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.
An Anthropogenic Table of Elements
In the 150 years since its construction by the Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev, the periodic table of chemical elements has become both a ubiquitous and iconic... More
Embodied Ecologies
The materiality of human bodies at the smallest scales—genes, microbes, chemicals, hormones—is increasingly being understood as both responsive to broader envir... More
Temporary Possession
Around the world, experiences of ownership are turning toward temporary and contingent forms of possession. This Theorizing the Contemporary series explores tem... More
Behind the Migrant Caravan: Ethnographic Updates from Central America
(Con traducción al español)Central America is again in the news as a region in crisis. In October 2018, a group of migrants gathered in a bus station in San Ped... More
Speculative Anthropologies
At the intersection of speculative fiction and anthropology, we find a sense of epistemological humility about the kind of worlds we could or should inhabit. ... More
Archiving Postcolonial Modernity: The Foreign Service Family Slide Show
My father worked for the Indian Foreign Service from 1955 to 1982. During this period our nuclear family lived in several countries across Africa, South America... More
Navigating the Anarchy of Debris: Observing the Loss of Material Sovereignty
This essay is an immersive exploration of an abandoned industrial site, which addresses the degeneration of materials and the imagery of ruination. By visually ... More
Time of Monsters
In her contribution to the 2016 Hot Spots series on liberalism’s contemporary crisis, Andrea Muehlebach aptly and beautifully rendered our current political s... More
From Reciprocity to Relationality: Anthropological Possibilities
Recently, the discipline of anthropology has faced much-needed critique from a chorus of young and dynamic scholars. These critiques emerged in the face of the ... More
The Naturalization of Work
The naturalization of work usually refers to social processes that make a life underpinned by labor seem unquestionable, inevitable, and even desirable. This ki... More