The Familiar Strange

The team at TFS would like to say thank you to all our listeners this season and to everyone who has listened in to our podcasts and read the blog! We are taking a short season break and we will return with some new and improved content in July!

But keep an ear out for some special content we recorded last year at the AAS!

Let’s keep in touch. Feel free to submit something to the blog, we’re always looking for content, and are keen to hear new voices. The submission guidelines are on our website at www.thefamiliarstrange.com/writeforus

And if you haven’t already, join our Facebook Chats Group, ‘The Familiar Strange Chats’. Whether you’re an anthropologist, a student, or just anthro-interested, we’d love for you to join the conversation.

Thank you again to all our listeners and readers who have enjoyed our content throughout this season. We hope you have a restful winter break, and we will see you in July.

Until then, keep Talking Strange…

This week we’d like to introduce a new Familiar Stranger, Jarrod Sim! Jarrod is a PhD student at the school of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University. His current research is an anthropologically-led study of how landscape has shaped the auditory cultures of a Paiwanese community in Taiwan. He investigates and comprehends sound as layered and is interested in its role in contemporary understandings of culture. Welcome Jarrod!

This week’s panel centres around the various sounds of fieldwork. Jarrod’s work with the Paiwanese community got us thinking about how our respective field sites sounded and how sound is a really integral part of fieldwork. We also dive into the difficulties of conducting ethnomusicology online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

We then discuss a question sent in by a listener! They wanted to know what kind of considerations the strangers made when choosing a field site and what were some of the practical constraints that had to be considered.

Our Facebook page and Facebook group are back up and running so don’t forget to head over to our Facebook group The Familiar Strange Chats. Let’s keep talking strange, together!

If you like what we do and are in a position to do so, you can help us to keep making content by supporting us through Patreon.

Our Patreon can be found at https://www.patreon.com/thefamiliarstrange

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Matthew Phung

Podcast edited by Alex D'Aloia and Matthew Phung

This week we bring you a special collaboration between The Familiar Strange and the Australian Network of Student Anthropologists or ANSA. In this special collaboration, Familiar Stranger Alex sits down with Hanne Worsoe and Dr Romy Listo to discuss some of the difficulties that arise from working in particularly intense or distressing field sites. Throughout the conversation they model some of the methods that can benefit new PhD students who are potentially entering into their field work.

It was a really interesting conversation and thank you again the ANSA for collaborating with us on this project!

Just a note on sound quality: We conducted this chat over Zoom so the internet and audio quality might vary in some spots. The podcast editing team is working on a solution!

Quotes

“It was very effective in helping and supporting people who were about to go into fieldwork or who had just come back from fieldwork”

“You feel very supported by one person, because you are being listened to and someone’s bearing witness to your experience”

“I think using these kind of things was really very helpful for me in being able to process some of distress that I felt while I was in the field”

“It is tough and you really need that capacity to be able to share with someone when you are going through those things it really does help”

“I think there’s a fear in academia of being able to express vulnerability and difficulty”

“Everyone had some kind of “war story” so to speak”

“Everyone had stories from the field that they would often shrug off and minimize”

“There wasn’t this space or the words to be able to talk about that in the context of research”

“I think academia needs to acknowledge its vulnerability at a number of different levels, but certainly at a fieldwork level and being affected by fieldwork”

This month familiar stranger Tim kicks us off by pondering the ethnographic and anthropological nature of the award winning film Nomadland directed by Chloé Zhao. The strangers discuss the almost anthropological origins of the film and other similar works that deal with the precariat or nomads the movie is based around.

The strangers then dive into the origins of Mother’s Day and the subsequent commodification of the day itself. They discuss some of the positives and contrast it with a similar “Mother’s day” celebrated on the 27th of May in Bolivia.

Just a note on sound quality: We are still conducting our panels over Zoom so the internet and audio quality might not be as clear in some places. The podcast editing team is working on a solution!

Head to our website for a full list of links and citations!

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Matthew Phung

Podcast edited by Timothy Johnson and Matthew Phung

This week Clair brings you an interview with Dr Yasmine Musharbash! Dr. Yasmine Musharbash is a senior lecturer at the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University. Her fieldwork is based in central Australia, and primarily centred on the Yuendumu, an Aboriginal community about three hours northwest of Alice Springs. Over the years, her research has branched out in an impressive variety of directions, including social relations and personhood of the Warlpiri people, the anthropology of sleep and night, the Anthropology of Emotions, Embodiment, Boredom Studies, death and grieving, and so on.

