Arjun Shankar
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 88991 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Arjun Shankar |
| NOMBRES | Arjun |
| APELLIDO | Shankar |
| FIRMA | SHANKAR A |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Pennsylvania |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4312-4412 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 32 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 378 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 32 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2002 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Becoming Nature
Nature affords transformations to consumers' social, embodied, and temporal experiences. Yet, consumer research has yet to consider how wild species contribute to and are affected by experiential consumption in nature. With data from an ethnography of fly fishing, we theorize human-fish interactions as encounters in interspecies contact zones. Our findings explain how these encounters are established, engendering processes of interspecies becomin…
Borders, labor, and beyond
Harsha Walia is the winner of the 2022 Conrad M. Arensberg Award given by the Society for the Anthropology of Work for outstanding contributions to the anthropology of work from inside the discipline and beyond. Walia is a scholar, activist, and organizer committed to migrant justice and border abolition. She is also author of Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (Fernwood Press 2021), Undoing Border I…
On Brown Blood
This article uses the conceptual space of "brown blood" to analyze United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind at the intersection of race and caste. The racial politics of blood has been somewhat submerged in the ongoing discussions of racism and racialization, which have been dominated by the representational politics of skin color. However, the Thind case, as I argue, hinges on an understanding of racial blood politics that intersected with casteist d…
"The Making of the "Brown Savior
This article offers a theoretical excavation of the brown savior, a figure that has taken on a critical role in the newly reconstructed help industries in India. Brown saviors help us to think more critically about the global help industries, an area in which racializing processes have been relatively understudied despite the fact that, historically, nearly all help interventions have focused on previously colonized peoples. I suggest that the br…
Air-conditioners and the talk of the middle class
Multimodal Ambivalence and the Struggle against Techno-Supremacies
Multimodal Ambivalence
For those of us located in the Global North, 2021 began with a barrage of media content documenting a coup attempt in the United States, the United Kingdom's split from Europe after four years of Brexit deliberations, and talk of mass vaccinations amid the uneven global devastation of COVID-19. For the three of us, with our connections to South Asia, Latin America, and West Africa, current Euro-American mediatized stories were supplemented by ong…
How Brands Craft National Identity
Drawing on cultural branding research, we examine how brands can craft national identity. We do so with reference to how brands enabled New Zealand's displaced Pākehā (white) majority to carve out a sense of we-ness against the backdrop of globalization and resurgent indigenous identity claims. Using multiple sources of ethnographic data, we develop a process model of how brands create national identity through we-ness. We find that marketplace a…
Curiosity Studies
“The Campus Is Sick”
Primitivism and Race in Ethnographic Film
Ethnographic film, given its history as a vestige of colonial visual culture, has been defined by and constrained by the racist and imperial ideologies of those who were the earliest ethnographic filmmakers. Scientistic, distanced, observational film-making techniques continued the colonial quest for totalizing knowledge through the romantic ideal that film was “objective.” At the same time, the earliest ethnographic films relied on the perceived…
Changing emotional engagement with running through communal self-tracking
Emerging research explores the role of self-tracking in supporting healthy behaviour. Self-tracking comprises a number of interrelated practices; some individual some communal. In this article, we focus on practices that enable interaction between self-trackers through data sharing and communication around personal data. For public health, communal self-tracking has been explored for the additional benefits it provides in addition to self-knowled…
Listening to Images, Participatory Pedagogy, and Anthropological (Re-)Inventions
In this article, I provide examples of how listening to images produced the possibility for anthropological reinvention. I base my analysis on fieldwork conducted in Karnataka, India, and the participatory photography project we initiated together. I focus my attention on the pedagogic basis of listening and build on the premise that a multimodal anthropology of invention can "facilitate a pedagogy of engagement and performativity" (Dattatreyan a…
Fresh perspectives on interpretive consumer research
Intellectually, we are all Sidney Levy’s next of kin, and he has left us rich. (John Schouten on CCT Facebook page - March 27th, 2018)In his introductory speech to the 2015 CCT conference, the late
What Do We Want Anthropology to Resemble
Masculinity, Toxicity, Value, and Film
Anthropology, Film, Pedagogy, and Social Change
Auteurship and Image‐Making
This article critiques digital photovoice, a method deployed by social activists, developmentalists, and anthropological researchers. I argue that the uncritical use of photovoice methods (1) has allowed a reinvigoration of a positivist orientation toward image authenticity and (2) inadvertently supports hegemonic regimes of value. To revitalize photovoice as a method, I argue that practitioners must view their project as an aesthetic one, in whi…
