Category Archives: Features

Features

Solidarity, infrastructure and critical pedagogy during COVID-19: Lessons from Brazil

By , and
This article is part of the series:

Even before the pandemic hit Brazil’s favelas, residents began organizing to protect themselves — against both the novel coronavirus and the government’s active suppression of effective public health action (Ortega and Orsini, 2020). Seasoned activists began fund-raising, mobilizations donations, distributing food, masks, and hygiene kits, and writing policies and manifestos; volunteers signed up to learn basic first aid …

FeaturesLectures

Writing Life No. 6: An interview with Sally Wyatt

By and
This article is part of the series:
Figure 1. Sally’s writing space

Sally Wyatt is a science and technology studies (STS) scholar and Professor of Digital Cultures at Maastricht University. She is a prolific academic writer, who has engaged with a broad variety of topics, ranging from digital healthcare practices and online genetic testing, big data and the need for appropriate regulations, to infrastructures, non-users, new …

FeaturesLectures

Writing Life No. 5: An interview with Robert Desjarlais

By and
This article is part of the series:
Photo by Robert Desjarlais

“British poet W.H Auden suggested that true poets are those who like ‘hanging around words listening to what they say.”

Desjarlais, 2011, Counterplay: An Anthropologist at the Chess Board,15.

At the Paris Institute of Advanced Studies, where Robert is currently a research fellow, it is 3:30 p.m. We meet online to discuss how to …

Features

Emergent Anthropology: Reimagining U.S. Medical Anthropology in Theory and Practice

By , , , and
This article is part of the series:

The American Anthropological Association website identifies four subfields of anthropology (archaeology, biological, cultural, linguistic) and reserves a separate section for “applied and practicing anthropology.” In our collective experience, we have found this division between ostensibly “academic” and “applied” anthropology problematic, as it limits the possibilities of a broadly conceptualized and enacted medical anthropology that is more continuous than categorical. We …

Features

Book forum: Michelle Murphy’s The Economization of Life

By
This article is part of the series:

Michelle Murphy’s The Economization of Life (Duke University Press, 2017) received the Ludwik Fleck Prize from the the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) at the 2019 conference in New Orleans. Murphy’s book, recognized for its novelty, scholarly excellence, and contribution to science and technology studies, was also the subject of a panel of feminist thinkers who offered commentary …

FeaturesLectures

Interpreting Sexuality: Intellectually Disabled People and “Special” Educators in India

By
This article is part of the series:

 “Why does she like putting the glass bottle near her pee-hole? She couldn’t talk and tell us what was going on…what did she exactly want? What was in her mind?… [I]t was very hard to figure that out…but I had to keep working on this because we work with special children and we are special educators.”

Savita, a special educator …