General | Platypus

Tracing the Legacy of Human Resilience in the Debris of Ancient Campfires

 Aylar Abdolahzadeh  June 8, 2026

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In the summer of 2015, I was a first-year graduate student when I joined a field project at La Ferrassie, a Neandertal’ site tucked into the Périgord region of southwest France. We camped in the backyard of the late Harold Dibble’s dig house in the small town of Carsac-Aillac, where the morning air smelled of walnuts and apple trees, and the sunset turned the golden bales of hay into glowing embers each evening (Fig 1). (read more...)

“Is This the End of Disability?”: Eugenics and the Technification of Normalization

 Cristian Gustavo Gutiérrez Pinzón  June 3, 2026

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New reproductive and bodily intervention biotechnologies not only promise to cure or prevent diseases, but are also shaping a new regime of bodily normalization that redefines which lives are desirable, correctable, or eliminable. For several years, countries such as Iceland have stood out for medical procedures that identify the conditions under which a fetus is developing and then ask parents whether they wish to continue or terminate the pregnancy. Between 80–85% of pregnant women in Iceland undergo prenatal screening and, when the result is positive for trisomy 21, termination rates approach 100%. In Denmark the percentage is 98%, in France 77%, and in the United States 67%. Geneticist Kari Stefansson, founder of deCODE Genetics, stated: “My understanding is, basically, that we have almost eradicated Down syndrome from our society; there will hardly ever again be a child with Down syndrome in Iceland” (Quijano, 2017). (read more...)

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.

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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...)

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...)

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...)