Camthropod

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 a varied set of relationships to the circus, but...

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 naturalness of neoliberalism, and his assertion that compara...

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 world’s leading ethnographic filmmakers. He also writ...

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 Anthropology at Indiana University. Her intellectu...

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 theatre-goers. With editing by Christina Woolner and v...

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 south-east England and talks with Al Webb, the He...

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 normative implications of anthropological research fo...

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: Lapwing.wav by Juskiddink (http://freesound.org/peop...

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 University Press: 2015). In the interview, Professor Wer...

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.

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 the demolition of the Carlton Tavern through the...

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 hearing the voice of God, and in a study of the audito...

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 the recent turn back to the right in the country.

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 the war – to explore what it means to sing, and par...

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 become so important to know English in this city t...

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, affordable meals. With its founders James and Ruth, P...

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 the radio grandfather's multivocal approach to his...

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 presenting aspects of our research or just things t...