Multimodal Ethnography and the Possibilities for Engaged Anthropology
The Curious Case of the Curiosity Center
This piece narrates the first meeting between an anthropologist and a man dedicated to developing a curiosity center in New York City. As the encounter unfolds, the complexities of the Indian diasporic experience, the emotions of field research, the paradoxes of a man's autobiography, and the concept of curiosity together animate the tale
Considering the Future of Visual Anthropology
The Digital Parallax and Entanglements of Filmmaking
Towards a critical visual pedagogy
In this article, the author calls for a critical visual pedagogy as a means to challenge visually constituted ‘grand narratives’ of poverty and suffering. In the first half, he situates images of poverty in India within a global development discourse termed the ‘end of poverty’, which functions as the rationale for social interventions in the global south and sustains a circuit of ‘poverty capital’. The author critically analyzes the visual aesth…
Purifying Practices
Prior consumer research theorizes nature as an ideal stage for romantic consumption experiences by framing nature as external to culture. The same studies, however, problematize this framing by highlighting the consumer-cultural resources through which nature is harnessed and interpreted. Through an ethnography of surfing culture, this article theorizes consumers' experiences of nature as emerging from assemblages of heterogeneous resources. A th…
Tribes, Inc
You hold in your hands a book that spans current thought about the role of the tribal in contemporary commercial society. Its chapters cut across the continents ranging from the philosophical to the grounded, from critical conjecture to ethnographic evidence, sampling a range of tribal identities, activities and practices along the way. In this chapter, we seek to add another conceptual piece to the contemporary jigsaw puzzle that is the current …
Technologies of Sexiness
‘Raunch’ culture and ‘porno-chic’ are examples of a dramatic rise in the re-sexualization of women’s bodies. Wrapped in discourses of individualism, consumerism and empowerment, and often excluding those who are not white, heterosexual and slim, this sexualization of culture has created significant debates within feminist literature with regard to the question of how to value women’s choices of participation in sexualized culture while also maint…
The Marketplace Management of Illicit Pleasure
Through pleasure, a foundational concept in consumer behavior, we offer an analysis of the history, development, and experience of clubbing, the postcursor of rave and the contextual focus of this article. On the basis of a 5-year study primarily involving participant observation and interviewing, we present an analysis of how the clubbing experience is cocreated by promoters, DJs, and clubbers themselves. We develop and demonstrate a biosocial c…
Purifying Practices
Prior consumer research theorizes nature as an ideal stage for romantic consumption experiences by framing nature as external to culture. The same studies, however, problematize this framing by highlighting the consumer-cultural resources through which nature is harnessed and interpreted. Through an ethnography of surfing culture, this article theorizes consumers' experiences of nature as emerging from assemblages of heterogeneous resources. A th…
Working Weeks, Rave Weekends
Popular music is one of the most ubiquitous forms of contemporary culture. This paper looks at the phenomenon known as rave or dance culture in Britain. It examines the nature of the consumer experience at a dance club through the use of a two stage methodology. Based on observations and the collection of phenomenological data, the findings suggest that the experience is linked to a series of behaviours, which are related to fragmentation and ide…
Multimodal Ambivalence
For those of us located in the Global North, 2021 began with a barrage of media content documenting a coup attempt in the United States, the United Kingdom's split from Europe after four years of Brexit deliberations, and talk of mass vaccinations amid the uneven global devastation of COVID-19. For the three of us, with our connections to South Asia, Latin America, and West Africa, current Euro-American mediatized stories were supplemented by ong…
Club culture, neotribalism and ritualised behaviour
Auteurship and Image‐Making
This article critiques digital photovoice, a method deployed by social activists, developmentalists, and anthropological researchers. I argue that the uncritical use of photovoice methods (1) has allowed a reinvigoration of a positivist orientation toward image authenticity and (2) inadvertently supports hegemonic regimes of value. To revitalize photovoice as a method, I argue that practitioners must view their project as an aesthetic one, in whi…
Postfeminist Heterotopias
This article contributes to debates concerning the sexualization of culture in the European context by analysing shifts in contemporary forms of British women’s (hetero)sexual sexual subjectivities in relation to consumer culture. The article employs a ‘heterotopological’ analysis of how space is materialized through history, power and discourse. A two-part analysis is employed that, first, maps the history of British sex shops in relation to two…
The production and consumption of music
Music is the water of life, whiskey of passion, it uplifts us, releases us, marks our joy and sadness, it is to live for and to die for, it caries the spirit of truth and freedom, it demands to be
Listening to Images, Participatory Pedagogy, and Anthropological (Re-)Inventions
In this article, I provide examples of how listening to images produced the possibility for anthropological reinvention. I base my analysis on fieldwork conducted in Karnataka, India, and the participatory photography project we initiated together. I focus my attention on the pedagogic basis of listening and build on the premise that a multimodal anthropology of invention can "facilitate a pedagogy of engagement and performativity" (Dattatreyan a…
