Episode 37: Origin Studies Part 3, by Adam Hinden. With Mike Degani, Timothy Cooper, and Marilyn StrathernAnthropologists often work with communities far away from where they live and study. How do we come to commit ourselves to years of engagement in a specific field site? Inspired by a gap in anthropological education surrounding the selection of…

Episode 36: Origin Studies Part 2, by Adam Hinden. With Andrew Sanchez, Elizabeth Turk, and Caroline HumphreyAnthropologists often work with communities far away from where they live and study. How do we come to commit ourselves to years of engagement in a specific field site? Inspired by a gap in anthropological education surrounding the selection…

Episode 35: Origin Studies Part 1, by Adam Hinden. With Sian Lazar, Thomas White, and Iza KavedžijaAnthropologists often work with communities far away from where they live and study. How do we come to commit ourselves to years of engagement in a specific field site? Inspired by a gap in anthropological education surrounding the selection of field-…

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and responsibility in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions…

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and responsibility in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions…

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and responsibility in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions…

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and responsibility in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions…

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and responsibility in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions…

This podcast examines the shifting sonic politics of the marching band scene in Derry, Northern Ireland. 20 years ago, Protestant parading in Derry was a source of intense political conflict but over the years it has become less controversial due to inter-community collaboration. However, tensions remain. Sean French and his interlocutors discuss h…

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and responsibility in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions…

What does it mean to have a voice? And how does a voice need to sound like if it is going to matter? In this episode, Marlene Schäfers (Utrecht University) discusses her research with Kurdish women singers and poets to explore what makes the voice an object of desire and appeal in the contemporary world, particularly for historically marginalized s…

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and responsibility in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions…

Episode 25. The Future of the Anthropological Journal. by Cambridge AnthropologyBy Cambridge Anthropology

Who is responsible for making a work of art? In each episode of this collaborative podcast series, one anthropologist, specialising in a particular cultural context, has a conversation with an artist of their choosing, exploring issues of authorship and responsibility in art. Ranging across geographical locations and creative practices, discussions…

In the past, it was natural to open your phone and pop in a new battery. Today, to do that you may have to be a hacker. Biella speaks to representatives from the EU Right to Repair Movement, and farmers Nebraska to talk about this new, and unexpected frontier in hacker culture we may all soon belong to - the Right to Repair Movement.…

Biella explores biohacking - the hacking of the human body - and the different reasons why people are becoming cyborgs. She speaks with artist Moon Ribas about how tech can be used to push the boundaries of creative expression while putting humans in touch with the earth, and even the cosmos, and Winter Mraz an engineer who in the aftermath of a ho…

In the past, state-sponsored hacking focused on espionage, stealing sensitive information and disrupting technological systems. Nowadays, the focus has shifted. Rather than hacking technology, state-sponsored hackers are targeting people. Biella speaks with Darren Linvill about a new kind of malevolent hacking, and how by playing to the algorithms …

One of the core beliefs in the many subsets of hacker culture is that information should be freely accessible and shared. But there are two distinct ways of achieving this freedom of information - Piracy, and The Open Source. Biella talks to Peter Sunde, co-founder of the Pirate bay, and Karen Sandler of the Software Freedom Conservancy, to discove…

Biella and technology journalist Frank Bajak discuss how two teenage hackers, calling themselves Lulzsec Peru, managed to expose corruption and shook the Peruvian government to the core with a massive leak of documents - and in doing so become some of the most impactful hacktivists of the early 2000s.…

Biella explores the legacy of Aaron Swartz. From the age of 14, Aaron was a prolific hacker, inventor and activist. He was integral in the creation of Creative Commons and the Internet Archive, co-founder social media site Reddit, and was passionate in his activism work that culminated in the dismissal of the Stop Online Piracy Act in the USA. But …

Biella uncovers the story of how in the 1980s and 90s the French government forced hackers to work for them, drawing young men who had skirted the law into the depths of international cyber warfare.By BBC Radio 4

