Some of the most recent articles from open access anthropology journals (beta)
On February 11, 1965, less than one year after the outset of the Brazilian military dictatorship, singer Maria Bethânia assumed one of the principal roles in the musical theater piece Opinião in Rio de Janeiro. Taking over for Nara Leão, …
Cuban street vendors use pregones, high-pitched rhymes and rhythms, to promote their goods and services. This ambulant form of small-scale commerce has been part of the urban soundscape since the early years of Spanish colonization. While of…
This article explores the making of two branded Spotify playlists to critique the concept of ‘affective labor.’ Over the last few decades, scholars have argued that social media users and creative industries workers alike are engaged in a ne…
Violence, including acoustic violence, can be remarkably resistant to critique; the semiotic structures upon which scholarly arguments rely may appear, in their representationalism, to have a distancing effect from the sheer materialism of v…
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…