The Familiar Strange is a podcast about doing anthropology: that is, about listening, looking, trying out, and being with, in pursuit of uncommon knowledge about humans and culture. Find show notes, plus our blog about anthropology's role in the world, at https://www.thefamiliarstrange.com. Twitter: @tfsTweets. FB: facebook.com/thefamiliarstrange. Instagram: @thefamiliarstrange. Brought to you by your familiar strangers: Ian Pollock, Jodie-Lee Trembath, Julia Brown, Simon Theobald, Kylie Won ...
A mysterious door-way, an incident of ferocious violence, a respectable and popular scientist, well-known for his enjoyable dinner parties who suddenly changes his will, the brutal killing of an elderly Member of Parliament, a diabolical serum that can transform one person into another – truly the ingredients of a fast good thriller! Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has captured the imaginations of readers ever since it was first published in 1886. It met wi ...
A life lived backwards, with events happening in reverse order forms the strange and unexpected framework of one of F Scott Fitzgerald's rare short stories. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was published in Collier's in 1927 and the idea came to Fitzgerald apparently from a quote of Mark Twain's in which he regretted that the best part of life came at the beginning and the worst at the end. Fitzgerald's concept of using this notion and turning the normal sequence of life on its head resul ...
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Part 2:Theory as reproduction:reflections on the history of doing feminist anthropology in Australia
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This is part 2 of the wonderful roundtable we recorded at 2019's AAS conference!由Your Familiar Strangers
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Part 1:Theory as reproduction:reflections on the history of doing feminist anthropology in Australia
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In this very special collaboration, TFS would like to present a two part roundtable we recorded at 2019’s AAS conference! It’s a shame that we haven’t been able to gather again and talk all things anthropology this year, but we hope that this might be enough to whet your appetite for more things to come in 2021! A big thank you to Dr Benjamin Hegat…
The end of 2020 is in sight! What a year it has been for all of us. The team at TFS would like to say thank you to all our listeners this year and to everyone who has listened in to our podcasts and read the blog this year! We are taking a short season break and we will return with some new and improved content in February 2021! But keep an ear out…
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This week, we bring you an interview with Dr. Ashley Carruthers. Ashley is a lecturer of anthropology at the Australian National University’s School of Archaeology and Anthropology. His research interests include migration, mobilities, rural-urban relationships, networks and infrastructures, farming, organic agriculture, bicycles, and he has conduc…
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Surprise! We are so pleased to show you all a collaborative project we did with our friends and yours at Myanmar Musings! In this very special episode, Familiar Stranger Alex D’Aloia sat down with Luke Corbin, Anthea Snowsill, Michael Dunford and Dinith Adikari to discuss all things Myanmar. Join us as we explore the tea shops of downtown Yangoon a…
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On this week’s panel, we feature the president of the Australian Network of Student Anthropologists, Hanne Worsoe and Dinith Adikari who is a PhD candidate from the Australian National University. Hanne kicks us off [1:37] by discussing a recent article by Judith Butler about the recent US election. She asks us to consider how identity politics has…
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“How much time do you actually need to spend with someone to “accurately” represent their lives?” This week, we bring you an interview with Diana Tung who is currently doing her field work in the city of Iquitos in Peru. This is also executive producer Matt’s first interview! Diana discusses all things fieldwork and how things have changed since we…
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This week we bring you a panel with Anthea Snowsill who is currently doing her research with the Intha people of Myanmar. In this panel We’d also introduce our newest Familiar Stranger, Carolyn West. Welcome to the team Carolyn! Carolyn [1:25] kicks us off by discussing the recent documentary The Social Dilemma. She asks us to consider if social me…
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'The reasons why uniforms exist is for various reasons. Among them is to visually identify a staff member, which is a functional reason - a really practical reason, rather. It's also to take away any outside... personality that can come through on the person's body.'This episode, Caitlin Setnicar, Australian National University anthropology graduat…
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For the panel this week we welcome Luke Corbin from Myanmar Musings and Familiar Strange alumnus Jodie Lee Trembath! Simon starts us off [1:31] by discussing his recent culture shock in moving to Germany from Australia. Simon thought that experiences with fieldwork and working with other cultures would have prepared him better for a rapid transitio…
