Platypus

Gazing into the Eyes of Elephants: Unsettling Recognition in Multispecies Relations

 Rebecca Winkler  May 23, 2024

“Do the elephants recognize you?” I am asked some version of this question by most people who find out my work has involved multiyear relations with elephants in Thailand. The short answer is yes, but not in the ways that most people think when they ask about recognition. I know that the elephants recognize me because they ignore me, because my presence in their space does not perturb them; the absence of a reaction, what might be interpreted as indifference, is how I know that I am familiar to them. People find this response disappointing. The ways that elephants express recognition do not seem to be legible to people as recognition. I think what people expect, or perhaps hope to hear, is a picture of recognition that aligns more with certain anthropocentric and often commodified forms of human-elephant interaction. (read more...)

Waves of Well-being: Surfing at the Shaka Surf Club in Kodi Bengre, India

 Laura Werle  May 21, 2024

यह सामग्री हिन्दी में भी उपलब्ध है

Dieser Inhalt ist auch auf Deutsch verfügbar

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Surfing’s roots are in long-standing cultures in the Pacific Islands, South America, and West Africa. After wave-riding was banned by European Missionaries who deemed it leisurely and “savage,” surfing’s contemporary “revitalisation” took place in Hawaii where it became a notable phenomenon of the 20th century. Nowadays, surfing represents a subculture around an “alternative” sport, a lifestyle, and an art with profound personal and lifestyle implications (Ford & Brown, 2006). Likewise, in India, particularly in the fishing village Kodi Bengre, surfing means much more than simply sliding along a wave. This qualitative study captures how the Shaka Surf Club shapes perceptions of well-being and mental health in surfers and surrounding community members in Kodi Bengre. (read more...)

The Brilliant Future of AI

 Ana Carolina de Assis Nunes  May 16, 2024

On a hot August afternoon in 2018, I attended a public lecture on AI and the future of work, broadly defined. Back then, I was a student in Brazil conducting my fieldwork for my master’s thesis in anthropology, and interested in understanding artificial intelligence (AI) representations in Brazilian media. As such, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork at events and talks in Computer Science and other departments at my university (Universidade Federal de Goiás, UFG) and carried out archival research of media stories about AI written in Portuguese. In this post, I retell a field story to reflect on what I noticed has changed when it comes to discussions around AI and the future of work in popular media since then. (read more...)

“We had to rethink many, many things”: Reflexivity in Scientific Practices during the Zika Epidemic in Recife, Brazil

 Thais Valim  April 25, 2024

Esse conteúdo também está disponível em português

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Luiza is a pediatrician and researcher specializing in infectious diseases who works at a teaching hospital in Recife, Brazil. Her daily routine involves treating children with congenital infectious syndromes, which can lead to various clinical conditions including microcephaly. However, in October 2015, an unprecedented situation unfolded. As she described during an interview with me, “That year, a new world entered my world.” She was referring to the surge in cases of microcephaly that puzzled Brazilian doctors and health authorities that year. In Recife, where the average number of microcephaly cases historically stood at nine cases per year, there were twelve cases registered in just one maternity ward within a month. (read more...)

Tear Gas as Punishment

 Jack Leff  April 18, 2024

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Tear gas is a chemical weapon that was developed in the early 20th century and has been predominantly used by police or military forces to stifle political unrest. As a result, tear gas serves as a manifestation of state violence; by forcefully reminding us of our need to breathe, its function is to break collective solidarity. Over time, the tactics surrounding tear gas have evolved and become more militarized. Typically, this has looked like both a general greater use of tear gas at protests, and the development of tear gas as punishment. As a researcher of radical, left-wing social movements in the United States and the security technologies used by the state to suppress them, tear gas is particularly interesting to me because it serves as a security technology par excellence. By examining the interplay between state use of tear gas to punish activists and the protestors fighting against it, we catch a glimpse into the racial capitalist operations of the United States and where it is vulnerable to resistance. This essay examines the police tactic of kettling, how it is wielded to punish activists, and how radical left-wing organizers respond. (read more...)

Spatial Approaches to Livestreaming: A Methodological Exploration in Digital Ethnography

 Soojin Kim  April 16, 2024

한국어 번역문은 여기에 있습니다.

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On AfreecaTV, faceless, wandering viewers appear and disappear in a livestream without notice. Many deceptively change their nickname (username) or use multiple nicknames to divide themselves and appear in different livestreams and other internet forums simultaneously. In crowded livestreams with hundreds to tens of thousands of viewers, it is increasingly challenging to discern the individuality of each viewer’s comments as their presence becomes ephemeral, almost like noise, amidst the rapid speed of chats. Given the near impossibility, or perhaps the meaninglessness, of identifying individuals in these online fields, I may opt to leave the quantified scope (e.g., the size and population) of my research fields undefined and just go with the “flow” (hŭrŭm). This is my reflection on the frustrations that I encountered during the initial phases of my fieldwork within AfreecaTV. Between late 2016 and early 2018, I conducted ‘online’ and ‘offline’ ethnographic fieldwork for my master’s thesis on (read more...)

Two Insomniacs Discuss Routine and Restlessness Through Google Tracking

 Alexandra Dantzer  April 4, 2024

Ovaj sadržaj dostupan je i na srpskom.

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In this piece I meditate on a conversation I had with my key interlocutor, Aleksandar Kecman, about Google tracking and our reflections upon first encountering my digital footprint. I met Aleksandar in Belgrade, where I did research among insomniacs exploring how the experience of time (and tangentially, space) figures in their lives. Being an insomniac myself I felt chronically out of synch with the rest of society—people close to me and their work and sleep schedules, the rhythms of socializing, and the idea of productive life well spent in time—and this feeling tracked with my interlocutors. Many of the problems the sleepless face are quandaries of time. How are the everyday practices of insomniacs shaped by local and broader understandings of what it means, temporally, to lead a “good life,” or a productive life, within a society that values grind and hustle? (read more...)

Recipes of Resistance: Global Digital Gastro-solidarity for Palestine

 Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam  March 26, 2024

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From the North in Safad (where my father is from) and Galilee to the South East in Al-Lydd (where my mother is from) and down to Jerusalem and Gaza, the food differs but is united at the same time, through love and history… Palestinian food is found in the home. That is where it all begins. (Joudie Kalla, Palestine on a Plate, 2016) Food is the most precious part of Palestinian heritage. For Palestinian food not to go extinct, the young have to learn from the old. (Aisha Azzam, Aisha’s Story, film forthcoming 2024) Around the world, millions have taken the streets in support of a free and thriving Palestine in the face of active genocide and the continuance of settler colonial violence. Visible on the streets and all over social media feeds, scattered among flags and keffiyehs, are images of the vibrant watermelon. This trinity of nationalist symbols bear a shared honoring of an ancient yet enduring cultural intimacy with Levantine lands. A cursory search about the history of the Palestinian flag’s colors (black, white, red, and green) leads one down many possible origins and mythologies behind the green portion of the flag. These include but are not limited to representing influential Arab dynasties, peace, Islamic faith, as well as a deep love and appreciation for the olive trees which bloom across the landscape. The keffiyeh, a traditional scarf, embodies similar sentiments entangled in its design. Within its iconic weave, visual histories of Palestinian trade pathways, robust fishing culture upon the Mediterranean sea, and once again, the olive trees. Last is the watermelon, which was used as a covert placeholder for the flag during a period of occupation when the display of the flag itself was forbidden. In essence, at the core of these symbols are Palestinian foodways and culture. (read more...)