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Department of Social Anthropology

 

Camthropod LogoThe Cambridge Anthropology Podcast

Camthropod is produced by a collective of staff and students from the Cambridge Department of Social Anthropology. We broadcast regularly during term time. Camthropod includes interviews with visiting speakers about their work, as well as audio pieces presenting aspects of our research or just things that interest us about daily life. We welcome all kinds of contributions, and invite you to get in touch with us at camthropod@gmail.com or on Twitter at @camthropod.  You can subscribe to Camthropod through your usual podcast services and through Spotify.

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Search for us on your usual Android podcast app or listen to episodes below:

Episode 37: Origin Studies Part 3, by Adam Hinden. With Mike Degani, Timothy Cooper, and Marilyn Strathern

Episode 36: Origin Studies Part 2, by Adam Hinden. With Andrew Sanchez, Elizabeth Turk, and Caroline Humphrey

Episode 35: Origin Studies Part 1, by Adam Hinden. With Sian Lazar, Thomas White, and Iza Kavedžija

Episode 34. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 8: Rabab Chamseddine with Rebecca Appleton 

Episode 33. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 7: Emiko Agatsuma with Iza Kavedžija

Episode 32Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 6: Bronagh Lawson with Kayla Rush

Episode 31. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 5: Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh with Anonymous Anthropologist

Episode 30: Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 4: Jesús Guevara Rico with Alanna Cant

Episode 29: The 'Political' in Northern Irish Protestant Marching Bands, by Sean French

Episode 28. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 3: Tuguldur Yondonjamts with Hermione Spriggs

Episode 27. Kurdish Women and Desires for Voice by Marlene Schäfers

Episode 26. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 2: Mzuzile Mduduzi Xakaza with Jeannine-Madeleine Fischer

Episode 25. The Future of the Anthropological Journal, with Andrew Sanchez, Liana Chua, and Natalia Buitron.

Episode 24. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 1: Maree Clarke with Fran Edmonds

Episode 23. The Recorded and the Live: Shi’i Islamic Media in Pakistan by Timothy Cooper. With Charles Hirschkind, Karen Ruffle, and Abeera Arif-Bashir

Episode 22. 30 years of German unity. Insights from fieldwork in Eastern Germany, by Laura Tradii

Episode 21. An Interview with Max Bolt, by Kevin Yildirim and Javier Ruiz

Episode 20. Anthropology Beyond the Academy:  Public Health

Episode 19. Anthropology Beyond the Academy: Diplomacy

Episode 18. Circus Stories, by Laura Byng

Episode 17. An interview with Michael Puett, by Beth Turk

Episode 16. An interview with David MacDougall, by Rafael Dernbach

Episode 15. An interview with Ilana Gershon, by Oliver Balch

Episode 14. Thinking about Vision. An investigation with visually-impaired theatre-goers and audio describers, by Harsha Balasubramanian

Episode 13: Welcome to Dataworld, by Alexander Taylor

Episode 12: Wicked problems in the world of debt advice, by Ryan Davey and Carl Packman

Episode 11: Birdsong, by Jonathan Woolley and Hugh Williamson

Episode 10: An Interview with Richard Werbner, by Joe Philp

Episode 9: MIASU at 30, by Sian Lazar

Episode 8: Your Local, by Farhan Samanani

Episode 7: An Interview with Tanya Luhrmann, by Rupert Stasch

Episode 6: Sounds of Protest, by Sian Lazar

Episode 5: Hiddo Dhawr: Singing Love in(to) Somaliland , by Christina Woolner

Episode 4: An Interview with Anna Tsing, by Corinna Howland and Christina Woolner

Episode 3: Treating English Handicaps, by Dr Sazana Jayadeva

Episode 2: Save the Date, by Patrick O'Hare

Episode 1: Gogo Breeze and Radio Kinship, by Harri Englund

Contributors

 

Camthropod: The Cambridge Anthropology Podcast ·

 

Episode 37: Origin Studies Part 3, by Adam Hinden. With Mike Degani, Timothy Cooper, and Marilyn Strathern

Episode 3 features Mike Degani, Timothy Cooper, and Marilyn Strathern

Adam Hinden is an Irish-American researcher and musician currently based in London. His work, both for his anthropology MPhil at the University of Cambridge and in his current research with ACLED, surrounds activism and allyship among indigenous groups in Taiwan. 