Hackers have long been portrayed as the bad guys, but Biella uncovers how the ethical Grey and White Hat hackers created the modern security industry, despite the risk to their careers, and fierce opposition from major tech and software companies who wanted to keep any vulnerabilities in their products hidden from the public eye. She talks with Chr…

In 1988, the first major computer worm shook the early internet to his core, disabling computers across the network and even causing panic in the Pentagon. Biella uncovers the story with Eugene Spafford, the first person to analyse the worm that caused so much chaos, and finds out why worms can still be so devastating decades later.…

Biella explores the earliest hacking subculture - The Phone Phreaks - an entire subculture that learned to manipulate the phone system with plastic whistles and tone generating blue boxes, and played a part in birthing the modern digital world. She talks with Phil Lapsley, author of ‘Exploding the Phone’ and a UK hacker who was one of the last gene…

Digital anthropologist Gabriella Coleman explores the strange history of hacker culture. From the kids who Phreaked the phone networks of the 1950s, right up to the present day.By BBC Radio 4

With the arrival of home recording technology in the early 1980s, many Shi’i Muslims in Pakistan started to record the majlis mourning assemblies and processions that are central to their faith. Soon after, some established family-run religious media stores beside Muslim shrines or in Shi’a-majority neighbourhoods. In this episode, Dr Timothy Coope…

On the 9th of November 2019, Germany celebrated the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet, the country appeared to be once more divided along political lines as the far-right party Alternative for Germany gained enormous success in the Eastern regions. Laura Tradii was on fieldwork in rural Brandenburg as the electoral campaign unfol…

In November 2019, Max Bolt came to the department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge to deliver the weekly senior seminar. Kevin Yildirim spoke with him beforehand to learn more about his recent work in Johannesburg, which concerns inheritance laws and custom in post-apartheid South Africa. The interview was recorded by Javier Ruiz. Max Bolt is Re…

Alisi Mekatoa and Nina Fudge are health researchers. They came to Cambridge to speak about how their undergraduate anthropology degree has informed their careers in and outside of academia. They spoke with Sian Lazar about general practice and primary health care in the UK, and the role of anthropological approaches in health research.…

Gareth Ward visited Cambridge just before he began his appointment as British Ambassador to Vietnam. He spoke with David Sneath about how anthropology has informed his career in the diplomatic service.(We are sorry that the recording quality of this interview is not as good as we would usually aim for.)…

Tropes of 'running away' abound in popular notions of the circus, but how true is this to the lived experiences of circus folk? In this episode of the podcast, Laura Byng uses interviews with different members of a contemporary UK circus to explore they ways in which they came to work in the circus, and, once there, why they stayed. What emerges is…

In November 2017, Michael Puett, Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology at Harvard University, gave two talks at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at Cambridge on the subject of neoliberalism in China. Beth met with Professor Puett after his talks to discuss Puett’s critical stance on the naturalnes…

David MacDougall visited Cambridge University this year for a series of talks and screenings and to open an exhibition of stills from his films at King's College. After the opening Rafael Dernbach met MacDougall to talk about the particular knowledge visual anthropology can produce and his practice as a filmmaker.David MacDougall is one of the worl…

Ilana Gershon visited Cambridge University this summer, and after her Senior Research seminar at the department, Oliver Balch caught up with her to talk about her research on new media and the contemporary world of work, and her latest book Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don't Find) Work Today. Ilana is Associate Professor of …

This podcast asks what vision means to those who describe theatre for blind and partially-sighted audiences. Harsha Balasubramanian shares some of the findings from her undergraduate dissertation, and argues that these audio describers' understandings of vision are revealed through their practices. These shape the experiences of sight-impaired thea…

The processing and storage of data underpins the digital economy. With 2.5 exabytes of data being produced every day, storing and securing this highly valuable asset is an increasingly challenging task. But where exactly is all this data stored and how is it secured? In this episode, Alexander Taylor visits The Bunker, a subterranean data centre in…

