Allegra Lab

An audio essay by Ian M. Cook with anthropologists who have gone beyond critique for critique's sake. Anthropologists who have creatively intervened in the world in ways that blur the scholar/activist categories and centre anthropology's tentative, non-absolutist mode of knowledge creation. The essay argues that the attempts at political practice by anthropologists, combined with the work of those who critique the international organisations and social movements that actively seek to intervene in the world, so that their their interventions might be more effective in achieving social justice, can help create and structure the conditions for critical radical optimism to emerge. Transcript: https://allegralaboratory.net/from-despair-to-where-anthropology-critique-political-practice-and-the-case-for-radical-optimism/ Featuring (in order of a-hear-ance) Agathe Mora Julie Billaud Jane Cowan Noah Walker-Crawford Matthew C. Canfield Lieselotte Viaene Rafael Carrano Lelis Samuel Shapiro Pedro Silva Rocha Lima

Corona Diaries 15: April 8 Mohira Suyarkulova in Bishkek allegralaboratory.net/ How do we socially and culturally adapt to isolation? How do we experience empty spaces? Are new forms of solidarity emerging? How does it feel to have to work in hospitals, assembly lines or shops when others stay at home? What new questions are we asking ourselves about our parenting and being a child? What new forms of exploitation emerge from the increased digitalisation of work? What new spaces of freedom have emerged? How can we understand social media’s role in the pandemic? How are our modes of communication changing in general? What role does humour play in our new shared experience of an absurd situation without precedent? Seven willing diarists offer us a short audio diary once a week throughout the month of April, reflecting, describing, venting - all is permissible, all has to be expected. allegralaboratory.net/

Corona Diaries 12: April 5 Tamara Buble in Zagreb allegralaboratory.net/ How do we socially and culturally adapt to isolation? How do we experience empty spaces? Are new forms of solidarity emerging? How does it feel to have to work in hospitals, assembly lines or shops when others stay at home? What new questions are we asking ourselves about our parenting and being a child? What new forms of exploitation emerge from the increased digitalisation of work? What new spaces of freedom have emerged? How can we understand social media’s role in the pandemic? How are our modes of communication changing in general? What role does humour play in our new shared experience of an absurd situation without precedent? Seven willing diarists offer us a short audio diary once a week throughout the month of April, reflecting, describing, venting - all is permissible, all has to be expected. allegralaboratory.net

Corona Diaries 9: April 2 Justin Spike in Budapest allegralaboratory.net/ How do we socially and culturally adapt to isolation? How do we experience empty spaces? Are new forms of solidarity emerging? How does it feel to have to work in hospitals, assembly lines or shops when others stay at home? What new questions are we asking ourselves about our parenting and being a child? What new forms of exploitation emerge from the increased digitalisation of work? What new spaces of freedom have emerged? How can we understand social media’s role in the pandemic? How are our modes of communication changing in general? What role does humour play in our new shared experience of an absurd situation without precedent? Seven willing diarists offer us a short audio diary once a week throughout the month of April, reflecting, describing, venting - all is permissible, all has to be expected. allegralaboratory.net/