Author Archives: Jean-Paul Rojas

Nearly a decade’s worth of ethnographic fieldwork led to production of Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka by Mythri Jegathesan (2019). Given that this week’s theme is on “Finding and Showing Patterns in your Research”, I find it inspiring how … Continue reading →

Admittedly, I’ve straddled the world of animal welfare/rescue in several different ways since high school. I’ve served as a volunteer for two separate dog and cat animal shelters in Miami, interacted with and cared for rats, fish, turtles, geckos, birds, and … Continue reading →

This week, we read the chapters “Opening Ceremony” and “Altars-puntos” of Queer Freedom : Black Sovereignty (2020) by Dominican American Anthropologist Ana-Maurine Lara. More than an ethnography, this piece serves as a ceremonial ofrenda to the complex, unclear : unknowing, intersecting, time-space oriented, physical-social, … Continue reading →

As we continue reading several of the bestselling ethnographies of the twenty-first century, I can’t help but continue to think about some of the recurring themes and trends these ethnographies have in common. For instance, violence. This week’s The Pastoral Clinic: … Continue reading →

Having read “Introduction: PAC as Reproductive Governance” and Chapter 3 “‘We Wear White Coats, Not Uniforms’: Abortion Surveillance in Hospitals” in Siri Suh’s (2021) Dying to Count: Post-abortion Care and Global Reproductive Health Politics in Senegal I find myself very appreciative of … Continue reading →

Delivering Health: Midwifery and Development in Mexico takes a consciously focused approach at examining how in a state of “entrenched social inequalities, structural failures, and legacies of misogyny and colonialism”, (Dixon 2020: 25) midwives take diverse yet interconnected approaches at addressing … Continue reading →

Liberal academic institutions frequently employ terms such as people of color (POC) in an attempt to acknowledge the structural racism, violence, and oppression towards racialized, ethnicized, and minoritized non-white populations. Yet, such terms and discourse dilutes the innately anti-black racism … Continue reading →

In Exceptional Violence, Thomas actively confronts and advocates for the relevance of culture to “to demonstrate that violence generally is not a cultural phenomenon but an effect of class formation, a process that is immanently racialized and gendered” (2011: 4). … Continue reading →

In Chapters 2 and 3, Murchison (2010) provides a thoughtful overview of how the object of ethnographic study is shaped by first identifying research “problems” or questions then developing a research design that effectively addresses these problems/questions given the accessibility and … Continue reading →

Dating the start of the anthropocene to “the advent of modern capitalism” (Tsing 2015: 19) serves as a thought-provoking framework for situating the livelihood of commercial mushroom picking. By positioning the matsutake as both a post-industrial luxury of high economic … Continue reading →