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Mobilities and Methods
Mobilities and Methods May 10, 2023

The Fluvial Imagination

On Lesotho’s Water-Export Economy

Colin Hoag

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Landlocked and surrounded by South Africa on all sides, the mountain kingdom of Lesotho became the world's first "water-exporting country" when it signed a 1986 treaty with its powerful neighbor …

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Mobilities and Methods April 23, 2023

Passport Entanglements

Protection, Care, and Precarious Migrations

Nicole Constable

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Passport Entanglements: Protection, Care, and Precarious Migrations (U California Press, 2022) examines the problems with documents issued to Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong and explores the larger role that passports …
Mobilities and Methods April 9, 2023

Crossing a Line

Laws, Violence, and Roadblocks to Palestinian Political Expression

Amahl Bishara

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Palestinians living on different sides of the Green Line make up approximately one-fifth of Israeli citizens and about four-fifths of the population of the West Bank. In both groups, activists …
Mobilities and Methods December 10, 2022

Oaxaca in Motion

An Ethnography of Internal, Transnational, and Return Migration

Iván Sandoval-Cervantes

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Migration is typically seen as a transnational phenomenon, but it happens within borders, too. Oaxaca in Motion: An Ethnography of Internal, Transnational, and Return Migration (U Texas Press, 2022), documents a …
Mobilities and Methods August 26, 2022

Cultural Labour

Conceptualizing the 'Folk Performance' in India

Brahma Prakash

Hosted by Lakshita Malik
Folk performances reflect the life-worlds of a vast section of subaltern communities in India. What is the philosophy that drives these performances, the vision that enables as well as enslaves …
Mobilities and Methods August 10, 2022

Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Social Media's Influence on Fashion, Ethics, and Property

Minh-Ha T. Pham

Hosted by Lakshita Malik
In 2016, social media users in Thailand called out the Paris-based luxury fashion house Balenciaga for copying the popular Thai “rainbow bag,” using Balenciaga’s hashtags to circulate memes revealing the …
Mobilities and Methods July 29, 2022

The Diasporic Condition

Ethnographic Explorations of the Lebanese in the World

Ghassan Hage

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Bridging the gap between migration studies and the anthropological tradition, Ghassan Hage illustrates that transnationality and its attendant cultural consequences are not necessarily at odds with classic theory. In The …
Mobilities and Methods July 26, 2022

Radical Resilience

Athenian Topographies of Precarity and Possibility

Othon Alexandrakis

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Radical Resilience: Athenian Topographies of Precarity and Possibility (Cornell UP, 2022) relates narratives of Athenians struggling to survive the impoverishment of relentless austerity measures, compounding emergencies, and human disasters of …
Mobilities and Methods July 15, 2022

Victims of Commemoration

The Architecture and Violence of Confronting the Past in Turkey

Eray Çayli

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
“Confronting the past” has become a byword for democratization. How societies and governments commemorate their violent pasts is often appraised as a litmus test of their democratization claims. Regardless of …
Mobilities and Methods July 6, 2022

The Opportunity Trap

High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failures of the Dependent Visa Program

Pallavi Banerjee

Hosted by Lakshita Malik
The Opportunity Trap: High-Skilled Workers, Indian Families, and the Failures of the Dependent Visa Program (NYU Press, 2022) is the first book to look at the impact of the H- …
Mobilities and Methods June 8, 2022

Militarized Global Apartheid

Catherine Besteman

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
In Militarized Global Apartheid (Duke UP. 2020), Catherine Besteman offers a sweeping theorization of the ways in which countries from the global north are reproducing South Africa's apartheid system on a worldwide …
Mobilities and Methods June 7, 2022

Visualizing Black Lives

Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media

Reighan Gillam

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
A new generation of Afro-Brazilian media producers have emerged to challenge a mainstream that frequently excludes them. Reighan Gillam delves into the dynamic alternative media landscape developed by Afro-Brazilians in …
Mobilities and Methods May 18, 2022

Refuge

How the State Shapes Human Potential

Heba Gowayed

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
As the world confronts the largest refugee crisis since World War II, wealthy countries are being called upon to open their doors to the displaced, with the assumption that this …
Ethnographic Marginalia May 10, 2022

Studying Borderlands

Talking Ethnography with Dr. Sahana Ghosh

Sahana Ghosh

Hosted by Sneha Annavarapu
How do border policing and violence intersect with gender and sexuality to affect border communities? Today’s guest, Dr. Sahana Ghosh, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the National University of Singapore …
Anthropology March 2, 2022

Mumbai Taximen

Autobiographies and Automobilities in India

Tarini Bedi

Hosted by Bhoomika Joshi
In Mumbai Taximen: Autobiographies and Automobilities in India (University of Washington Press, 2022), the first book-length study of Mumbai's taxi industry and of the livelihoods that surround it, Tarini Bedi draws from …
Anthropology February 9, 2022

The Moving City

Scenes from the Delhi Metro and the Social Life of Infrastructure

Rashmi Sadana

Hosted by Sneha Annavarapu
The Moving City: Scenes from the Delhi Metro and the Social Life of Infrastructure (U California Press, 2022) is a rich and intimate account of urban transformation told through the …
Mobilities and Methods February 2, 2022

Fragments of the City

Making and Remaking Urban Worlds

Colin McFarlane

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
Cities are becoming increasingly fragmented materially, socially, and spatially. From broken toilets and everyday things, to art and forms of writing, fragments are signatures of urban worlds and provocations for …
South Asian Studies January 26, 2022

Bombay Brokers

Lisa Björkman

Hosted by Sneha Annavarapu
A political party worker who produces crowds for electoral rallies. A “prison specialist” who serves other people’s prison sentences in exchange for a large fee. An engineer who is able …
Mobilities and Methods November 5, 2021

Scammer's Yard

The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica

Jovan Scott Lewis

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
There is romance in stealing from the rich to give to the poor, but how does that change when those perceived rich are elderly white North Americans and the poor …
Mobilities and Methods October 13, 2021

Capital Development

Mandate Era Amman and the Construction of the Hashemite State (1921-1946)

Harrison Guthorn

Hosted by Josephine Chaet
Amman, the capital of Jordan, contends with a crisis of identity rooted in how it grew to become a symbol for the Anglo-Hashemite government first, and a city second. As …