Sussex Anthropology

🌍 Studying an MA in Anthropology webinar
🗓️ Tuesday 14 May 2024 (12-1pm UK Time/British Summer Time)

Join me, as academic convenor for
- MA in Social Anthropology
- MA in Anthropology of Development and Social Transformation

Learn more about what you’ll study on these courses at University of Sussex and how it can help to take your career forward.

Register here: https://tinyurl.com/sussanth24

Interested in postgraduate study at the University of Sussex? Join us for an International Development and Anthropology masterclass, 'Four myths about global poverty.' Thank you Hasan Ashraf for putting together this poster!

Meike Fechter and student ambassador Renata Carvalho at the London Anthropology Day at the British Museum. Sharing the world of Sussex Anthropology with students, educators and Anthropology enthusiasts from all over the UK.

📣New blog post from our 3rd year student Renata Carvalho
discussing the 'business' of immigration control including a look at the role of .

'Profit over people? The ‘big business’ of tough immigration laws.'

https://bit.ly/profitoverpeople

Profit over people? The ‘big business’ of tough immigration laws. By Renata Carvalho As the new Nationality and Borders Bill sparks yet another wave of debates over the United Kingdom’s immigration tactics, it is important to ask: who will really benefit from it?…

📣📣The Anthropology Social invites all students and staff to a film screening of final year Anthropology student Beatrice Messuti's ethnographic film 'Folkpores', filmed as part of Sussex's Junior Research Associate (JRA) scheme in the summer or 2021.

🎥🎥The screening will be held on Thursday 17th March 4pm at Fulton 213. Free entrance.

Here's what Beatrice shares about her work:

"'Folkpores' (San Giovanni) is a sensory storytelling of Summer Solstice traditions in Northern Italy, especially focusing
on areas of Lombardy and Piedmont. The focus of film is the traditions of the nights surrounding the Summer Solstice, especially the Notte di San Giovanni and the traditional herbalism embedded
in the picking of the herbs and the making of the Guazza, a special water made with herbs and flowers and left outside on San Giovanni to absorb the magical properties of the dew.

By exploring these traditions behind the camera, in an attempt to create a multi-sensory visual ethnography, the relevance of the senses in these practices has become increasingly evident to me. Ideas of “porous subjectivity” have been useful in exploring the connection of the senses to the realm of spirituality and enchantment, to dissect the role of the senses in syncretic practices. The entanglements between the body, the sensory, and the spiritual world have been fascinating to explore, as the senses enable the body to participate in a spiritual experience and absorb spiritual essences and forces.

This has especially struck me in regards to the ritual of washing one’s face and body with the filtered Guazza, the morning after San Giovanni. This ritual and the water are believed to possess special
healing properties and to bring forth luck, fertility, and love. As the film displays, when the experience is described, the senses (sight, touch, smell) are used to paint a very vivid picture and are
vessels of spiritual meaning. The rich scent of flowers is capable of “penetrating one’s soul”, the water “feels fresher than it really is”, and that the flowers contained in it are the most colourful and
smell the strongest at that time of the year. Many describe this experience as very purifying and soothing, and this purification is enabled and enhanced by the sensorium.

I have tried to portray this in the film through different techniques: these include keying in images of flowers to represent the prominence of scent and colour in the storytelling of the participants, as well as making animated collages in collaboration with the participants, with cutouts of pictures taken by them that they felt represented the sensory landscape of their celebrations.

Participants created soundscapes and collages have therefore been incorporated in the video interviews and footage of the celebrations. They accompany the narration and reveal the sensory and emotional landscapes of individuals and their “porous subjectivity”. The camera itself is used as a tool for further immersion and to enhance perception: it becomes a porous subject that absorbs information and reflects it to the viewer of the film. It also enhances the filmmaker’s sensory immersion (e.g. through zooming in and focus), similar to the film possession described by Jean Rouch as cinétrance.

