“Hated Speech”: What Speaking Truth to Power Entails Preeti Raghunath Speech is central to the anthropologist’s concern --- it is what allows them to become an “insider” into a community, it is rooted in relationality, and is what allows one to transcend the liminal. Speech as an act of communication has been at the root of discriminatory practices…

Writing up a messy field? A personal account of an iterative process Priyanka Das Introduction This piece deals with some of my ruminations post doing fieldwork in the Bombay film industry for my ongoing doctoral degree. It echoes both ‘productive’ contemplation and ‘anxious’ over-thinking on the gratifications and regrets, that…

Online Spaces, Motivation, Autonomy: I started writing on my blog in August 2015, and I remember my sole drive being that I was denied the opportunity to publish in print. I believe this is one of the most important driving forces for people writing online, since you get to speak…

Storytellers, Saints, and Scoundrels — Kirin Narayan Killers of the Flower Moon — David Grann In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place — Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography — John Van Maanen Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer — Loic Wacqant

Data behaves in different ways — — the context, platform, economy, techno-social built, algorithmic structuration and archival potential determines data usage and outcome. In the broad spectrum of media anthropology, data is not only complex to fathom but also tricky to study. This deliberative note, raises questions around how data…

Television as a medium underwent profound changes at the beginning of the twenty-first century mainly due to the advent of the digital. The drive towards television digitalization began in India around 2001 when the prohibition on the reception and distribution of television signals in Ku band was lifted by the…

Prologue I have to admit that writing a blog on my ongoing work, should have been more welcoming to me than writing a research paper on the same. It is easier, right? Well, the issue is that the current pandemic has affected my research so deeply, that everything has sort…

Do you recall reading about the Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947? Do you realize how the focus was hardly ever on ‘Partition’ and more on ‘Independence’? …

Interviews and oral histories are important methodological tools for any ethnographic or anthropological study. In this post, we talk to Nandini Oza, the President of the Oral History Association of India to draw from her extensive experience of using this in her work to understand its myriad nuances. How do…