Member Voices showcases the intellectual vitality of the SCA by featuring the work of its members, as well as archived content from discontinued Fieldsights sections. We publish short pieces which engage contemporary disciplinary conversations within anthropology. We welcome submissions which put current events in conversation with anthropological thought and literature. We encourage creativity and collaboration, aiming to create a forum which propels the discipline in new and exciting directions.

How to Submit

View the submission guidelines. Please email Member Voices Section Editor Janita Van Dyk at [email protected] with any questions. Authors must be current members of the SCA.

Settler Atmospherics

Settler Atmospherics

This essay is part of an online supplement to the Openings collection on “Chemo-Ethnography,” which was edited by Nicholas Shapiro and Eben Kirksey and featured... More

Reading Achille Mbembe in Indian Majoritarian Politics

Reading Achille Mbembe in Indian Majoritarian Politics

In the 2014 Indian national elections the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under the stewardship of Narendra Modi, returned to power with a comfortable majority. O... More

Reflections on Ethnographic Writing Today

Reflections on Ethnographic Writing Today

Serving as the jury for this year’s Gregory Bateson Book Prize gave the four of us a remarkable opportunity to take the pulse of the discipline. It provided a r... More

Executive Disorder: Living the Ban in Seattle

Executive Disorder: Living the Ban in Seattle

When I first met Rami, I could tell that he was overwhelmed. For the last few months, he and his staff at the Iraqi Community Center of Washington (ICCW) have b... More

Race-ing Fargo

Race-ing Fargo

On July 25, 2017, what started as a parking dispute in Fargo, North Dakota turned into a verbal altercation between Amber Hensley, a white woman from the small ... More

The Household

The Household

How are the worlds in which we live shaped by the ways that households are thought and made? How does the scale of the household shape the spatial and temporal ... More

Activist Mobilities and the Viacrucis Migrant Caravan

Activist Mobilities and the Viacrucis Migrant Caravan

As we arrive at the first checkpoint in Huehuetan, Chiapas, everyone seems to hold their breath, uncertain of how the authorities are going to respond when a gr... More

Beyond Open Access, Net Neutrality: Cultural Anthropology Takes Action

Beyond Open Access, Net Neutrality: Cultural Anthropology Takes Action

In 2008, when my collaborators and I published “Anthropology of/in Circulation” in Cultural Anthropology (Kelty et al. 2008), we were excited by the ways in whi... More

Fieldnote as Political Weapon: James Comey’s Ethnographic Turn?

Fieldnote as Political Weapon: James Comey’s Ethnographic Turn?

Watching the testimony of former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James Comey live on television, I came to realize—one more time and with politic... More

Proficiency

Proficiency

When it comes to the study of practice, one of the main challenges for ethnographers is often the question of their own proficiency. If it is widely regarded a ... More