Anthropologica

Les plantations climatiques au Québec : Entre quantification de la nature et engagement socio-écologique

2025-03-04T22:10:55-08:00

Voluntary carbon offset markets based on forestry projects are very popular globally. However, they are met with scepticism and criticism on several fronts. Social science studies associate them with environmental injustices, such as land grabbing, restricting access to forest resources and placing the onus on southern countries to preserve the planet’s “green lungs.” What about when tree planting projects are conducted in northern regions such as Quebec in order to offset the emissions of people in these regions? Should we raise the alarm about these initiatives? This article takes a critical look at climatic plantations carried out within the confines of markets and environmental areas in Eastern Quebec, with the objective of evaluating and better understanding the benefits of carbon offsetting and trees planted for this purpose in civilian society.

Donner l’alerte à bas bruit : Pour une éthique des soins agroécologiques au Chili

2025-03-04T22:11:04-08:00

Communities and individuals have raised the alarm for decades denouncing the Chilean development model and the resulting social- environmental degradation of the country. This article addresses how small manual actions are multiplying in various regions of Chile to respond to the environmental crisis, in a context marked by the production of extractive industries (production of salmon, pine trees, eucalyptus, fruit for export, copper, lithium). This article aims to underscore the development of agroecological projects or those transitioning to agroecology in the south of Chile, in Chiloé and in the regions of Araucanía, historically Mapuche territory. Their practices contribute to promoting and transmitting ancestral knowledge and expertise related to seed-saving, family and peasant farming, co-operation and the organization of territorial defence collectives. Our work is based on a method uniting long-term investigation and patchwork ethnography, based on short but in-depth research stays. Interviews complement the data. Lastly, this work contributes to considering an ethics of care across agroecological projects led by women in the south of Chile.

Petrophonics

2025-03-04T22:10:44-08:00

Drawing from sound studies, energy humanities, and anthropology, this essay identifies a critical gap in the academic recognition of “petrophonics”—sonic and vibrational byproducts of fossil fuel dependency that pervade contemporary soundscapes—within sound and soundscape studies as well as the environmental and energy humanities, where such phenomena are often dismissed as “white noise” or background ambience. Through theoretical analysis and empirical observation, we attempt to define petrophonics as both an object of study and a framework for critical engagement. Focusing on traffic noise—the most accessible example of petrophonics—as a cultural and material phenomenon rather than a mere auditory background allows us to explain and propose a speculative definition of petrophonics, characterized by its materialist grounding in fossil fuel infrastructures and its capacity to exist independently of audibility. This essay concludes by emphasizing the political, temporal, and decolonial dimensions of petrophonics, advocating for an ethico-affective approach that foregrounds the relational and infrastructural realities of petromodernity. This framework invites scholars and practitioners to re-attune to the pervasive yet overlooked sounds of fossil fuel dependency and imagine alternative, post-petrocultural phonic worlds.

HIV in Madagascar: Cause for Alarm

2025-03-04T22:11:17-08:00

In line with the work of a growing number of concerned researchers, this brief article draws attention to certain features of Madagascar’s looming HIV crisis. Reporting on the findings of a survey conducted with patients of a clinic that has recently hosted a large-scale screening program, we focus especially on what is and is not known about the transmission, effects, and treatment of HIV, and on why an elevated infection rate among the clientele of this clinic (many of whom are involved in artisanal mining) should be of special concern. Anticipating the return of long absent awareness-raising campaigns concerning HIV in Madagascar, we close with some cautious recommendations on what they might cover and how they might be carried out.

Les artefacts sonnent l’alarme dans un makerspace de Barcelone ! Explorations autour d’une fiction ethnographique illustrée

2025-03-04T22:10:35-08:00

This is the story about an anthropologist who heads off to spend time with makers in Barcelona and stays there for 18 months. Caught in a whirlwind of encounters and adventures, she explores spaces where the sum of collective learning is worth more than all the machines and artifacts combined. Participating allows her to percolate a shared reflexivity. Coding workshops during soldering sessions, making electronic circuits while carrying out a heritage development project, and data emerges, the terrain takes shape and meaning unfolds, without, however, exhausting the eternal question: how best to give an account of this research?

Illustration represents one of the possible solutions to bring to the foreground a polyphonic narrative and leave a sensitive trace of a journey that is as human as it is heuristic. Telling a story reveals the creative and subjective dimension of rendering data while attempting to give research participants a more rightful place. This illustrated ethnographic fiction is the result of a collaborative experiment between an anthropologist, an illustrator and a maker. You will be exposed to talking artifacts, to workers who emerge from the past to weave the fabric of a technical story that continues to write itself and spark larger- than-life social hope.

