Among Women With Selcen Küçüküstel

6 min. read (or watch the video) This week I want to talk a bit about a new book by my dear colleague Selcen Küçüküstel. Küçüküstel is a social anthropologist with a background in photo journalism. So, not only does she have amazing stories to tell as an anthropologist, she also takes breath taking photos…

Culture in Animals? With Natasha Fijn

6 min. read (or watch the video) One of the first exercises many of us are made to do, when we take an introductory course in anthropology, is to list all the things we think set us apart from other animals. In other words, we are made to think about what it is to be…

Maps with Charlotte Marchina

5 min. read (or watch the video) Maps have always captivated me. When I was eight years old, my dad gave me a topographic sheet of somewhere in Eastern Europe. It depicted every power pole in the landscape. He said it had been used by American pilots in the Second World War. The paper square…

Surface with Mike Anusas

4 min. read (or watch the video) He brings up American musician Money Mark’s “Insects Are All Around Us.” Copyright prohibits me from cutting to the original here, but you can find it on YouTube. It opens with these words: “Insects are all around us. They produce many sounds at many frequencies and volume levels.…

Deception with Martin Stevens

4 min. read (or watch the video) What is deception? The Oxford Dictionary defines it as “the act of hiding the truth, especially to get an advantage.” Okay, so, I like to drink beer that comes in cans with good looking labels. Yes, I like good beer, and sometimes such beer comes with poorly designed…

Larry Towell — The Mennonites

8 min. read (or watch the video) One of the beauties of living in Canada is that we still have a functioning public library system. Books are expensive, and although it is a delight to have one’s own books, owning them isn’t always necessary. Here in Regina, Saskatchewan we have a great public library with…

On what I think you think they think

15 min. read (or watch the video) A. Oehler, CASCA 21 (Guelph) Talk Covid-19 has wreaked havoc on many of our fieldwork plans over the past year. I too had great plans for data collection in Russia in 2021. I even had the funding secured. Then Covid hit, I switched institutions, and consequently lost all…

Plasticity of Minimalism

6 min. read (or watch the video) What is minimalism? I think it is many things to many people. To me it is a matter of expanding personal plasticity or flexibility. Here’s what I mean: For every functional item you ditch, you have to compensate by learning a new skill. If I ditch my GPS,…

Salmon with Marianne Lien

4.5 min. read (or watch the video) It is spring time in Norway right now. On the fjords of the west coast, the temperatures have been around plus 6 to 10 Celsius. It is a beautiful time of year. Many of the fjords are home to aquafarms, which provide a living for local residents, and…

Getting Lucky With Donatas Brandišauskas

3.3 min. read (or watch the video) Today I bring to you my dear colleague Donatas Brandišauskas, associate professor of Anthropology at Vilnius University in Lithuania. In 2017 Donatas came out with his flagship ethnography, “Leaving Footprints in the Taiga.” It’s a great book about his ethnographic research with Siberian Orochen reindeer herders and hunters…