Anthropology can be presented in various forms - what does it mean to share anthropology through podcasts? In the latest episode in the What Does Anthropology Sound Like series, we explore anthropological podcasts as method and as output. This episode features Dr. María Eugenia Ulfe Young (from the Nuestras Historias desde Cuninico podcast), PhD Candidate Anuli Akanegbu (creator of BLK IRL®), and Dr. Dominic Boyer (co-creator of the Cultures of Energy podcast). Find the transcription and show-notes here: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-does-anthropology-sound-like-podcasts Find our guests' podcasts: Nuestras Historias Desde Cuninico - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063634656075 BLK IRL® - https://www.blkirl.com/ Cultures of Energy - https://culturesofenergy.rice.edu/

In this AnthroPod episode, we provide a retrospective on the Virtual Otherwise conference from the perspective of the local node in Agria, Greece. Touching on matters of accessibility, engagement, and multimodality, we ask: Whither anthropology conferencing?

This episode is devoted to thinking through the specificity of the United States as a place in which to conduct fieldwork. For show notes, please visit : https://culanth.org/fieldsights/contributed-content/anthropod

In this episode, Professors Sophie Bjork-James, Carolyn Sufrin, and Elise Andaya share what the anthropology of abortion looks like in their fieldsites and how those sites will change in a post-Roe world, and we break down this topic with the help of other scholars of reproduction. For show notes, please visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/anthropod-talks-abortion

In part 2 of our series on sound and borders, cultural geographer Tom Western talks with Nick Smith about the work of the Syrian and Greek Youth Forum (SGYF) in Athens, Greece. Featuring sound clips created by the SGYF team, the discussion unpacks the concept of active citizenship and the ways that sound can challenge the static character of border regimes in Greece and throughout the Mediterranean. For show-notes visit

This is the second episode in the series "What Concepts Do." In this episode, Contributing Editor Sharon Jacobs unpacks the concept of solidarity, alongside anthropologists Darryl Li, Amahl Bishara, Lesley Gill, and Dimitrios Theodossopoulos. What is solidarity, and who can practice it? Is solidarity something we do within communities, or beside allies? What are some of the shortcomings and challenges of solidarity? For show-notes and resources, visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-solidarity-does

In this episode, anthropologist and artist Alex Chavez talks about performance, migration and nationalism in the United States. For show-notes, please visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/the-sound-of-borders-a-conversation-with-alex-chavez

Cassandra Hartblay, Cristiana Giordano, and Greg Pierotti discuss performance as ethnographic medium in the third installment of What Does Anthropology Sound Like, an Anthropod Series. For transcriptions, visual content, and other resources related to this episode of Anthropod, please visit: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-does-anthropology-sound-like-performance

In this episode, Contributing Editors Joyce Rivera-González and Michelle Hak Hepburn unpack the concept of resilience, alongside anthropologists Roberto Barrios, Elizabeth F.S. Roberts, Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, Andrew Wooyoung Kim, and Jason Cons. Where did the concept of resilience originate from, and how is it so widespread? What are the benefits and shortcomings of the concept? And how do anthropologists engage with resilience ethnographically? For show notes, please visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/what-resilience-does

Professor Kamari Clarke reflects on her ethnographic work in Africa, her thinking on the legacies of colonialism in the discipline of Anthropology, and her recent work with the Radical Humanism Initiative. For the transcription and show-notes of this episode, please visit: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/radical-humanism-and-decolonization-an-interview-with-kamari-maxine-clarke

The Ottoman archives contain just over a hundred photographs that look like old family portraits, but they were created for an entirely different purpose. They document the renunciation of Ottoman nationality, "terk-i tabiiyet," by Armenian emigrants bound for the US and elsewhere. As our guest Zeynep Devrim Gürsel explains, the photographs were "anticipatory arrest warrants for a crime yet to be committed"--the crime of returning to the Ottoman Empire. Gürsel's research goes far beyond the story of the small number of photographs that remain as she has documented over four thousand individuals who went through the process of "terk-i tabiiyet." In this Ottoman History Podcast-AnthroPod collaboration, we talk to Gürsel about her research project on the production, circulation and afterlives of these photographs titled "Portraits of Unbelonging." It is a double-sided history that explores not only the context of Armenian migration and policing during the late Ottoman period but also the experiences of those pictured and their descendants following their departure from the Ottoman Empire. (Recorded August 2019) In memory of Mary Lou Savage (née Khantamour) Contributors: Beth Derderian (AnthroPod), Zeynep Devrim Gürsel (Rutgers University), and Chris Gratien (Ottoman History Podcast).

