Public Anthropologist Podcast

In the 11th episode of the PUAN podcast, Anna Gopsill interviews Dr Cathrine Talleraas (CMI) and Onike Shorunkeh Sawyerr (GIZ). Their conversations consider the effects of externalisation into Africa - and the challenges of working within and with multinational organisations in achieving common goals related to migration.

In the 10th episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey speaks with Geoscientist Jakob Steiner and Historian Lachlan Fleetwood on the 19th century imperialist traditions of remaking the Himalayas as geographical frontiers. We reflect on the genealogy of this Himalayan-frontier science. Jakob and Fleetwood discuss the fragile instruments and modes of measurements that reveal the limits of science and imperial projects in making sense of the Himalayas. The conversation reflects most on the reproduction of inequalities and biases in the field sites towards the local communities, and the political implications of similar scientific projects, today.

In the 9th episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews anthropologist Mark Goodale on the history of human rights. The humaneness of humanity has a history. And Goodale's work shows that this history is foregrounded in relation to geopolitical and economic history. He asks if a distinction at all can be drawn between politics and economy especially when there are clear empirical links between how the financial world has come to see human rights as relevant only to the extent that it is not an obstacle to political economic growth. The conversation takes a deep dive into the philosophical underpinnings of human rights as a moral project; its political implications; the emergence of the anthropology of human rights as an analytic frame; the post 9/11 turn to a collective erasure of human rights with the emergence of the surveillance state; and the place of human rights in the changing nature, texture, and form of the voices that are becoming increasingly dominant in contemporary movements for justice.

In the 8th episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews anthropologist Jeevan Sharma on how to write a history and ethnography of the speedy transformations in Nepal. Sharma’s work looks beyond disciplinary boundaries to study the political and economic inequities that has historically informed the social life in Nepal. There is no way of ethnographically understanding social change in Nepal without a careful engagement with these historical shifts. Eventually, Sharma reflects that the call for radical transformation in Nepal has not necessarily led to greater political emancipation, freedom, better livelihoods, and economic opportunities. 

In the 7th episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews anthropologist Kamari Maxine Clarke on how emotions—and its expressions —are central to interpreting justice in criminal courts. Clarke’s work on affective justice highlights the larger historical conditions and structural inequities under which justice is realized, the role of time and space in the materialization of justice in juridical proceedings and the significance of geospatial technologies in forging truth.

In the 6th episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews environmental historian and historical geographer, Jason W. Moore. Moore's work radically upsets the Nature-Society dualism of capitalism both materially and symbolically manifested in the logic of Anthropocene. We discuss the periodization of history, its framing and the kind of role it played in shaping our interpretation of climate change and the inanimate world.

In the 5th episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews Historian Elena Conis on how risky pesticides were culturally accepted and what kind of role did science play in its acceptance. Professor Conis explains how scientific research during war and epidemic prioritized some type of scientific questions over others, and how this approach built an economy that was geared towards selling poisonous pesticides and making them socially desirable.

In the 4th episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews a professor of English, Candace Fujikane, on how ideas of abundance and scarcity are forged under capitalism. Professor Fujikane’s research uses cartography as a methodology to map Kanaka Maoli’s knowledge and relation of abundance with lands, seas and skies. In doing so, Fujikane’s work raises fundamental concern about the capitalist economies of scarcity, which have devastating consequences for the planet.

In the 3rd episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews Anthropologist Angela Garcia on the endless dispossession, inequality, and heroin use etched in the history and memory of northern New Mexico. Professor Garcia’s avant-garde scholarship combines apparently isolated moments of intimacy, addiction, care and abuse to shed light on the impacts of a colonial past that is eating up the landscape inside.

In the 2nd episode of PUAN podcast, co-host Saumya Pandey interviews Anthropologist Nikhil Anand on the concept of wet cities. Professor Anand’s work focuses on Mumbai, a city built in and out of the Arabian Sea. He encourages us to think about the long history of engineering cities as dry lands devoid of wetness, and how that is contributing to the current climate events.