Xenia Cherkaev will speak about her forthcoming book Gleaning for Communism: The Soviet Socialist Household in Theory and Practice (Cornell UP 2023). The book tells a radically new story of how the Soviet system functioned and why it failed. Mediating between today’s popular narratives of “Soviet times” and the ownership categories of Soviet civil law, it shows the Soviet Union as an explicitly illiberal modern project, reliant in theory and fact on collectivist ethics. A historical ethnography, its narrative begins in the 2010s with former Leningrad residents’ stories of gleaning industrial scrap from worksites. Placing these stories in conversation with Soviet legal theories of property and with economic, political and social history, this book shows the Soviet Union as a “socialist household economy,” whose members were guaranteed “personal” rights to a commons of socialist property rather than private possessions. It traces the development of such “personal” rights though three historically significant turns – during the 1930s, 1960s and 1980s – and shows how the Soviet project unfolded in dialogue with contemporaneous neoliberal thought in one overarching debate about the possibility of a collectivist modern life.

The Women's & Gender Studies presents the year-long Articulating Abortion series. It is with great honor we will welcome Professor Khiara M. Bridges to MIT campus. Professor Bridges will excavate the role of race in the Court's decision in Dobbs to reverse Roe v. Wade.

with Alex Blanchette, Tufts Anthropology, and Deborah Fitzgerald, MIT STS

Join us for a roundtable discussion as we explore what makes industrialized food production so enduring. Together, we will think through agricultural pasts and futures, with an eye toward the ethics of making and eating food on a climate-changing planet.

The Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project uses objects and stories donated by diverse residents of a former steel mill community in order to explore the transformation in what it means to be “working class” in the United States. This digital project includes mini-documentaries or interactive “storylines” created from these donated objects. The storylines explore such topics as experiences of immigration, historic union conflicts, the social impact of the mill closings, and environmental activism in a contemporary deindustrialized landscape. The discussion will focus on The Memorial Day Massacre storyline which explores one of the most famous events in U.S. labor history in which ten strikers were killed by Chicago police in 1937.

The demand for service robots has increased with the COVID-19 pandemic, and one of the primary sites for development of such robots is in eldercare nursing. Eldercare robots seem to promise a continuation of care not otherwise possible under current medical infrastructures in the US. These robots purport to stave off loneliness, provide a watchful eye to alert family members and emergency medical personnel, and enhance clients’ therapeutic care by engaging memory recall and language skill.

Come relax with us and enjoy some fun conversation.
No need to RSVP; just show up and bring your friends!

MIT Anthropology and French+ Programs present a book talk:

Malcom Ferdinand presents his new book, "Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World"

Wednesday, April 27, 2022, 5:30 - 7:00pm

Room 32-141 (map)

Register on Eventbrite

Friday - Saturday, 22 - 23 April 2022

https://livingclimatefutures.org/

Living Climate Futures culminates in a two-day symposium of events and activities, April 22-23. Some events are open to the public and require Tim Tickets (see FAQ). Others are for the MIT community (preference to students) and community partners only.

Sign up on Eventbrite!

The British Museum’s Anthropology Library and Research Centre, in conjunction with the Royal Anthropological Institute, is pleased to present ‘Reviewer meets Reviewed’, a discussion between author Professor Graham Jones  (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and reviewer Dr Katherine Swancutt  (Kings College London).

Thursday 20 January 2022 at 4.00-6.00pm (BST)
 

This webinar will be held on Zoom. Please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7B7mapF5QOaHFoWtSvNU5A

In Magic's Reason, Graham M. Jones tells the entwined stories of anthropology and entertainment magic.

Throughout the academic year, the Center for Latinx Digital Media invites you to a series of weekly seminars held over Zoom on Thursdays. You can now register (click here) to the next seminar of the Fall 2021 quarter, happening next Thursday, November 11 at 12-1 PM US CT. Professor Héctor Beltrán (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) will give a presentation entitled “Making Latinx Makers.”

Abstract: Popular “diversity in tech” discourse proposes ways to encourage “different” participants to join events aimed at empowering these communities through technology. Here I examine ethnographically how members of racialized groups are called upon to manage these differences themselves within maker and hacker collectives. To explore constructions of Latinidad within makerspaces I bring together scholarship on prototypes and participatory models with conceptual work on incompleteness advanced by Latinx Studies scholars.

Héctor Beltrán is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at MIT. He is a sociocultural anthropologist who draws upon his background in computer science to understand how the technical aspects of computing intersect with issues of identity, race, ethnicity, class, and nation.

This event is co-sponsored by the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, the Center for Global Culture and Communication, the Department of Communication Studies, the Department of Radio/Television/Film, the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, and the Latina and Latino Studies Program.

Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScvzEbT1vQPJltIjXlDq2luFGdMJTtvCgd5WldPE68TA0HubA/viewform

Learn more information on the Center's website: https://ldm.soc.northwestern.edu

AI (Artificial Indigeneity): re-mattering Native America in an age of technological settling

David Shane Lowry, Distinguished Fellow, History MIT

Tuesday October 12, 3:30-5:00pm

Room E51-095

The Association of Puerto Ricans at MIT, Latino Cultural Center, and Office of Multicultural Programs present:

La Borinqueña book exhibition and talk with author, creator, graphic novelist, and illustrator, Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez.

