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.
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
Coming Clean
The first time I learned to wash my hands “properly” was nearly seven years ago: I was twenty-six.1 It was in an NGO in Delhi, India, one of the organizations i... More
Virtual Virulence and Metabolic Life
In early February 2020, three days after the first Covid-19 case was detected in India, a message went viral on social media. “BOILER CHICKEN HAS BEEN FOUND TO ... More
Seeing Indigenous Land Struggles in the “Multispecies Cloud” of Covid-19
Amid ongoing debates over where and how Covid-19 emerged, a “multispecies cloud” of zoonotic speculation has gathered over the wildlife markets of Wuhan in cent... More
Green Capitalism and Its Others
Whither the Earth? From the Amazon fires to the Arctic melt, School Strikes for Climate and an American Anthropological Association meeting focused on the topic... More
Bolsonaro and the Unmaking of Brazil
Recently Brazil became an example of the destructive forces of populist extreme-right-wing governments. Indigenous and traditional populations, the environment,... More
