These Fieldsights sections feature series of ten or more short-form essays, which bring together scholars across institutions and career stages to weigh in on a shared topic. These pieces are reviewed by the editors of Cultural Anthropology.
Connotative Memories
Recent events of violence in São Paulo, Brazil targeting Palestinian, Syrian, as well as Angolan, Nigerian, and Congolese bystanders during a protest against th... More
Borderwaters: Conversing with Fluidity at the Dominican Border
Wind tugging at my sleeve feet sinking into the sand I stand at the edge where earth touches ocean where the two overlap a gentle coming together at other ... More
Camps and Ruins: Notes from Greece on the Visual Representation of the 2015 “Refugee Crisis”
My grandmother had very few photographs from her childhood; I believe there were only two.1 The first photo was one taken in an unknown studio, depicting her en... More
Europe in the Balance
Europe seems to be plunging into crises of demographic and economic displacements, heightened nationalism, and general unrest. Wealthy countries that have enjoy... More
Topology as Method
Topology is a branch of mathematics that studies spaces that remain continuously invariant through distortion. In doing so, it offers tools for the study of the... More
An Otherwise Anthropology
In recent years, the concept of the otherwise has been tracking across anthropology to frame political potentialities that are emerging, often drawing on phenom... More
An Anthropogenic Table of Elements
In the 150 years since its construction by the Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev, the periodic table of chemical elements has become both a ubiquitous and iconic... More
Embodied Ecologies
The materiality of human bodies at the smallest scales—genes, microbes, chemicals, hormones—is increasingly being understood as both responsive to broader envir... More
Temporary Possession
Around the world, experiences of ownership are turning toward temporary and contingent forms of possession. This Theorizing the Contemporary series explores tem... More
Behind the Migrant Caravan: Ethnographic Updates from Central America
(Con traducción al español)Central America is again in the news as a region in crisis. In October 2018, a group of migrants gathered in a bus station in San Ped... More