The Emic - Anthropological stories from the field – Details, episodes & analysis

Welcome to The Emic, the podcast where anthropologists share a moment from their fieldwork in which they truly took on an emic perspective – seeing the world from the point of view of the people they study.

 

In this episode, you'll hear from anthropologist and archaeologist Jason De León. De León is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, and the founder of the Undocumented Migration Project, a multidisciplinary research collective that investigates clandestine migration between Latin America and the United States using ethnographic, archaeological, and forensic methods. His influential book The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail has shaped public debates on border policy and migrant rights, and in 2017 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for this work.

 

The story you're about to hear centers on a moment in De León's fieldwork when he suddenly realized he had far more in common with smugglers than he had ever imagined. It's an uneasy but illuminating recognition — and exactly the kind of shift in perspective that The Emic is all about.

 

This conversation was recorded by Roanne during a meeting with Jason De León at the American Anthropological Association's annual conference in New Orleans. You may occasionally hear background sounds: doors opening, the murmur of busy corridors, and anthropologists chatting as they pass by. Consider it part of the scene — a live reflection captured in the middle of anthropology's biggest gathering. However, most of the sounds you hear in this podcast are the actual recordings that Jason made during his fieldwork. This means that you hear, what he heard, back then. 

 

More on Jason: Jason De León - UCLA Department of Anthropology

 

More on his most recent book Soldiers and Kings, which won the National Bookaward for nonfiction 2024: https://www.jasonpatrickdeleon.com/

 

If you want to receive additional photos from the field, personal drawings and behind-the-screens information accompanying the episodes of The Emic, subscribe to Roanne's free monthly email: www.anthropologyofthefuture.com/the-emic

In the autumn of 1971,  when he just turned 23 years old, Tim was living in a tiny wooden cabin on the shores of lake Rautaperajärvi, in the far northeastern corner of Finnish Lapland. He was a few months into his doctoral fieldwork with the Skolt Sámi people. The Skolts had been resettled in this remote area following the loss of their homeland to the then Soviet Union in the aftermath of the Second World War. Tim's plan had been to study the micropolitics of their situation as a minority within a minority, but he quickly discovered that for the people themselves, this took second place to the much more pressing concerns with how to get by, from one day to the next, within an unpromising environment. And nothing bothered people more, he found, than an issue around reindeer pastures. This is where the real politics lay.

 

Tim Ingold is a British social anthropologist, currently Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He was educated at Leighton Park School and Cambridge University. He is a fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His bibliography includes: The Perception of the Environment (2000), Lines (2007), Being Alive (2011), Making (2013) The Life of Lines (2015), Anthropology and/as Education (2017), Anthropology: Why it Matters (2018) and Correspondences (2021).

 

If you want to receive additional photos from the field, personal drawings and behind-the-screens information accompanying the episodes of The Emic, subscribe to Roanne's free monthly email: www.anthropologyofthefuture.com/the-emic

Danielle went to Iran to investigate the relationship between carpetmakers and their bias but learned something completely different: how to utilize the headscarf to give secret messages to whomever she talked to.

Dr. Danielle Braun is a corporate anthropologist, speaker, Director of the Academy for Organizational Culture, and author of popular books on anthropology (including Corporate Tribe, Building Tribes, Tribal Office Behavior, Patterns, and That's Crazy). She studied cultural anthropology and then spent 25 years as a corporate executive. Nowadays, Danielle still travels the world in search of ways to learn lessons on leadership and organizational culture, which she enjoys passing on to organizations and boards. At the Academy for Organizational Culture, she and her team help organizations improve and become more inspired, and provide courses. https://academievoororganisatiecultuur.nl/

During fieldwork in hospitals, Roanne discovers that technology is not just impacting the way in which we experience time, but also the extent to which we find waiting tolerable. 

Due to new technologies, physicians can work faster, which means they can help their patients quicker, too. But there is an important downside to these developments, that is too often overlooked.

For more information about Roanne: www.anthropologyofthefuture.com    If you want to receive additional photos from the field, personal drawings and behind-the-screens information accompanying the episodes of The Emic, subscribe to Roanne's free monthly email: www.anthropologyofthefuture.com/the-emic

Spanish design anthropologist Miguel Gómez Hernández went to Australia to investigate how industry experts envision the future designs of houses for the elderly. This future vision was all about safety and health, including iPads on the fridge to help people see what to eat, and no carpets or other things that create a risk of falling. But then he started visiting the houses of elderly people and found that they resisted these ideas. For them, there are different things that matter than safety and comfort, namely the joy of a colourful carpet and the need for photos where they can be seen.

