Abstract ‘Entanglements in the Anthropocene’ is an embodied exploration of the intersections of place, dance and lens‐based practices (photography and video). Lens‐based works discussed here result from collaborative research projects and grow from a shared curiosity about aesthetics in the Anthropocene and how to express entangled relationships with place. Broadly ethnographic, the work emerges from a quiet process of attunement to, participation in, and conscious engagement with, the material agencies of place. As a collection of embodied and ethnographic research, our photographs and video work express deep explorations of place‐based experiences, and memories and affect, and play with elemental motifs, the passage of time, and sensory experiences of climate change. These works collaboratively emerged during field visits with our local region over the last two years and the research is ongoing. In this article we theorise and reflect on some of these artworks as embodied ethnography of our entanglements in the Anthropocence.
Abstract This article draws on the narratives of Mongolians who have worked in Korea to explore the experience of migrant labour and the role work abroad plays in Mongolian identities and life projects. Four different categories of worker are discussed: those working on 3 month visas; those working illegally having overstayed their visa; contract workers; and workers on student visas. Noting that so many narratives valorise the migrant work ethic and highlight the value given to their labour, we argue that migrants seek not only financial opportunities but also the opportunity to articulate nomadic values and prove their moral worth as Mongolians in ways that may appear restricted within Mongolia itself.
Abstract How can anthropologists ensure the accuracy of the statements they make in their publications, especially in an era of ever increasing budgetary and bureaucratic pressures that limit the duration of fieldwork? What should the role of language abilities be in this context and to what degree is it necessary to learn the language of the place where one works as an anthropologist? How can anthropologists heed what are clearly important calls for the use of interdisciplinary methodologies—notably those blending ecological and ethnographic techniques—without impacting the reliability and quality of their work? What form should collaborations with local scholars take in this context? This review essay discusses these questions in relation to a recently published book: Jason Roberts' We Stay the Same: Subsistence, Logging, and Enduring Hopes for Development in Papua New Guinea . The essay contextualises Roberts' study as it pertains to the people of Lavongai Island; emphasises its three main contributions; shows some significant shortcomings of the book; and, finally, attempts to draw from these shortcomings some broader implications for the discipline of environmental anthropology in PNG. These highlight the key role of linguistic abilities for ethnography, the pitfalls of interdisciplinary methodologies when ethnography is involved, and the importance for foreign ethnographers to collaborate with national scholars.
Gendered cultural change arising from conflict can be either productive or destructive. This study takes Pakistan's tribal areas as a case study to contribute to the discussion on gendered cultural change brought about by conflict in the post-9/11 era. The conflict between the Taliban and the state of Pakistan has reconfigured the gendered cultural dynamics of the region. This paper offers an emic perspective on how conflict radically transforms women's cultural practices, reshapes masculinities and concurrently facilitates the emergence of neo-tribalism. Ethnographic fieldwork, conducted between 2021 and 2024, examined both negative and positive impacts. The study finds that while the conflict imposed strict patriarchal norms, restricting women's participation in traditional cultural events-once vital sources of social networking and resistance against patriarchy-it also inadvertently changed the traditional masculine mindset regarding gender roles in tribal society.
Drawing on fieldwork among the Akha people in Phongsaly District, Phongsaly Province, northern Laos, this paper examines Akha patrilineal kinship and its links to reproduction. The Akha people's reproductive decisions and behaviours are shaped by patrilineality, ancestral connections and cultural-spiritual perceptions of reproduction, which produce both continuity and contradiction in kin relations. Patrilineal kinship plays a crucial role in shaping reproduction by defining the number and gender of children, as well as assigning the duties and responsibilities of women and men. Reproduction is a means through which kinship is negotiated, defining women's values and contributions to sustaining patrilineage. However, far from being inferior, Akha women demonstrate agency by actively upholding patrilineal values. After relocation, Akha cultural practices concerning kinship and reproduction are subject to state policies and interventions aimed at integrating the Akha into national development. While the Akha informants expressed a willingness to change some cultural practices, such as the abandonment of infanticide, they were also firm in upholding the values of producing sons. This suggests that, despite their integration, Akha communities have negotiated to preserve their kinship, highlighting its continued centrality in guiding reproductive decision-making and reinforcing social belonging in the post-relocation context. In turn, reproduction remains fundamental to maintaining patrilineage, despite the alternative of adoption.
This autoethnography presents fragments of an invisible life, an ordinary body navigating the terrain of 'academic migration' (2009-2025), from rejection as a PhD applicant to recognition as a high-achieving graduate. Provoked by my recent pursuit of Fulbright Postdoctoral Award in the United States, I draw on Kafka's figure of the hunger artist to conceptualise migration-both physical and intellectual-as a political epistemology. Through creative-relational inquiry, this performance autoethnography explores the existential themes of political depression and relational poverty. The hunger artist's subversive narrative is analysed for its embodied and psychological resonance, advancing the development of 'livingness' as a conceptual framework. This psychopoetic intervention engages the everyday body and enacts political therapy, refiguring relational poverty as spaces of creative living. This article demonstrates how the poetics of writing migration can open a breathing space-a way of becoming-for those rendered invisible within dominant academic and social structures.
By ethnographically reading Australia in a grain of rice, this article recasts Australia's entangled histories with the Asia-Pacific and the epistemic tensions through which rice emerges as a source of sustenance and metabolic concern in everyday life. I explore rice as a method, showing how the grain gathers anthropological thought and practice in conversation with diabetes research, cereal science and regenerative biology. Tracing the trajectories of Japanese rice cultivated in New South Wales and prepared in a Korean Australian kitchen in Western Sydney, I follow the grain from paddy fields into supermarket aisles, through kitchens and bodies, and into laboratories. Rice opens new ways of thinking about eating and metabolic life under conditions of planetary uncertainty and re-situates the Asia-Pacific as integral to Australia's biopolitical and migratory futures. This article seeks to contribute to contemporary anthropological thought in Australia, especially in relation to the Asia-Pacific.
