AnthroPod’s newest series, What Concepts Do, contextualizes national and international conversations in anthropological discourse. This series examines, from an anthropological perspective, how different concepts are mobilized by policymakers, media outlets, and in everyday discourse, and understand what these concepts "do" in the world. Each episode features several anthropologists, or anthropologically-oriented scholars and practitioners, whose insights help explain a particular concept.

Series Playlist: What Concepts Do

Series Playlist: What Does Anthropology Sound Like?

Series Playlist: AnthroBites

The Ottoman archives contain just over a hundred photographs that look like old family portraits, but they were created for an entirely different purpose. They document the renunciation of Ottoman nationality, "terk-i tabiiyet," by Armenian emigrants bound for the US and elsewhere. As our guest Zeynep Devrim Gürsel explains, the photographs were "anticipatory arrest warrants for a crime yet to be committed"--the crime of returning to the Ottoman Empire. Gürsel's research goes far beyond the story of the small number of photographs that remain as she has documented over four thousand individuals who went through the process of "terk-i tabiiyet."  In this Ottoman History Podcast-AnthroPod collaboration, we talk to Gürsel about her research project on the production, circulation and afterlives of these photographs titled "Portraits of Unbelonging." It is a double-sided history that explores not only the context of Armenian migration and policing during the late Ottoman period but also the experiences of those pictured and their descendants following their departure from the Ottoman Empire. (Recorded August 2019)

In memory of Mary Lou Savage (née Khantamour)

Contributors: Beth Derderian (AnthroPod), Zeynep Devrim Gürsel (Rutgers University), and Chris Gratien (Ottoman History Podcast).

60. Portraits of Unbelonging: Special Crossover with Ottoman History Podcast

Professor Kamari Clarke reflects on her ethnographic work in Africa, her thinking on the legacies of colonialism in the discipline of Anthropology, and her recent work with the Radical Humanism Initiative.

For the transcription and show-notes of this episode, please visit: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/radical-humanism-and-decolonization-an-interview-with-kamari-maxine-clarke

61. Radical Humanism and Decolonization: An Interview with Kamari Maxine Clarke

In this episode, anthropologist and artist Alex Chavez talks about performance, migration and nationalism in the United States. For show-notes, please visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/the-sound-of-borders-a-conversation-with-alex-chavez

64. The Sound of Borders, Pt. 1: Crossing

Cassandra Hartblay, Cristiana Giordano, and Greg Pierotti discuss performance as ethnographic medium in the third installment of What Does Anthropology Sound Like, an Anthropod Series. 
For transcriptions, visual content, and other resources related to this episode of Anthropod, please visit: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-does-anthropology-sound-like-performance

63. What Does Anthropology Sound Like: Performance

In this episode, Contributing Editors Joyce Rivera-González and Michelle Hak Hepburn unpack the concept of resilience, alongside anthropologists Roberto Barrios, Elizabeth F.S. Roberts, Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, Andrew Wooyoung Kim, and Jason Cons. Where did the concept of resilience originate from, and how is it so widespread? What are the benefits and shortcomings of the concept? And how do anthropologists engage with resilience ethnographically? 

For show notes, please visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-resilience-does

What Resilience Does

62. What Resilience Does

This is the second episode in the series "What Concepts Do." In this episode, Contributing Editor Sharon Jacobs unpacks the concept of solidarity, alongside anthropologists Darryl Li, Amahl Bishara, Lesley Gill, and Dimitrios Theodossopoulos. What is solidarity, and who can practice it? Is solidarity something we do within communities, or beside allies? What are some of the shortcomings and challenges of solidarity? For show-notes and resources, visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-solidarity-does

65. What Solidarity Does

In this episode, Professors Sophie Bjork-James, Carolyn Sufrin, and Elise Andaya share what the anthropology of abortion looks like in their fieldsites and how those sites will change in a post-Roe world, and we break down this topic with the help of other scholars of reproduction.

For show notes, please visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/anthropod-talks-abortion

67. AnthroPod Talks Abortion

This episode is devoted to thinking through the specificity of the United States as a place in which to conduct fieldwork.

For show notes, please visit : https://culanth.org/fieldsights/contributed-content/anthropod

Indie Folk

68. Conducting Fieldwork in the United States

Anthropology can be presented in various forms - what does it mean to share anthropology through podcasts? In the latest episode in the What Does Anthropology Sound Like series, we explore anthropological podcasts as method and as output. This episode features Dr. María Eugenia Ulfe Young (from the Nuestras Historias desde Cuninico podcast), PhD Candidate Anuli Akanegbu (creator of BLK IRL®), and Dr. Dominic Boyer (co-creator of the Cultures of Energy podcast).