The way the film is constructed seeks to echo the way the participants share their stories: conversational, vivid, rich in sensory details, and to immerse the viewer in the same spiritually charged sensorium I had the pleasure to explore last Summer. I hope I have succeeded in my intent and that it will be a pleasure to explore for the viewer, too."

Flash talks and discussion about the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.
Tues 8th March 12.00-13.30
At the Global Studies Resource Centre
(Arts C, room 175)

📣 NEW BLOG POST!!
Sussex Anthropology finalist Ellie Plumb writes a strong review of Seth Holmes' book 'Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies.'
Read it on the Culture & Capitalism blog:

https://cultureandcapitalismblog.wordpress.com/2022/03/02/fresh-fruit-broken-bodies-migrant-farmworkers-in-the-united-states-book-review/

Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States (Book Review) by Ellie Plumb In Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States, Seth M. Holmes seeks to uncover the synergistic effects that citizenship, race, ethnicity, and class hierarch…

We're hiring! Follow the link below for news of a new post in Social Anthropology (Human Rights)

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/about/jobs/lecturer-in-social-anthropology-ref-7551

Lecturer in Social Anthropology Ref 7551 : Jobs : About us : University of Sussex Search for job vacancies at the University of Sussex, including academic roles.

📣 NEW BLOG POST
'Environment, Labour and Capitalism at Sea' - a Book Review by final year Sussex Anthropology student Connie Scott.
🔗 Check it out on the Culture & Capitalism blog: https://wp.me/p7jF2I-U0

Environment, Labour and Capitalism at Sea (Book Review) by Connie Scott “Fish simply appear in supermarkets” (p.209), writes Penny McCall Howard. Most consumers have little or no awareness of where their fish comes from, or of the complex relationship b…

📣 The Winter 2021 edition of our Anthropology newsletter has been published!

🏆 Read about our awards & achievements, publications, student successes and more.

🔗 http://bit.ly/anthnews

📣 NEW BLOG POST

Mosquito Trails: Ecology, Health, and the Politics of Entanglement - a Book Review by final year Sussex Anthropology & Spanish student Jack Payne-Cook.

🔗 Check it out on the Culture & Capitalism blog: https://bit.ly/34FRtgE

Mosquito Trails: Ecology, Health, and the Politics of Entanglement (Book Review) By Jack Payne-Cook If I was asked by someone unfamiliar with anthropology to provide an example of the contemporary relevance of the discipline, I would consider offering Alex M. Nading’s “Mosquito…

The Anthropology Pub Quiz is back!!! 🏆

Join us this Thurs 9th Dec for an evening of fun, drinks, knowledge and celebrations.

All welcome!!!
🍻🎉

📢 NEW BLOG POST 📢
Check out the latest article on the Culture & Capitalism blog:
'On the Edge of the Body' by 3rd year Anthropology student Renata Carvalho.

On the Edge of the Body By Renata Carvalho Anthropology’s many attempts of conceptualising the body into clear and useful analytical categories has raised significant ontological questions that problematise the very basis…

📢 NEW BLOG POST‼️
Check out the latest article on the Culture & Capitalism blog: 'Recognising the Spirit of Ubuntu in Khayelitsha Community Response to the Covid-19 pandemic' by Megan Anderson

Recognising the Spirit of Ubuntu in Khayelitsha Community Response to the Covid-19 pandemic by Megan Anderson In the second-largest peri-urban settlement in South Africa, Khayelitsha, the coronavirus has proliferated with recorded cases over 6,500. The township has become one of the worst…

Careers events this week...

🔍Looking for jobs and experience, need help with applications or thinking about your career options?

💼Join upcoming events and book 1-1 sessions with the University's Careers Advisers!

🔗https://careerhub.sussex.ac.uk

📢 NEW BLOG POST‼️

Check out the latest article on the Culture & Capitalism blog: 'Afghanistan's Global Entanglements' by Dr. Magnus Marsden.