How Brands Craft National Identity
Drawing on cultural branding research, we examine how brands can craft national identity. We do so with reference to how brands enabled New Zealand's displaced Pākehā (white) majority to carve out a sense of we-ness against the backdrop of globalization and resurgent indigenous identity claims. Using multiple sources of ethnographic data, we develop a process model of how brands create national identity through we-ness. We find that marketplace a…
Changing emotional engagement with running through communal self-tracking
Emerging research explores the role of self-tracking in supporting healthy behaviour. Self-tracking comprises a number of interrelated practices; some individual some communal. In this article, we focus on practices that enable interaction between self-trackers through data sharing and communication around personal data. For public health, communal self-tracking has been explored for the additional benefits it provides in addition to self-knowled…
Towards a critical visual pedagogy
In this article, the author calls for a critical visual pedagogy as a means to challenge visually constituted ‘grand narratives’ of poverty and suffering. In the first half, he situates images of poverty in India within a global development discourse termed the ‘end of poverty’, which functions as the rationale for social interventions in the global south and sustains a circuit of ‘poverty capital’. The author critically analyzes the visual aesth…
"The Making of the "Brown Savior
This article offers a theoretical excavation of the brown savior, a figure that has taken on a critical role in the newly reconstructed help industries in India. Brown saviors help us to think more critically about the global help industries, an area in which racializing processes have been relatively understudied despite the fact that, historically, nearly all help interventions have focused on previously colonized peoples. I suggest that the br…
Anthropology, Film, Pedagogy, and Social Change
Multimodal Ambivalence and the Struggle against Techno-Supremacies
Multimodal Ethnography and the Possibilities for Engaged Anthropology
Becoming Nature
Nature affords transformations to consumers' social, embodied, and temporal experiences. Yet, consumer research has yet to consider how wild species contribute to and are affected by experiential consumption in nature. With data from an ethnography of fly fishing, we theorize human-fish interactions as encounters in interspecies contact zones. Our findings explain how these encounters are established, engendering processes of interspecies becomin…
On Brown Blood
This article uses the conceptual space of "brown blood" to analyze United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind at the intersection of race and caste. The racial politics of blood has been somewhat submerged in the ongoing discussions of racism and racialization, which have been dominated by the representational politics of skin color. However, the Thind case, as I argue, hinges on an understanding of racial blood politics that intersected with casteist d…
What Do We Want Anthropology to Resemble
The Digital Parallax and Entanglements of Filmmaking
Borders, labor, and beyond
Harsha Walia is the winner of the 2022 Conrad M. Arensberg Award given by the Society for the Anthropology of Work for outstanding contributions to the anthropology of work from inside the discipline and beyond. Walia is a scholar, activist, and organizer committed to migrant justice and border abolition. She is also author of Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism (Fernwood Press 2021), Undoing Border I…
Primitivism and Race in Ethnographic Film
Ethnographic film, given its history as a vestige of colonial visual culture, has been defined by and constrained by the racist and imperial ideologies of those who were the earliest ethnographic filmmakers. Scientistic, distanced, observational film-making techniques continued the colonial quest for totalizing knowledge through the romantic ideal that film was “objective.” At the same time, the earliest ethnographic films relied on the perceived…
Considering the Future of Visual Anthropology
Working Weeks, Rave Weekends
Popular music is one of the most ubiquitous forms of contemporary culture. This paper looks at the phenomenon known as rave or dance culture in Britain. It examines the nature of the consumer experience at a dance club through the use of a two stage methodology. Based on observations and the collection of phenomenological data, the findings suggest that the experience is linked to a series of behaviours, which are related to fragmentation and ide…
The production and consumption of music
Music is the water of life, whiskey of passion, it uplifts us, releases us, marks our joy and sadness, it is to live for and to die for, it caries the spirit of truth and freedom, it demands to be
The Marketplace Management of Illicit Pleasure
Through pleasure, a foundational concept in consumer behavior, we offer an analysis of the history, development, and experience of clubbing, the postcursor of rave and the contextual focus of this article. On the basis of a 5-year study primarily involving participant observation and interviewing, we present an analysis of how the clubbing experience is cocreated by promoters, DJs, and clubbers themselves. We develop and demonstrate a biosocial c…
Marketing the Arts
Popular music is one of the most ubiquitous forms of contemporary culture. This paper looks at the phenomenon known as rave or dance culture in Britain. It examines the nature of the consumer experience at a dance club through the use of a two-stage methodology. Based on observations and the collection of phenomenological data, the findings suggest that the experience is linked to a series of behaviours, which are related to fragmentation and ide…
Postfeminist Heterotopias
