Publications - Anthropology

We have become dinosaurs (short film)

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 04:45:20 +0100

This short film is an anthropological investigation of Subjectivity, Subculture and Rebellion in the context of a youth house located in Horsens, Denmark.

The Female Barber (short film)

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 04:45:20 +0200

This small film portraits a day in the life of Dina, a female barber, in her shop located in Aarhus, Denmark

i am victor (film)

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 04:45:20 +0200

This film is an anthropological investigation of liminality, art and loneliness.

I bjergene kan man ikke lyve: ultraløb, autenticitet og smertende kroppe i Rocky Mountains, USA

Helligsøe, K. P. — Mon, 01 Jan 2018 04:45:20 +0100

Loneliness and housing tenure: Older private renters and social housing tenants in Australia

Morris, A., Verdasco Martinez, A. — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Loneliness is recognised as one the most pressing issues of the contemporary period and, if left untreated, can have serious health implications. We argue that a key determinant of loneliness for older people (65 plus) in Australia dependent on the government Age Pension for their income is their housing tenure. Drawing on semi-structured in-depth interviews, we show that older Australians who are private renters are far more likely than their counterparts in social housing to experience loneliness. The high cost of their accommodation results in private renters having no resources for socialising and the possibility that they can be asked to vacate at any time evokes much anxiety. These features make retaining social ties extremely difficult and many experience loneliness. In contrast, the manageable rent of older social housing tenants and guaranteed security of tenure creates a foundation for social engagement and maintaining strong friendships.

Understandings of self through the category of the ‘unaccompanied asylum-seeking minor’: a Danish ethnography

Verdasco Martinez, A. — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 04:45:20 +0100

This article explores and unfolds the category of the ‘unaccompanied asylum-seeking minor’ in Den- mark. By studying the notions that are embedded in the category, namely age and childhood, I analyse, through the narratives of the young refugees, what it means for both their sense of self and for their everyday lives to belong to, or to be excluded from, ascribed asylum categories, while finding themselves in complex situations of uncertainty. Using ethnographic material gathered during the refugee crisis of 2015–2016, I show that the young refugees’ narratives point to contradictions in their understandings of the ‘self’, which are linked respectively to the notions of chronological age, upheld by the asylum sys- tem, and relational age operating within the context of their family relations. I further describe the changes that take place when a young refugee’s status changes from minor to adult. Finally, I suggest how these changes may be linked to contemporary Western and welfare-related notions of childhood. The findings suggest that a relational approach that goes beyond the fixity of categories in the asylum and refugee system allows for a better understanding of the young people’s situation and sense of self.

Everyday Rituals of Migration: Constructing Relatedness and Agency among Young Refugees in Denmark

Verdasco Martinez, A. — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 04:45:20 +0200

This article examines how young unaccompanied refugees living together within the confines of an asylum centre in Denmark construct different kinds of social relations and the meanings attached to these relationships. By investigating their routinised practices of everyday life as ‘rituals’, I analyse how young refugees negotiate different kinds of relatedness that enable them to exert agency. The ethnography points to the progression and expansion of different modes of relatedness to include friendships as well as consociate relationships, both with peers with whom they create a sense of community, and with adults who help them navigate the asylum landscape. The study underscores the deeply social nature of the young refugees’ agency. I argue that in the intensity of living together they transform weak ties into strong ties, described through idioms of friendship and kinship, that express the profound meaning of these relationships in the context of the uncertainty they face.

Communities of belonging in the temporariness of the Danish Asylum System: Shalini’s anchoring points

Verdasco Martinez, A. — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 04:45:20 +0100

efugees often find themselves in a protracted situation of temporariness, as applications for asylum are processed, deportations negotiated and possible extensions of temporary protection status considered within the context of increasingly restrictive governmental policies across Europe. Through the case of a young Sri Lankan woman who arrived in Denmark as an ‘unaccompanied asylum-seeking minor’ and spent five years within the Danish asylum system, this article explores how she experienced moving through different legal categories and the institutional settings associated with them. I argue that, by engaging in social relations in the localities where she was situated, she developed places of belonging that could serve as ‘anchoring points’ providing some measure of stability in her otherwise unpredictable and precarious life situation. This case suggests that, even under conditions of protracted temporariness and legal uncertainty, individuals are able to create important anchoring points and develop communities of belonging that can serve them in a difficult process of belonging to Denmark.

Special issue: Sensations, Symptoms and Healthcare Seeking

Andersen, R. S., Risør, M. — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 04:45:20 +0100

Bag om fællesskabsmålingen: En kvalitativ undersøgelse af social eksklusion og social deltagelse.

