Ethnographic Imagination Basel

Basel Social Anthropology
  • 0.0 (0)
  • SOCIAL SCIENCES

Ethnographic Imagination Basel (EIB) – a series on reimagining the world from the mundane – is produced by the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. It is a research, educational, and public engagement initiative exploring innovative forms of political imagination through ethnographic practice. The podcast promotes ethnography not only as a tool of scholarly research but also as a mode of imagination available to all, a means for pursuing deeper intercultural, contextual understanding and more ethical ways of being in the world.

  1. 27/11/2025

    On Display - with Friedrich von Bose

    How does the act of displaying items allow us to reassess our connection to the past and guide us towards new futures? In this episode, we will explore the concept of display, which includes the showcasing of images, objects, ideas, and bodies in museums and beyond. Our guest is Dr. Friedrich von Bose, Director of the Museum der Kulturen Basel, who merges imaginative approaches with scholarly research and curatorial practice. His academic and curatorial work has primarily focused on the political implications of display concerning colonialism, racism, and the future of anthropology museums. As a cultural anthropologist and former curator at the Humboldt Forum, von Bose has also served as a Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the Institute of Social Anthropology and Empirical Cultural Studies at the University of Zurich, concentrating on the History and Theory of Museum Ethics since 2023. Before this, he oversaw research and exhibitions at the three ethnological museums of the State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony (State Art Collections Dresden): the Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig, the Museum of Ethnology Dresden, and the Ethnology Museum Herrnhut, where he was responsible for the long-term strategic development of research and exhibition programs.  von Bose’s publications include: Researching Colonial Provenances. Final Report of the Project “Provenance of Colonial-Era Collections from Togo in the Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden and the GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig”, (2024) “Concerning curatorial practice in ethnological museums. An epistemology of postcolonial debate” in: Conal McCarthy, Philipp Schorch (Eds.): Curatopia. Museums and the future of curatorship (2019) Das Humboldt-Forum. Eine Ethnografie seiner Planung  (2016)  “The making of Berlin‘s Humboldt-Forum. Negotiating history and the cultural politics of place” (2013) Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.

    34 min

  2. 15/10/2025

    On Extractivism - with Mark Goodale

    In this episode On Extractivism, the conversation centres on how the unpredictability of extractive economies opens and forecloses various futures, a global market premised on the extraction of natural resources and raw materials. Our guest is Mark Goodale, professor of cultural and social anthropology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland whose work explores lithium extraction, new global green economies, and the long histories of extractivism in South America. His research encompasses law, human rights, politics, ideology, and long-term ethnographic studies in Bolivia, where his projects have examined government justice and recognition under Evo Morales' human rights activism. Goodale is the author of numerous books, such as Dilemmas of Modernity. Bolivian Encounters with Law and Liberalism (2008) Surrendering to Utopia. An Anthropology of Human Rights (2009), Anthropology and Law. A Critical Introduction (2017), A Revolution in Fragments. Traversing Scales of Justice, Ideology and Practice in Bolivia (2019) and Reinventing Human Rights (2022) This episode focuses on Extracting the Future. Lithium in an Era of Energy Transition (2025), Goodale`s most recent book. Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.

    30 min

  3. 29/09/2025

    On Plastics - with Brenda Chalfin

    How can plastic offer us an important window into today's epochal conundrum? This episode, On Plastics, looks at a historically salient material, ever so complexly entangled in our bodies and everyday life, with our guest Brenda Chalfin, whose ethnographic work explores plastic along with other material flows in the contemporary social life of urban Ghana.  Chalfin is a professor of anthropology at the University of Florida, where she has also held the position of director of the Centre for African Studies. Her research primarily investigates issues related to state formation, urban environments, material infrastructures, and political economies across West Africa. She has paid particular attention to the public life and governance of material flows from plastics to human waste to water, offshore oil and indigenous commodities. Chalfin is the author of numerous articles and the author of Shea Butter Republic (2004), Neoliberal Frontiers. An Ethnography of Sovereignty in West Africa (2010) and Waste Works. Vital Politics in Urban Ghana (2023). Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.

    29 min

  4. 18/08/2025

    On Immortality - with Abou Farman

    What does the desire to overcome death and preserve oneself for the far future tell us about the world in which we live? Immortality, ways to overcome death in the present, as imagined through new secular technologies, is what we discuss in this episode with our guest, Abu Farman, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the New School for Social Research in New York. His scholarly work explores how recent investments in immortality have generated new understandings of the human. A large portion of his research and writings, focuses on secularization in relation to post-humanism, technology and aesthetics, and also more widely, questions of religion and secularism, science, dying, and indigenous autonomy. Among Farman`s publications is the book Clerks of the Passage (2012), an extended essay on movement migration. He has also authored numerous essays on topics as diverse as transhumanism, health, informatics, selves, cosmos and cosmologies, death and the infinite.  This episode is centered around his book On Not Dying. Secular Immortality in the Age of Technoscience (2020) is a fascinating study about secular technological investments in overcoming death in the American context.    Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.

