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.
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
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 has ushered in a new grammar of intimacy. Every physical interaction inspires a calculation of risk management. Consequential decisions are made over t... More
"Bigas Hindi Dahas": Covid-19 and State Violence
Fifteen days after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered a Luzon-wide “enhanced community quarantine” to curb the spread of Covid-19, the residents of Si... More
Communion in Quarantine: How Liturgical Christian Churches Celebrated Easter
Good Friday liturgical services in the Armenian Apostolic Church—under normal circumstances—include a grand procession carrying a wooden recreation of the Tomb ... More
Corona Chronotopes
A viral video produced by a collective of filmmakers based in Milan shows Italians recording messages to their selves of ten days ago. The video illustrates the... More
Hope and History in South Africa’s Pandemic
April 10, 2020. Lockdown Day 15. A few nights ago, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced a further two weeks of lockdown, on top of the three we are... More
They Sow the Wind and Reap the Whirlwind (Covid Doubt in St. Petersburg)
I’m in Russia, vacationing like everyone else: on March 25, 2020, President Putin gave most people a week off work, and then another three weeks. It’s sort of l... More
Lonely Death in Pandemic Times
As anthropologists who research and write about death and trauma, we are troubled by accounts of pandemic-related deaths that fail to account for the intimacies... More
The Comfort of Things? A Meditation from Coronaland
About a decade ago, Daniel Miller (2008) published an ethnography of objects in a London neighborhood, entitling it The Comfort of Things. I leafed through it (... More