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 04:45:20 +0100

Visual note-making

Vium, C. . — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Spectres of Undocumented Migration in Paris

Vium, C. . — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 04:45:20 +0100

Intimate Distance

Thu, 01 Jan 2015 04:45:20 +0100

The great promise of internet-based forms of communication is that they help maintain relationships over great geographical distance. Their proliferation and success has, in only a couple of years, fostered new forms of living together, new modes of closeness and intimacy. The collaborative documentary project “Intimate Distance” is a unique experiment for which three transnational families have recorded their webcam conversations over the course of several months. The resulting film offers a very intimate insight into the fascinating communication rituals, with which people who are separated by migration organize a transnational family life via Skype. “Intimate Distance” is a documentary that evolved without the presence of a director. It is composed solely from the images that its protagonists produce of themselves on a daily basis with the help of digital technology. Thus, the film is a meditation on the potentials and limitations of digitally mediated proximity.

Digital Environments and the Future of Ethnography.

Köhn, S., Frömming, U., Fox, S., Terry, M. — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 04:45:20 +0100

Migrantische Medien - Medien der Migration

Köhn, S. — Fri, 01 Jan 2016 04:45:20 +0100

Digital Environments. Ethnographic Perspectives across Global Online-and Offline Spaces

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 04:45:20 +0100

Mediating Mobility

Köhn, S. — Fri, 01 Jan 2016 04:45:20 +0100

Desktop Documentary: Screens as Film Locations

Köhn, S. — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Unpacking El Paquete

Köhn, S. — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 04:45:20 +0100

With online access heavily restricted, Cuba has one of the lowest internet
penetration rates in the world. Yet, Cuban citizens have found a
way to distribute all kinds of web content in the form of El Paquete
Semanal, a one terabyte collection of data that is compiled by a
network of people with various forms of privileged internet access and
then circulated nationwide on USB sticks and external hard drives
via an elaborate network of deliverymen. In this article, I show how El
Paquete has come to constitute a nested media ecosystem that facilitates
the publication of independent local media content, hosts several
digital marketplaces, and offers an otherwise non-existing space for
advertisement. Its enormous local relevance and scope sets it in competition
with the Cuban state that reacts ambiguously: it largely tolerates
the Paquete as long as compilers continue to self-censor overtly
political content. While state officials have repeatedly criticised the
“banality” of its material, the government recently felt obliged to distribute
its own alternative weekly data compilation called Mochila
(backpack) via its youth computer clubs and official cybercaf s. I therefore
seek to understand El Paquete as an arena in which the relationships
between citizenry and the state are currently being re-negotiated.

What’s at the top in the top-down control of action?

Roepstorff, A., Frith, C. — Fri, 01 Jan 2016 04:45:20 +0100

What Robots Want

Vejlin, F. — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 04:45:20 +0200

In this paper, I want to explore how the relations between intentions, autonomy, and a sense of presence are configured in the development of an autonomous android robot, Erica, currently being developed at the Hiroshi Ishiguro Laboratory (HIL) in Kyoto, Japan. Since the early 2000’s, the HIL researchers have studied how a human presence can be transferred to an android body via teleoperation (Sakamoto et al. 2007). Recently, however, the focus has shifted from teleoperated to autonomous androids, evident in the development of the ERATO Intelligent Communication Android (Erica). In the paper, I discuss how the implementation of Erica’s intention-desire system (I-D system), contributes to the emerging presence of some form of android autonomy. Since it creates a feedback loop between internal states and external behaviour by allowing Erica to choose an interactive trajectory based on how external input progressively changes her internal motivations, the HIL researchers see the development of the I-D system as a crucial step towards developing an autonomous and sociable android (Glas et al. 2016: 28). The I-D system, ideally conceived, is wholly ‘autonomous’ and is made possible by the networked integration of a variety of technologies; her system architecture; auditory, visual, and tactile sensors; strategically placed pneumatic actuators; speech synthesisers; and so forth. When integrated properly, the system is supposed to run without human interference. However, Erica’s potential autonomy is not only indebted to her technological construction. On the contrary, it is intimately reliant on the continuous presence of human interference from both her programmers, operators, and interactive interlocutors alike. In short, I argue that the presence of humans is crucial for the possibility of creating android autonomy and that without human interference, androids could hardly be called social nor autonomous.