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This week we bring you a very very special episode! Last year we partnered with the Australian Network of Student Anthropologists, or ANSA for short and recorded their roundtable at the AAS held at the Australian National University! The roundtable discussion featured the likes of Dr Marcus Barber, Dr Sophie Chao, Dr Jayne Curnow, Dr Derek Elias, D…
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This week we bring you another zoom panel! Featuring Mike Dunford who is a Phd candidate in anthropology at the Australian National University and Sophie Chao who you might remember from our last panel and her interview on her work with the Marind People. To kick us off Alex [1:39] reflects on how we have to be performative in some ways to achieve …
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A content warning before this interview. Today’s topic centres around human trafficking activites in the Mekong reagion and our guest does mention some of the physical abuse that does take place in these situations. “I’m still to this day, very supportive of the UN if I’m going to put my policy hat on if you like” This week, we bring you an intervi…
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#60 Adapting Methods, Human Difference, Virtual Dojos And Foggy Field Notes: This Month On TFS
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Welcome back to a new season! With Covid-19 restrictions still in place, we bring you another Zoom panel! For this reason, the audio quality will be a little different to our usual studio sound.This week, we are joined by Sophie Chao, who we interviewed previously about her use of multispecies ethnography during her time with the Marind People and …
Just like that, we have already made it through half of what can only be described as a crazy year. To bring this season to a close, we recorded a short message from our homes (hence the differing audio quality ... we are KEEN to get back to the podcast studio soon) as we are still in the midst of corona virus restrictions. But despite the challeng…
More great books at LoyalBooks.com由F. Scott Fitzgerald
More great books at LoyalBooks.com由Robert Louis Stevenson
More great books at LoyalBooks.com由F. Scott Fitzgerald
More great books at LoyalBooks.com由Robert Louis Stevenson
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“Because for a few hours, maybe sometimes a few days, you can shed your human skin and you can take on the body of a creature that will allow you to fly, to swim through the rivers, to glide across the canopy” This week we bring you an interview with Dr Sophie Chao, who won the 2019 Australian Anthropological Society's PhD Thesis Prize with her the…
More great books at LoyalBooks.com由Robert Louis Stevenson
More great books at LoyalBooks.com由Robert Louis Stevenson
More great books at LoyalBooks.com由Robert Louis Stevenson
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#58 Individuals, Whiteness, Gendered Fandoms and Picking Field Stories to Tell: This Month on TFS
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This week we bring you another from home Zoom panel! This week we are joined by Senior lecturer Dr Yasmine Musharbash. Dr Musharbash is currently based in the Northern territory and has research interests in monsters, sleep and death. Alex [1:44] starts us off this week by returning to a topic touched on in the last panel. He dives further into Sab…
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#57 Narratives of Loss: Baptiste Brossard talks Alzheimer’s Disease & Social Dimensions of Ageing
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“I’m giving mundane examples here, but it can be a matter of life or death in a sense. Whether people are believed or not, it changes their destiny” In this episode, we bring you an interview with Dr Baptiste Brossard. Dr Brossard is a sociologist and lecturer currently based at Australian National University. He has an interest in mental health, s…
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Given the recently instigated social distancing rules in Canberra, this week we bring you a special “online” episode! For the safety of everyone, and especially in line with our own efforts to flatten the curve, we recorded this panel from the comfort of our own homes using the increasingly popular online video conferencing tool: Zoom. For this rea…
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"Realistically there's many people - maybe most anthropologists - are caught up in their own world, like many people are, trying to just get ahead. That’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is that I try and do [good]. I try and move forward with it."Content Warning: This interview has mention of addictions and the rehabilitation process.In this episode w…
This month on TFS, we are joined by special guests Sophie Pezzutto and Saidalavi P.C., two PhD candidates from the Australian National University. Sophie's research interests are on social media and the gig economy in relation to the transgender community, while Said is working on caste among Muslim communities in Southern India.Sophie [1:24] start…
