The COVID-19 pandemic has had disproportionate impacts on communities that already bear disparate burdens of environmental and climate injustice. Migrant communities and those that have been historically marginalized are especially vulnerable. Building and maintaining relationships that serve as community support is challenged by the distance mandated by the virus. In this article, research partners from neighborhood and academic communities explore ways that we have navigated related challenges. Using the organizing and research methodology of legislative theatre, our collaborative harnessed virtual space to maintain connection and further our research goals. Zoom became our virtual gathering space, which was enriched by incorporating embodied practices into our processes to deepen intimacy. We found that responsivity and consistency of connection served to support relationships in the absence of physical presence. While these practices and approaches allowed us to move our work forward while prioritizing equitable relationships, challenges remain. Accessibility is a key barrier, as both technology and internet connection are unreliable in many communities. Equity work, regardless of the form of engagement, requires time and engagement with place. Yet, we found that storytelling combined with embodied practices, responsivity, and consistency of connection, can transcend virtual space to promote healing and change.

Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share MailTo Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation David Himmelgreen, Nancy Romero-Daza, Deven Gray; Reflections on Paul Farmer's Contributions from Two Generations of Medical Anthropologists. Human Organization 1 June 2022; 81 (2): 99–100. doi: https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-81.2.99 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest Search

The paradigm of integration-assimilation has dominated the social studies of migration, ethnicity, race, and inequality for a century since Park and Burgess’s pioneer work. This paradigm has been criticized, but it has not been supplanted; in fact, it has reappeared in the last few decades as a transnationalism perspective. In this article, we explore the other side of integration—uprootedness—to reframe contemporary migration studies. We discuss its impact throughout the migration process: from displacement at the place of origin to settling limitations at the place of destination. We argue that uprootedness produces different manifestations of alienation in the lives of migrants, a problem compounded by the lack of recognition of migrants at the place of destination.

This article presents a project implemented between 2015–2019 using a collaborative approach with indigenous primary schools in the municipality of Rafael Delgado, located in central Veracruz, Mexico. In the context of a Nahuatl-speaking, semi-rural community, the project illustrates the processes through which intercultural dialogue promotes the resignification of local identity and the strengthening of social cohesion, thus engaging both the school and the members of the community in social participation processes.

This article aims to contribute to the analysis of peace agreements in Colombia through a focus on the process of reintegration of former guerrillas into national society. We use applied research, an anthropological gaze, and an ethnographic methodology to understand an extremely critical process: the implementation of the Havana Peace Agreements between the Colombian State and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP).1 We attempt to connect the short-term circumstances experienced at the local level with the long-term perception of this political and social landscape. Relating time and space allow us to broaden our perspective on addressing peace.

In this article, I examine two sites of the contemporary illegality industry in the United States: the ICE Field Office and the Immigration Court. Drawing on ongoing ethnographic engagement, including accompaniment and observations in a regional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Field Office and an Executive Office of Immigration Reform (EOIR) Court, I trace how human interactions and social relations in each of these bureaucratic sites structure and reinforce conditions of precarity, insecurity, and marginality among undocumented and asylum seeking people in the United States. In both sites, the enforcement power of the state is visible through the configurations of bureaucratic processes and the structures of interactions between migrants and federal government officials. Examining these two sites from the vantage point of engaged ethnography, I illustrate how routine, bureaucratic encounters (re)produce illegality and exclusion by enacting violence against migrants through the powers of surveillance and administrative monitoring, and the threat of deportation and family separation. I also reflect on the political potential that emerges through activist anthropology and accompaniment with migrants in sites of state violence.

In 2001, Tyson Foods, one of the world’s leading chicken processors, was indicted on charges that it recruited undocumented migrants to work in its plants across the rural United States. In the following years, Tyson engaged in an operation to purge the largest chicken plant in the country of hundreds of unionized immigrant workers, relying heavily on the Social Security Administration’s controversial “No-Match” program to shape its termination practices. In response, a local campaign called for “Justice and Dignity” in the form of an improved corporate policy that would simultaneously serve the interests of the company, its workers, and their communities. This article chronicles that localized struggle and its national aftermath, illuminating the far-reaching effects federal “employer sanctions” have had on transnational corporations and their policymakers, on workers of different backgrounds, and on strategies used to advocate for worker rights. Politically engaged ethnography reveals how differentially positioned actors navigate and experience the neoliberal immigration and employment laws of the United States while deepening our understanding of the workings of the poultry industry, the recruitment of immigrant workers, and the anthropology of organized labor.

In response to evidence suggesting that polluted drinking water is a risk factor for Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology (CKDu) in Sri Lanka, the government introduced reverse osmosis (RO) water as an alternative form of drinking water in the North Central Province (NCP) between 2010 and 2016. We examine whether CKDu prevalence and disease progression have been reduced as a result of the introduction of RO water and behavioral changes and how villagers perceive the changes.

Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Jeremy Slack, Scott Whiteford; Navigating and Engaging Continued Violence and Migration, A Reflection on: “Violence and Migration on the Arizona-Sonora Border”. Human Organization 1 June 2021; 80 (2): 88–90. doi: https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-80.2.88 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest Search

In this era of industry deregulation, gutting of environmental protections, and science denial, environmental justice applied anthropology is more important than ever. There is growing ethnographic research into the ways people organize themselves and take action to protect their families and communities from toxins while demanding accountability from polluting industries and the state. When students encounter this literature in university curricula and when service-learning projects are part of coursework, the experiences they gain can inform their personal lives long after the semester ends. Five anthropologists share experiences teaching environmental justice ethnography courses. Their pedagogy addresses critical questions of ethical research and student positionality.