    31 min

  5. 09/06/2025

    On Love - with Serena Owusua Dankwa

    How might thinking about love, against and beyond dominant representations help us understand our attachments differently? In this episode with Serena Owusua Dankwa, we discuss love, affective attachments and emotional entanglements as studied by anthropologists. Dankwa is Senior Lecturer of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel, and her research and writing focus on questions related to gender sexuality intimacy in West Africa and Europe. Her work has spun from a long-term ethnographic work with women who love other women in southern Ghana to questions of subjectivity and experience in contexts of feminist humanitarianism, especially as they focus on gender-based violence or sex trafficking in Switzerland, Mali, and Bosnia. The conversation focuses on her book, Knowing Women. Same-sex Intimacy Gender and Identity in Post-colonial Ghana (2021), a book that has received the prestigious Ruth Benedict award and the Elliott Skinner award from the American Anthropological Association.    Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) incollaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel

    34 min

  6. 25/04/2025

    On Sensing - with David Howes

    How does attending to and engaging our senses reveal our world otherwise? Our guest on this episode, On Sensing is David Howes, professor of anthropology and co-director of the Centre for Sensory Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law at McGill University.  Howes is recognized as one of the leading figures in the anthropology of the senses and a theorist within the interdisciplinary field of sensory studies. His research and teaching cover fields such as the anthropology of the senses, sensory ethnography consumption, material culture, art and aesthetics, law and legal anthropology. This conversation focuses on two of his monographs, Sensual Relations Engaging the Senses in Culture and Social Theory (2003) and Sensorial Investigations. A History of the Senses in Anthropology, Psychology and Law  (2023), which explore the engagement of perception across different temporal and spatial contexts.   He is the author of numerous books including monographs such as Ways of Sensing Understanding the Senses in Society (2014), co-authored with Constance Classen and The Sensory Studies Manifesto: Tracking the Sensorial Revolution in the Arts and Human Sciences (2022) Sensorium: Contextualizing the Senses and Cognition in History and Across Cultures(2024).  Howes is also editor of numerous essay collections on the senses, including The Empire of the Senses.The Sensual Culture Reader (2005) and The Sixth Sense Reader (2009).    Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel

    33 min

  7. 03/03/2025

    On the Devil - with Birgit Meyer

    What do depictions of the devil reveal about modernity, late capitalism and the world at large? In this episode with Birgit Meyer, professor of religious studies at Utrecht University, we talk about the devil in images and imaginaries of evil from religious cultures to the culture of consumption. Meyer is a cultural anthropologist whose scholarly work centres on the forces of darkness in relation to new religious movements, film media, and the senses. Her research encompasses the increasing prominence of global Pentecostalism and the complex relationship between religion and popular culture, heritage, media, and the public sphere. She is widely recognized in anthropology and African Studies for her contributions to understanding Pentecostalism and late capitalism in post-colonial West Africa, with a particular focus on Ghana. Meyer has led numerous collaborative projects and has published edited and co-edited essay collections, including Magic and Modernity Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment (2003), Religion Media and the Public Sphere (2005), and Aesthetic Formations. Media, Religion, and the Senses (2009), Sense and Essence. Heritage and Cultural Production of the Real (2018). This episode focuses on two monographs: Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana  (1999), and Sensational Movies: Video Vision and Christianity in Ghana (2015).   Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel

    34 min

  8. 31/10/2024

    On Erotics - with Anima Adjepong

    Anima Adjepong, Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati, joins us as a guest in this episode, On Erotics. The discussion begins with the concept of the erotic as a form of sensual and aesthetic relationality that challenges traditional notions of objectivity and rationality.  Adjepong's scholarly work has explored the intersections of erotics with gender, sexuality, race, class, and knowledge production while also addressing themes of belonging, freedom, and the complexities of class, race, and transnationalism in both Ghana and the United States. The dialogue explores how the erotic can provide ways to reimagine our engagement with an understanding of the world.      Adjepong is author of the book Afropolitan Projects: Redefining Blackness, Sexualities, and Culture from Houston to Accra (2021), which presents an ethnographic examination of how Ghanaians living abroad utilize African imaginaries to shape their identities. This work highlights a unique form of cosmopolitanism that intricately weaves racial identities within the broader context of gender, sexuality, and religion. Additional contributions include articles and chapters with titles such as "Invading Ethnography: A Queer of Colour Reflexive Practice"(2019), “Whiteness Engendered Violence on the Rugby Pitch" (2021), and "Women's Football and Gendered Nationalism in Ghana" (2022). This episode emphasizes in particular their 2019 essay, “Erotic Ethnography, Sex Spirituality, and Embodiment in Qualitative Research.”     Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.

    33 min
See All (22)

About

Ethnographic Imagination Basel (EIB) – a series on reimagining the world from the mundane – is produced by the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. It is a research, educational, and public engagement initiative exploring innovative forms of political imagination through ethnographic practice. The podcast promotes ethnography not only as a tool of scholarly research but also as a mode of imagination available to all, a means for pursuing deeper intercultural, contextual understanding and more ethical ways of being in the world.

Information

  • Creator
    Basel Social Anthropology
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodes
    22
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Basel Social Anthropology
  • Show Website
    Ethnographic Imagination Basel