My interest in Chiquita Canyon and the community of Val Verde grew out of my involvement with the community opposition to the landfill expansion in 2017. Now, as an anthropology student, my focus has shifted to how the sensory experience of Chiquita Canyon is interpreted, classified, regulated and elusive to regulatory agencies, community members and landfill operators and how these experiences come into conflict. Community members can use odor complaints filed through regulatory agencies to ...| Platypus
In a political and scientific landscape that is becoming ever more arid, tense, and hostile to the struggles for transformation and social justice, it is with great joy and enthusiasm that we present this series of four posts written by Brazilian feminist anthropologists and intended for academic readers specializing in STS, as well as for readers in broader feminist networks and activist/grassroots communities.| Platypus
On Monday, April 14th, my stomach sank as I read an e-mail from the principal investigators of a large-scale, multi-institutional project funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) that supported half of my livelihood as a postdoctoral research associate. Following that day’s press release from the USDA—“USDA Cancels Biden Era Climate Slush Fund, Reprioritizes Existing Funding to Farmers”—the email transformed the cloud of uncertainty that loomed over all federally...| Platypus
In 2015, I was back in India’s capital city, Delhi after two years of fieldwork in villages in rural parts of the country. On my return, the city had changed. There was something different in the atmosphere, which was leading to far-reaching, unexpected effects. For instance, during my morning commutes as I turned on the radio to one of Delhi’s most popular radio stations the radio jockey blared every hour or so, ‘Hawa-laat’! The Hindi word Hawalaat translates as a prison. If the word...| blog.castac.org
In 2015, I was back in India’s capital city, Delhi after two years of fieldwork in villages in rural parts of the country. On my return, the city had changed. There was something different in the atmosphere, which was leading to far-reaching, unexpected effects. For instance, during my morning commutes as I turned on the radio to one of Delhi’s most popular radio stations the radio jockey blared every hour or so, ‘Hawa-laat’! The Hindi word Hawalaat translates as a prison. If the word...| Platypus
My research has been a culmination of witnessing, participating, and archiving otherwise invisible acts of care, hopeful experimentation, and provisional collaboration that enabled urban survival in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Paying attention to provisional and patchworked modes of response, and offering a partial yet grounded view, created a critical vantage point to examine the evolution of digital platformisation through different phases of the pandemic and beyond. Auto-ethnographi...| Platypus
Each year, thousands of Bay-Area tech workers attend Burning Man: an annual art festival in the Nevada desert. In this article, an ethnographer of AI development joins his interlocutors at the event and reflects on its resonances with the AI industry he studies. He argues that Burning Man’s unique environment and otherworldly experiences can help us think about the AI industry’s aspirations for civilizational transformation.| Platypus
Now that I’ve mentioned it to her, Ms. Pacidal—an Amis Indigenous woman in her 80s—starts to fiddle with the watch on her left hand. It has a black, square, and boxy plastic face, on which shines a dimly lit screen that shows the date and time, location tracking services, and a daily step count. “It’s light,” she says. “In fact, almost forgettable!” It’s secured on Ms. Pacidal’s arm with a rubber strap, and she tells me that she has not taken it off for months.| Platypus
Like many older adults in China, Auntie Zhang has found her own way into the digital world. Her fascination with short videos is not about escaping reality, but her way of engaging with reality and making sense of it. When she scrolls, sings along, and lip-syncs, she holds onto her core values that life has often shaken but not erased. The sentimental ballads drifting through these online videos give shape to frustrations and bafflement that rarely find words. Although dismissed by outsiders ...| Platypus
"Excavating" Cosmotechnical Diversity in Colombia and Sweden offers an ethnographic comparative study of metaphorical Silicon Valley's within local contexts of Sweden and Columbia using Yuk Hui's (2017) cosmotechnics as a conceptual framework.| Platypus
Gun violence in the United States is a statistical crisis, a political flashpoint, and an everyday reality for millions. But what if we could play through its structural logics? My game Seven Days of Destruction invites players into a speculative environment where systemic poverty, miseducation, drug abuse, and inequality are not only themes but mechanics. By designing this game, I sought to intervene in the ways we narrate and engage with structural violence: not through direct representatio...| Platypus
Peasant Reserve Zones (Zonas de Reserva Campesina, or ZRCs in Spanish) constitute a legal framework established to organize territories historically inhabited by peasant communities in Colombia. Designed as part of agrarian reform efforts, these zones are intended to promote environmental conservation and socioeconomic sustainability in rural areas. The ZRCs provide peasant organizations with a set of tools to structure their social, economic, political, and environmental governance. However,...| Platypus
This is not a scientific or technological project, but perhaps it is a project about science and technology. My proposal is to create a magical tool, a tarot deck, that provokes thought about how mystical and religious elements permeate the advancement of science and technology, especially in the field of biotechnology, and are in constant confluence with all aspects surrounding it: academia, startups, investors, and the like.| Platypus
Bedtime stories are stories narrated by adults to children before they fall asleep. As an essential parenting skill, the storytelling scene is infused with love and trust. These stories make the transition from day to night easier. Rest well, tomorrow will be another day.| Platypus
I created the term “Disability Dongle” in 2019 to draw attention to the phenomenon of design and engineering students and practitioners who prototype “innovative” disability solutions. The definition satirizes an outcome in which designs or technologies “for” disabled people garner mainstream attention and accolades despite valid concerns disabled people have about them. | Platypus