Katherine Verdery reflects on working through her Securitate file and ethnographers' positionalities, her research in Eastern Europe prior to the fall of communism, and what anthropology offers at moments when the episteme shifts.

Writing ethnographic poetry with Darcy Alexandra and Ather Zia. This is the second installment in the What Does Anthropology Sound Like series, in which we ask anthropologists to share their work and insights with us on the different forms their anthropological practice takes. In this episode, the theme is poetry.

The "Anthropology and/of Mental Health" series is a two-part exploration of anthropologists' experiences with mental health. In this episode, Anar expands the conversation about mental health in anthropology through conversations and contributions about attention, grief, and unexpected changes to our plans for fieldwork and research.  For more information, as well as a transcript of the episode, visit the shownotes page at: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/anthropology-and-of-mental-health-pt-2 Musical intro and outro: All the Colors in the World by Podington Bear. Transitions: Entwined Oddities by Blue Dot Sessions. Sound Effects: Radio Transition by psyckoze. Logo designed by Janita van Dyk.

Hunleth and Yount-André discuss Hunleth's research on children's caregiving amid Zambia's tuberculosis (TB) outbreak and trace parallels with today's COVID19 pandemic. They look at the role of proximity, recognizing the different ways children offer care, how to discuss disease with children and problematize the idea of disclosure, and the moral valences that become attached to disease and the people who suffer from them - particularly around privilege and vulnerability.

Jonathan Rosa discusses raciolinguistic ideologies, a framework developed by Rosa and Professor Nelson Flores (University of Pennsylvania) to critique the racialization of various speaking subjects and their linguistic practices. The interview begins with a focus on this concept and related themes in Rosa’s book, then turns to a consideration of broader implications of this work for academia, anthropology in particular. A common thread throughout this interview is the issue of coloniality, both broadly construed and more specifically with regard to how it shapes and manifests within educational contexts. In particular, Rosa comments on the question of decolonizing or unsettling anthropology, reflecting in some closing remarks on the usefulness and concerns around platforms such as #AnthroTwitter for challenging the colonial logics within our own discipline. For more information and a transcript of this episode, visit: https://culanth.org/fieldsights/raciolinguistic-ideologies-and-decolonizing-anthropology-a-conversation-with-jonathan-rosa

Sophie Chao and Bianca Williams discuss activism, organizing, and anthropology in the first installment of a new Anthropod series: What Does Anthropology Sound Like.

In this episode, AnthroPod Contributing Editor Anar Parikh talks to Prof. Beatriz-Reyes Foster and Prof. Rebecca Lester about their blog series "Trauma and Resilience in Ethnographic Fieldwork" on Anthrodendum. For more, visit https://culanth.org/fieldsights/contributed-content/anthropod

Ruth Behar speaks with Kristen Ghodsee about how anthropologists can be public intellectuals: They discuss how can anthropologists maintain credibility as scholars within the academy while also speaking to broader audiences; the necessity of patience and thinking of a career over the long duree; the productive spaces and possibilities within the discipline to reach out; and tips and suggestions for how to write in ways that appeal to non-academic audiences.

Guests Camilla Ida Ravnbøl and Marie Kolling explore the impact that digitalizing economies have on communities that are poor and highly cash dependent. The episode features Ravnbøl's research with Roma migrants at the Roskilde Festival, a music festival in Denmark that went cashless in 2017 but has developed accommodations for cash-dependent Roma migrants who collect bottles for refunds. Rich soundscapes anchor the listener in the ethnographic context of this research.

Mark Schuller on anthropological work in, with, and on NGOs.

