Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Mine Egbatan can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/08/commodifying-disability-as-an-experience/. About the post: In this post, I explore how disability is depoliticized when it is reduced to an individual, sensory experience within technologically reproduced spaces, isolated from the social, cultural, and politi...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Amanda Quan can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/08/medicine-disoriented/. About the post: What follows is an object collection that troubles the arrival of The Clinic by engaging the historic underpinnings, cultural logics, and afterlives of its object parts. I think with the concept of simulation as one that...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Madelyn Zander can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/08/the-cloud-is-too-loud-spotlighting-the-voices-of-community-activists-from-the-data-center-capital-of-the-world/. About the post: In this post, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork that began in 2021 with community activists in Northern Virginia, a place known a...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Mariel Garcia-Montes can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/08/challenging-normalized-surveillance-birds-on-the-wire-surveillance-in-mexico/. About the post: The ways that surveillance technology is acquired and deployed, often in the name of security, contributes to the establishment of a culture where surveilla...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Yuna Hwang can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/08/questioning-the-market-how-did-the-south-korean-camming-beot-bang-market-grow/. About the post: Drawing on new economic sociology to consider markets as social networks, along with a historical-institutional perspective emphasizing the sociopolitical contexts t...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Chu May Paing can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/07/trolling-breaking-rules-poking-fun-or-just-outright-harassment/. About the post: What is the social function of trolling and in what context can trolling be an empowering act for those of us who are already systematically marginalized? What are the ways in w...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Adriana Moreno can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/07/digital-anthropology-of-the-senses-connecting-technology-and-culture-through-the-sensory-world/. About the post: This post explores the relevance of studying the senses, particularly hearing and touch, from a digital anthropological perspective, taking adva...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by PEDRO DE MEDEIROS can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/07/cards-and-codes-spirituality-and-magic-in-the-biotechnological-era/. About the post: My proposal is to create a magical tool, a tarot deck, that provokes thought about how mystical and religious elements permeate the advancement of science and technology...

This podcast episode talks to three anthropologists, Rachel Douglas-Jones, Rine Vieth, and Kara White, scholars working in three different parts of the world who use multimodal methods in their teaching and research. It is not a history of multimodal methods, or even a really detailed review of them, instead, it is a consideration of some of the issues they raise or resolve for ethnography. Transc...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Jessica L. Olivares can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/07/to-witness-cell-phone-cameras-immigrant-communities-and-police-accountability/. About the post: What follows is a reflection on my fieldwork in Houston, Texas, during 2018 and 2019, focusing on how anti-surveillance advocates at the American Civil Libe...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Sean Muller can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/06/anthropology-of-a-dream-the-stakes-of-studying-addiction-in-america/. About the post: Addiction emerges as a problem alongside the fantasy of a “good life” characterized by “upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and lively, durable inti...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by João Paulo Siqueira can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/06/between-the-bitterness-of-anonymity-and-ethics-is-racism-reflections-for-anthropological-research-on-science-in-the-backyard/. About the post: Therefore, my contribution to the discussion circle was to challenge the idea that we conduct research "at ho...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Elizabeth Roberts can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/06/on-disability-infrastructure-and-shame/. About the post: Before the pandemic, I frequently went back and forth to Mexico City for work and flew regularly within the USA to give talks and workshops. The pandemic arrived just as my nerve pain made getting...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Carolina Angel Botero can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/06/what-will-be-lost-a-cat-a-man-with-a-horse-and-the-battle-at-court/. About the post: This essay joins ethnographic fieldwork with a visual storyboard to explore speculative futures that arise from ongoing processes of dispossession and loss in the fo...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Jonathan Givan can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/06/being-heard-as-experimental/. About the post: In this post, I want to explore histories of experimental music and contrast it with histories of Hip Hop to better understand who is allowed to be labeled as experimenting within music and how the answers to th...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by John Neufeld can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/06/the-doing-of-collaborative-ethnography/. About the post: In the time Montreal Waterways spent engaging with the island’s residents and its landscape, it became evident that an island is more than a park: an island is actually a composite of a great number of...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Mehak Sawhney can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/06/premediations-of-carcerality-notes-on-targeted-surveillance-in-postcolonial-india/. About the post: I refer to the various surveillance media practices that underpin the technological and legal procedures of targeted political imprisonment—from recording and...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Katie Foster can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/05/on-observing-reflections-on-un-climate-policy-negotiations-from-paris-to-the-present/. About the post: What has changed from COP 21 to COP 28? How do evolving global conditions influence the process? And what does the act of observing allow within multilatera...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Samantha Breslin can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/05/cultures-of-trust-in-computing-and-beyond/. About the post: What does it mean to trust? In this post I explore how there are specific ways of producing trust in computer science education. I draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted for my PhD in an underg...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Rebecca Winkler can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/05/gazing-into-the-elephants-eyes-unsettling-recognition-in-multispecies-relations/. About the post: In my fieldwork, I bring together my background in conservation biology, ethology, and ongoing doctoral research in cultural anthropology to attend to concern...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Laura Werle can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/05/waves-of-well-being-surfing-at-the-shaka-surf-club-in-kodi-bengre-india/. About the post: The research described in this post aimed to provide insights to improve low-cost mental health support and interventions in coastal areas and fisher communities in India...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Thais Valim can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/04/we-had-to-rethink-many-many-things-reflexivity-in-scientific-practices-during-the-zika-epidemic-in-recife-brazil/. About the post: This piece explores how local experiences with the Zika epidemic in Recife, Brazil, have impacted Brazilian scientists' research...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Jack Leff can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/04/tear-gas-as-punishment/. About the post: By examining the interplay between state use of tear gas to punish activists and the protestors fighting against it, we catch a glimpse into the racial capitalist operations of the United States and where it is vulnerable...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Soojin Kim can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/04/spatial-approaches-to-livestreaming-a-methodological-exploration-in-digital-ethnography/. About the post: This is my reflection on the frustrations that I encountered during the initial phases of my fieldwork within AfreecaTV. Between late 2016 and early 2018,...

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Alexandra Dantzer can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/04/two-insomniacs-discuss-routine-and-restlessness-through-google-tracking/. About the post: This piece approaches questions about life, time-waste, routine, and restlessness through a different lens. Namely, Google tracking data serve as an elicitation dev...