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Reposted by American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal)

Duke University Press @dukepress.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Congratulations to @danilynrutherford.bsky.social, whose book "Beautiful Mystery" has been named a co-winner of the 2026 American Ethnological Society @amethno.bsky.social Senior Book Prize. buff.ly/QdtUSef

Cover of Beautiful Mystery: Living in a Wordless World by Danilyn Rutherford. Features an image of the author and her daughter treated with a colorful gradient, giving it a blueish tone. The beach and a house are visible in the background.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Congratulations to Professors Morris and Rutherford, and thank you for these extraordinary books! This year's Senior Book Prize committee consisted of Mohamad Junaid, Amira Mittermaier, and Adriana Petryna. Huge thanks to our committee for their work on and commitment to this scholarship.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

We are delighted to announce the co-winners of this year's AE Senior Book Prize: Rosalind Morris for Unstable Ground: The Lives, Deaths, and Afterlives of Gold in South Africa & Danilyn Rutherford for Beautiful Mystery: Living in a Wordless World.

americanethnologist.org

2026 AES Senior Book Prize Winners Announced! - American Ethnological Society

by Danilyn Rutherford

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

In this ambiguity, medication becomes an agent of care, a means through which people endure suffering and remain connected to those who care for them." Read here: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

What are psychiatric medications for? Poramin Tangopasvilaisakul argues that "psychiatric drugs blur the line between medical effects and side effects, or between what happens inside the body and within relationships. [...]

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Read the piece in the AES Special Collection, Promised Futures: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

June Hee Kwon’s interspecies ethnography explores how Jeju citrus farmers and trees are bound together in a shared waithood, as people invest in long-term cultivation without knowing whether their efforts will pay off in the future.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Through a granular and embodied ethnography in Taiwan, Shi Yeu Nga observes how the gut supplement industry is built on promises of a better future, starting with the gut. Read the piece in the AES Special Collection, Promised Futures: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

In working with scientists in the Arctic, Hanna Oosterveen reflects on how different visions of the future are negotiated among members of the environmental research community. Read the piece in the AES Special Collection, Promised Futures: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Read the piece in the AES Special Collection, Promised Futures: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Through his observation of pottery-making in Crete, Emanuele Prezioso comments on futurity. He argues that, as much as it draws on past traditions, pottery is inherently oriented toward the future through ‘the crafting of the possible’.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Access the piece in the AES Special Collection, Promised Futures: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

In her account of a Chinese town renewed to attract returning migrants, Teresa Irigoyen-Lopez articulates what happens when the promised future does not resonate with those to whom it is promised.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Read the piece in the AES Special Collection, Promised Futures: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

By following a migrant's journey after she receives refugee status in the UK, Hannah Morgan shows that bureaucratic anxieties about the future do not disappear when an aspired future is attained.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

In his work on South Africa’s Gauteng Province, Loren B. Landau shows how people become trapped by failed promised futures and unrealized expectations. Access the piece in the AES Special Collection, Promised Futures: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

In his ethnography of Baptists in Texas, Thomas Long delineates the role of exclusion in promises of a singular future grounded in conservative theology. Access the piece in the AES Special Collection, Promised Futures: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Through his study of plastic building facades in Bolivia, Isaac Silver connects the anthropology of the future with that of plastic. He follows how globally circulating plastic becomes the material through which Aymara traders project abundant futures.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

In their "day trip to utopia" in a former East German model socialist city, Paul Basu and Jonas Tinius reflect on how abandoned visions of the future endure in the material remnants of today. Access their piece in the AES Special Collection, Promised Futures: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Lindsay A. Bell conducts a sensitive ethnography of a Cold War-era high-rise in Hay River, Canada, through which she explores how people live with the architectural remnants of extractive and promissory pasts.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Deana Jovanović examines how a return to Yugoslav-era greatness is promised in a Serbian mining town. She argues that performative and populist promises are central to sustaining political power while helping people navigate precarious futures.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

We begin by the introduction of editors, Ibrahim Ince and Erick Moreno Superlano, that put the contexts of the 12 pieces into dialogue, from Baptist churches, Arctic stations, utopian cities, citrus groves, industrial high-rises to human guts. Read here:

americanethnologist.org

Introduction: Promised Futures - American Ethnological Society

- T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

NEW Special Collection: Promised Futures AES presents a collection of essays that attends to the temporal politics of what futures are promised, by whom, and at what cost?