 

 

Episode 36: Origin Studies Part 2, by Adam Hinden. With Andrew Sanchez, Elizabeth Turk, and Caroline Humphrey

Anthropologists often work with communities far away from where they live and study. How do we come to commit ourselves to years of engagement in a specific field site? Inspired by a gap in anthropological education surrounding the selection of field-sites, this three-part podcast explores how some anthropologists developed their interest in specific settings and topics, and how these inclinations are shaped by various external factors into life-long research interests and specializations. Each episode contains the "origin stories" of three anthropologists at the University of Cambridge, and shows how anthropological knowledge often hinges on indirect, serendipitous experiences.

Episode 2 features Andrew Sanchez, Elizabeth Turk, and Caroline Humphrey

Adam Hinden is an Irish-American researcher and musician currently based in London. His work, both for his anthropology MPhil at the University of Cambridge and in his current research with ACLED, surrounds activism and allyship among indigenous groups in Taiwan. 

 

Episode 35: Origin Studies Part 1, by Adam Hinden. With Sian Lazar, Thomas White, and Iza Kavedžija

 

 
Anthropologists often work with communities far away from where they live and study. How do we come to commit ourselves to years of engagement in a specific field site? Inspired by a gap in anthropological education surrounding the selection of field-sites, this three-part podcast explores how some anthropologists developed their interest in specific settings and topics, and how these inclinations are shaped by various external factors into life-long research interests and specializations. Each episode contains the "origin stories" of three anthropologists at the University of Cambridge, and shows how anthropological knowledge often hinges on indirect, serendipitous experiences.

Episode 1 features Sian Lazar, Thomas White, and Iza Kavedžija

Adam Hinden is an Irish-American researcher and musician currently based in London. His work, both for his anthropology MPhil at the University of Cambridge and in his current research with ACLED, surrounds activism and allyship among indigenous groups in Taiwan. 

 

Episode 34. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 8:  Rabab Chamseddine with Rebecca Appleton

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Who is responsible for making a work of art?  Each episode brings a fresh perspective on where ideas come from, what agency an artist feels in the creation of their work, and how, and in which contexts, ownership and responsibility for the artwork are claimed. Ultimately, as a collection, the series encourages listeners to think about ‘the artist’ and ‘the artwork’ as dynamic processes in a relationship of authoring.  Episode 8 features Rabab Chamseddine with Rebecca Appleton

Rabab Chamseddine (b.1997, Abidjan, Ivory Coast) is a Lebanese (spoken word) poet and film-maker based in Tyre and Beirut, Lebanon. She is currently completing her master’s in Literature at the American University of Beirut. Her poetry unfolds as an exploration of the bilateral theme of love and loss, and the poetics of meaning-making that emerge between them, in that very space of mourning, in Beirut. Chamseddine began her spoken word poetry journey in 2017 by partaking in poetry nights hosted in the hubs and communal cafes of Beirut, to later become the winner of Beirut Poetry Slam 2018. Her work will be appearing in an anthology entitled We Call to the Eye and the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Descent (Persea Books), edited by Hala Alyan and Zeina Hashem Beck, as of spring 2023.  
Find her on Instagram @ rababchamseddine 

Rebecca Appleton is a postgraduate researcher in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She is currently undertaking PhD research about the politics of contemporary women’s poetry in Beirut, Lebanon. The project researches the emerging and evolving performance and politics of women’s poetry in Beirut, focussing on poetry’s capacity to generate alternative spaces for personal, social, political, and gendered expression as the city negotiates crises. 

Artery is a podcast organised by Iza Kavedžija (University of Cambridge) and Robert Simpkins (SOAS, London) and supported by the AHRC.
Music: Footsteps, by Robert Simpkins.

 

Episode 33. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 7: Emiko Agatsuma with Iza Kavedžija

 

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and responsibility in art.  Ultimately, as a collection, the series encourages listeners to think about ‘the artist’ and ‘the artwork’ as dynamic processes in a relationship of authoring.

Episode 7 features Emiko Agatsuma with Iza Kavedžija

Emiko Agatsuma is a dancer and a choreographer specializing in Butoh, a dance genre that emerged in Japan in the1960s as a reaction to Western modern dance. Having graduated from Waseda University in Tokyo in 1999, she joined the largest Butoh Company - Dairakudakan founded by Akaji Maro. She had performed in every Dairakudakan production until 2019. She now heads the AGAXART production company for Butoh dancers and artists in Japan. Emiko is a recipient of the prestigious Best Young Artist 2015 Award by the Japan Dance Critics Association and she represented Japan in 2020 at the 39th annual Battery Dance Festival in New York City, USA.   https://agaxart.wixsite.com/agart/home.   @emiko.agatsuma
  
Iza Kavedžija is an Assistant Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. She is specialising in Japan, with primary research interests in art and creativity, the life course and ageing, as well as health and wellbeing. She is currently leading an AHRC-funded project entitled ‘
The Work of Art in Contemporary Japan: Inner and outer worlds of creativity’. https://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/directory/dr-iza-kavedzija
Translation and narration by Kaori Yoshikawa. 