When credit is an essential means of getting by, how can debt advice organisations help those who are struggling to repay? This episode of the podcast considers some of the conundrums that debt advisers face in Britain today, as a result of credit having become a vital means of subsistence for millions of people. It is an attempt to explore the nor…

Birdsong is a ubiquitous feature of the British countryside. But what is the cultural significance of this much-loved part of our landscape? Jonathan Woolley reflects upon the meanings made by birds - as omens, as signs, as proxies, and as music - from the Norfolk Broads, to Bosavi in Papua New Guinea.This podcast uses audio from freesound.org:Lapw…

Earlier this year Professor Richard Werbner gave a senior research seminar in the Department entitled 'The Poetics of Wisdom Divination: Renewing the Moral Imagination'. PhD student Joe Philp caught up with Professor Werbner afterwards to ask him more about his recent book, Divination's Grasp: African Encounters with the Almost Said (Indiana Univer…

Camthropod welcomes you to the new academic year with an episode dedicated to the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this term. Sian Lazar spoke with several members of the unit to find out just what makes it so distinctive.By Cambridge Anthropology

On April 8th 2015, in North West London, without any warning or permission a buzzing local pub was torn down by developers hoping to erect luxury flats in its place. The resulting scandal made national headlines, feeding into an intense debate around gentrification and property speculation in London. But what exactly was lost? This episode looks at…

Tanya Luhrmann gave the 2016 W.H.R. Rivers Memorial Lecture in Cambridge, and during her visit she discussed with Rupert Stasch the larger research project she is currently engaged in, about contrasts in the psychological experience of “hearing voices” in the United States, Ghana, and India. Both in a study of how certain Christians experience hear…

In this episode, Sian Lazar discusses two sounds of different kinds of street mobilisation in Argentina: the bombos, or drums, which are associated with organised social forces, and the cacerolazo, or pots and pans demo, associated with the ‘middle classes’. She relates these different political soundscapes to the politics of the ‘Pink Tide’ and th…

Opened in 2014, Hiddo Dhawr is Somaliland’s first and only live music venue to operate since the 1988 civil war, which decimated the capital Hargeysa, and displaced the artistic community. In this episode, social anthropology PhD candidate Christina Woolner visits Hiddo Dhawr – which specializes in the performance of acoustic music popular before t…

Anna Tsing visited our department to give the Marilyn Strathern lecture for CUSAS in 2015. Corinna Howland took the opportunity to sit down with her to discuss her classic book Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, and to find out a bit more about her thinking on issues of globalization, scale, environmental politics, and capitalism.…

Since the liberalisation of the Indian economy in the early 1990s, an entire industry of commercial English language training centres has emerged, offering spoken English classes for adults. In this episode, Sazana Jayadeva speaks with Prakruthi Banwasi, the founder of one of the first English training centres in Bangalore, India, about why it has …

Patrick O’Hare is a PhD student in social anthropology researching waste-pickers, the landfill economy and the recycling industry in Montevideo, Uruguay. In this podcast he visits Save the Date in London, a Dalston café which forms part of the ‘Real Junk Food Network’ dedicated to diverting food from landfill and transforming it into wholesome, aff…

Gogo Breeze, a popular radio personality in Zambia's Eastern Province, styles himself as his listeners' grandfather and attends to them through a variety of radio programmes. In this podcast, Cambridge anthropologist Harri Englund introduces the key means by which Gogo Breeze pursues kinship over the airwaves. Examples of broadcasts bring to life t…

Camthropod, the Cambridge Anthropology Podcast. Camthropod is produced by a collective of staff and students from the Cambridge Division of Social Anthropology. We aim to broadcast it fortnightly during term time. Camthropod will include interviews with visiting speakers and with members of the department about their work, as well as audio pieces p…

By The Anonymous Anthropologist