World Literacy in Danger, Revisited

2025-03-04T22:09:02-08:00

Last year at the 2153 conference of the Canadian Anthropology Society, a renowned linguist, Leahcim Suark, urged us to document written languages before they disappear. In his now famous speech, titled, “World Literacy in Danger,” Suark brings alarming statistics on the condition of written languages of the world. According to Suark, one written language is lost approximately every two years. By next century, Suark claims, nearly half of the roughly 70 remaining written languages on Earth will likely disappear. The loss of literary languages brings about significant challenges in preserving human knowledge, accessing information, and maintaining linguistic diversity. Yet, in this commentary, I argue that oral traditions present a more productive way to think about knowledge transmission and preservation. Drawing on ethnographic data in Ajyy Sire, the traditional territory of the Ajyy Djono, I show that in a society where oral communication prevails and knowledge is transmitted through oral traditions across generations, information becomes more accessible, irrespective of a person’s literacy or computer proficiency. I also show that without the dominance of written (standardized) languages, oral languages and their diverse expressions can still flourish, fostering resilience amidst the global changes facing humanity.

Sonner l’alarme : Notes de la rédactrice en chef Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier

2025-02-26T09:21:46-08:00

Sounding the alarm: Notes from the Editor-in-Chief Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier

2025-02-26T09:29:31-08:00

Illumina : Implantation d’un projet de recherche-action et de création participative dans le champ de la santé mentale

2025-03-04T22:08:52-08:00

This article is based on an experiment conducted in 2022-2023 in a mixed-use neighborhood struggling with homelessness. This neighborhood is home to numerous community and cultural organizations, including Sherpa, with which the Illumina project was initiated. This creative and artistic project, set up in collaboration with anthropological researchers, stakeholders and artists, is being implemented throughout the neighborhood. Creation and art have had several functions: as an alternative form of relationship with the individuals who frequent community organizations, primarily those concerned with mental health. Among other things, Illumina led to the creation of a public art trail, the result of some fifty collective workshops involving 200 participants. This article offers both a synthesis of this initiative and a critical reflection on the themes of stigma, precariousness, narrativity and methodologies.

Territorialités dans le Haut Rio Negro : Quelques notes sur les traductions (et les dissonances) dans la démarcation et la gestion des Terres autochtones

2025-03-04T22:10:24-08:00

The article explores the multilingual and multiethnic complexities of the Upper Rio Negro, a regional region of the Amazon region, with a focus on how different indigenous communities interact with the state and public policies regarding the demarcation of new lands. The author takes up some of Lévi-Strauss’s ideas on mythology and history to reflect on the process of land demarcation and some of its implications after about 25 years. Through examples of intercultural translations made by indigenous leaders, the article shows how indigenous people reinterpret concepts of the state to adapt them to their lived realities, revealing a dynamic process of cultural negotiation. Ultimately, the author thinks about some relationships between mythology and history, attributing new meanings to the concepts of land, territoriality and indigenous governance in a contemporary context, or to mythical narratives and political discourses continuing to dialogue.

Terrorismes en mutation : Déshumanisation et espoirs

2025-03-04T22:09:13-08:00

Twenty-three years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, anthropological analysis remains crucial to understanding the complex dynamics of terrorism and violence. Anthropology, as a discipline dedicated to studying humanity, allows us to understand that violence is not an isolated phenomenon, but an oft- instrumentalized tool to control societies and shape power relations. Although the events of September 11 are frequently associated with religious extremism, it is important to highlight that terrorism is a multi-faceted phenomenon, fuelled by a variety of ideological, cultural and social factors. One striking characteristic of contemporary terrorism is the dehumanization of victims, often reduced to abstractions, such as “human losses” or “number of dead.” Concurrently, those responsible for the violence are sometimes portrayed as “monsters,” a reciprocal mechanism of dehumanization. This process prevents the true recognition of individual suffering, while hindering a deeper reflection on the social, political and economic reasons for violence. Anthropology provides valuable insight into these mechanisms and paves the way to more effectively preventing future violence. The current interconnected generation plays a key role in transforming these perceptions by rejecting—or not—violent responses in favour of solutions that are more inclusive, supportive, and adapted to local realities.

The Trauma Mantras: A Memoir in Prose Poems, by Adrie Kusserow

2025-03-04T22:09:23-08:00

In Praise of Makeshift Finishing

2025-03-04T22:09:33-08:00

In Response to “In Praise of Makeshift Finishing” by Daniel Tubb: Writing in Puzzle-Pieces

2024-11-27T15:25:38-08:00

Makeshift Works

2024-11-27T10:30:46-08:00

Makeshift as Method for Research and Teaching: Designing Assessments to Beat AI

2025-03-04T22:09:54-08:00

In Response to “In Praise of Makeshift Finishing”: On Makeshifting, Publishing, and Storytelling

2025-03-04T22:10:14-08:00