Artery is a podcast organised by Iza Kavedžija (University of Cambridge) and Robert Simpkins (SOAS, London) and supported by the AHRC.
Music: Footsteps, by Robert Simpkins.

 

Episode 32. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 6: Bronagh Lawson with Kayla Rush

 

 

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and responsibility in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions address and unpack the conceptualisation of the artistic person, authorship as centred upon an individual or bounded group, and the development of responsibility for artworks during and after their making. Each episode brings a fresh perspective on where ideas come from, what agency an artist feels in the creation of their work, and how, and in which contexts, ownership and responsibility for the artwork are claimed. Ultimately, as a collection, the series encourages listeners to think about ‘the artist’ and ‘the artwork’ as dynamic processes in a relationship of authoring.

Episode 6 features Bronagh Lawson with Kayla Rush

Bronagh Lawson is an artist based in Belfast who has written a blog about the vibrant local contemporary visual arts scene for the last ten years. Previously she ran cross-community cross-border development programmes for 13 years. Originally from Portaferry and Strangford, Northern Ireland, she is a Fulbright scholar and graduate of Winchester School of Art. Bronagh is a co-founder of the Hydrangea project, a Belfast-Chicago collaboration which uses contemporary art underpinned with art therapy to act as a healing mechanism. Her book Belfast City of Light: Looking and Listening to Belfast Come with Me is based on her experience as a non-churchgoer attending every church in Belfast for a service.  

https://www.lulu.com/shop/bronagh-lawson/belfast-city-of-light/paperback/product-1z7ympqj.html?page=1&pageSize=4
https://iarc.ie/exhibitions/previous-exhibitions/ebb-and-flow-prints-by-bronagh-lawson/
https://us4.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=849f2610883f3b34ac8274556&id=595d763c41

Kayla Rush is an anthropologist of art, music, and performance. She is an assistant lecturer in music at Dundalk Institute of Technology in Dundalk, Ireland. Kayla's previous research examined community arts in contemporary Northern Ireland; her book on this research, The Cracked Art World: Conflict, Austerity, and Community Arts in Northern Ireland, was published in June 2022. Her current research is focused on private, extracurricular, fees-based rock and popular music schools.
https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/RushCracked
https://doi.org/10.1386/jpme_00054_1

Artery is a podcast organised by Iza Kavedžija (University of Cambridge) and Robert Simpkins (SOAS, London) and supported by the AHRC.

Music: Footsteps, by Robert Simpkins.

 

Episode 31. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 5: Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh with Anonymous Anthropologist

 

Episode 5 features Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh with Anonymous Anthropologist

Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh BSc. Hons, MLitt, MA is a practice-based opera doctoral researcher at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in London where she also teaches. Her research engages with the opera “Carmen” drawing on the Tehran Opera Company to forecast what new socio-political futures could be dreamt through opera. Her new libretto of “Carmen” in 2025 will coincide with the 150th anniversary of “Carmen’s” premiere in Paris. In this episode, as the librettist, Nazli reflects upon the production of the opera "Paradise Garden" (2021).

Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh is an experienced transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary artist with a portfolio spanning live and recorded arts, both place based and touring. Currently she is associate director of the Glasgow based Queer Sanctuary Arts with a focus on future artistic planning. She is a member of the Governance Committee for the New York based International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA), of which she was an Arts Council England Fellow. At the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama she is the Deputy Chair of the inaugural Independent Equity Committee.

Twitter: @Nazli_Tabatabai

Anonymous Anthropologist
By anonymising herself, she hopes to highlight that artists are constantly asked to do things for free. As anthropologists are keen to collaborate with artists (sometimes for free), she hopes her small act could highlight the issue and help fellow anthropologists reflect on the ‘friendship’ convention in Social Anthropology.
More info: http://www.payingartists.org.uk/
 

Artery is a podcast organised by Iza Kavedžija (University of Cambridge) and Robert Simpkins (SOAS, London) and supported by the AHRC.

Music: Footsteps, by Robert Simpkins.

 

Episode 30. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 4: Jesús Guevara Rico with Alanna Cant

 

Episode 4 features Jesús Guevara Rico with Alanna Cant

Jesús Guevara Rico is an artist and art conservator, originally from San José Tateposco in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. He trained at the prestigious Western School of Conservation and Restoration (Escuela de Conservación y Restauración de Occidente) in Guadalajara. Now based in Oaxaca City, Jesús works on and oversees the conservation and restoration of colonial heritage throughout the state, especially religious paintings, frescos, and carvings. Novohispano art also provides inspiration for the content, materials, and techniques of Jesús’s oil paintings, murals, and tattoos.