Find the transcription and show-notes here: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-does-anthropology-sound-like-podcasts
Find our guests' podcasts:
Nuestras Historias Desde Cuninico - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063634656075
BLK IRL® - https://www.blkirl.com/
Cultures of Energy - https://culturesofenergy.rice.edu/

What Does Anthropology Sound Like

70. What Does Anthropology Sound Like: Podcasts

AnthroBites: Disability with Dr. Arseli Dokumaci.
AnthroBites is a series from the AnthroPod team, designed to make anthropology more digestible. Each episode tackles a key concept, text, or theme, and breaks it down into manageable, bite-sized chunks. In this episode, Dr. Arseli Dokumaci discusses disability, ethnography, and her recent book Activist Affordances.
Our interview with Dr. Dokumaci was conducted in May 2023.
Show notes: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/anthrobites-disability

71. AnthroBites: Disability

In this episode, Dr. Willi Lempert discusses anthropology of outer space, focusing on historical and ongoing forms of colonialism on and off of Earth, as well as indigenous futurisms and alternative imaginations of outer space. 
Our interview with Dr. Lempert was conducted in May 2023.
For more, visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/astro-colonialism-conversation-with-willi-lempert

72. Astro-Colonialism: Conversation with Willi Lempert

In our latest episode in this series What Concepts Do we welcome guest producer Nazlı Özkan, who leads us through a discussion of New Media. How has newness been produced as a feature of media in different political and historical contexts, and how can anthropological approaches help us understand how technological novelty becomes a part of statecraft, activism, and everyday life?

73. What New Media Does

In this episode, fellow podcasters, Frankie Younger and Dr. Anthony Jerry share how they combined podcasting with community engagement to create podcasts as archival spaces for the voices of historically marginalized communities.

74. Sounds of the Margins: Podcasting as Alternative Archives

A discussion featuring Harsha Walia, alongside community organizers and migrant workers representing Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), took place at the American Anthropological Association's 2023 Annual Meeting in Toronto. This episode is the first part of a two-part mini-series highlighting the impact and contributions of Harsha Walia’s scholarship.

76. AAA 2023 - Conversations with Harsha Walia Part One: Migrant Workers

The second episode of our two-part mini-series, showcases a roundtable discussion held at the 2023 American Anthropological Association’s Annual meeting in Toronto. In this episode, anthropology scholars gather to celebrate the work of Harsha Walia and share reflections on how her scholarship has influenced their own research, writing and activism.

77. AAA  2023 - Conversations with Harsha Walia Part Two: Anthropologists

In this episode, Professor Nick Seaver, Professor Veronica Barassi, and Alex Moltzau discuss the intersection of anthropology and algorithms. What exactly can anthropology bring to the table in understanding them? How can we use anthropological concepts and methods to make sense of algorithms? And how does this research translate into practice?

For show notes, please visit: culanth.org/fieldsights/anthropology-and-algorithms

75. Anthropology and Algorithms

Recently, Tampa Bay has stoked controversy among U.S. anthropologists. Facing statewide rising fascism and oppressive laws targeting historically marginalized minorities, it's also the site of the 2024 American Anthropological Association (AAA) annual meeting. In this episode of AnthroPod, we visit three Tampa-based anthropologists doing community-centered fieldwork among marginalized local communities.

78. Eyes on Florida: Community-centered anthropology in Tampa Bay

On this episode of AnthroPod, the podcast of the Society of Cultural Anthropology, we listen to Dorothy E. Roberts's keynote address from the 2014 meeting of the American Anthropological Association. For more on information, visit: http://culanth.org/fieldsights/646-dorothy-e-roberts-on-the-future-of-race-in-science-regression-or-revolution


16. Dorothy E. Roberts on The Future Of Race In Science: Regression Or Revolution?

Guest podcaster David Lein examines the impact of Pokémon GO on communities, both digital and physical, in conversation with Michigan-based scholars John Cheney-Lippold, Eric Montgomery, and individuals in Detroit who are using Pokémon GO.

31. Socializing Through Technology: Pokémon GO in Downtown Detroit

Theory, method, and politics of studying human-animal relations from anthropological perspectives with Nikhil Anand, Philippe Descola, Radhika Govindrajan, Laura Ogden, and Paige West.

32. Animals and Anthropology

Cassandra Hartblay discusses design and ethnography through her work on disability in Russia.

33. Ethnography and Design, Pt. 1: Disability, Design, and Performance

Rachel Watkins discusses the origins and legacies of scientific racism for AnthroBites, the podcast that makes key concepts in anthropology more digestible.

Siobhan McGuirk's Album

AnthroBites: Scientific Racism

Yarimar Bonilla discusses the concept of sovereignty and its anthropological applications in this episode of AnthroBites, the podcast that makes key concepts in anthropology more digestible.