Afghanistan’s Global Entanglements by Magnus Marsden For many viewers in the West, the horrific scenes at Kabul airport in August 2021 appeared to suggest that after a brief period of international intervention, Afghanistan had once…

The student-led Anthropology book club is starting their Autumn read this week with Lila Abu-Lughod's classic 'Veiled Sentiments'. All students are welcome!

Wednesday 17th Nov 6-7pm at Jubilee 143.
Book club introductions and discussion of Chapter 1.

Pdf of the book available by emailing [email protected]

See you there!!

Anthropology Seminars - TOMORROW - Tuesday November 16th, 15:00 - Guldem Baykal Buyuksarac

Tomorrow’s Anthropology Seminar will be on Zoom. The speaker is Dr. Güldem Baykal Büyüksaraç from Istanbul University. The title of her talk is:



Rural Governance, Water Grabbing, and Local Contestation in the Tauruses



Güldem’s current research focuses on contested understandings and constructions of “heritage” in and around the conservation sites on the Tauruses mountains in Antalya province (Turkey), part of the ancient region of Pisidia. Her work investigates how different actors - contemporary village communities, administrators, heritage specialist and private investors - shape and engage in ideological, experiential and material construction of landscapes, managed through overlapping archaeological heritage and nature conservation regimes.



Güldem Baykal Büyüksaraç is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Istanbul University. She has received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University and carried out her postdoctoral studies at the George Washington University Institute for Middle East Studies. She has been engaged in a range of research areas, including critical heritage and conservation theories, space and landscape studies, identity and post-identity politics. She is the co-editor of Commoning the City: Empirical Perspectives on Urban Ecology, Economics, and Ethics(Routledge, April 2020). She was a senior fellow at the Koç University Research Centre for Anatolian Civilizations, and currently working towards a monograph, tentatively entitled Landscapes in the Making: Claims to Land, Heritage, And Livelihood in Southwest Rural Turkey).



The Seminar will start at 15:00 and the zoom link is:



https://universityofsussex.zoom.us/j/93108340176?pwd=MG1MaTZJbjI2dUV6SG1yRkhyZmRsUT09

Passcode: Sussex

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Join us today for the next presentation in our Sussex Anthropology seminar series!

Prof. Jean Paul Baldacchino from the University of Malta will talk about:

Psychoanalysis and the anthropology of self-alteration.

The talk will explore the ‘self’ as a topic of renewed interest in anthropology. Several studies have questioned the universality of the self with many anthropologists arguing that the ‘self’ as such tells us more about the development of Western culture than anything else. Social historians have debated the origins of the Western self in studies of ‘individualism’ while anthropologists have contrasted the Western self with differing understandings of the person across cultures. Rather than engaging once more with the ‘long-running onslaught on the sovereign individual’ (Humphrey 2008: 359) this paper takes as its starting point the notion of ‘self-alteration’ focusing on psychoanalysis as a mode of self-alteration. As such it draws upon clinical ‘case studies’ but also a dose of autoethnographic ‘methodological individualism’ putting under examination my own experience as analyst and as analysand. Psychoanalysis I argue, cannot be easily dismissed as a product of Western individualism but on the contrary in important ways serves to destabilise certain fundamental assumptions about the individual. The possibilities and technologies of self-alteration are historically circumscribed and also subject to power dynamics however they can also provide a useful tool in the study of morality and ‘ordinary ethics’.

3pm in C333!

Great to see our returning Y2 and Finalists enjoying pizza in the Dhaba today. Welcome back to Campus, everybody.

📢We're delighted to announce our Autumn 2021 seminar series!

📚Join us on Tuesdays 3pm for constructive and stimulating discussions

More here👉https://bit.ly/anthsemi

Sussex Anthropologist Paul Boyce has a new book coming out. See advanced publicity here:
https://www.routledge.com/COVID-19-Assemblages-Q***r-and-Feminist-Ethnographies-from-South-Asia/Banerjea-Boyce-Dasgupta/p/book/9781032201108

COVID-19 Assemblages: Q***r and Feminist Ethnographies from South Asia This book documents and analyzes the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic through q***r and feminist perspectives. A testament of dispossessions as well as a celebration of various forms of resilience, community building and critical responses, it chronicles the social history of q***r and trans persons...