Find him on Twitter @JesusGuevaraRi3

 

Alanna Cant is an anthropologist in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Reading. Her work is about aesthetics, identity, material culture, and religion within the ‘economies of culture’ of Mexico and the United Kingdom. Her book The Value of Aesthetics: Oaxacan woodcarvers in global economies of culture was published in 2019 by the University of Texas Press. 

https://www.reading.ac.uk/archaeology/staff/alanna-cant
https://www.alannacant.com/

 

Voice credit: Alfredo Narváez

Artery is a podcast organised by Iza Kavedžija (University of Cambridge) and Robert Simpkins (SOAS, London) and supported by the AHRC.

Music: Footsteps, by Robert Simpkins.

 

Episode 29: The 'Political' in Northern Irish Protestant Marching Bands, by Sean French

 

 

This podcast examines the shifting sonic politics of the marching band scene in Derry, Northern Ireland. 20 years ago, Protestant parading in Derry was a source of intense political conflict but over the years it has become less controversial due to inter-community collaboration. However, tensions remain. Sean French and his interlocutors discuss how different political styles sound and how acoustic experience intersects with political marginalization. Through ideas around rowdiness, volume, and voice, French shows how marching band members in contemporary Northern Ireland negotiate different political stances and forms of identification.

Acknowledgements:  Special thanks to Richard Holland and the East Bank Protestant Boys, everyone at Bready Ulster Scots Pipe Band, and everyone at the North West Cultural Partnership. I am so grateful for all you've done for me, and I would be nowhere without your kindness letting me be a temporary part of the marching band world in Derry. 

Sean French is a third year Social Anthropology PhD student at the University of Cambridge. 

 

Episode 28. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 3: Tuguldur Yondonjamts with Hermione Spriggs

 

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and responsibility in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions address and unpack the conceptualisation of the artistic person, authorship as centred upon an individual or bounded group, and the development of responsibility for artworks during and after their making. Each episode brings a fresh perspective on where ideas come from, what agency an artist feels in the creation of their work, and how, and in which contexts, ownership and responsibility for the artwork are claimed. Ultimately, as a collection, the series encourages listeners to think about ‘the artist’ and ‘the artwork’ as dynamic processes in a relationship of authoring.

Episode 3 features Tuguldur Yondonjamts with Hermione Spriggs

Tuguldur Yondonjamts (b.1977, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia) lives and works in Ulaanbaatar and in New York. His work is very much dependent on research and careful analysis of certain environments and materials, often responding to the nomadic culture of Central Asia and the issues affecting Mongolia’s society and economic development. By using investigational logic, he is able to create large scale drawings and diagrams, representing imagined journeys. His work is widely exhibited in Mongolia, the US and internationally. 
https://tugulduryondonjamts.com/
tuguldur_yondonjamts_

Hermione Spriggs is an artist and anthropologist based between London and Yorkshire. She is currently undertaking practice-based PhD research with an ethnographic focus on trapping and pest control in North Yorkshire. Her edited volume Five Heads: Art, Anthropology and Mongol-Futurism (2018) is published by Sternberg Press. 
 
https://hermione-spriggs.com
hermione.spriggs

 

Artery is a podcast organised by Iza Kavedžija (University of Cambridge) and Robert Simpkins (SOAS, London) and supported by the AHRC.

Music: Footsteps, by Robert Simpkins.

 

Episode 27. Kurdish Women and Desires for Voice by Marlene Schäfers

 

 

What does it mean to have a voice? And how does a voice need to sound like if it is going to matter? In this episode, Marlene Schäfers (Utrecht University) discusses her research with Kurdish women singers and poets to explore what makes the voice an object of desire and appeal in the contemporary world, particularly for historically marginalized subjects. Field recordings of Kurdish classical and recent repertoires reveal how contemporary politics of voice shape what voices mean, how they sound, and how they impact listeners.  

Marlene Schäfers is Assistant Professor in Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University, Netherlands. She obtained her PhD at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Her first monograph, Voices that Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey was published with the University of Chicago Press in 2022. You can find more information, including additional field recordings on her website: www.marleneschafers.com  

Acknowledgements: My thanks are due to the Kurdish women who so generously shared their time with me and let me record their voices. The recordings featured in this podcast were made in Wan, Turkey, in 2011-12.

