Ethnographic Café
The Ethnographic Café is a place for ethnographers to meet across disciplines, generations, and countries. We gather to talk about all things ethnographic, from history, design, and method to analysis, writing and dissemination.
We meet monthly on Zoom to discuss a recently published ethnography with its author (see our schedule of events). We also convene periodically for special thematic sessions around a salient topic in the practice of ethnography.
We continue the online conversation through short photographic essays picturing the field, video interviews of ethnographers sharing the nitty-gritty of their fieldwork, reading recommendations contributed by the community, and through a directory that will help ethnographers with shared interests to find each other.
We aim to stimulate and support the work of a new generation of ethnographers, especially doctoral students, postdocs, and junior faculty, and we hope you will join us in this endeavor.
The Ethnographic Café Organizing Team:
Ashley Mears, Ekedi Mpondo-Dika, Loïc Wacquant, and Natalie Pasquinelli
Fall 2024 Schedule
09/13 Poulami Roychowdhury, Capable Women, Incapable States: Negotiating Violence and Rights in India
11/08 Michel Anteby, The Interloper: Lessons from Resistance in the Field
See the events here!
Friday, September 13, 2024 11am-12:15 pm PT / 2-3:15pm ET*
*Please note the unusual start and end time of this event.
Poulami Roychwdhury in conversation with Ashley Mears
Capable Women, Incapable States: Negotiating Violence and Rights in India
Zoom Meeting ID: 999 3910 8952
Password: 1234
*Read excerpts here
Poulami Roychowdhury is an Associate Professor of Sociology and International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Roychowdhury's research and teaching focus on the relationship between politics and law, with special attention to issues concerning gender-based violence.
Professor Roychowdhury’s award-winning book, Capable Women, Incapable States: Negotiating Violence and Rights in India, was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. Through ethnographic and interview-based accounts of survivors, civil society groups, and law enforcement personnel, this book develops a theoretical framework for understanding how collective action influences law enforcement decision-making and women’s access to justice.
Currently, Dr. Roychowdhury is working on three separate projects. The first examines the politics of sexual harassment in India, tracing the evolution of new policing practices around street harassment. The second focuses on the transnational politics of reproductive justice, asking how women respond to legal challenges against abortion. The third is an interdisciplinary, collaborative initiative that traces the inequality of COVID-19 in India.
Ashley Mears is Professor and Chair of Cultural Sociology and New Media at the University of Amsterdam. She works in cultural, gender, and economic sociology, focusing on processes of valuation and the circulation of non-financial forms of value. She has conducted ethnographies of fashion, elites, and viral social media. Her latest work is on the attention economy, told through a case study of magicians who got rich making viral videos. She is learning a lot about Facebook algorithms, and also learning Dutch.