PODCAST
Articles published on our platform are read out loud and turned into podcasts. We also record interviews with our collaborators and contributors. You can find all our audio content here.
AnthroArt
AnthroArt – Action for People and Planet is an initiative of three applied anthropology organisations – Antropedia, Namla and Ambigrama – that aims to create an international platform for connecting anthropology and art, with the purpose of deepening awareness about inequality and our relation with the environment and driving change across three geographies: Romania, The Netherlands and Portugal, as well as beyond.
’Are you biased?’: the complexity of researching & advising on inclusion in the public eye – Rosalie Post
In this paper, I ponder a research project that I was a part of, during my employment at a research consultancy. I want to use it as a case study, to raise some ethical questions I have no definite answers to: how do we do research on diversity & inclusion, particularly for public policy, and how do we do it in an ethical way? And what are the best/right policy choices? When it comes to the positionality of a research consultant and policy advisor in housing (this was my job title), how could I have ever known for sure if my advice was any good?
The paper dives into a project I did a few years ago where we were asked to do research on the possibility of discrimination among a student population who choose their own house mates from the candidates. The housing is cheap and good quality and the waitlist for it is long. The case highlights the fickle and emotional nature of the topic of housing, with insiders and outsiders and a multitude of perspectives. I would like to even ask: Is dividing a scarce resource ever ethical? And if we conclude that it’s not, and decisions still have to be made in the public sphere, what do we do then?
Article by Rosalie Post, illulstrated by Margherita Miani, read by Rosalie Post
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In this paper, I ponder a research project that I was a part of, during my employment at a research consultancy. I want to use it as a case study, to raise some ethical questions I have no definite answers to: how do we do research on diversity & inclusion, particularly for public policy, and how do we do it in an ethical way? And what are the best/right policy choices? When it comes to the positionality of a research consultant and policy advisor in housing (this was my job title), how could I have ever known for sure if [...]
January 29, 2024
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Showing our vulnerabilities is hard. However, not doing so will undeniably compromise our possibility to connect with others. In this essay, I share my experience in a week’s research in a community home located in Amsterdam. The story that happens in De Meevaart is a gateway to talk about emotions and about the power that having resources and company to experience emotions can have for social inclusion. Article by Luiza Fonini, illustrated by Studio Sonsuz, read by Luiza Fonini https://theanthro.art/working-out-inclusivity-through-emotions-the-power-of-vulnerability-luiza-fonini-illustration-by-studio-sonsuz/ [...]
January 29, 2024
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As an anthropologist I believed that ‘culture’ is what makes humans exceptional compared to other living beings. Research on social learning and cultural traits among animals, however, shows that ‘human abilities’ are found among animals as well. It states that humans and animals are more alike than different. These findings invite us to learn to understand animals’ intelligence through the setting of their ecology, instead of from the human point of view. But are humans capable of empathizing with animals in that way? It is an instinct of human evolution to attribute human-like traits and behaviors to animals. This tendency [...]
January 29, 2024
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What happens when an etic category or label like “first-generation students” enters public discourse? In the Netherlands, public discussions of first-generation or first-in-family students and their predicaments have arisen in recent years. But few people grow up thinking of themselves in those terms. Not a common identity-marker, the concept is introduced in other moments, like in news items or in participatory research projects. But to what effect? And does it stigmatize or help? Article by Lieve de Coninck, illustrated by Eline Veldhuisen, read by Rosalie Post https://theanthro.art/first-generation-student-a-helpful-or-stigmatising-label-in-dutch-student-life-lieve-de-coninck-illustration-by-eline-veldhuisen/ [...]
January 29, 2024
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In the West of Amsterdam there is an area that used to be occupied by light industry, but which since has been designated as a new area for housing development. Surrounding the area is a working-class neighbourhood with homes built in the first half of the 20th century. Rather than giving corporate developers free range, the municipality has also given space to citizen initiatives and community development. One project to come out of that is a climate neutral neighbourhood that aims at self-sufficiency. This essay is about in- and exclusion dynamics in sustainable innovation trajectories. As we will show, class [...]
January 29, 2024
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We should question the belief that women’s less ideal positions at work compared to men, are their individual duty to undo. This belief encourages women to focus on self-improvement, and ignore and reduce the differences between men and women when it comes to equal payment, leadership positions, professional behavior, maternity leave and other work-related matters. However, when approaching gender inequality at work through cultural structures and established institutions, it seems to boost men’s thriving over women’s. To truly solve the gender gap at work, we should distance ourselves from the unfair notion that primarily individual women should solve gender inequality [...]
January 29, 2024
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We all care about the environment, one way or another. The news in recent decades about the state of the Planet has probably made us more careful about our actions, because we care about nature and what we pass on to future generations. Also, in addition to the general public, specialists in the natural sciences initiate numerous environmental protection programs. All these efforts and good intentions can sometimes be misdirected in the absence of a deep understanding of the situation on the ground. Environmental anthropology deals with the way human communities relate to the environment and use the natural resources. [...]