Miguel is a design-anthropologist teaching and pursuing his PhD at Monash University, Australia. He is researching how older adults and the AgeTech industry envision future older people's lives with smart-home technologies. He has also taught courses on anthropology, health humanities, usability, and design thinking. Previously, Miguel researched and developed guidelines to design mobile apps and sensors for older people, primarily in the e-health domain. His academic background is an MSc in technology-anthropology in Denmark, and a Dual BA in sociology and political science in Spain and Finland. He also lived in Russia.

How does one drink riverwater in a way that is sustainable? Not in the way a thirsty anthropologist, traveling on a steppe does. Hint: the right way involves a Mongolian God and a beautiful cup.

As a corporate anthropologist, Ludo conducts anthropological research within companies and organisations. He provides and supports trainings and learning paths within the academy. Ludo specialises in cultural issues between generations in the workplace and in creating meaning in organisations. Ludo is also involved in societal research conducted by the Guild of Polder Anthropologists. Previous research projects in his academic career were in central Uganda, Spain and western Mongolia, as well as on the Zuidas in Amsterdam and in Silicon Valley in California. 

Why don't police officers report each other to their managers, even in cases of misconduct or behavior that deserves to be reported? That was one of the research questions that Dr. Danielle Braun began her fieldwork with. For a long time, she conducted research within the Dutch police force: she rode along in their cars during shifts, hung around the office, and went out with them after receiving a report of a major fight in a bar. And during that intervention, she learned something, or rather, felt something, that answered her research question. Listen to her story to find out what that was!   Dr. Danielle Braun is a corporate anthropologist, speaker, Director of the Academy for Organizational Culture, and author of popular books on anthropology (including Corporate Tribe, Building Tribes, Tribal Office Behavior, Patterns, and That's Crazy). She studied cultural anthropology and then spent 25 years as a corporate executive. Nowadays, Danielle still travels the world in search of ways to learn lessons on leadership and organizational culture, which she enjoys passing on to organizations and boards. At the Academy for Organizational Culture, she and her team help organizations improve and become more inspired, and provide courses. https://academievoororganisatiecultuur.nl/   For more information about Roanne: www.anthropologyofthefuture.com    If you want to receive additional photos from the field, personal drawings and behind-the-screens information accompanying the episodes of The Emic, subscribe to Roanne's free newsletter: www.anthropologyofthefuture.com/the-emic

In this episode, Roanne talks about her research among mountaineers and rock climbers. She struggled immensely with vertigo when trying to learn climbing, but these people seemed to be immune to it. It didn't come from a denial of the risk, nor from naivety, she quickly noticed - many of the athletes she spoke to experienced serious accidents or lost colleagues and friends to the sport. One of them - the world-renowned Edurne Pasaban, who inspired this episode, lost 14 people in the mountains herself, and she almost died as well. Yet she continues to climb. During an interview with Edurne, Roanne tries to understand how she does it without being overwhelmed by fear, the conversation takes a surprising turn, and Roanne learns a lesson that will not only help her climb better but also help her in her work and remain calm under high pressure. Listen here to the story, or order Roanne's interview collection FEAR! which includes the full story about Edurne Pasaban, as well as interviews with the other athletes from Roanne's research: Fear!, Roanne van Voorst | 9781628654363 | Boeken | bol   For more information about Roanne: www.anthropologyofthefuture.com    If you want to receive additional photos from the field, personal drawings and behind-the-screens information accompanying the episodes of The Emic, subscribe to Roanne's free newsletter: www.anthropologyofthefuture.com/the-emic

In this episode, anthropologist Oskar Verkaaik describes his research on the designs and interiors of mosques in the Netherlands. He shares how he aimed to understand why mosques almost always look more or less the same, both inside and out - at least, that's what he had read in literature and what many designers had told him. According to them, a mosque should resemble a reminder of the country of origin of its visitors. There seemed to be some truth in that, until an imam made him realize a completely different function of the appearance of a mosque. Listen here to the story of Dr. Oskar Verkaaik.   Oskar Verkaaik teaches anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. He has published widely on a range of topics, including ethnic-religious politics in Pakistan, secularism and cultural citizenship in the Netherlands, contemporary religious architecture, and heritage breeds in the context of sustainable dairy-farming. He is currently working on invasive species politics.    For more information about Roanne: www.anthropologyofthefuture.com    If you want to receive additional photos from the field, personal drawings and behind-the-screens information accompanying the episodes of The Emic, subscribe to Roanne's free newsletter: www.anthropologyofthefuture.com/the-emic

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For an overview of Roanne's work, you can also visit her LinkedIN page: https://nl.linkedin.com/in/roannevanvoorst