AnthroBites: Sovereignty

Guest producers Stine Krøijer and Astrid Oberborbeck Andersen take up a debate that is central to current environmental and political anthropology: namely, how ethnographers can identify and describe the political when earth beings, spirits, or nonhuman others become part of the ethnographic equation? Marisol de la Cadena’s 2015 book _Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds_ is the point of departure for the conversation.  The episode is built around a recording of a workshop on “More than Human Politics,” which was held in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen in April 2015.

37. More-than-Human Politics

Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar discuss their recent book, Anthropology's Politics: Disciplining the Middle East (2015). They touch on how political and economic pressures shape how U.S.-based scholars research and teach about the Middle East, how certain topics and regions are embraced or pushed back on, and how those pressures and incentives impact scholars working in the Middle East from graduate school to teaching and public engagement.

Producer: Beth Derderian
Music: Sweeter Vermouth by Kevin MacLeod

40. Anthropology's Politics: A Conversation with Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar

Christa Craven discusses feminist anthropology in this episode of AnthroBites, the podcast that makes key concepts in anthropology more digestible.

AnthroBites: Feminist Anthropology

Graeme Warren explains what we can learn about histories and cultures through Hunter & Gatherer research.

AnthroBites: Hunters & Gathers

Margot Weiss explores the origins, presents and futures of queer anthropology.

AnthroBites: Queer Anthropology

In "When Fieldwork Breaks Your Heart," guest producer Aisha Sultan considers the question: what do you do when fieldwork threatens to break your heart? While graduate seminars and methodological reflections within anthropology often focus on the possibilities ethnography affords as the cornerstone of the discipline, Sultan here contends with its bleaker and more difficult dimensions: the toll it takes on the minds and bodies of ethnographers; experiences of mental illness; persistent feelings of distrust, frustration, and exhaustion. Sultan’s conversation with Helen Lee and Shoshanna Williams is interspersed with excerpts of poetry and fieldnotes from each of their fieldwork experiences. Together, these reflections offer a candid, vulnerable, and realistic insight into the quotidian experience of doing ethnographic fieldwork.

49. When Fieldwork Breaks Your Heart

Mark Schuller on anthropological work in, with, and on NGOs.

AnthroBites: Anthropology of NGOs

Guests Camilla Ida Ravnbøl and Marie Kolling explore the impact that digitalizing economies have on communities that are poor and highly cash dependent. The episode features Ravnbøl's research with Roma migrants at the Roskilde Festival, a music festival in Denmark that went cashless in 2017 but has developed accommodations for cash-dependent Roma migrants who collect bottles for refunds. Rich soundscapes anchor the listener in the ethnographic context of this research.

51. Cashlessness: A Look at Life on the Margins of a Digitalizing Economy

Ruth Behar speaks with Kristen Ghodsee about how anthropologists can be public intellectuals: They discuss how can anthropologists maintain credibility as scholars within the academy while also speaking to broader audiences; the necessity of patience and thinking of a career over the long duree; the productive spaces and possibilities within the discipline to reach out; and tips and suggestions for how to write in ways that appeal to non-academic audiences.

All the Colors in the World

52. Anthropologists as Public Intellectuals: Kristen Ghodsee & Ruth Behar in Conversation

Sophie Chao and Bianca Williams discuss activism, organizing, and anthropology in the first installment of a new Anthropod series: What Does Anthropology Sound Like.

54. What Does Anthropology Sound Like: Activism

Jonathan Rosa discusses raciolinguistic ideologies, a framework developed by Rosa and Professor Nelson Flores (University of Pennsylvania) to critique the racialization of various speaking subjects and their linguistic practices. The interview begins with a focus on this concept and related themes in Rosa’s book, then turns to a consideration of broader implications of this work for academia, anthropology in particular.
﻿A common thread throughout this interview is the issue of coloniality, both broadly construed and more specifically with regard to how it shapes and manifests within educational contexts. In particular, Rosa comments on the question of decolonizing or unsettling anthropology, reflecting in some closing remarks on the usefulness and concerns around platforms such as #AnthroTwitter for challenging the colonial logics within our own discipline.
For more information and a transcript of this episode, visit: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/raciolinguistic-ideologies-and-decolonizing-anthropology-a-conversation-with-jonathan-rosa

55. Raciolinguistic Ideologies & Decolonizing Anthropologies: A Conversation with Jonathan Rosa

Writing ethnographic poetry with Darcy Alexandra and Ather Zia. This is the second installment in the What Does Anthropology Sound Like series, in which we ask anthropologists to share their work and insights with us on the different forms their anthropological practice takes. In this episode, the theme is poetry.

58. What Does Anthropology Sound Like: Poetry

AnthroPod is produced by the Society for Cultural Anthropology. In each episode, we explore what anthropology teaches us about the world and people around us.

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