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“It was a really difficult dilemma for me, because I felt that I needed to stand by my work, but at the same time what was more important was the social movement, because you know, what am I writing for?” In this episode (which is our first interview of 2020!) we bring you our interview with Dr Amita Baviskar that was recorded at the AAS Conference…
Welcome to our first podcast of 2020! And to kick of the new year season of TFS, we are joined by the lovely Kirsty Wissing, PhD candidate from the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University.Alex [1:16] begins off our discussion with a bit of activism. Referring to the work of Nancy Scheper-Hughes, he asks: when y…
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#51: Newsworthy Stories, Becoming Projects, Ethics Of Danger, Balancing Values: This month on TFS
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Jodie [1:26] begins our panel this month with a recent incident in Canberra, Australia, where a woman was shot by a 'random' gunman. Luckily her wound was not life-threatening. This story was HUGE here, but at the same time the story was released, Australia was (and currently still is in some places) on fire. Jodie asks us whether we should care so…
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This episode, Kylie interviews a very familiar guest ... Dr Jodie-Lee Trembath (aka Jodie from TFS)! Now, Jodie's no stranger to qualifications, but this year she completed her PhD - which is a MAMMOTH achievement - so we thought it was about time to pick her brain to understand more about universities and fieldwork. They start off by discussing Jo…
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Monica Heller est professeure en anthropologie linguistique à l’Université de Toronto (Canada). Émilie Urbain est professeure adjointe de linguistique au département de français de l’Université Carleton. Elles sont bilingues (français/anglais). Elles ont grandi et travaillent dans des zones périphériques des marchés linguistiques dominants de produ…
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#49: Intolerable Ads, Introvert Anthros, Irrevocable Ties & Indigenous Symbols: This Month on TFS
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This month, Kylie [0:50] kicks off our conversation by reflecting on our blog about racism in sport and asks us about the ethics of ad targeting on social media. This comes after we decided to try boosting the blog post through a paid Facebook advertisement, since we felt this was a topic that needed to be discussed in the broader community. “What …
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#48 Nature of Anthropology: Andrew Kipnis on China, Funerals, Conferences & Ethnographic Socialising
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"I think you’d be crazy to go into something like anthropology if you want to learn how to say whatever other people tell you to say - you know, maybe you should become a lawyer!"This week we bring you a special treat – an interview between our good friend Zoe Hatten and her PhD supervisor Professor Andrew Kipnis. Andrew Kipnis, Professor at the Au…
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Firstly, we’d like to introduce you all to Alex D’Aloia, who is managing our Facebook group TFS Chats – you might remember the blog post that he wrote for us at the start of this year: "Anthropologists and Dragons". Make sure to check out the chat group after listening to this episode and let us know what questions you have and what you found most …
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#46 Reconfigurable: Elanor Huntington Talks Engineering, Anthropology, & How We're Making Our World
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“Not only do we need engineers working alongside anthropologists to do good quality engineering, I also think that we need to do an anthropology of engineers… Engineers are making our world, right? And, the way that we, as engineers, think collectively, behave collectively, what we consider to be important... I think somebody should be watching tha…
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#45: Financial Identity, Quiet Fields, Silencing Students & Angry Anthropologists: This Month On TFS
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Simon [1:00] begins our chat by asking what happens to your identity when you become a dependent spouse; that is, when your partner is supporting the household financially and you are not, especially in a new country. “For the last maybe 20 or 30 years, the assumption has been that both men and women will probably work together to support a househo…
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#44 Digitising Migrants: Annalisa Pelizza on the European immigration crisis in an age of Big Data
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This is the 7th episode in our Science and Technology interview series. This time, Jodie is interviewing Annalisa Pelizza, Professor in Technology Studies of Communication at the University of Bologna in Italy, Visiting Professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and lead investigator on the project "Processing Citizenship: Digital re…