Hytta. Fire vegger rundt en drøm

Schou Pallesen, C. M. — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 04:45:20 +0200

Et godt liv for ældre i det sydlige Grønland

Jensen, T., Schlütter, M. M., Olsen, M. A. F., et al. — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 04:45:20 +0200

Environmental status and pressures in the assessment area

Boertmann, D. M., Johansen, K. L., Flora, J. — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Analysing political biases in danish newspapers using sentiment analysis

Enevoldsen, K., Hansen, L. — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 04:45:20 +0100

Traditionally, the evaluation of political biases in Danish newspapers has been carried out through highly subjective methods. The conventional approach has been surveys asking samples of the population to place various newspapers on the political spectrum, coupled with analysing voting habits of the newspapers’ readers (Hjarvard, 2007). This paper seeks to examine whether it is possible to use sentiment analysis to objectively assess political biases in Danish newspapers. By using the sentiment dictionary AFINN (Nielsen et al., 2011), the mean sentiment scores for 360 articles was calculated. The articles were published in the Danish newspapers Berlingske and Information and were all regarding the political parties Alternativet and Liberal Alliance. A significant interaction effect between the parties and newspapers was discovered. This effect was mainly driven by Information’s coverage of the two parties. Moreover, Berlingske was found to publish a disproportionately greater number of articles concerning Liberal Alliance than Alternativet. Based on these findings, an integration of sentiment analysis into the evaluation of biases in news outlets is proposed. Furthermore, future studies are suggested to construct datasets for evaluation of AFINN on news and to utilize web-mining methods to gather greater amounts of data in order to analyse more parties and newspapers.

Når helbredet svigter i alderdommen

Schlütter, M. M., Hounsgaard, L. — Sun, 01 Nov 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Formålet med kapitlet er at forstå hvordan uvished håndteres af en gruppe ældre inden for rammerne af et behandlingsforløb i sundhedsvæsenet i en grønlandsk kontekst. Baggrunden er materiale fra deltagerobservationer, samtaler og interviews fra førsteforfatterens etnografiske feltarbejde i seks måneder i en by i Grønland i 2018 og 2019, et feltophold i en by i Vestgrønland samt på det Grønlandske Patienthjem i København i 2019. Kapitlet viser hvordan inddragelse af det grønlandske begreb sila og Bourdieus praksisteori kan belyse hvordan de ældre i et behandlingsforløb handler ud fra en social erfaring med uvished når de møder den.

Why Railroads Now? Anthropology of Infrastructure and Debates around “Green” Transit

Swanson, H. A. — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Mars: a room of my own

Vohnsen, N. H. — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Time and the writing of personal narratives in organizational ethnography

Kjærsgaard, M. G., Larsen, H. — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 04:45:20 +0200

Cutting/Belonging. Sameness and Difference in the Lived Experience of Obesity and Kinship in Denmark

Grøn, L. — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 04:45:20 +0200

The exploration of obesity as a phenomenon that runs in families can provide crucial insights into the lived experience of kinship. Based on a longitudinal fieldwork among Danish families, I argue that kinship terms like ‘mutuality of being’ and ‘the mysterious effectiveness of relationality’ characterise their lived experience of obesity and family life. Taking my point of departure in previous work on the lived experience of kinship, I draw on Bernhard Waldenfels’ responsive phenomenology, specifically his notion of ‘originary substitution’, which 1. Highlights complex dynamics of sameness and difference and 2. Avoids both individualism and fusion into third-person categories in the exploration of sameness and difference. I argue that dynamics of being ‘same-same, but different, but same’ and of ‘cutting/belonging’ become accentuated when something haunts the family. Here, the co-emergence of sameness and difference, and of the nourishing and the poisonous in kinship and relatedness comes to the fore.

Køn og studievalg i Randers

Birkedal, N. B., Sørensen, J. K. — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Projektet er et samfinansieret forskningsprojekt mellem MANTRA, Aarhus Universitet og HTX, Tradium i Randers. Projektet kortlægger udfordringer og muligheder for at tiltrække flere elever til HTX med særligt fokus på køn. Med denne kortlægningsrapport har MANTRA skabt indsigt i og forståelse for, hvordan unge 9.-klasseselever træffer ungdomsuddannelsesvalg. Mere specifikt indsigt og forståelse for hvad der påvirker unges valg af uddannelse med fokus på til- og fravalg af HTX. Undersøgelsen viser at oplevelsen af ungdomsuddannelsen er afgørende for, at 9. klasses eleverne føler, de tager et informeret valg. Elevernes valg påvirkes af de sociale og kulturelle miljøer de er i. Samtidig er størstedelen relativt afklarede, når de møder HTX i 9. klasse. MANTRA’s tre overordnede anbefalinger for at accelerere den kulturelle forandring og tiltrække flere elever til HTX er derfor:

Redaktionelt forord

Kristensen, N. H., Duvald, I., Steno, A. M. — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 04:45:20 +0200

Fra globale kvoter til lokale forhandlinger

Tejsner, P. — Sun, 01 Sep 2019 04:45:20 +0200

Sounding the Reef

Buttacavoli, M. — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Spotlights in the Middle of Nowhere

Elbek, L. L. — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Being Care-full In Exile

Lund Mortensen, E. — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 04:45:20 +0100

When Boreholes Become Herders, Cattle Menace Grasslands

du Plessis, P. — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Kødkraft - En historie om køddeling fra feltarbejde blandt hadza i Tanzania

