Editors’ Forum

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.

How to Submit

View the submission guidelines. Please email [email protected] with any questions.

Digital Learning

Covid-19

Digital Learning

Digital learning could imply hands-on learning, a physical engagement of bodies and fingers (digits) finding out how to do something. But mostly it implies, par... More

Missing the Revolution with Covid-19: On Hindsight and Ethnographic Expertise

Covid-19

Missing the Revolution with Covid-19: On Hindsight and Ethnographic Expertise

Covid-19 was a revolution that I should have seen coming. In his classic Cultural Anthropology article, “Missing the Revolution,” Orin Starn (1991) argues that... More

Religion, Law, and Bolsonaro’s Decree on Essential Services

Covid-19

Religion, Law, and Bolsonaro’s Decree on Essential Services

The corona virus pandemic has raised wide-ranging questions on the limits of religious freedoms in a global health crisis. While religious gatherings have acted... More

Covid-19, (In)visible Mothers, and the State

Covid-19

Covid-19, (In)visible Mothers, and the State

I called Yesenia on a Tuesday afternoon, but she didn’t answer. My number wouldn’t be familiar to her, as I wasn’t her son’s teacher, nor was I employed by the ... More

Crowd, Contagion, Corona

Covid-19

Crowd, Contagion, Corona

In early March 2020, weeks before the Covid-19 pandemic locked down much of Bangladesh, I was told a story by a friend, clearly in jest. A violent crowd had bea... More

The Irruption of Care, or Facing a Pandemic in Times of Revolution

Covid-19

The Irruption of Care, or Facing a Pandemic in Times of Revolution

No sintai miedo, si gracias a la Primera Línea nosotros podemos marchar. Si no fuese por ellos, no existiría la marcha.—Stefan Kramer “Don’t be afraid, it’s th... More

Prison as the Problem, Prison as the Cure

Covid-19

Prison as the Problem, Prison as the Cure

Across the United States, politicians, public prosecutors, and local and federal courts have released thousands in the country’s jails and prisons in an effort ... More

Stigma and the Logics of Wartime

Covid-19

Stigma and the Logics of Wartime

The United Kingdom’s National Health Service has been subsumed in recent weeks by military metaphors. Health workers are “servicemen” on the “frontline” “battli... More

Impact of Covid-19 on Hijras, a Third-Gender Community in India

Covid-19

Impact of Covid-19 on Hijras, a Third-Gender Community in India

On Tuesday, March 24, 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on the telly that India will put its population of 1.38 billion under lockdown to curb commun... More

Birthing under Investigation

Covid-19

Birthing under Investigation

Covid-19 has ushered in a new grammar of intimacy. Every physical interaction inspires a calculation of risk management. Consequential decisions are made over t... More