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This month, we were devastated to discover that the audio file of the awesome podcast panel we had recorded for you was completely corrupted (cue sounds of wailing and gnashing of teeth!). Not to be defeated, we decided we would re-release one of our early episodes, and chose this one because a) it has one of the lowest listen-counts of any of our …
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#42 Economies Of Openness: Ros Attenborough On Cultures Of Trust, Exclusion & Generosity In STS
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"All of these questions deserve...just that little bit extra thought about what would openness look like for my study and in my discipline? What would it achieve? What effects would it have? And you know that when you have research interview data it's never going to be as simple as just 'publishing it on the internet'. There are all the ethical con…
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Simon (0:48) kicks off this panel by asking us about mediocrity. He reflects on his fieldwork in Iran, where he observed – particularly in the education sphere - that there was a very small difference between being ‘perfect’ and being a ‘failure’. “In Australia we…have this kind of uncomfortable-ness, I think, with excellence and the idea that peop…
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#40 Robot Reflections: Inger Mewburn on researching researchers & welcoming our robot overlords
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In episode 5 of our STS Series, Inger Mewburn, Associate Professor and Director of Research Training at the Australian National University, founder of the popular blog The Thesis Whisperer and author of How to Tame Your PhD, Becoming an Academic, How To Be An Academic, and How to Fix Your Academic Writing Trouble, chats to our own Jodie-Lee Trembat…
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#39 Heartless Foundation, Stories, Reconciliation & Failed Election Prophecies: This month on TFS
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On this month’s panel, we welcome Will Grant from The Wholesome Show onto the podcast and introduce Kylie Dolan, one of TFS' Editorial Board members who is making her podcast debut!Julia [1:01] dives straight into the Heart Foundation’s latest campaign ‘Heartless Words’, which has caused a bit of controversy in Australia. Julia elaborates: “the mes…
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#38 When good intention isnt enough: Jacqui Hoepner on morally repulsive research & academic freedom
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“I went into this thinking that objectivity and neutrality were the Name of the Game. That you couldn’t do good research if you were in any way biased or if you had your own opinions or experiences or values that might influence the research.”In episode number 4 of our STS Series, Dr Jacqui Hoepner, an early career research fellow at the Australian…
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#37 Democracy Sausage, Fan Identity, Mental Health Policy & Being AnthroDiplomats: This Month On TFS
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This month, we’d like to welcome and thank special guests Dr Jill Sheppard and Martyn Pearce from Policy Forum Pod for joining our semi-themed panel discussion, inspired by the upcoming Australian Federal Election.Jill [1:16] starts us off with a very topical issue right now in Australia – voting for the upcoming Federal Election. Jill tells us tha…
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#36 If Machines Talked: Lucy Suchman on drone warfare, stubborn photocopiers & human-robot relations
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“The claim was 'isn’t this wonderful that remote controls keep humans safe'. Now, all you have to do is recognise that this is referring only to certain humans. The assumption is the humans that matter are those who are involved in US military operations. And it completely dehumanises the humans who are of course the objects, the targets of these w…
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This month Julia (0:59) starts us off with the relationship between loneliness and health after listening to an episode of 'All in the Mind', a podcast that explores the connections between the brain and behaviour. She stresses that loneliness is something that everyone is vulnerable to and is becoming more of a problem in our modern world. In the …
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“Wherever you work, science and technology are everywhere … [and] ethnographic methods are crucial for answering the kinds of questions that STS scholars want to answer.”In the second episode of our STS Series, Emma Kowal, a cultural and medical anthropologist and Professor at Deakin University, author of over 100 publications including Trapped in …
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This month on TFS, we bring you a special themed panel with Dr Siobhan McDonnell about getting ready to go to the field. Siobhan is a legal anthropologist and Research Fellow the Australian National University with interests in Indigenous land rights, climate change and gender studies.This is also Ian's last panel podcast with us as he is moving to…