The Emic - Anthropological stories from the field

Roanne van Voorst, PhD. Dr. Anthropologist

Join anthropologist Roanne van Voorst and her guests during fieldwork in Inuit villages in Greenland, poor riverbank-settlements in Indonesia, or the buzzling city of Amsterdam. While she shares the wisest lessons that she learned in the field - often from unexpected teachers -, you will hear the sounds that surround her: chirping snow, a street musician playing the guitar, singing birds, or a noisy traffic road. In anthropology, the 'emic' perspective means the insider's perspective. During fieldwork, anthropologists try to understand the perspective of the people who live within a specific group, or subculture in society. Want to learn more about Roannes' fieldwork, see her notes, photos or drawings from the field? Then subscibe to her monthly letters at www.anthropologyofthefuture.com/the-emic The podcast includes guest episodes from fellow anthropologists, or other listeners: if you want to share your 'emic' moment (see this file: https://anthropologyofthefuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Emic-radioplay-instructions.pdf for an explanation), you may send Roanne a 5 minute audio recording of your story - the most beautiful ones are produced by Roanne and her team into a radioplay, where we will add sounds to your voice!

  1. 12 AUG

    17: Tim Ingold on seeing like a reindeer

    In the autumn of 1971,  when he just turned 23 years old, Tim was living in a tiny wooden cabin on the shores of lake Rautaperajärvi, in the far northeastern corner of Finnish Lapland. He was a few months into his doctoral fieldwork with the Skolt Sámi people. The Skolts had been resettled in this remote area following the loss of their homeland to the then Soviet Union in the aftermath of the Second World War. Tim's plan had been to study the micropolitics of their situation as a minority within a minority, but he quickly discovered that for the people themselves, this took second place to the much more pressing concerns with how to get by, from one day to the next, within an unpromising environment. And nothing bothered people more, he found, than an issue around reindeer pastures. This is where the real politics lay.   Tim Ingold is a British social anthropologist, currently Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He was educated at Leighton Park School and Cambridge University. He is a fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His bibliography includes: The Perception of the Environment (2000), Lines (2007), Being Alive (2011), Making (2013) The Life of Lines (2015), Anthropology and/as Education (2017), Anthropology: Why it Matters (2018) and Correspondences (2021).   If you want to receive additional photos from the field, personal drawings and behind-the-screens information accompanying the episodes of The Emic, subscribe to Roanne's free monthly email: www.anthropologyofthefuture.com/the-emic

    8 min
  2. 10 JUN

    15: Giovanna Parmigiani on paganism, magical cards and sisterhood

    In this episode, Giovanna talks about a moment in her fieldwork that she returns to often. A quiet moment shared with women that would become her sisters. A moment where something shifted for her.     Giovanna Parmigiani is an anthropologist of religion and magic, a scholar of Contemporary Paganisms, the co-chair of the Contemporary Pagan Studies Unit at the American Academy of Religion, and a founding co-convenor of the Network for the Anthropology of History at the European Association of Social Anthropologists. Her work is firmly grounded in ethnographic and auto-ethnographic practices, and her main focus of interest is the relationship between religion, politics, and gender.   Her first monograph, Feminism, Violence and Representation in Modern Italy: We Are Witnesses, Not Victims (Indiana University Press, 2019) dealt with violence against women. Her second, The Spider Dance: Tradition, Time, and Healing in Southern Italy (Equinox Publishing, 2024), deals with contemporary pagan women and healing. She writes about conspirituality and conspiracy theories and has a forthcoming book on this topic, Lived Conspirituality: Researching Conspiracy Theories and Alternative Spiritualities (Routledge).   Parmigiani is the host of the Gnoseologies series at the CSWR. At HDS, she teaches courses on contemporary paganisms; earth-based religions; New Age spiritualities; the anthropology of magic, religion, and healing; and religion, materiality, and the senses.   If you want to receive additional photos from the field, personal drawings and behind-the-screens information accompanying the episodes of The Emic, subscribe to Roanne's free monthly email: www.anthropologyofthefuture.com/the-emic

    5 min
  3. 31-07-2024

    10: Beatrice Bonami on Invisible Technology and Birds in the Brazilian Amazon

    When the Brazilian educator and anthropologist Beatrice Bonami traveled to the Amazon to study how Indigenous and local peoples perceived the future and technology, including digitization of daily life and privacy issues, she soon realized she would have to adapt her usual working methods: how could she ever conduct research on digital privacy, in a community where people share their houses with everyone? During her workshops, people kept drawing a mystical, anthropomorphic bird - what did thát have to do with technology? She would soon find out.  Beatrice Bonami is a Brazilian author, educator, social researcher, and innovator. She has extensive multi-country experience in a variety of multicultural settings, including government, educational environments, and indigenous territories. Governmental advisor, researcher and teacher, Dr. Bonami is specialist in tech decolonization, digital education, transformation, and ethics in cutting-edge innovation. Holding a Ph.D. in Education Innovation and International Development from the University of São Paulo [Brazil], University College London [United Kingdom], and Universita La Sapienza di Roma [Italy], her expertise is rooted in a global perspective. As a Youth Ambassador with UNESCO representing Latin American countries, she has actively worked with UNDP, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization [WHO]. Currently, Dr. Bonami is a teacher and Senior Researcher [Universität Tübingen], having secured research grants with the German Government and the German Research Foundation. Her ongoing project "Framework for Decolonizing Transformation in Non-Western and Southern Innovation and Technology [TnWiST]," underscores her commitment to advancing non-Western and Southern knowledge and fostering positive change in technology development and appropriation on a global scale.

    6 min

Info

Join anthropologist Roanne van Voorst and her guests during fieldwork in Inuit villages in Greenland, poor riverbank-settlements in Indonesia, or the buzzling city of Amsterdam. While she shares the wisest lessons that she learned in the field - often from unexpected teachers -, you will hear the sounds that surround her: chirping snow, a street musician playing the guitar, singing birds, or a noisy traffic road. In anthropology, the 'emic' perspective means the insider's perspective. During fieldwork, anthropologists try to understand the perspective of the people who live within a specific group, or subculture in society. Want to learn more about Roannes' fieldwork, see her notes, photos or drawings from the field? Then subscibe to her monthly letters at www.anthropologyofthefuture.com/the-emic The podcast includes guest episodes from fellow anthropologists, or other listeners: if you want to share your 'emic' moment (see this file: https://anthropologyofthefuture.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Emic-radioplay-instructions.pdf for an explanation), you may send Roanne a 5 minute audio recording of your story - the most beautiful ones are produced by Roanne and her team into a radioplay, where we will add sounds to your voice!