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...)
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...)
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...)
“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. 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...)
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...)
Donna Haraway opens When Species Meet with the proclamation that “human genomes can be found in only about 10 percent of all the cells that occupy the mundane space I call my body” (Haraway, 2007). The rest of the human body is comprised of bacteria, viruses, archaea and other microorganisms – largely invisible to the human eye, but nonetheless living on and within us. In recent years we have seen a proliferation of research and attention towards these microorganisms, particularly in the gut, skin, lungs, and mouth, with each comprising their own microbiome. Although this research is still developing, it is increasingly clear that these microorganisms may actually be fundamental to the development and functioning of human bodies. (read more...)
In one testimony from Colombia’s armed conflict, a parrot named Lola repeated the phrases she heard around her: “Paraco asesino” (“paramilitary murderer”), “Viva la guerrilla” (“long live the guerrilla”), and “The vultures are coming” Her voice condensed the sounds, fears, and political tensions of war into a multispecies archive of memory. Far from being passive witnesses, animals moved within the infrastructures of conflict as companions, alarms, transportation, and sometimes even weapons. Yet these violent incorporations are only the most extreme expression of a broader multispecies world of conflict. (read more...)
