General | Platypus

Introducing Citizen Technology: Ethnographic Insights from Makerspaces

 Sandrine Lambert  May 25, 2026

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...)

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...)

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...)

Microbes and the Permeable Body: Rethinking Health Through the Holobiont

 Bronte Jones  May 12, 2026

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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...)

Animals in War: Multispecies Agency and the Memory of the Colombian Armed Conflict

 Valeria Sánchez-Prieto  May 6, 2026

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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...)

Making for the Feed: Creativity, Platforms, and Visibility in China

 Christina Kefala  May 4, 2026

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Creativity is often imagined as a deeply human capacity: a moment of inspiration, a flash of originality, or an individual act of expression. Yet in contemporary digital environments, creativity rarely unfolds in isolation from technological systems. Across creative industries, from fashion and design to visual media, branding, and online content production, creative work increasingly takes shape within infrastructures of platforms, software tools, and algorithmic systems. These technologies do not simply enable creativity; they actively shape how creative ideas are imagined, produced, circulated, and evaluated. (read more...)

What Would Happen if Ethnographers Learned to Process Signals?

 Mauricio Baez  May 1, 2026

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During my doctoral research, focused on neuroscience laboratories and their forms of engagement with other spaces in the city of Bogotá, Colombia, I have been observing how artists and researchers use different processes to modulate, transform, and process biological signals in order to create artistic works. This experience led me to try to learn how to use the same software they employ. I created a small piece that I would like to show, along with a brief presentation of some of the reflections that emerged from it. (read more...)