Skaanes, T. — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 04:45:20 +0100

On Cynicism and Citizenship

Vine, M. D. — Sun, 01 Nov 2020 04:45:20 +0100

The life and death of Masako

Skaanes, T. — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 04:45:20 +0200

The Tanzanian Hadza are known to have one of the simplest material cultures in the world (cf. Marlowe 2010) and this implicates Hadza symbolic life (cf. Woodburn 1982, Barnard & Woodburn 1988). This paper contributes with ethnography on symbolic relations to non-human agents that adds more richness to the understanding of these domains. Through the examination of a ritual and symbolic doll, Masako, we find ideas of extended personhood, material kinship relations, ego's anchor in names, and how this is all played out in ritual performances. Masako was 'born' and given to me as part of the material collection that we co-curated during fieldwork. As part of giving me her, her genealogy and the significance of her name was explained to me and I was instructed to bury her if she was to die. As part of her material life- cycle, the day came when I experienced the troubling burden of holding a dead doll and being in need of keeping my promise that Masako, the doll, should be put to rest. The life and death of Masako is a narrative of how she embodies kinship relations, a tangible access-point to women's spiritual power, and a concrete promise of futurity.

Putting Masako to rest

Skaanes, T. — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 04:45:20 +0200

Short abstract The Hadza clay-doll Masako was 'born' and given to me as part of the material collection that we co-curated and generated during fieldwork. This paper presents the story of her and how she embodies kinship relations, an access to the woman's spiritual power, and a promise of futurity. Long abstract The Tanzanian hunting and gathering Hadza have been an odd case among human societies. They allegedly present a rare case of a group entertaining "no belief in an afterlife" (Woodburn 1981), who have a "minimalist form of religion, where individuals engage in few religious practices and show disbelief in the existence of powerful supernatural agents" (Apicella 2017). In short, they are known as one of the simplest human societies: "the Hadza ranked at the bottom of the complexity scale; we would be hard-pressed to find a less complex society" (Marlowe 2010). However, this paper presents another story. It shows how working with a material focus among the hunter-gathering Hadza elicited narratives of cosmology, people, and objects that were all but simple and minimalist. Working with the power objects (Apter &Pietz 1993), hitherto silenced stories on intimate object-relations, extended personhood, and ritual practices found expression. This paper presents the story of a named clay-doll, and how she embodies kinship relations, an access to the woman's spiritual power, and a promise of reproduction and of futurity. Masako, a named clay-doll was 'born' and given to me as part of the material collection that we co-curated and generated during fieldwork. Her genealogy and the significance of her name was explained to me, and I was instructed to bury her if she was to die. As part of her material life-circle, the day came, when I experienced the troubling burden of holding a dead doll and being in need of keeping my promise that Masako, the doll, should be put to rest.

Introduction to the 2020 December Issue

Schneidermann, N. — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Ugandan music stars between political agency, patronage, and market relations

Schneidermann, N. — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Quantitative Methods

Billington, J., Corcoran, R., Watkins, M., et al. — Sun, 01 Sep 2019 04:45:20 +0200

Looking for Mr. Right Now

Chahine, A. — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 04:45:20 +0100

Et udvidet moralsk laboratorium

Hede, K., Boelsbjerg, H. B. — Sun, 01 Nov 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Denne artikel undersøger, hvordan begravelsesritualet i Danmark genforhandles, eller genskabes, som en direkte reaktion på COVID-19 og regeringens retningslinjer, og hvordan denne genskabelse betinger den øvrige sorgproces og udfordrer vores indre moralske kompas. Det hele føles som et stort eksperiment, der ikke bare udfordrer vores helbred, men også vores sensitivitet og moralske forsvarsværker (Cheryl Mattingly). Artiklen tager empirisk afsæt i et autoetnografisk feltarbejde over to måneder, hvor jeg befandt mig i huskarantæne med mine forældre og voksne søskende. Vi var samlet som følge af, at min mor var kræftsygdom og befandt sig i det sidste stadie af sit sygdomsforløb. De etnografiske erfaringer fremdrages i et online interview og udfoldes derefter analytisk i en dialog mellem mig selv og Hanne Bess Boelsbjerg (Postdoc ved Institut for Klinisk Medicin - Interacting Minds Centre (IMC)), som også er medforfatter på artiklen.

Vector

Vine, M. D. — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 04:45:20 +0100

Mimesis and Conspiracy

Vine, M. D., Carey, M. . — Sun, 01 Jan 2017 04:45:20 +0100

Emptiness and Surface

Frederiksen, M. D. — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Children, Food and Digital Media

Povlsen, K. K., Krogager, S. G. S., Leer, J., Højlund, S. — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 04:45:20 +0100

Home Economic classes experiment with cooking a la Masterchef whilst they film their experiments and edit a short video