 

Episode 26. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 2: Mzuzile Mduduzi Xakaza with Jeannine-Madeleine Fischer

 

 

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and responsibility in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions address and unpack the conceptualisation of the artistic person, authorship as centred upon an individual or bounded group, and the development of responsibility for artworks during and after their making. Each episode brings a fresh perspective on where ideas come from, what agency an artist feels in the creation of their work, and how, and in which contexts, ownership and responsibility for the artwork are claimed. Ultimately, as a collection, the series encourages listeners to think about ‘the artist’ and ‘the artwork’ as dynamic processes in a relationship of authoring.

Episode 2 features Mzuzile Mduduzi Xakaza with Jeannine-Madeleine Fischer

Mzuzile Mduduzi Xakaza works as Director of the Durban Art Gallery and also paints and draws on a part-time basis. He has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions in South Africa and abroad since the early 1990s. His art is inspired mainly by the love and appreciation of his social and physical environment (landscape) as well as social issues that are subtly evoked by such a theme. However, there is always something enigmatic about some of the creative ideas that flow into his mind whilst creating - something that seems to defy definition of any sort.

https://asai.co.za/artist/mduduzi-xakaza/

Jeannine-Madeleine Fischer is a cultural anthropologist at the University of Konstanz and is currently researching aesthetic activism in South Africa. She is part of the interdisciplinary research group "Traveling Forms".

https://www.uni-konstanz.de/en/research/research-institutions/nomis-research-project-traveling-forms/research-fields/activism-as-a-mobile-aesthetic-form/

Artery is a podcast organised by Iza Kavedžija (University of Cambridge) and Robert Simpkins (SOAS, London) and supported by the AHRC.
Music: Footsteps, by Robert Simpkins.
 

Episode 25. The Future of the Anthropological Journal, with Andrew Sanchez, Liana Chua, and Natalia Buitron.

Marking the Cambridge Journal of Anthropology’s (CJA) latest editorial handover, this episode discusses the state of the anthropological journal in the contemporary discipline. The CJA has been the in-house journal of the Department of Social Anthropology since 1973 when it began as a platform for students and faculty alike to experiment with new ideas and ways of presenting arguments. Over the last decade it has become more global in readership and authorship, it is now an entirely Open-Access, published by Berghahn, and widely known for its Special Issue model, which allows a part of every issue to be taken up by exciting and insightful collections of articles curated by guest editors. Discussing all this and more will be Andrew Sanchez, the outgoing editor of the journal, and Liana Chua and Natalia Buitron, the new incoming editors.

 

Episode 24. Artery: on art, authorship and anthropology. Episode 1: Maree Clarke with Fran Edmonds

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and responsibility in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions address and unpack the conceptualisation of the artistic person, authorship as centred upon an individual or bounded group, and the development of responsibility for artworks during and after their making. Each episode brings a fresh perspective on where ideas come from, what agency an artist feels in the creation of their work, and how, and in which contexts, ownership and responsibility for the artwork are claimed. Ultimately, as a collection, the series encourages listeners to think about ‘the artist’ and ‘the artwork’ as dynamic processes in a relationship of authoring. 

 

Episode 1 features Maree Clarke with Fran Edmonds.  Maree Clarke is a Mutti Mutti/Wemba Wemba/Boonwurrung/Yorta Yorta artist, from Mildura in northwest Victoria, Australia, now living and working in Naarm (Melbourne).  With over 30 years experience as an artist, Clarke’s work focuses on new ways of telling old/ongoing stories through art-making, much of which occurs in her backyard.
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/maree-clarke/; https://vivienandersongallery.com/artists/maree-clarke/

Fran Edmonds is an interdisciplinary scholar who has worked extensively with Aboriginal artists, community organisations and galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) for almost 30 years. Her work supports First Nations people to reclaim their stories from the ‘archives’.
https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/livingarchiveofaboriginalart/
https://omeka.cloud.unimelb.edu.au/livingarchivenaidoc/blog

By Iza Kavedžija (University of Cambridge) and Robert Simpkins (SOAS, London) and supported by the AHRC, https://worldsofcreativity.socanth.cam.ac.uk/  .  Music: Footsteps, by Robert Simpkins.

