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About Adam Bobeck

Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi’i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com.

Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi’i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com.

NBN Episodes hosted by Adam:

Anthropology May 9, 2022

Collaborative Damage

An Experimental Ethnography of Chinese Globalization

Mikkel Bunkenborg, Morten Nielsen, and Morten Axel Pedersen

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
Collaborative Damage: An Experimental Ethnography of Chinese Globalization (Cornell UP, 2022) is an experimental ethnography of Chinese globalization that compares data from two frontlines of China's global intervention—sub-Saharan Africa and …
Islamic Studies April 18, 2022

The Words of the Imams

Al-Shaykh Al-Saduq and the Development of Twelver Shi'i Hadith Literature

George Warner

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
Ibn Babawayh – also known as al-Shaykh al-Saduq – was a prominent Twelver Shi'i scholar of hadith. Writing within the first century after the vanishing of the twelfth imam, al-Saduq …
Anthropology April 5, 2022

Making Livable Worlds

Afro-Puerto Rican Women Building Environmental Justice

Hilda Lloréns

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
When Hurricanes Irma and María made landfall in Puerto Rico in September 2017, their destructive force further devastated an archipelago already pommeled by economic austerity, political upheaval, and environmental calamities …
Anthropology March 16, 2022

Herring and People of the North Pacific

Sustaining a Keystone Species

Thomas F. Thornton and Madonna L. Moss

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
Herring are vital to the productivity and health of marine systems, and socio-ecologically Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) is one of the most important fish species in the Northern Hemisphere. Human …
Science March 10, 2022

Racism, Not Race

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

Joseph L. Graves and Alan H. Goodman

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
The science on race is clear. Common categories like “Black,” “white,” and “Asian” do not represent genetic differences among groups. But if race is a pernicious fiction according to natural …
Islamic Studies March 9, 2022

Angels Hastening

The Karbalāʾ Dreams

Christopher Clohessy

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
Today I talked to Christopher Clohessy about his book Angels Hastening: The Karbalāʾ Dreams (Gorgias Press, 2021), When, on an autumn Medina night in 61/680, the night that saw al-Ḥusayn killed, Umm …
Anthropology March 4, 2022

When We Are Human

Notes from the Age of Pandemics

John Zerzan

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
These are dark and darkening times, challenging us to look deeper to grasp the roots and dynamics of the looming civilizational crisis. Chronic illness of the planet calls for radically …
Anthropology January 31, 2022

Across Anthropology

Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial

Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
How can we rethink anthropology beyond itself? In this book, twenty-one artists, anthropologists, and curators grapple with how anthropology has been formulated, thought, and practised 'elsewhere' and 'otherwise'. They do …
Anthropology January 21, 2022

Afterlives of Affect

Science, Religion, and an Edgewalker’s Spirit

Matthew C. Watson

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
In Afterlives of Affect: Science, Religion, and an Edgewalker’s Spirit (Duke UP, 2020), Matthew C. Watson considers the life and work of artist and Mayanist scholar Linda Schele (1942-1998) as …
Anthropology January 7, 2022

Between Gaia and Ground

Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism

Elizabeth A. Povinelli

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
In Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism (Duke UP, 2021),  Elizabeth A. Povinelli theorizes the climatic, environmental, viral, and social catastrophe …
African American Studies January 5, 2022

Metaphysical Africa

Truth and Blackness in the Ansaru Allah Community

Michael Muhammad Knight

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
The Ansaru Allah Community, also known as the Nubian Islamic Hebrews (AAC/NIH) and later the Nuwaubians, is a deeply significant and controversial African American Muslim movement. Founded in Brooklyn in …
Anthropology January 4, 2022

Playing Jazz in Socialist Vietnam

Quyền Văn Minh and Jazz in Hà Nội

Stan BH Tan-Tangbau and Quyền Văn Minh

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
Quyền Văn Minh (b. 1954) is not only a jazz saxophonist and lecturer at the prestigious Vietnam National Academy of Music, but he is also one of the most preeminent …
Critical Theory December 24, 2021

The Interfact

On Structure and Compatibility in Object-Oriented Ontology

Gabriel Yoran

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
Objects in object-oriented ontology (OOO) are mysterious and inexhaustible entities. But since OOO grants ontological priority to objects, it should have an easy time referring to objects. But this is …
Islamic Studies December 15, 2021

The Prophet's Heir

The Life of Ali ibn Abi Talib

Hassan Abbas

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
Ali ibn Abi Talib is arguably the single most important spiritual and intellectual authority in Islam after prophet Mohammad. Through his teachings and leadership as fourth caliph, Ali nourished Islam …
Politics & Polemics October 18, 2021

Skirmishes

With Friends, Enemies, and Neutrals

Graham Harman

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
One of the fifty most influential living philosophers, a “self-promoting charlatan” (Brian Leiter), and the orchestrator of an “online orgy of stupidity” (Ray Brassier). In Skirmishes: With Friends, Enemies, and …
Anthropology September 17, 2021

Margaret Mead

Paul Shankman

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
Tracing Mead’s career as an ethnographer, as the early voice of public anthropology, and as a public figure, this elegantly written biography links the professional and personal sides of her …
Anthropology September 6, 2021

In Humboldt's Shadow

A Tragic History of German Ethnology

H. Glenn Penny

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
The Berlin Ethnological Museum is one of the world's largest and most important anthropological museums, housing more than a half million objects collected from around the globe. In Humboldt's Shadow: A …