Congratulations to Sussex Anthropology Doctoral Researcher Gabriel Popham, who has won the Research Image competition organised by the Festival of Doctoral Research. This is great news. Well done Gabriel. Here is the image, and a description:

La Maddalena. Chiomonte, Italy. The expropriation of this small parcel of land in the Alps took almost a month to complete. It would have taken a day, had it not been for the fact that over a thousand people were legally registered as co-owners, each one of them with an identical claim to ownership. Covid rules (and fears of mass protests) meant that each and every owner was individually brought here to assess the situation and to make observations, which were dutifully recorded by officials. The owners agreed to collectively purchase the land years ago as an act of civil disobedience against the new Turin-Lyon railway line, an infrastructure project that is set to drill through the mountains of the Susa Valley, in the northwest of Italy. For them, the only purpose of buying the land was to put up so-called "paper barricades" against the new railway project.

Sussex Anthropology are Hiring! We have advertised a fixed term, 20 month Lectureship in Visual and Cultural Anthropology. See details here: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/about/jobs/lecturer-in-visual-and-cultural-anthropology
Closing date: 29th July

Lecturer in Visual and Cultural Anthropology Ref 6357 : Jobs : About us : University of Sussex Search for job vacancies at the University of Sussex, including academic roles.

If you're thinking of studying Anthropology here are some great suggestions for background reading, from Gillian Tett:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/23/top-10-books-of-everyday-social-anthropology-gillian-tett-anhro-vision

Top 10 books of everyday social anthropology | Gillian Tett From studies of the ‘ghost workers’ in the wealthy west to the social meaning of smartphones, these books offer vital insights into how we structure our lives

We're hiring new faculty at Sussex Anthropology. We have just advertised a 3-year post in Anthropology and International Development: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/about/jobs/lecturer-in-anthropology-ref-6108
Please share widely through your networks.

Lecturer in Anthropology and International Development (Education and Scholarship) Ref 6108 : Jobs : About us : University of Sussex Search for job vacancies at the University of Sussex, including academic roles.

Interested in studying anthropology at university?
Join our department at the RAI’s London Anthropology Day on 29 June 2021!

Book now at londonanthropologyday.com so you can attend our live events and hear about anthropology courses in the UK from admissions tutors and academics, specialising in Social, Biological and Forensic Anthropology.

---------LIVE EVENTS--------
You must register as an attendee to gain access to live events.

𝟏𝟎:𝟎𝟎 – 𝟏𝟏:𝟑𝟎 𝐖𝐞𝐥𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲
Find out about how to get the most out of London Anthropology Day. Dr Nick Long (LSE) will then share his insights on why Anthropology is an intriguing and essential discipline for the 21st century, and there will be a discussion of the various areas of anthropology you can study from Dr Simon Underdown and Dr Liana Chua.

𝟏𝟏:𝟑𝟎 – 𝟏𝟑:𝟑𝟎 𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 (𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐩-𝐢𝐧 𝐬𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬)
Visit the university’s virtual rooms to ask questions about undergraduate anthropology courses, admissions and their online videos. Links will be provided to registered participants for these sessions nearer to the day. BOOK NOW at londonanthropologyday.co.uk to access

𝟏𝟑.𝟑𝟎-𝟏𝟒.𝟑𝟎 𝐖𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫.𝐦𝐞 𝐒𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞
A social space to meet fellow prospective students and find out about becoming a Student Fellow at the Royal Anthropological Institute. Links will be provided to registered participants for these sessions nearer to the day.

Summer is back! A campus boundary walk with our wonderful MA students - thanks to Akintunde Babatunde for the photos and to Becky for organising!