses, while ruined sewage systems or pow…

It was Europe’s wake up call: the news reported that a huge gas pipeline running across the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany had exploded (Oltermann 2022). The explosion caused a release of gas and ruptured the pipeline, abruptly stopping the flow of …

“The Anthropologist’s Toolkit: Reflections on ethnographic methodology” is a new essay series that peers into the anthropologist’s toolkit to reflect on what ethnographic methodology constitutes in all its multimodal forms. We invite all contributions …

Africa Spectrum, Ahead of Print. This article draws insights from access, claim-making and critical environmental justice scholarships to reveal how community-based conservation (CBC) may provide strategic openings for marginalised individuals to claim…

This study examines the enduring presence of traditional birth attendants in Batang Regency, Indonesia, and involves various stakeholders, including users of traditional midwifery services, healthcare professionals, and the general public. The research…

This paper explores motivations behind voluntary activities of youth in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, during an increasingly common period of ‘waithood,’ characterized by prolonged status as youth and delay in adulthood due to challenges with unemployment. …

Post-independent India has witnessed several horrific incidents of communal violence. The largest communal riot happened in the year 1984, in the capital city of New Delhi. But after the occurrence of the Anti-Sikh Riots of 1984, there was silence surr…

This paper adopts Michael Saward’s representative claims theory to analyze Chinese New Zealanders’ participation in non-elected representation. It explores how they made representative claims and examines the democratic legitimacy of their claims. Base…

The present study aims to analyze the relationships between actors from civil society, the State and the private sector, in the dynamics of reconstruction of the territory after the environmental disaster caused by the rupture of the tailings dam of th…

This paper investigated how Japanese young people’s attitudes toward politics and the social environments they are in affect their interaction with political information in their daily life. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty people …

I have long tried to move away from teaching as “passing on knowledge” and moved towards practicing teaching as co-creating knowledge. I have come to regard teaching as a joint act of exploration, also taking into account students’ everyday life experi…