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.
Im/migration in the Trump Era
One year into the Trump presidency, when our core values of multiculturalism, cross-cultural understanding, international diversity, and racial inclusion are un... More
Activist Objects: The Materiality and Meaning of Human Remains in Postconflict Peru
In this essay, I explore an event that inspired my interest in the performative aspects of making political claims. The images included here were made at the Ap... More
Our Lives with Electric Things
Our lives with electric things are positively charged with meaning. Our bodies pulse with electrical activity. The electric appliances, devices, and technologie... More
Demonetization: Critical Responses to India’s Cash(/less) Experiment
On November 8, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi demonetized 86 percent of the cash circulating in India. While citizens were allowed to deposit and exchange n... More
Collaborative Analytics
This Theorizing the Contemporary series on collaborative analytics emerged from a workshop held at the Center for Ethnography at the University of California, I... More
Evil Infrastructures
Can an infrastructure be evil? The short pieces in this Theorizing the Contemporary series, which were originally commissioned for the 2016 Society for Social S... More
Cuba as Dreamworld and Catastrophe
This Hot Spots series attempts to interrogate how Cuba is interpellated by diverse audiences to think with and about the complexities and paradoxes of everyday,... More
The Rise of Trumpism
The rise of Donald Trump caught many off-guard. What happened? And what comes next? At least one thing is clear: stark divides are being exposed in social order... More
Standing Rock, #NoDAPL, and Mni Wiconi
Thousands of Water Protectors from more than three hundred Native nations, as well as allied supporters from a range of social movements, gathered at the Standi... More
Ryzyka: A Curated Conversation
I walked into the director’s office of the cultural center in the village of Severnoye—a settlement that was recently renovated with the support of a regional p... More