 

Episode 23. The Recorded and the Live, by Timothy Cooper

 

With the arrival of home recording technology in the early 1980s, many Shi’i Muslims in Pakistan started to record the majlismourning assemblies and processions that are central to their faith. Soon after, some established family-run religious media stores beside Muslim shrines or in Shi’a-majority neighbourhoods. In this episode, Dr Timothy Cooper (Research Fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology) examines the distinct sonic aesthetic of Shi’i religious media in Pakistan through interviews with his interlocutors in Lahore, as well as through extracts from their personal archives of Shi’i majlis assemblies, rituals, and recitations. He is joined by Karen Ruffle from the University of Toronto and Charles Hirschkind from the University of California, Berkeley, who help to put Shi’i relationships with sound in a wider geographic and disciplinary context.  This podcast forms the final part of a three-part multi-platform sound essay titled The Recorded and the Live that examines Shi’i faith, ritual, and recording media in Pakistan. It was produced through the support of an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Postdoctoral Fellowship (ES/V011669/1).  
Part 1 is an ethnographic film titled This is a Majlis: A Sound Essay co-directed with Abeera Arif-Bashir that was screened at the 2021 Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival. https://festival.raifilm.org.uk/film/decolonising-the-archive-shorts-2/
Part 2 is an hour-long collection of laments and elegies from the collections of Shi’i media traders in Pakistan titled Recitations for Muharram and Ashura, broadcast and archived on NTS Radio. https://www.nts.live/shows/pirate-modernity/episodes/pirate-modernity-2nd-august-2021

Acknowledgements: My immense gratitude goes to Karen Ruffle, Charles Hirschkind, and Abeera Arif-Bashir for taking the time to work with me on this podcast, and to my interlocutors in Lahore, Muhammad Shehzad, Muhammad Ashiq, Ali Raza, Hurr Abbas, whose patience and intellectual generosity knows no bounds. The interviews featured in this podcast were conducted in Lahore between January and February 2020.

 

Episode 22. 30 years of German unity. Insights from fieldwork in Eastern Germany, by Laura Tradii

 

 

On the 9th of November 2019, Germany celebrated the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet, the country appeared to be once more divided along political lines as the far-right party Alternative for Germany gained enormous success in the Eastern regions. Laura Tradii was on fieldwork in rural Brandenburg as the electoral campaign unfolded, and she discusses the debates that emerged around the failures and successes of the German Reunification.

 

Episode 21. An Interview with Max Bolt, by Kevin Yildirim and Javier Ruiz

 

Episode 20. Anthropology Beyond the Academy.  Public Health

Alisi Mekatoa and Nina Fudge are health researchers. They came to Cambridge to speak about how their undergraduate anthropology degree has informed their careers in and outside of academia. They spoke with Sian Lazar about general practice and primary health care in the UK, and the role of anthropological approaches in health research.

    Episode 19. Anthropology Beyond the Academy: Diplomacy

Gareth Ward visited Cambridge just before he began his appointment as British Ambassador to Vietnam. He spoke with David Sneath about how anthropology has informed his career in the diplomatic service.
(We are sorry that the recording quality of this interview is not as good as we would usually aim for.)

 Episode 18. Circus Stories, by Laura Byng

Tropes of 'running away' abound in popular notions of the circus, but how true is this to the lived experiences of circus folk? In this episode of the podcast, Laura Byng uses interviews with different members of a contemporary UK circus to explore they ways in which they came to work in the circus, and, once there, why they stayed. What emerges is a varied set of relationships to the circus, but a shared passion for this way of life.

Episode 17. An interview with Michael Puett, by Beth Turk

In November 2017, Michael Puett, Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology at Harvard University, gave two talks at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at Cambridge on the subject of neoliberalism in China. Beth met with Professor Puett after his talks to discuss Puett’s critical stance on the naturalness of neoliberalism, and his assertion that comparative analysis can help us create alternative models by which to organize our world. They also talked about how to contextualize the particular version of neoliberalism found in China today.

Episode 16. An interview with David MacDougall, by Rafael Dernbach

David MacDougall visited Cambridge University this year for a series of talks and screenings and to open an exhibition of stills from his films at King's College. After the opening Rafael Dernbach met MacDougall to talk about the particular knowledge visual anthropology can produce and his practice as a filmmaker.

David MacDougall is one of the world’s leading ethnographic filmmakers. He also writes regularly on documentary and ethnographic cinema and is the author of Transcultural Cinema (Princeton University Press, 1998) and The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses (Princeton, 2006). He is presently Adjunct Professor at the Research School of Humanities, Australian National University, Canberra.

 

Episode 15. An interview with Ilana Gershon, by Oliver Balch

 

Ilana Gershon visited Cambridge University this summer, and after her Senior Research seminar at the department, Oliver Balch caught up with her to talk about her research on new media and the contemporary world of work, and her latest book Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don't Find) Work Today.

Ilana is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University. Her intellectual interests range from linguistic anthropology, science studies, media studies, legal anthropology, anthropology of democracy, and anthropology of work.