Wed. Sept. 29^th at 7pm

Room W20-307

Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez is the writer and creator of the critically acclaimed and best-selling graphic novel La Borinqueña.

Learn the story of the superhero La Borinqueña, a student at Columbia University named Marisol Rios De La Luz majoring in Earth and Environmental Sciences.  During her study abroad trip to Puerto Rico, Marisol makes a discovery that gives her superhuman strength while exploring the island's caves, transforming her into La Borinqueña.

Co-sponsored by: Anthropology, Hermanas Unidas, Institute Community & Equity Office, MIT Libraries, Women’s and Gender Studies.

Wounding Wall: Infrastructure, Injury, and Rescue on the U.S.-Mexico Border

Ieva Jusionyte, Watson Family University Associate Professor of International Security and Anthropology, Brown University

Tuesday, September 28, 3:30-5:00pm

Room E51-095

This seminar is part of the Making the unknown knowable seminar series. Click here to read more

Abstract

How do oceanographers apprehend ocean waves? This presentation draws on anthropological work I undertook among wave scientists in the United States to argue that what oceanographers take ocean waves to be has been strongly imprinted by the techniques, technologies, and media — maritime, photographic, filmic, information theoretic — through which waves have come to be known. I offer an account of ethnographic fieldwork I conducted on board the FLoating Instrument Platform (FLIP), a seagoing vessel managed by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in La Jolla, California. FLIP is a singular vessel, one that, once at sea, can “flip” 90 degrees into a vertical position —with all the instrumentation inside swiveling correspondingly—to become a stable platform from which to measure wave action. Moving from an examination of the contemporary use of infrared and laser imaging to study waves from FLIP, I place the platform within a longer history of wave science, reaching back into the Cold War, when ocean observation projects were conditioned by nuclear-age American maritime expansion, particularly in the Pacific. I then flip to the recent present, as scientists turn from understanding waves not only as a kind of infrastructure for maritime networks, but also as avatars of anthropogenic climate change.

Join via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/92462817781

Please note: a passcode is required. Email makingtheunknownknowable@gmail.com to request it.

Christine Walley hosts MIT Anthropology Program Talk on "Caste of Merit" with author Ajantha Subramanian, Dwai Banerjee from MIT STS will be the discussant.

from Harvard University Press "Caste of Merit" webpage:

"How the language of “merit” makes caste privilege invisible in contemporary India.

Just as Americans least disadvantaged by racism are most likely to endorse their country as post‐racial, Indians who have benefited from their upper-caste affiliation rush to declare their country post‐caste. In The Caste of Merit, Ajantha Subramanian challenges this comfortable assumption by illuminating the controversial relationships among technical education, caste formation, and economic stratification in modern India. Through in-depth study of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)—widely seen as symbols of national promise—she reveals the continued workings of upper-caste privilege within the most modern institutions."

The Office of the Associate Provost for International Activities and the MIT Africa Steering Committee invites you to an online panel discussion which will feature leading voices from the African continent and the African diaspora who are engaged in critical public discourses around race and reform across diverse African contexts and different media.

Agenda:
12:30p – 1:30p Panel discussion
1:30p – 2:00p breakout sessions with panelists (open to MIT community only)

Video Release: Friday, April 2, 2021 / 9:00am EST

Live Q&A: Monday, April 5, 2021 / 5:00–6:00pm EST Livestreamed Q&A

How do tools in computation shape the models that scientists, artists, and engineers make of the world and universe?

Part of “Unfolding Intelligence: The Art and Science of Contemporary Computation” -  third in a series of MIT CAST symposia that bring together artists, scientists, engineers, and humanists from a variety of disciplines to address topics of common concern in areas of rapidly evolving research and urgent social relevance.

Register to participate in the Symposium

ACMS Virtual Panel Series: “Twentieth-Century Mongolia”

Title: Twentieth-Century Mongolia (Register here)

The March Virtual Speaker Series panel will focus on the twentieth century Mongolia. The panel will be moderated by Dr. Marissa Smith, and have three speakers presenting on the following topics:

• “Science in Socialist Mongolia: An Introduction” by Dr. Morris Rossabi (Columbia University)
• “Why Revolution Did Not End: International Relations and the Mongolian Women” by Dr. Manduhai Buyandelger (MIT)
• “The Soviet Hero in Post-War Mongolian Literature” by Dr. Simon Wickhamsmith (Rutgers University)

Tackling legacies of Europe’s colonial past in the wake of Black Lives Matter

The Justice Now? symposium gathers scholars, activists, and policymakers from Europe, North America, and Africa to examine current movements for justice for the impacts of Europe’s colonial past in Africa in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. Through virtual panels and roundtable discussions over the course of five days, speakers in areas such as transitional justice, racial justice, museum, legal, colonial and decolonial studies will discuss experiences and share strategies in the development of anti-racist and decolonial movements in and across their respective contexts. The symposium is convened by M. Amah Edoh and the Anthropology department at MIT in collaboration with international human rights NGO Avocats Sans Frontières and the European Network Against Racism.

Attendance is free, but registration and respect of rules of conduct are required.

Please direct inquiries to conveners at justicenowsymposium@gmail.com.

Please join the Association of Central Eurasian Students (ACES) at Indiana University for the keynote address of the 27th Annual ACES Conference, "Elections, Virtual Reality, and Climate Change: What Can Anthropology of Mongolia Offer?" given by Dr. Manduhai Buyandelger, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.