Some of the most recent articles from open access anthropology journals (beta)
Losing a close relative in old age is nowadays a very common occurrence. But what does it mean in practice to organise a funeral for someone over 80, in a context characterised by the pluralisation of our relationship with death and the de…
This article focuses on the description of an ongoing ethnographic process. It explores the researcher’s first encounter with a new environment and the initial reflections that emerge from a queer and decolonial perspective. Two portraits,…
This article addresses ethical and methodological challenges I encountered while conducting fieldwork in the town of Camiri, between May 2023 and December 2024, as part of a research project on gender diversity in the Bolivian Chaco. Throu…
This introduction presents the special issue of the Swiss Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology entitled “Arts, Public Space, and Globalization.” It outlines the themes addressed in the contributions. The special issue allows us to o…
In this article, I explore compassion both as a social emotion and as a practice of encounter in ethnographic research. I argue that compassion is not a plain emotion but instead a socially relational one that prompts cognitive processes, le…
Kinship emerges as a constellation of relational ties for young adults who arrive in Norway as unaccompanied refugee minors, shaped by migration, separation, and the uneven terrain of family reunification. Drawing on long‑term ethnographic f…
This article explores the interplay between hope and hopelessness among refugees in Sweden who have been denied asylum and live under the threat of deportation. Based on ethnographic research conducted in a rural municipality in central Swed…
This essay belongs to the essay series ‘The Anthropologist’s Toolkit: Reflections on Ethnographic Methodology’. In this series, authors peer into the anthropologist’s toolkit to reflect on what ethnographic methodology constitutes in all it…
In my doctoral research, I work on memory practices of youth collectives in Quibdó, capital of the department of the Chocó (Colombian Pacific). Chocó is a territory marked by many stigmas, and Afro-Colombian youth in Quibdó is considered O…
This article discusses the potentials and challenges of psychoanalytically oriented “interpretation workshops”: interpretive, collective spaces that address ethnographic fieldwork’s subconscious, emotional, and experiential aspects. While …
Navigating payments in ethnographic research provides insights into social dynamics within ethnographic research contexts. Drawing from research with financially vulnerable queer male sex workers in Nairobi, Kenya, this article explores th…
This article is grounded in a longitudinal ethnographic investigation of half a dozen working-class neighbourhoods in a large town in northern England. That investigation focused on nostalgia and culturally informed perceptions of change. Re…
Conducting fieldwork in collaboration with NGOs is becoming increasingly common. However, the process and difficulties of obtaining organizational access are rarely outlined in ethnographic literature. This article unravels the author’s expe…
During research on love songs and political poetry in Somaliland, one of my closest interlocutors has been a poet named Weedhsame who describes his work as arising from a duty to ‘give voice to the voiceless’. Collaborating with a musician a…
Uncertainty, disavowal, forgetting, and stigmatisation are common responses to toxicity: dumping grounds are habitually portrayed as ‘strange, alien spaces with no comprehensive histories’ (Little and Akese 2024). How can we best face this s…
In recent years, a lot of scholarly attention has been devoted to how practices of digitalisation and datafication require medical professionals to work together with different stakeholders, and to how such collaborations shape expertise (St…
In recent years, a lot of scholarly attention has been devoted to how practices of digitalisation and datafication require medical professionals to work together with different stakeholders, and to how such collaborations shape expertise (St…
This article discusses adult conversion in the Russian Baptist community as the unlearning of old sinful ways of living. Russian Baptists see conversion as an act of repentance, surrendering to Christ, and becoming born again, and as a life-…
As widespread physical pursuits and popular entertainment forms, combat sports inform and constrain social understandings of violence. Recent research has discussed martial artists’ positioning of their practice vis-à-vis violence and the pr…
Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork on Swedo-Russian musical collaborations, this article explores the link between popular music and the conspicuous consumption of Russia’s wealthy elite. Presenting two specific cases, one following a…
The majority of this article consists of an unadulterated piece of auto-ethnographic writing depicting a key experience from my anthropological fieldwork. For my PhD research on Japanese policing, I spent two years living in Tokyo and traini…
Bribery relations are a way to cope with the uncertainties of everyday life for many people living in Tanzania. For members of the Tanzanian Indian communities, the uncertainties not only count the faltering bureaucratic systems and a state …