Guests Namita Dharia and Tulasi Srinivas discuss the possibilities for an anthropology of wonder. Their conversation builds out from Srinivas’s latest book, "The Cow in the Elevator: An Anthropology of Wonder," and explores questions of positionality in the field, canonical inheritances, and experiments with ethnographic writing. Sonic landscapes from Srinivas’s fieldsite weave in and out of their discussion, opening listeners to encounters with ritual and aesthetic practices and renewing Srinivas’s assertion that “deep listening is the quality of a great ethnographer.”

In "When Fieldwork Breaks Your Heart," guest producer Aisha Sultan considers the question: what do you do when fieldwork threatens to break your heart? While graduate seminars and methodological reflections within anthropology often focus on the possibilities ethnography affords as the cornerstone of the discipline, Sultan here contends with its bleaker and more difficult dimensions: the toll it takes on the minds and bodies of ethnographers; experiences of mental illness; persistent feelings of distrust, frustration, and exhaustion. Sultan’s conversation with Helen Lee and Shoshanna Williams is interspersed with excerpts of poetry and fieldnotes from each of their fieldwork experiences. Together, these reflections offer a candid, vulnerable, and realistic insight into the quotidian experience of doing ethnographic fieldwork.

“(W)Rap on: Gender/Sexuality” is the third episode of the (W)Rap On series at AnthroPod, which brings anthropologists into conversation with artists, activists, and scholars from other disciplines and perspectives. The series is loosely inspired by James Baldwin and Margaret Mead’s 1970 conversation Rap on Race, and was conceived by Hilary Leathem in collaboration with AnthroPod. Our format attempts to identify and confront some of the problems that Mead and Baldwin’s conversation embodied, such as white fragility, complicity with power structures, and the struggle to create space for different groups to speak openly. We provide a platform for thoughtful and incisive discussions that highlight solidarities and shared commitments. We also highlight frictions and tensions between anthropological and other approaches. In this episode, anthropologist Mary Weismantel discusses writing about bodies, relating to readers, memory, and truth with fiction writer Samuel Delany. V Chaudhry moderates the conversation.

Anthropologist Jason De León and journalist Maria Hinojosa discuss migration, U.S. border militarization, and teaching and writing in political times. Journalist Julio Ricardo Varela moderates the conversation. This episode is part of the (W)rap On: Series, inspired by the original 1970 conversation between writer James Baldwin and anthropologist Margaret Mead.

This roundtable discussion explores the recently published Reading List for a Progressive Environmental Anthropology. The crowdsourced reading list is a project organized by Bridget Guarasci (Franklin and Marshall College), Amelia Moore (University of Rhode Island), and Sarah Vaughn (University of California, Berkeley). Crafting this reading list around themes such as toxicity, globalization, waterscapes, and economies, Guarasci, Moore, and Vaughn aim to offer theoretical and regional breadth that pushes at the intellectual and practical boundaries of environmental anthropology. In this roundtable discussion held at the 2018 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Guarasci and Moore are joined by collaborators Jessica Cattelino (University of California, Los Angeles), Eleana Kim (University of California, Irvine), and Laura Ogden (Dartmouth College) for a conversation on how the reading list came about, the motivations behind it, and possible applications and future directions. As well as offering insightful commentary on environmental anthropological theory over the years, the discussion highlights the political implications of who we choose to read now and what concepts and discourses we engage in our conversations about the environment—in other words, why citation matters.

Margot Weiss explores the origins, presents and futures of queer anthropology.

“(W)Rap On: Race” features anthropologist Shalini Shankar discussing race, social activism, and pedagogy with Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson. Christien Tompkins moderates the conversation. (W)Rap on Race is the inaugural episode of the new (W)Rap On series at AnthroPod, which brings anthropologists into conversation with artists, activists, and scholars from other disciplines and perspectives. The series is loosely inspired by James Baldwin and Margaret Mead’s 1971 conversation Rap on Race. Yet the format attempts to identify and confront some of the inherent problems that this conversation embodied and only further crystallized, such as white fragility, difficulties with confronting complicity in larger power structures, and struggles to create space for different groups to speak openly (instead of being spoken over or spoken for). Our goal for this series is to provide a platform for thoughtful and incisive discussions that highlight solidarities and shared commitments but also, and perhaps more importantly, highlight where frictions might emerge between anthropological approaches and those of different disciplines or of work outside the academy.