January 29, 2024
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My experiences with anthropological research in Ghana and Cameroon made me aware of the differences between doing such research ‘there’ and ‘here’, between being a visitor in another country and being a researcher in my own society.Illustration by Studio Sonsuzhttps://theanthro.art/investigative-or-embedded-research-fieldwork-experiences-in-ghana-and-cameroon-as-lessons-for-anthropology-at-home-sjaak-van-der-geest-illustration-by-studio-sonsuz/ [...]
July 29, 2023
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Understanding the causes of persistent inequality between different segments of a society is at the core of social science. This article explores the issue of exclusion by examining various mechanisms of durable inequality within Romanian society, with a specific focus on the Roma population. Throughout history, the Roma have experienced institutionalized exclusion, including slavery, which this text refers to as “categorical exclusion”. Even though these explicit forms of exclusion have been abolished, there is still evidence of “social exclusion” as a continuation of earlier institutionalized servitude. To understand and address the mechanisms that perpetuate inequality, it is crucial to critically [...]
July 29, 2023
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It is well known that tuberculosis (TB) damages the physical body. Less known is the fact that the body is frequently damaged by one or more of the many side effects of TB drugs. What is even less recognized, including among doctors, is that this multi-layered damage often lasts long after a person is cured and may be irreversible. In this article I will discuss hearing loss and other sequelae (aftereffects of a disease or injury) caused by tuberculosis and its treatment and experienced by people in Romania. I argue that these harms change TB survivors’ sense of self, and [...]
July 29, 2023
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In this reflective paper, I delve into the moral evaluation process carried out by emergency department (ED) triage workers in Romania as they grapple with the rising demand for emergency care. Adopting a symbolic interactionist approach, I scrutinize how triage staff assess patients’ entitlement to and deservingness of care, with a focus on the intricate dynamics of this assessment process. My long-term fieldwork at the EDs of two public hospitals exposed that moral evaluation arises from the pragmatic necessity of dissuading patients from seeking ED services for issues that could be addressed by primary care providers. Since current policies prevent [...]
July 29, 2023
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How does intra-European transnational labor migration in agriculture change the material and status conditions of the most underprivileged groups living in the European peripheries from which this labor originates? How do the dominant groups react? While a rich literature looks at transnational labor migration from Eastern Europe to Western Europe, there is still room for research on the ethic relations that structure these flows as well as on the material effects that it has in communities of extreme marginality such as that of the rural Roma. Illustration by Andra Badeahttps://theanthro.art/roma-seasonal-migration-and-its-effects-in-romanian-rural-communities-valer-simion-cosma/ [...]
July 29, 2023
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“I haven’t held you in my arms, but I feel you. I haven’t talked with you, but I hear you. I haven’t met you, but I love you. Your absence is like the sky: present everywhere.” In Romania, women who unexpectedly lose a fetus or newborn baby with whom they had imagined a life-long bond often experience deeply-felt emptiness and loneliness. Their experience is made worse by the silence and misrecognition they encounter in their social surroundings. This article describes women’s painful interactions with the medical system, the Orthodox Church and the people in their personal networks. It shows not [...]
July 29, 2023
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Transparency and accountability are fundamental for modern democracies but grassroots governance depends upon social and cultural systems of knowledge which often raise serious barriers to information and political participation. Ethnographic fieldwork in a Romanian village shows how a culture of secrecy and deception permeates social interactions from everyday life to the workings of local politicians and administrators. Information about corruption and abuse of power becomes hidden and distorted when political leaders behave just like everyone else in the village: they protect shady deals and patronage using the epistemic advantage offered by technocratic knowledge and the haze of rumours and gossip.Illustration [...]
July 29, 2023
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Most ethnographic research projects are conducted during the day. But how suitable is such a work schedule in global cities that operate twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, or where potential interlocutors work during the night? Researching at night, as I found out, is not very suitable. So for some time now, but especially while researching the labour opportunities of migrant manual workers in London, I have been developing a set of methods for doing ethnographic research during the night. I started from classic ethnographic methods, such as participatory observation and free or semi-structured conversation and then used [...]
March 21, 2023
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The desire to have a lighter skin color and the efforts to achieve it are rarely just purely individual choices based on personal style and preferences. Rather the ideal(ized) tones of women’s skin (in Bali and elsewhere) hint at social hierarchies and structures created through and perpetuated by skin color, both in the colonial past and nowadays. In this piece, I present the costs that young women in Bali pay to feel like meaningful beings in a global cultural context where the skin color they’re born with is frequently judged as “dirty” or associated with “backwardness.” Next, looking at my [...]
