Some of the most recent articles from open access anthropology journals (beta)
This paper considers a specific cohort of new Chinese professional women born under the one-child policy in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It explores their perceptions and experiences of career in Australia through qualitative data collected fr…
I. Introduction
This article focuses on children whose sharing of family and siblingship is not limited to a single place or a family unit. Based on a phenomenological understanding, our research sheds light on how children’s participation…
Within the social sciences, family research in sociology has in recent years – and for good reason – taken to adopting a “practical turn” to its subject. Drawing on the concepts of doing and displaying family, numerous authors have provided valu…
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
Body painting uses a three-dimensional living canvas. While a widespread activity that can be characterized as a creative cultural scene, it has not yet merited anthropological attention. Even though body painting is closely related to the body, it is …
This article explores a Mesoamerican topology based on the figure of the fold. It argues that the operation of folding represents a crucial concept for understanding indigenous cosmology and ontology. The fold is what allows the separation and articula…
“‘By Name and No Other’: The COVID masks portrait project” is a series of images of the photographer’s family made in the early days of the COVID-19 quarantines in Seattle. These portraits document an uncertain moment, creating both a visual archive of…
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory
This article considers issues raised while working at the intersection of anthropology and visual art in Everglades National Park and during the months that followed. Based on a May 2019 residency as an AIRIE (Artist in Residence in Everglades) fellow,…
This article comprises a rethinking of Mauss’s The gift, reciprocity, and exchange theory in anthropology, using theories of chaos and complexity to make sense of the author’s ethnographic data from Papua New Guinea. The article begins with an explanat…
By reexamining the empirical relationship between ethnography and photography, this article explores the phenomenology of photographic experiences in a French banlieue. Photography may be a powerful practice to critically depict social phenomena in the…
This article focuses on Tibetan thangka and thangka painters in Amdo Rebgong (Qinghai, China), who are caught between a state-fostered tourist market promoting Tibetan thangkas as folk art and an intermediate market where clients pursue the religious a…
I examine my dual role as artist and ethnographer in the creation of artworks including mixed-media paintings and installations. Drawing from four works that combine art making and anthropological research, I present, from the perspective of anthropolo…
This article examines the possible roles of exceptionally preserved clay reliefs and sculptures within a cave in the Mixe (Ayuujk) territory of Oaxaca, Mexico, a region where early researchers proposed that no art existed. Deploying conceptual tools of…
This is an exhibition of fieldwork art adapted to the page. It is set out following the typical stages of an anthropological research project and presents works that were both made through fieldwork and exhibited as art. The strategy is one of “blendin…
In the Chinese bureaucracy, where political imperatives for maintaining harmony require people to restrain negative affects, officials often express anger and aggression through silence, apathy, and other flat affects. Other times, overly positive spee…
In recent years, the Chinese state has made family members care for and manage persons diagnosed with serious mental illnesses. Many of these caregivers are also former socialist workers to whom the state has broken its promise of paternalism. This art…
This article spotlights the role of affect in paths of “self-development,” focusing on young adults in China who engage in various training programs. Informed by market-driven expertise, individuals configure their feelings as central for their ability…
Critical scholars suggest that self-help psychology discourages political activism and encourages entrepreneurship by promoting a “positive” attitude. This article complicates this finding, arguing that for Chinese youth, self-help groups reproduce cla…
This article examines the changing sociological meaning of indifference in urban China after the tragic death of a two-year-old girl in a road accident in 2011. My analysis suggests that, in China where the political state had tried to claim credit for…