Maria Frederika Malmstrom on the Sound of Economic Collapse in Egypt

Vijayendra Rao, an economist with the World Bank, talks with anthropologist Ian Pollock about the theory and practice of development, anthropology’s relationship to development, and how ethnography might help the disenfranchised engage with powerful institutions and effect social change.

Graeme Warren explains what we can learn about histories and cultures through Hunter & Gatherer research.

Damien Sojoyner on race, education, imprisonment, and their intersection in the United States.

Teresa Caldeira discusses her recent research on urban practices and forms of cultural production from the peripheries of São Paulo, Brazil that are reshaping public space, including rap music, graffiti, ostentation funk, and pixação Producer: Liliana Gil Music: Excerpts from “Soldado Sem Bandeira” by Emicida (00:00, 08:20), “Fim de Semana no Parque” by Racionais MC’s (06:25), a birthday song recorded at the Jardim das Camélias’s Parish Church (14:05), and “Se Identifica” by A’s Trinca (17:20, 23:05). Thanks to the artists for granting permission to use these excerpts in the episode.

Christa Craven discusses feminist anthropology in this episode of AnthroBites, the podcast that makes key concepts in anthropology more digestible.

Lara Deeb and Jessica Winegar discuss their recent book, Anthropology's Politics: Disciplining the Middle East (2015). They touch on how political and economic pressures shape how U.S.-based scholars research and teach about the Middle East, how certain topics and regions are embraced or pushed back on, and how those pressures and incentives impact scholars working in the Middle East from graduate school to teaching and public engagement. Producer: Beth Derderian Music: Sweeter Vermouth by Kevin MacLeod

Angela Jenks shares her approach to anthropological pedagogy and offers thoughtful insights into how anthropologists might begin thinking about how to incorporate podcasts into their syllabi.

Anthropologists of media and journalism reflect on the current post-truth era in the United States means for research and teaching. This episode features a panel from the the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association with Naomi Schiller, Robert Samet, Natalia Roudakova, Alexandra Juhasz, Amahl Bishara, and Faye Ginsburg. Music: “Bit Rio” and “Caravan” by Podington Bear

Guest producers Stine Krøijer and Astrid Oberborbeck Andersen take up a debate that is central to current environmental and political anthropology: namely, how ethnographers can identify and describe the political when earth beings, spirits, or nonhuman others become part of the ethnographic equation? Marisol de la Cadena’s 2015 book _Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds_ is the point of departure for the conversation. The episode is built around a recording of a workshop on “More than Human Politics,” which was held in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen in April 2015.

Yarimar Bonilla discusses the concept of sovereignty and its anthropological applications in this episode of AnthroBites, the podcast that makes key concepts in anthropology more digestible.

Hugh Gusterson, Kim Garcia, and a U.S. military drone operator on active duty discuss the representation of drone warfare. Their conversation engages the ways we think about communities of expertise and war, as well as how we represent the experiences of others.

Rachel Watkins discusses the origins and legacies of scientific racism for AnthroBites, the podcast that makes key concepts in anthropology more digestible.

Lilly Irani discusses the human labor behind artificial intelligence technology. Irani helped create a platform called Turkopticon to support workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk, a website that outsources micro data processing work. Irani also talks about her current book project on entrepreneurialism and national development in India.

Keith Murphy discusses the anthropology of design through his work on Swedish design as well as bringing design methods into ethnography through ethnocharrettes.

Cassandra Hartblay discusses design and ethnography through her work on disability in Russia.

Theory, method, and politics of studying human-animal relations from anthropological perspectives with Nikhil Anand, Philippe Descola, Radhika Govindrajan, Laura Ogden, and Paige West.

Guest podcaster David Lein examines the impact of Pokémon GO on communities, both digital and physical, in conversation with Michigan-based scholars John Cheney-Lippold, Eric Montgomery, and individuals in Detroit who are using Pokémon GO.

In the third and final episode in our trilogy on outer space, anthropologist Valerie Olson discusses systems thinking in the Anthropocene, off-world architecture and garbage, as well as food and health beyond Earth.

