Members of the Emerging Subjects project at UCL and the National University of Mongolia contributed to this post. What does focusing on gifts given and received during the Lunar New Year tell us about the general economy in Mongolia? Last year we posted our first Lunar New Year Gift Index (LNYGI) and foundContinue Reading
by Duane Jethro The beach is a place of waste and ruin. Rotting seaweed, stinking dead seals, cracked and crushed shells, deflated bluebottles, fat blobs of translucent jellyfish melting away in the sun. All the finished, broken things spewed out by the ocean. In early January, estate agent, Penny Sparrow’sContinue Reading
Christopher Pinney, UCL Anthropology I recently came across M.N. Srinivas’ observation that his enthusiastic engagement with photography, during his fieldwork in Mysore in the late 1940s, earned him the nickname “chamara man”. He notes that in Kannada chamara denotes whisks made of the long hair from a yak’s tails usedContinue Reading
Sipping my morning coffee in the corrosive speech of Bernard Avle, the radio host of Accra’s Citi FM Breakfast Show – a deliciously satirical commentary on salient socio-economic issues in Ghana –, I find my daily dose of morning chuckling interrupted by the conversational attempts of a friendly French tourist (hereafterContinue Reading
David Jeevendrampillai, UCL Anthropology UCL promotes itself as a leading global university and frequently ranks amongst the top institutions in the world; it also houses the UK’s largest Anthropology department. The department has an international reputation as a leader in Anthropological research with a particular history and strength in materialContinue Reading
Christopher Tilley, Department of Anthropology, University College London (c.tilley@ucl.ac.uk) Robert Macfarlane Landmarks (2015) London: Hamish Hamilton, 387pp. £20.00 rrp This is the fifth book by Macfarlane about British landscapes. The ‘landmarks’ of the title are not what one might expect: they are words. The book is about the powerContinue Reading
Over the past few weeks I have been working closely with London’s homeless community for my PhD fieldwork. As part of my role at the day centre where I conduct much of my research I have helped a number of people fill out the ubiquitous Job Seeker’s Allowance form –Continue Reading
Haidy Geismar, UCL As I’m sure you are all aware, last week Vanuatu was devastated by Cyclone Pam, battering the country with winds of over 270 mph. The storm knocked out the country’s telecommunications and transport infrastructure and now, just a few days later, it is estimated that more then 70%Continue Reading
Lauren Bonilla, Rebekah Plueckhahn, Rebecca Empson, Department of Anthropology, University College London This post is written by researchers on an ERC-funded project entitled ‘Emerging Subjects of the New Economy: Tracing Economic Growth in Mongolia’ based at the Department of Anthropology, University College London. Our project focuses on the mineral-rich country of Mongolia, onceContinue Reading
Christopher Pinney, UCL Anthropology The recent events in Paris have focused attention on the complex relationship between different varieties of Islam and the image. Historians will rightly point to a French tradition of anti-clerical satire that reaches back to Diderot’s Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage of 1771, and which providesContinue Reading
Jessica Knights, Material and Visual Culture MA, UCL Anthropology While undertaking my Master’s in Material and Visual Culture in UCL’s anthropology department last year, I received a Heinz Wolff Materials Bursary to carry out a project at the University’s Institute of Making. My proposal was to explore the propertiesContinue Reading