This article contributes to debates concerning the sexualization of culture in the European context by analysing shifts in contemporary forms of British women’s (hetero)sexual sexual subjectivities in relation to consumer culture. The article employs a ‘heterotopological’ analysis of how space is materialized through history, power and discourse. A two-part analysis is employed that, first, maps the history of British sex shops in relation to two…
Technologies of Sexiness
‘Raunch’ culture and ‘porno-chic’ are examples of a dramatic rise in the re-sexualization of women’s bodies. Wrapped in discourses of individualism, consumerism and empowerment, and often excluding those who are not white, heterosexual and slim, this sexualization of culture has created significant debates within feminist literature with regard to the question of how to value women’s choices of participation in sexualized culture while also maint…
Club culture, neotribalism and ritualised behaviour
Tribes, Inc
You hold in your hands a book that spans current thought about the role of the tribal in contemporary commercial society. Its chapters cut across the continents ranging from the philosophical to the grounded, from critical conjecture to ethnographic evidence, sampling a range of tribal identities, activities and practices along the way. In this chapter, we seek to add another conceptual piece to the contemporary jigsaw puzzle that is the current …
Consumer Tribes
The ‘new dominant logic of marketing’ switches the view of firms as the principal economic producers and value creators to one in which customers are actively engaged in the value creation and marketing process (Normann and Ramirez, 1993; Vargo and Lusch, 2004; Wikström, 1996). This chapter examines how subcultures play an important role in enabling consumers to act proactively and productively in the market as entrepreneurs. Subcultures have oft…
Purifying Practices
Prior consumer research theorizes nature as an ideal stage for romantic consumption experiences by framing nature as external to culture. The same studies, however, problematize this framing by highlighting the consumer-cultural resources through which nature is harnessed and interpreted. Through an ethnography of surfing culture, this article theorizes consumers' experiences of nature as emerging from assemblages of heterogeneous resources. A th…
Towards a critical visual pedagogy
In this article, the author calls for a critical visual pedagogy as a means to challenge visually constituted ‘grand narratives’ of poverty and suffering. In the first half, he situates images of poverty in India within a global development discourse termed the ‘end of poverty’, which functions as the rationale for social interventions in the global south and sustains a circuit of ‘poverty capital’. The author critically analyzes the visual aesth…
Considering the Future of Visual Anthropology
The Digital Parallax and Entanglements of Filmmaking
Auteurship and Image‐Making
This article critiques digital photovoice, a method deployed by social activists, developmentalists, and anthropological researchers. I argue that the uncritical use of photovoice methods (1) has allowed a reinvigoration of a positivist orientation toward image authenticity and (2) inadvertently supports hegemonic regimes of value. To revitalize photovoice as a method, I argue that practitioners must view their project as an aesthetic one, in whi…
Multimodal Ethnography and the Possibilities for Engaged Anthropology
The Curious Case of the Curiosity Center
This piece narrates the first meeting between an anthropologist and a man dedicated to developing a curiosity center in New York City. As the encounter unfolds, the complexities of the Indian diasporic experience, the emotions of field research, the paradoxes of a man's autobiography, and the concept of curiosity together animate the tale
Masculinity, Toxicity, Value, and Film
Anthropology, Film, Pedagogy, and Social Change
What Do We Want Anthropology to Resemble
Listening to Images, Participatory Pedagogy, and Anthropological (Re-)Inventions
In this article, I provide examples of how listening to images produced the possibility for anthropological reinvention. I base my analysis on fieldwork conducted in Karnataka, India, and the participatory photography project we initiated together. I focus my attention on the pedagogic basis of listening and build on the premise that a multimodal anthropology of invention can "facilitate a pedagogy of engagement and performativity" (Dattatreyan a…
Fresh perspectives on interpretive consumer research
Intellectually, we are all Sidney Levy’s next of kin, and he has left us rich. (John Schouten on CCT Facebook page - March 27th, 2018)In his introductory speech to the 2015 CCT conference, the late
Curiosity Studies
“The Campus Is Sick”
Primitivism and Race in Ethnographic Film
Ethnographic film, given its history as a vestige of colonial visual culture, has been defined by and constrained by the racist and imperial ideologies of those who were the earliest ethnographic filmmakers. Scientistic, distanced, observational film-making techniques continued the colonial quest for totalizing knowledge through the romantic ideal that film was “objective.” At the same time, the earliest ethnographic films relied on the perceived…
Changing emotional engagement with running through communal self-tracking
Emerging research explores the role of self-tracking in supporting healthy behaviour. Self-tracking comprises a number of interrelated practices; some individual some communal. In this article, we focus on practices that enable interaction between self-trackers through data sharing and communication around personal data. For public health, communal self-tracking has been explored for the additional benefits it provides in addition to self-knowled…
Sociology (26 obras) · Aesthetics (12 obras) · Art (12 obras) · Political science (12 obras) · Anthropology (9 obras) · Computer Science (9 obras) · Business (8 obras) · Gender Studies (8 obras) · Gender Studies (8 obras) · History (8 obras)