Ethnographic Imagination Basel

• On Erotics - with Anima Adjepong

  Anima Adjepong, Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati, joins us as a guest in this episode, On Erotics. The discussion begins with the concept of the erotic as a form of sensual and aesthetic relationality that challenges traditional notions of objectivity and rationality.  Adjepong's scholarly work has explored the intersections of erotics with gender, sexuality, race, class, and knowledge production while also addressing themes of belonging, freedom, and the complexities of class, race, and transnationalism in both Ghana and the United States. The dialogue explores how the erotic can provide ways to reimagine our engagement with an understanding of the world.      Adjepong is author of the book Afropolitan Projects: Redefining Blackness, Sexualities, and Culture from Houston to Accra (2021), which presents an ethnographic examination of how Ghanaians living abroad utilize African imaginaries to shape their identities. This work highlights a unique form of cosmopolitanism that intricately weaves racial identities within the broader context of gender, sexuality, and religion. Additional contributions include articles and chapters with titles such as "Invading Ethnography: A Queer of Colour Reflexive Practice"(2019), “Whiteness Engendered Violence on the Rugby Pitch" (2021), and "Women's Football and Gendered Nationalism in Ghana" (2022). This episode emphasizes in particular their 2019 essay, “Erotic Ethnography, Sex Spirituality, and Embodiment in Qualitative Research.”     Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.

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• On Humanitarianism - with Inderpal Grewal

  This episode, “On Humanitarianism”, reviews how the incitement to rescue and save others has become vital to how we are what we are in the contemporary world.  It also examines how a particular perspective on humanitarianism may help us better understand the current global order. Our guest is Inderpal Grewal, professor emerita of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. Grewal is one of the pioneers of the field known today as Transnational Feminist Studies and has conducted extensive research on questions focused on post-colonialism, mobility and modernity, non-governmental organizations and human rights, law and citizenship, among many other subjects.   Some of her notable publications include Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire and the Cultures of Travel (1996), Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms (2005), and Saving the Security State: Exceptional Citizens in Twenty-First Century America (2017). Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.  

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• On Trance - with Michaela Schäuble

  Our guest on episode #13, On Trance, is Michaela Schäuble. Her scholarly work explores innovative ways to engage with the experiences of trance through writing, film, and photography. This episode examines the transformative potential of ecstatic experiences of trance, the state of ecstasy and exuberance associated with mediumship. Our discussion centers on trance, forms of possession, and mediumship, which have long fascinated anthropologists and challenged their understanding and representational possibilities.   Michaela Schäuble, a professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern in Switzerland, is also an acclaimed documentary filmmaker. She is one of the co-founders and Co-directors of Ethnographic Media Space Bern, a creative collective of anthropologists engaged in audio-visual methods as part of knowledge production. Prior to her current position, she taught at the University of Manchester in England and the Martin Luther University in Halle Wittenberg, Germany.  Schäuble's diverse research interests span media and audio-visual anthropology, religion, social memory, gender space, and nationalism, offering rich and engaging perspectives.   She is author of Narrating Victimhood. Gender Religion and the Making of Place in Post-war Croatia (2014). She is also the author of numerous articles and chapters on topics as diverse as Mediterranean anthropology, anthropology of post-socialism, ritual and commemoration, masculinity and placemaking, as well as ethnographic methods beyond the written word. One of her current projects focuses on the phenomenon of tarantism in southern Italy, an ensemble of bodily afflictions and healing practices that involve trance-like experiences.   Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.

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• On Data - with Alec Bălăşescu

  Our conversation on this episode, On Data, is with  Alec Bălăşescu, associate faculty at the Royal Roads University in British Columbia, Canada. Bălăşescu is a social and cultural anthropologist whose research and teaching range from bodily aesthetics, fashion, and politics to human-technology interactions, climate change, and health, Primarily through the prism of machine learning, algorithms and their implications for an ethnographic imagination.    Bălăşescu is the author of Paris Chic, Tehran Thrills: Aesthetic Bodies, Political Subjects (2007), a book that traces the circulations of fashion between France and Iran to reflect on the intersections of consumption, modernity, and religion. His more recent work  revolves around human-technology interactions: “Machine Anthropology, Or, Will Robots Talk About Us Behind Our Backs” (2020); and “Augmented Anthropology: Interstitial Anthropology in the Limits of Humanity.” (2024), co-authored with Cristina Luna and published in the Journal of Future Robot Life.     Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Production:  Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.

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• On Surveillance - with Katherine Verdery

  In this episode, On Surveillance, our guest is Katherine Verdery, Julien J. Studley Faculty Scholar and Distinguished Professor Emerita at the Department of Anthropology at the City University of New York. Her research has explored a vast set of topics, from property relations in agriculture and the political economy of social inequality and ethnic ties to the socialist and post-socialist politics of culture and regimes of governance, secrecy, and surveillance.   Verdery`s book, My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File (2018), which won the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, explores new ways to think about the relationship between surveillance, governance, and state power today.     Some of Verdery`s other publications include What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? (1996), The Political Lives of Dead Bodies (1999), The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania (2003) and Secrets and Truths: Ethnography in the Archive of Romania’s Secret Police (2014).   Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. Production:  Zainabu Jallo, Ann Karimi Kern (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel

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