 

Episode 14. Thinking about Vision. An investigation with visually-impaired theatre-goers and audio describers, by Harsha Balasubramanian

 

This podcast asks what vision actually means to those who describe theatre for blind and partially-sighted audiences. Harsha Balasubramanian shares some of the findings from her undergraduate dissertation, and argues that these audio describers' understandings of vision are revealed through their practices. These shape the experiences of sight-impaired theatre-goers.
With editing by Christina Woolner and voice acting from Rebecca Vaa, Francesca Firth, and Sian Lazar.
I am hugely indebted to everyone who has helped with this podcast: all its participants and my friends and former teachers from university.

 

Episode 13. Welcome to Dataworld, by Alexander Taylor

The processing and storage of data underpins the digital economy. With 2.5 exabytes of data being produced every day, storing and securing this highly valuable asset is an increasingly challenging task. But where exactly is all this data stored and how is it secured? In this episode, Alexander Taylor visits The Bunker, a subterranean data centre in south-east England and talks with Al Webb, the Head of Physical Security, about the increasingly extreme measures being taken to store and secure data within ‘the cloud’.

 

Episode 12: Wicked problems in the world of debt advice, by Ryan Davey and Carl Packman

When credit is an essential means of getting by, how can debt advice organisations help those who are struggling to repay? This episode of the podcast considers some of the conundrums that debt advisers face in Britain today, as a result of credit having become a vital means of subsistence for millions of people. It is an attempt to explore the normative implications of anthropological research for this particular field of social practice, and considers the viability of advocating debt refusal and debt cancellation. The episode comprises a conversation between Carl Packman, Research and Good Practice Manager at the anti-poverty charity Toynbee Hall, and Ryan Davey, a researcher in the Anthropology Department at the London School of Economics.

The presenters would love to hear from any debt advisers who listen to the podcast, to find out your views about what’s being discussed. Please contact Ryan at r.davey@lse.ac.uk or Carl at carl.packman@toynbeehall.org.uk.

Further information about the research can be found here: http://www.lse.ac.uk/anthropology/research/An-Ethnography-of-Advice

 

 

Episode 11: Birdsong, by Jonathan Woolley and Hugh Williamson

Birdsong is a ubiquitous feature of the British countryside. But what is the cultural significance of this much-loved part of our landscape? Jonathan Woolley reflects upon the meanings made by birds - as omens, as signs, as proxies, and as music - from the Norfolk Broads, to Bosavi in Papua New Guinea.

This podcast uses audio from freesound.org:
Lapwing.wav by Juskiddink
120319_001_L4 Rooks and some magpies.mp3 by Nemark
Blackcap01_13-03-2016.wav by Tim_Lomas
20080321.warbler.wav by dobroide

The full version of Hanna Tuulikki’s ‘At Sing, Two Birds’ is available
here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKcETcbf8Es

 

Episode 10: An Interview with Richard Werbner, by Joe Philp

Earlier this year Professor Richard Werbner gave a senior research seminar in the Department entitled 'The Poetics of Wisdom Divination: Renewing the Moral Imagination'. Former PhD student Joe Philp caught up with Professor Werbner afterwards to ask him more about his recent book, Divination's Grasp: African Encounters with the Almost Said (Indiana University Press: 2015). In the interview, Professor Werbner explains what divination can reveal about moral peril and the moral imagination in contemporary Botswana

Richard Werbner is Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. He has published widely on religion, ritual, politics and social history in Southern Africa, especially Botswana and Zimbabwe.

 

Episode 9: MIASU at 30, by Sian Lazar

Camthropod welcomes you to the new academic year with an episode dedicated to the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, which is currently celebrating its 30th anniversary. Sian Lazar spoke with several members of the unit to find out just what makes it so distinctive. For more information see the MIASU website.

 

Episode 8: Your Local, by Farhan Samanani

On April 8th 2015, in North West London, without any warning or permission a buzzing local pub was torn down by developers hoping to erect luxury flats in its place. The resulting scandal made national headlines, feeding into an intense debate around gentrification and property speculation in London. But what exactly was lost? This episode looks at the demolition of the Carlton Tavern through the eyes of those who used to frequent it, uncovering the value of spaces like pubs in bringing communities together in rich and often unexpected ways.

 

Episode 7: An Interview with Tanya Luhrmann, by Rupert Stasch

Tanya Luhrmann gave the 2016 W.H.R. Rivers Memorial Lecture in Cambridge, and during her visit she discussed with Rupert Stasch the larger research project she is currently engaged in, about contrasts in the psychological experience of “hearing voices” in the United States, Ghana, and India. Both in a study of how certain Christians experience hearing the voice of God, and in a study of the auditory experiences of diagnosed schizophrenics, Luhrmann and her collaborators have discovered correlations between the kinds of voices people hear in each of these countries and main wider understandings in those countries of the nature of “mind.”