In the second episode in our trilogy on outer space, anthropologist Debbora Battaglia discusses cosmo/politics, the diary of a space zucchini, and the social life of moon dust. For more, visit culanth.org.

The role of race, class, gender, neoliberalism, and more in the 2016 election discussed by leading anthropologists.

In the first episode in our trilogy on outer space, anthropologist David Valentine discusses haircuts in space, the colonization of Mars, the rise of the billionaire-led NewSpace community. For more, visit culanth.org.

In this episode, Dr. Alma Gottlieb discusses her approach to ethnographic writing. For more, visit culanth.org.

Anna Tsing on Landscapes and the Anthropocene

Anthropod talks with Prof. Charlene Makley (Reed College) about her article, "The Sociopolitical Lives of Dead Bodies: Tibetan Self-Immolation Protests as Mass Media." For more, visit culanth.org

AnthroPod talked with Sverker Finnström and Federica Guglielmo on the connections between Finnström’s research on the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, Guglielmo’s research on the Rwandan genocide, and the SANT 2015 conference theme “Anthropology and Morality”.

AnthroPod talks to Helena Wulff about the practice of writing and the difference between writing academic and public texts. Helena Wulff is Professor of social anthropology at the Department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University.

Dr. Livia Stone on the contested walls of Oaxaca de Juarez, Mexico, and their interplay with natural forces. Based on the photo essay "As Fluid as a Brick Wall", which Livia co-authored with Dr. Abigail C. Stone. The photo essay appeared in the November 2014 (29.4) issue of Cultural Anthropology.

Paolo Favero on visual methods in the field. In our conversation, Favero shares his engagement with visual methods and suggests that using a camera is not about documenting empirical evidence but a process of producing the empirical field material and choosing perspectives.

Three anthropologists share insights on the #BlackLivesMatter movement, social media, policing, race-based violence and histories of African American protest. Featuring Yarimar Bonilla, Laurence Ralph and Mark Auslander.

In this episode of AnthroPod, Stacy Topouzova and Rupa Pillai interview Tobias Rees, author of "Humanity/Plan; or, On the 'Stateless' Today (Also Being an Anthropology of Global Health)", which appears in the August 2014 issue of Cultural Anthropology. Professor Rees is an associate professor in the Department of the Social Sciences of Medicine at McGill University.

AnthroPod speaks with Kevin Lewis O'Neill, the winner of the 2014 Cultural Horizons Prize for his essay, "Left Behind: Security, Salvation, and the Subject of Prevention" from the May 2013 issue of Cultural Anthropology. Professor O'Neill is an associate professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. He is author of City of God (2010) and Secure the Soul (2015), both from the University of California Press.

On this episode of AnthroPod, the podcast of the Society of Cultural Anthropology, we listen to Dorothy E. Roberts's keynote address from the 2014 meeting of the American Anthropological Association. For more on information, visit: http://culanth.org/fieldsights/646-dorothy-e-roberts-on-the-future-of-race-in-science-regression-or-revolution

Naisargi Dave talks with us about the origins of her interest in animal activism, her experiences doing fieldwork, and reads selections from her essay and forthcoming work.

Charles Briggs talks to psychoanalyst Maureen Katz about the anthropology of mourning. They discuss a letter titled “Dear Dr. Freud” that Professor Briggs wrote to Sigmund Freud about the experience of a traumatic epidemic in rural Venezuela. They consider how he was drawn into the mourning process as an anthropologist and photographer, and how mourners framed their work of mourning in relation to the long history of colonialism. They end the episode by talking about how anthropology itself might be reconsidered as the work of mourning.