March 21, 2023
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Ami and Izabela are friends. One is an ethnic Romanian and a PhD candidate in anthropology, the other, thirteen years her junior, is an ethnic Roma and an undergraduate student. Their friendship took off when Ami was doing her field research about kinship among Roma. Izabela was fresh out of high school at the time; she taught Ami the Romani language and answered all her questions about Roma (even the silly ones). While she was explaining the world she had been raised in, with its practices and values, to the researcher that had moved in with her family, Izabela started [...]
March 21, 2023
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In the last greater than thirty years, the work lives of blue-collar people in Galați, Romania has fundamentally changed. After decades of state-guaranteed employment, many starting in the 1990s were forced into early retirement or made redundant when industrial units were privatized and restructured or closed entirely. Local options for training and re-employment in the industrial sector were few, forcing many to either migrate outside Romania for work, or accept positions in the city with many disadvantages, including low wages, limited benefits, rigid work schedules and inferior working conditions. Embracing an approach applied by Rothstein during 40 years of study [...]
March 21, 2023
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The segregation and poverty of the Roma have been debated for the last thirty years in Romania and some other Eastern European countries. Academic research was conducted to better understand the conditions of Roma discrimination, poverty, and segregation, while applied programs were designed and implemented to improve their standing in the society. Despite the existing debates, applied projects, and governmental programs, the overall situation of the people living in segregated Roma “ghettos” has largely remained unchanged, with people living in poor conditions, being often illiterate, discriminated against, and unemployed. Many of these people, however, got tired of waiting for the [...]
March 21, 2023
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Political ecology examines the relations between communities and the environment, with a focus on the postcolonial world. Reports about human-nature interactions in geographically exotic contexts have fascinated western audiences from the very beginning. Political ecology brings an important critical dimension connected to how postcolonial politics generates social and ecological crises. Extrapolating and adapting political ecology outside the Global South is particularly challenging. The ways in which political power, economic interests, social hierarchies, as well as culture or ideologies contribute to the construction of the environment remain less discussed in Eastern Europe. The political ecology of the European periphery points to [...]
March 21, 2023
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This article invites the reader to follow seemingly unrelated paths towards the same goal: making sense of what it means to be human in a world that casually blends discourses on nature, technology, and biology having at their centre the ideas of progress, optimization, and their capitalization. Within this type of current thinking, the challenges posed by climate change could be addressed technologically, the dream of ecological capitalism could continue ad infinitum, and Artificial Intelligence would be instrumental in fulfilling this promise. A closer look at the politics of optimization within and outside managerial perspectives may teach us otherwise: one [...]
March 21, 2023
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At the end of a frustrating work duty, I asked Iosif, the foreman of a Romanian rail repair crew, what would have happened had his team not managed to mend the broken suspension of a cargo wagon. A routine task, replacing the part had turned into a taxing six-hour long toil: the workers had to use scavenged parts, makeshift tools and improvised fixes that one does not learn from any technical handbook. “There’s no such thing as ‘can’t’ in the Romanian Railroads!” he replied. His answer, equally fatalistic and boastful, eloquently captured the plight of state-run rails in Romania, and, [...]
March 21, 2023
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From the late 1700s to 2016, when it became an urban nature park, Văcărești Pit was a mixture of wastelands and modernization projects on the southern fringes of Bucharest. While always integrated in the productive and power circuits of the city, the area was also a spatial and temporal gap: created by invoking, dismantling, and re-appropriating parts of the past, as well as imagining different futures[1]. Around Văcărești Pit, real estate developers, people displaced from their homes, ecologists, politicians, visitors, passers-by, scientists, hopes, fears, fantasies, “casino capitalism,”[2] wild animals, and plants have gathered from all over the city. All these [...]
March 21, 2023
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Nowadays fossil-based plastics are ubiquitous. They are in our clothes, buildings, cars, and roads. Accumulations of very small pieces of plastics, called micro-plastics and nano-plastics, are present everywhere in nature and various organisms, including humans, with effects whose gravity we are only now beginning to understand. In addition, fossil-based plastics are almost indestructible, being considered the “new immortals,” next to other man-made materials such as cement or radioactive waste. Then, in our “plasticized” world, how do we relate to plastics and how do we learn to approach its dangerous and almost eternal presence? These are some of the questions of [...]
March 21, 2023
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This text inventories some of the ecological consequences of city lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic and discusses critically their uneven distribution and ways in which social groups experienced them. The discussion includes a critical approach to extractive capitalism, which relies on continuous exploitation of natural resources and reproduction of social inequalities. Read by actor Daniel Popa , with an illustration by CO+LOR Constantin Cojocaru și Loreta Isachttps://theanthro.art/the-political-ecology-of-locked-down-cities-lucian-vesalon/ [...]
March 21, 2023
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