Senior Seminar

The Present and the Future in the Present: Religion, Values, and Climate Change Professor Joel Robbins (University of Cambridge) joel_350x350.png Many people have come to the conclusion that simply sharing the scientific data on global warming with the public has not been enough to motivate the kind of consistent action...

Our Past, Their Myths: Dynamics of Stranger Incorporation and Mutual Misunderstanding in Maluku, East Indonesia Dr Geger Riyanto (Universitas Indonesia) geger_profile_photo_350x350.png A major theme in study of Austronesian landscapes has been cultural alliances with strangers, and incorporation of immigrants into local...

Afterlives of Revolution: Everyday Counterhistories in Southern Oman Dr Alice Wilson (University of Sussex) alice_wilson_300x300.png The Dhufar Revolution was fought between 1965-1976 in an attempt to depose Oman's British-backed Sultan and advance social ideals of egalitarianism and gender equality. But following...

Language, pragmatic standardization, and the affective political economy of late capitalism in an “out-of-the-way place” Professor Aurora Donzelli (University of Bologna) The goal of this talk is to reflect on the role of discursive genres in producing political and affective transformations. Since the millennium...

Dr Natalia Buitron (University of Cambridge) An Amazonian Subjunctive: How to Change the World by Playing Others What is the role of the subjunctive for social change? For festive events in Shuar villages of Upper Amazonia, relatives send written invitations, teachers give lectures to the community, and villagers stage...

Dr Iza Kavedžija (University of Cambridge) Embodying Emptiness: Enskilment and the artistic imagination in Japan How is ‘skill’ to be understood when art practitioners deliberately seek to destabilize their practice and avoid treading familiar ground? Enskilment in general is usefully approached as an education of...

Professor Michael Schnegg (Hamburg University) Affective Closures: When Sharing Becomes Shameful Sharing has long been a valued practice in Namibian communities. Being dependent in terms of economic goods, labor, and food was seen as the usual contribution to shared affectivity in the group. In recent years, however...

Dr Rebecca Prentice (University of Sussex) Between the Technocratic and the Unruly: Work, Labour and Precarity in Times of Crisis Anthropologists of work and labour have developed a unique understanding of precarity, based on extended ethnographic encounters with workers both ‘at work’ and in their lives and reproductive...

Professor William Mazzarella (University of Chicago) Advertising as Integral Magic: An Afterlife What if one were to take seriously the proposition that advertising isn’t like magic, rather it is magic? And further, what if advertising isn’t just a matter of manipulation, but also, for the magician themselves, a question...

Prof Laura Rival (University of Oxford) Alejarse Is Not Aislarse: Constructing Anthropological Solidarity With Indigenous Strategies For Legal Empowerment This paper builds on the expert witness statement I was asked to write as part of my work for the Petitioners’ legal team that is challenging the state of Ecuador in the...