 

Episode 6: Sounds of Protest, by Sian Lazar

In this episode, Sian Lazar discusses two sounds of different kinds of street mobilisation in Argentina: the bombos, or drums, which are associated with organised social forces, and the cacerolazo, or pots and pans demo, associated with the ‘middle classes’. She relates these different political soundscapes to the politics of the ‘Pink Tide’ and the recent turn back to the right in the country.

 

Episode 5: Hiddo Dhawr: Singing Love in(to) Somaliland , by Christina Woolner

Opened in 2014, Hiddo Dhawr is Somaliland’s first and only live music venue to operate since the 1988 civil war, which decimated the capital Hargeysa, and displaced the artistic community.  In this episode, social anthropology PhD candidate Christina Woolner visits Hiddo Dhawr – which specializes in the performance of acoustic music popular before the war – to explore what it means to sing, and particularly about love, in contemporary Hargeysa. Conversations with the venue’s founder Sahra Halgan, reflections from some young patrons, and an evening taking in the music reveal the many meanings of love songs, and offer insight into the social and political climate of life in a post-war, unrecognized state.

Acknowledgements: Many people were involved in the making of this podcast. Special thanks are due to Sahra Halgan for her continued and generous hospitality, and for permission to use her music (particularly two songs, ‘Hobaa Layoow Heedhe’ and ‘Qaraami’ from the Sahra Halgan Trio’s album Faransiskiyo Somaliland), to Cabdinaasir Macalin Caydiid, whose cuud playing provides the accompaniment to much of this podcast, and to Kenedid Hassan for his constant support and encouragement. Thanks also go to Cabdixakiim Cabdillahi Cumar (‘Camaje’) for help with interviews and translation, Habbane Cali Habbane, Hanan Omar, Muna Maxamed Qaalib, Xamda Cabdiwahab Siciid, Ibrahim Sheekh Axmed Cabdi, Khadar Nuux Yoonis and Sahra Maxamed Cali for speaking to me about their experiences at Hiddo Dhawr, and to the many musicians who allowed me to record and use their performances.

 

Episode 4: An Interview with Anna Tsing, by Corinna Howland and Christina Woolner

Anna Tsing visited our department to give the Marilyn Strathern lecture for CUSAS in 2015. Corinna Howland took the opportunity to sit down with her to discuss her classic book Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, and to find out a bit more about her thinking on issues of globalization, scale, environmental politics, and capitalism.

 

Episode 3: Treating English Handicaps: Spoken English Training Centres in Bangalore, India, by Sazana Jayadeva

Since the liberalisation of the Indian economy in the early 1990s, an entire industry of commercial English language training centres has emerged, offering spoken English classes for adults. In this episode, Sazana Jayadeva speaks with Prakruthi Banwasi, the founder of one of the first English training centres in Bangalore, about why it has become so important to know English in this city today.

 

Episode 2: Save the Date, by Patrick O’Hare

Patrick O’Hare is a former PhD student in social anthropology researching waste-pickers, the landfill economy and the recycling industry in Montevideo, Uruguay. In this podcast he visits Save the Date in London, a Dalston café which forms part of the ‘Real Junk Food Network’ dedicated to diverting food from landfill and transforming it into wholesome, affordable meals. With its founders James and Ruth, Patrick explores why so much edible waste makes it into the trash and how food activists like them are challenging wasteful practices and people’s perceptions about what is good to eat.
Save the Date Café

 

Episode 1: Gogo Breeze and Radio Kinship, by Harri Englund.

Gogo Breeze, a popular radio personality in Zambia's Eastern Province, styles himself as his listeners' grandfather and attends to them through a variety of radio programmes. In this podcast, Cambridge anthropologist Harri Englund introduces the key means by which Gogo Breeze pursues kinship over the airwaves. Examples of broadcasts bring to life the radio grandfather's multivocal approach to his vocation.

For more information, see the articles:

Harri Englund, Forget the Poor Radio Kinship and Exploited Labor in Zambia,
Current Anthropology, Vol. 56, No. S11,( October 2015), pp. S137-S145

Harri Englund, Multivocal morality: Narrative, sentiment, and Zambia’s radio grandfathers, HAU, 5 (2), pp. 251-273

 

Contributors:

Sian Lazar, Harri Englund, Patrick O’Hare, Sazana Jayadeva, Christina Woolner, Corinna Howland, Farhan Samanani, Rupert Stasch, Joe Philp, Jonathan Woolley, Hugh Williamson, Ryan Davey, Carl Packman