On this episode of AnthroPod, Rupa Pillai interviews Dr. Laura Moran about how Sudanese young people with refugee backgrounds use hip hop music and style in Brisbane, Australia. Dr. Moran present her work at the 112th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. For show notes and additional information, visit: http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/606-laura-moran-on-symbolic-ethnic-capital-in-australia

On this episode of AnthroPod, Jonah S. Rubin interviews three anthropologists working in the aftermath of genocides. The works these authors are discussing were originally presented at a panel entitled "Gray Zones and their Aftermaths: Memory, Mourning, Justice" at the 112th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. For show notes and additional information, visit: http://culanth.org/fieldsights/558-ethnographies-of-post-genocide

This episode of AnthroPod is the second of a two-part series on publishing in academia. We go behind-the-scenes of academic publishing, looking to the past and the future with the incoming editors of Cultural Anthropology, Dominic Boyer, James Faubion, and Cymene Howe; the first editor of Cultural Anthropology, George Marcus; and former acquisitions editor at Princeton University Press currently doing research on the future of the book, Mary Murrell. Part 1 featured Anne Allison, Tom Boellstorff, and Tim Elfenbein. For more on this episode, visit http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/552-publishing-anthropology-part-2

This episode of AnthroPod is the first of a two-part series on publishing in academia. In Part 1, we go behind-the-scenes in the editorial offices of Cultural Anthropology, American Anthropologist, and Duke University Press with Anne Allison, Tom Boellstorff, and Tim Elfenbein. Part 2 will feature Dominic Boyer, James Faubion, Cymene Howe, George Marcus, and Mary Murrell.

Nicholas D'Avella, postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley's Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society, talks about the complex networks of debt, currency valuation, and real estate that Argentines find themselves caught up in and the stories they tell to help navigate them.

On this episode of AnthroPod, the podcast of the Society for Cultural Anthropology, Bascom Guffin and Jonah S Rubin interview four leading voices pushing for open access in anthropology. With its February 2014 issue, the journal of Cultural Anthropology is now free to read at www.culanth.org.

We return again to the November 2013 American Anthropological Association meeting in Chicago to showcase the panel entitled "Worlding with the Body." In this episode the five panelists consider how the concept of "worlding" -- that is, how bodies are not simply objects that exist within the world, but agents that operate to partially make it - can help reveal new details about their diverse fields of research.

Conversations from the November 2013 American Anthropological Association meeting in Chicago. Tomomi Yamaguchi talks about right-wing activists in Japan. Nick Seaver explains the cultural importance of algorithms. Walter Callaghan shares his personal journey to studying PTSD in Canadian soldiers. And Shan-Estelle Brown discusses the aesthetic experiences some drug users have with their opioid replacement therapy.

In this episode of AnthroPod, Bascom Guffin and Grant Jun Otsuki interview John Hartigan (University of Texas, Austin) about his work on race, genomics, and biology in Mexico. He talks about his essay in the August 2013 issue of Cultural Anthropology, "Mexican Genomics and the Roots of Racial Thinking." For more AnthroPod and all the other content put out by the SCA visit us at: www.culanth.org. Show notes are available at:

On this episode of AnthroPod, the podcast of the Society for Cultural Anthropology, Jonah S Rubin interviews Prof. Saida Hodzic (Cornell) about her article in the Fubruary 2013 issue of Cultual Anthropology, entitled: "Ascertaining Deadly Harms: Aesthetics and Politics of Global Evidence." For more AnthroPod and all the other content put out by the SCA visit us at: www.culanth.org. Show notes are available at: http://culanth.org/fieldsights/388-saida-hodzic-on-global-health-governance.

In this episode of AnthroPod, Rupa Pillai interviews Kamari Maxine Clarke, author of "Notes on Cultural Citizenship in the Black Atlantic World," which appears in the August 2013 issue of Cultural Anthropology. For more on this article and all of our other content, visit culanth.org.

In this episode of AnthroPod, the podcast of The Society for Cultural Anthropology, editorial intern Jonah S Rubin interviews Prof. Richard Handler (UVA) about his article in the May 2013 issue of Cultural Anthropology, entitled: "Disciplinary Adaptation and Undergraduate Desire: Anthropology and Global Development Studies in the Liberal Arts Curriculum." For more on this article and all of our other content, head to production.culanth.org and culanth.org.

Michael Fisch on Tokyo's Train Suicides. In the first installment of AnthroPod, Bascom Guffin and Grant Otsuki interview Michael Fisch, author of "Tokyo's Train Suicides and the Society of Emergence", which appears in the May 2013 issue of Cultural Anthropology. Michael Fisch is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago. (http://anthropology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty_member/michael_fisch/) Read his essay here: http://production.culanth.org/supplementals/505-tokyo-s-commuter-train-