Platypus

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Food (In)Security Under the Microscope

 Leonardo Vilaça Dupin, Ana Paula Perrota, Rosângela Pezza Cintrão  June 2, 2026

Este conteúdo também está disponivel em português.

In November 2025, in Rio de Janeiro, the seminar (in)SAM — “Food (in)Security Under the Microscope: Rethinking the Relationship Between Food Systems, Microorganisms, and Sanitary Norms” — brought together researchers from different countries and professionals from various fields of knowledge for two days, with the aim of contributing to the development of inclusive sanitary norms for non-industrial food production. The panel discussions, which featured social science researchers and leaders from traditional peoples and communities, addressed topics such as: challenges for multispecies planetary health and for promoting food and nutritional sovereignty and security; food, microorganisms, and sanitary regulations; biopolitics in global food systems, agribusiness, and the production of large-scale (in)securities; and methodological and interdisciplinary challenges for research and regulations involving microorganisms. (read more...)

Recent

Domesticating Affordances: From Surveillance to Navigation of Interfaces, How Affordances Are Reappropriated across Contexts by Rural Indian Women

 Debjani Chakraborty  May 29, 2026

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Joginder Kaur (54) had no formal schooling. For her, phone calls always meant pressing the green button to receive a call. Dialling numbers or navigating menus were not part of that routine—until they became unavoidable. In came emojis, used to mark different people in her contact list: Birds, hearts, and just a smiley face. Each representing a new contact. (read more...)

Why Do We Weave Networks? Mapping the Common Territory of Latin American Feminist Anthropology of Science and Technology

 Clarissa Reche  May 27, 2026

Este conteúdo também está disponível em português.

Este contenido también está disponible en español.

 Listen to a reading of this post.

Continuing the series that began in 2025, this year we will present five more posts prepared for Platypus by researchers from the Latin American Network of Feminist Anthropology of Science and Technology (RAFeCT). You can learn more about the network in the introductory post and check out the other posts in this series here. (read more...)

Introducing Citizen Technology: Ethnographic Insights from Makerspaces

 Sandrine Lambert  May 25, 2026

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When I first arrived at the makerspace known as Fab Casa del Mig, in the Sants neighborhood of Barcelona, I crossed a large urban park called La España Industrial. I later learned that the park occupies the site of a former textile factory with the same name. Walking through the park, I passed people walking their dogs, groups playing basketball or pétanque, and others simply spending time with their family there. At the end of the park stands Fab Casa del Mig, the last remaining building of this former industrial complex. Inside, there is a large makerspace. (read more...)

$Photograph of a building corner showing extensive wall damage with large cracks and exposed underlying material. The white exterior wall has multiple vertical and horizontal fractures, with visible rust stains and deterioration near the base. The image shows blue and grey skies and the wet concrete indicates it had previously been raining.$

Becoming Experts: Activists Working Against Science Based on Misinformation

 Kaitlyn Kathleen Rabach  May 22, 2026

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In County Donegal, Ireland, an estimated 30,000 buildings are crumbling due to governmental and commercial mishandling of building materials such as concrete. A lack of urgency in governmental response has left homeowners living with severe mold, electrical risks, structural cracks and the impending threat of their homes collapsing, see image below. Homeowners have described living in these homes as being in a constant state of fear—fear their homes will crumble on top of them but also fear that the government they once trusted “to do right by them” will never fix their homes. (read more...)

“Tech-ing” the “Justice Gap” and/or (Re)imagining Access to Justice in Africa

 Nicole Ahoya  May 20, 2026

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“What would we say if a health system did not cure 60 to 70 per cent of health problems properly? And I can tell you more, this gigantic justice gap affects more people in the world than some of the big diseases we all know and read about – malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis!” a speaker exclaimed at an international conference called “Tech the Justice Gap” in 2020. Drawing a comparison between healthcare and access to justice, he continued, “5.1 billion unmet justice needs,” emphasizing that the lack of access to justice requires greater international attention. (read more...)

Salt: A Provocation

 Jackie Ashkin, Alexander Foster, Madeline Augusta Turner  May 18, 2026

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Salt. That everyday thing we use to season our meals, relax our muscles, or make our icy roadways safer to traverse. Salt is an inescapable part of human experience, and yet, as anthropologists, it often escapes our attention. In recent years, anthropologists have turned their attention to what Cymene Howe (2026) calls the ‘elemental’, referring to the objects and processes – often simultaneously both – that constitute the world. Ongoing environmental crisis means coming to experience the elemental in new ways, both within and around the body. Salt, or sodium chloride, is one of these elements. (read more...)

Seeing, Acting, Believing: The CyberKnife and the Transformation of Medical Imaging

 Thomson Chakramakkil  May 14, 2026

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Dr. Sinha is the anti-Benjamin of our times. He asks his patients to believe in the aura of the machine. When I meet him in the treatment room at the corner of the Radiation Oncology wing on a Thursday afternoon—its ceiling painted blue with drifting, improbable clouds—he speaks in paragraphs, waxing lyrical about the CyberKnife’s precision. The CyberKnife’s industrial robotic arm, he tells me, is a direct import from the automobile assembly line. At his cue, the technologists in the control room set it in motion. The arm whirrs as it moves along three linear and rotational axes; it is designed to track the movements of the patient’s body in real time. Dr. Sinha walks me through each piece of the ensemble: the ceiling-mounted x-ray machines that track the tumour’s position, the large linear accelerator that charges the radiation beam, a phantom skull laid on the table for setting delivery coordinates. “High dose and minimal margins,” he insists, “is the future of radiation therapy.” (read more...)