Today, we are talking about Yasmine’s research on monster anthropology, which has blossomed into an on-going inter-disciplinary and comparative project that brings together anthropology and monster studies. Her key publications on the subject include two edited volumes Monster Anthropology: Ethnographic Explorations of Transforming Social Worlds Through Monsters (2020 Bloomsbury w/ Dr. Geir Henning Presterudstuen) and Monster Anthropology in Australasia and Beyond (2014 Palgrave Macmillan, w/ Dr. Geir Henning Presterudstuen)

In this episode, we explore the different ways in which the Aboriginal people live with the monsters that haunt them, in particular in instances of social change and transformation. We first delve into the elementary instability of the term monster, such as how the monstrous bodies rupture classification, transgressing the otherwise clear-cut boundary between taxonomies and how monsters are contingent on the humans they haunt, combining the temporal and spatial perspectives.

Yasmine then compares and contrasts monster studies versus monster anthropology, before drawing on her fieldwork to investigate how one monster, that cannot be named, morphs and changes alongside the settler colonial state that has been inflicting trauma onto the Aboriginal peoples. We then explore how a more well-known monster, “Pankarlangu”, has adapted to the broader processes of climate change and colonialism, and how the Aboriginal people haunted by it perceive such a transformation. We finally discuss the appropriation of Aboriginal monsters, the clash between different ontologies in fieldwork, and how pandemics and apocalypses may impact on monsters in the Aboriginal country.

Head to our website for a full list of links and Citations!

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Matthew Phung

Podcast edited by Clair Zhang and Matthew Phung

This week we bring you another panel in our new format! This time, we’re diving into the conflict between Amazon and its workers in Alabama trying to form a union. Clair raises the topic of “corporate sassiness” and how we have started to attribute personalities and personhood to the social media presences of these gigantic companies. What do you think about companies “clapping back” at people on their social media platforms? Does it play a role in how you consume certain products?

Next, Alex shares his recent experience at a friend’s wedding and how it relates to the ideas of tradition and culture. He raises the idea that some traditions can keep replicating themselves, even if the original institution isn’t as prevalent anymore and what this means for people living in the modern era. What do you think about traditions? How do you think future generations will see some of the traditions we adhere to?

Head to our website for a full list of links and citations!

Before we dive into today’s episode we’d just like to add a content warning for this episode for sexual assault.

This week, Familiar Stranger Carolyn sits down with Camille Waring from the University of Westminster. Camille is currently doing her PhD on online representations of sex workers and how photography is being used against marginalized communities.

Throughout this chat, Carolyn dives into the meanings of photography today, what the actual act of taking a photograph means for people and definitions of “Lens Based Violence” and weaponized photography. Eventually, they ask the questions of “what is a photograph” and “who decides what can go on what platforms?”

It was a really interesting conversation with some thought provoking points made. We hope you enjoy it!

Just a note on the audio quality, we’re still conducting some interviews through Zoom so some parts of the interview might be harder to hear than others.

Head to our website for a full list of links and citations!

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Matthew Phung

Podcast edited by Carolyn West and Matthew Phung

This week on TFS, the Strangers continue with our new panel format and dive deeper into the topics of entrepreneurism and ethics. They talk about how universities and by extension academia is becoming more and more business-like with academics having to “build their brands” in order to find success. The conversation then shifts to discuss the current ethical framework of Anthropology. The Strangers share their experiences with fieldwork ethics and how modern anthropology has started to slowly adopt new ethical practises.

Head to our Website for a full list of links and citations!

Don’t forget to head over to our Facebook group The Familiar Strange Chats. Let’s keep talking strange, together!

If you like what we do and are in a position to do so, you can help us to keep making content by supporting us through Patreon. Our Patreon can be found at https://www.patreon.com/thefamiliarstrange

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Matthew Phung

Podcast edited by Alex D’Aloia and Matthew Phung

This week we bring you an interview with Dr Susan Ellison from Wellesley College. In this interview, Familiar Stranger Alex asks about her experiences working in the city of El Alto and the neighbouring town of La Paz. Alex and Susan discuss Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and how it exists as a second space for conflict resolution for Bolivians and their families. They also discuss how foreign aid adds a layer of complexities to the frameworks already present in Bolivia and potential recommendations for moving forward.

Head to our website for a full list of links and citations mentioned!

Music by Pete Dabro: dabro1.bandcamp.com

Shownotes by Matthew Phung

Podcast edited by Alex D’Aloia and Matthew Phung

Hello and Welcome back to The Familiar Strange!

We are so happy to be back and we can’t wait to keep talking strange with you all!

We’re kicking off this new season with a panel with Familiar Strangers, Alex D’aloia, Carolyn West, Timothy Johnston and Simon Theobald. We’re trying out a new format for panels this season, so make sure you reach out and tell us what you think.

In this panel episode, we dive back into 2020 and the US elections. The Strangers discuss what we as anthropologists can contribute to the conversations around the US. How can the methods, attitudes and values of anthropology be applied? Are anthropologists still relevant in this modern context? What can we as anthropologists bring to the table?

Head to our Website for a full list of links and citations.

We’ve been experiencing some difficulties with our Facebook page and Facebook Chats group. We’re hoping to get them up and running as soon as we can but for now follow us on Twitter @TFSTweets to stay up to date with our new releases!