Loves me, loves me not

The Balkan region is known for its historical climate of turbulent social relations; thus, public spaces that consecrate shared experiences of grief and loss come as no surprise. One such space, however, has experienced astonishing growth in its fame and popularity, not just as a renowned cultural landmark, but as a significant Croatian cultural export. The Museum of Broken Relationships is filled with unremarkable everyday objects donated by lovers who associate them with their past relationships. The value of these objects is not necessarily utilitarian, or aesthetic, but symbolic: they represent the emotions of remorse and pain elicited by breakups. This paper is an account of the objects, stories, and narratives found in the Museum of Broken Relationships. It considers the Museum a lens through which people can scrutinize the meaning of love in their everyday lives and consequently re-shape their identities. It looks into the Museum’s transformative potency as a spiritual and sacred space that offers hope in times of despair, fosters disorientation and chaos, and offers visitors an opportunity to confirm or reject their previous perspectives on love.

An Islander’s notes

Lazarus is a Cuban street musician living in Athens, Greece. This article tracks both his life history and his encounter with the author who was researching busking in the city. It is a study at the confluence of art and anthropology, an exploration of ethno-biography as a mode of representation, and a reflection on ethnographic fieldwork.

A Guide for Graduate Students

This paper will explore the challenges graduate students may encounter when working with socially vulnerable groups in the field. It is written from the perspective of a current graduate student and draws on her ethnographic experiences in Nairobi Province, Kenya, to provide some modest advice to other researchers. Particular attention is paid to some of the more common challenges students may encounter in the field working with vulnerable groups such as research design, ethical considerations, and participant recruitment and retention. This article concludes with a framework through which to study these groups.

Body, Nature, and Society: neonatal resuscitation [En]

Modern medicine questions the link between nature, society, and body through the development of the medical technology and the increase of life expectancy. Based on anthropological and sociological resources, this paper will try to unpack the Western vision of an ill body and the treatments that are established in response. This critical reflection on neonatal resuscitation will lead me to propose the need to re-evaluate such system. I will use a transcultural approach when analyzing the care that is given to newborns presenting a critical vital prognostic, while drawing specifically on French-based research. In its attempt to postpone death, biomedicine has allowed for humans to challenge nature and its inexorable processes, and defy the physiological laws. However, what is the price for this progress? In order to tackle these sensitive issues, it is important to leave our judgements behind and to study our therapeutic practices with a new perspective. La médecine moderne redéfini le lien entre nature, société, et corps au travers de l’essor des diverses technologies et par le prolongement de la vie. S’appuyant sur des références anthropologiques, sociologiques mais également éthiques, cet article tentera de déconstruire la vision occidentale d’un corps diminué et l’ampleur des traitements mis en place. Cette réflexion critique de la réanimation néonatale me permettra de proposer une réévaluation du système biomédical. J’utiliserai une approche transculturelle des soins adressés aux nourrissons présentant un pronostic vital critique, me concentrant sur la situation française. En s’efforçant d’éloigner la mort, la biomédecine a réussi à autonomiser le corps face à la nature, repoussant les lois physiologiques. Cependant, à quel prix s’effectue ce progrès? Pour appréhender ces questions sensibles, il importe de se départir de tout jugement et d’étudier d’un œil nouveau nos pratiques thérapeutiques.

A Critique of the ‘Paleo Diet’

Relatively little has been written about the social, economic and political dynamics and relationships that are engendered through Paleo culture. Examining the tensions within and between the ‘Paleo Diet’ principles and practices reveals the application of a technical solution to a structural problem: power dynamics created at an individual and group level by the Paleo culture reveals an emergent food classism rooted in socio-economic and racialized inequalities. Participation in and adherence to the Paleo lifestyle (or the inability to do so) creates particular types of social subjects and subjectivities based on the implicit moralization of food and consumption practices. While the Paleo Diet reflects millenarian apprehensions about the state of the contemporary world and concerns with global food quality and food insecurity, it is dependent on and exacerbates the socio-economic dynamics and marginalizing practices of a global food regime that it seeks to critique and abandon.

Ethnographic Memories

This article explores the similarities between a memoir and an ethnographic work. A memoir stands as an historical account written from personal knowledge. It is a form of writing that should resonate deeply within the heart of the anthropologist, whose very own specificity is to be, first and foremost, an ethnographer. That is, anthropologists are individuals full of (hi) stories, contingence, and subjectivity, who nevertheless struggle to bring “objective” accounts of what had happened under their eyes during fieldwork. I use this short comparative act as a jumping board to examine the politics of knowledge in the history of anthropological inquiry since the Enlightenment. More precisely, this comparison represents an opportunity to look at what is silently invested in the practices of ethnographical writing. In a brief discussion, I highlight the political implications that surround issues of knowledge production, expert voices, and translation amidst the discourse and narrative of anthropologists.

Eating politically

This paper aims to demonstrate how the organization Food Not Bombs fits into a history of counter cultural food movements, especially through focusing on multiple political aims and the building of community through mutual food production and consumption. Through speaking with members who fill multiple roles within the Ontario chapters of the movement, I explore how various issues around the commodification of food, meat consumption, and activism inform how these individuals conceptualize their ‘food activism.’

Facebook

Facebook keeps a keen eye on the inhabitants of the world by tracking users’ lives as they create profiles, connect with friends, and share pictures, videos, and statuses. Drawing from the work of Michel Foucault, Jeremy Bentham, David Miller, and Michael Welch, in this article I consider how Facebook exists in the world of technology as a modern day panopticon and argue that, by creating a platform on which users can instantly post and share their private lives with the public, Facebook blurs the lines between the private and public domains. Through a review of the workings and features of Facebook, I argue that the social network site is a virtual rendition of the penitentiary.

“Man Eaters”

The stuffed “man-eating” lions of Tsavo, Kenya are one of the Field Museum of Natural History’s most popular exhibits. However, in Kenyan museums the story of the lions is nowhere to be found. The narrative of these “man-eaters” (who ate over 100 people) and the heroism of the British soldier who killed the lions and rescued the railway seems to be primarily a Western construction. This story of the modernity of a British railroad held up by a savage wilderness intrigues audiences even today. I will discuss how that story plays into the popular belief of a wild, but conquerable, Africa.

The Landscape Imagination

This article considers how the research programmes of historical ecology and Amerindian perspectivism may be combined and intersected to better describe the cultural understandings, agencies, and intentionalities that underlie the processes of landscape transformation in Amazonia. These research programmes will be discussed and interrelated towards points of contiguity and conjuncture. Historical-ecological research investigates the changing relationships between human beings and their landscapes across time. In particular, it considers historical examples of landscape transformations, which are anthropogenically derived environmental changes. Amerindian-perspectivist research investigates the relationships between human beings and other species within the cosmologies of Amerindian societies in the Amazon and elsewhere. The combination of these currently regnant approaches to ethnographic research among Amerindian societies provides new opportunities to better theorize the cultural contexts for the anthropogenic actions that lead to landscape transformations in the past and present. It also provides new opportunities to better describe how cosmological understandings are grounded in the processes that articulate human beings with their broader ecological contexts. This article considers these intersections and calls for further research with Amerindian societies that combines historical ecology and Amerindian perspectivism.