Ellina Mourtazina (University of Lausanne) examines the ways in which people experience silence in a meditation retreat center in northern India. She shows how in this setting silence is a relational, as well as an internal and intentional way of perceiving one’s lifeworld.
... continue reading.The Art of Making and Breaking Silence: Thoughts from Theatre Audio Describers
Harshadha Balasubramanian (independent scholar) analyzes how theatre audio describers carefully maintain or break silences for visually-impaired audiences, and reflects on doing fieldwork as a visually-impaired anthropologist.
... continue reading.Gendered Violence and Silence in the “Country of the Unspoken”: Reflections on Ethnographic Writing in New Caledonia
Drawing on extensive research among indigenous Kanak communities in New Caledonia, Nathanaëlle Soler (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) asks how to write about unspoken gender-based violence. One way to do this, she concludes, is by studying the distribution of power and speech that erases the voice of women from public and private spheres while at the same time exploring their silent forms of resistance.
... continue reading.Anthropology at the Ragged Edge of Silence
Reflecting on her childhood in Ireland and her research on Australia’s Stolen Generations, Fiona Murphy (Queen’s University Belfast) suggests that understanding the complex presence of silence in our research participants’ lives will help us to differently inhabit their imaginations and experiences, pushing us beyond silence’s ragged edge.
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