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Submissions for the AES Senior Book Prize are currently open! The Prize goes to a work that is deeply ethnographic and speaks to contemporary social issues with relevance beyond the discipline and beyond the academy. The deadline for submissions is April 15th, 2026.

americanethnologist.org

Senior Book Prize - American Ethnological Society

The prize goes to a work that is deeply ethnographic and speaks to contemporary social issues with relevance beyond the discipline and beyond the academy.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

📢📢📢 New Editor's Note Alert 📢📢📢 Our Editor in Chief, Susanna Trnka, comments on gender and global politics in AE 53.1 editor's note. In light of current political battles over gender, she argues for anthropology’s continued relevance in understanding gender, power and contemporary politics.

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

American Ethnologist | AAA Ethnology Journal | Wiley Online Library

Click on the article title to read more.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

As part of the 'Property and Other Fictions' Forum, the author points that ethnographies of housing, money and sanctions reveal value, property and capitalism as being continually reworked through everyday practices.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

📢📢📢 New Commentary Alert 📢📢📢 Nicholas D'Avella's commentary, 'Ecologies of value: troubling great transformations', is now available in AE 53.1 Early View.

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

American Ethnologist | AAA Ethnology Journal | Wiley Online Library

Click on the article title to read more.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

As part of the 'Property and Other Fictions' Forum, Polson elaborates how the promises of middle-class stability through property and asset ownership are fragile fictions.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

📢📢📢 New Commentary Alert 📢📢📢 Michael Polson's 'Property, capitalism, and the value-shaping power of states' is now available in AE 53.1 Early View.

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

American Ethnologist | AAA Ethnology Journal | Wiley Online Library

Click on the article title to read more.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

As part of the 'Property and Other Fictions' Forum, the author examines how everyday life becomes organized around enduring precarity rather than security amid neoliberal restructuring and geopolitical sanctions.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

As part of the 'Property and Other Fictions' Forum, the author explores how the aspiration of owning a home is continually displaced by global finance, sanctions, and neoliberal housing regimes.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

📢📢📢 New Article Alert 📢📢📢 Jianmin Shao's 'The geobiopolitics of trans medicine: Kinship, recalibrated care, and difference-making amid China-US tensions' is now available in AE 53.1 Early View. Access here: anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

As part of the 'Property and Other Fictions' Forum, Elliott underlines how contemporary crises of financialization and sanctions transform property from a source of security into a volatile, extractive and often illusory promise.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

As part of the 'Property and Other Fictions' Forum, the author reveals how money and property function as unstable vehicles that extract value from workers while undermining the very aspirations they are meant to secure.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

As part of the 'Property and Other Fictions' Forum, the author ethnographically traces how people navigate loss, debt, and mobility under global financial and political constraints.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

📢📢📢 New Commentary Alert 📢📢📢 Mareike Winchell's 'Negative property: From accretive enclosure to im/mobility and loss' is now available in AE 53.1 Early View.

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

American Ethnologist | AAA Ethnology Journal | Wiley Online Library

Click on the article title to read more.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

As part of the 'Property and Other Fictions' Forum, the author explores global financial regimes, state policies, and international power structures through struggles over housing in Iran and Mexico.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

📢📢📢 New Commentary Alert 📢📢📢 Guillermo de la Peña's 'Ethnographies of globalization: Fictitious commodities, deceitful property, and the illusion of upward social mobility' is now available in AE 53.1 Early View.

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

American Ethnologist | AAA Ethnology Journal | Wiley Online Library

Click on the article title to read more.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

📢📢📢 New Article Alert 📢📢📢 Emrah Yıldız's 'Outsmarting sanctions: Experiments with fictitious commodities across Iran and Turkey' is now available in AE 53.1 Early View, as part of the 'Property and Other Fictions' Forum: anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

As part of the 'Property and Other Fictions' Forum, Hassan reflects on her fieldwork in Turkey and Iran, which stimulated her to attend closely to the moments where everyday existence is structured by sanctions, financialization, and chronic instability.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

📢📢📢 New Commentary Alert 📢📢📢 Wesam Adel Hassan's commentary, 'Speculative lives under broken economies', is now available in AE 53.1 Early View.

anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

American Ethnologist | AAA Ethnology Journal | Wiley Online Library

Click on the article title to read more.

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American Ethnological Society // American Ethnologist (journal) @amethno.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

Call for Late Breaking Sessions @ the AES Spring Conference in Victoria, BC! Late-breaking sessions address urgent global, political, environmental, and disciplinary developments shaping anthropological research and practice today. Read more here: americanethnologist.org/news/call-fo...

americanethnologist.org

Call for Late-Breaking Sessions at the AES Spring Conference (May 1-3, 2026) - American Ethnological Society

Deadline: February 13, 2026

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