Platypod, The CASTAC Podcast

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Laura Werle can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/05/waves-of-well-being-surfing-at-the-shaka-surf-club-in-kodi-bengre-india/. About the post: The research described in this post aimed to provide insights to improve low-cost mental health support and interventions in coastal areas and fisher communities in India. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Thais Valim can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/04/we-had-to-rethink-many-many-things-reflexivity-in-scientific-practices-during-the-zika-epidemic-in-recife-brazil/. About the post: This piece explores how local experiences with the Zika epidemic in Recife, Brazil, have impacted Brazilian scientists' research practices more broadly, namely, how it made them more reflexive about knowledge production and science making. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Jack Leff can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/04/tear-gas-as-punishment/. About the post: By examining the interplay between state use of tear gas to punish activists and the protestors fighting against it, we catch a glimpse into the racial capitalist operations of the United States and where it is vulnerable to resistance. This essay examines the police tactic of kettling, how it is wielded to punish activists, and how radical left-wing organizers respond.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Soojin Kim can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/04/spatial-approaches-to-livestreaming-a-methodological-exploration-in-digital-ethnography/. About the post: This is my reflection on the frustrations that I encountered during the initial phases of my fieldwork within AfreecaTV. Between late 2016 and early 2018, I conducted "online" and "offline" ethnographic fieldwork for my master’s thesis on the livestreaming culture. This journey led me to explore spatial approaches to digital ethnography, which I will discuss in this post. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Alexandra Dantzer can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/04/two-insomniacs-discuss-routine-and-restlessness-through-google-tracking/. About the post: This piece approaches questions about life, time-waste, routine, and restlessness through a different lens. Namely, Google tracking data serve as an elicitation device and a conversation starter to help me think about the everyday routines and rhythms of the lives of people I have talked with, as well as my own routines. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/03/recipes-of-resistance-global-digital-gastrosolidarity-for-palestine/. About the post: In this essay, the author weaves together insights on Palestinian foodways with their past ruminations on digital food, its related activism, and how these flourish and interact on digital food spaces (DFS). The author expands upon past considerations of how they understood and defined digital gastrodiplomacy to include a typology refered to as "digital gastrosolidarity."

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Fei Yuan can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/03/bed-time-storytelling/. About the post: Memories, hallucinations, and unfulfilled dreams are narrated from the bed during the final chapters of life. I seek to highlight the experiences of those in the hospice ward who, despite being confined to their beds, are actively living through their final moments, rather than just waiting out their last days. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Lea Happ can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/03/who-knows-about-ethical-research-reflections-on-research-ethics-and-vulnerability-in-abortion-research/. About the post: As a feminist researcher, I have found it at times difficult to navigate the complex nexus of agency and vulnerability. Ultimately, for me, doing feminist research means centring the particular circumstances of my research site and foregrounding the voices of those who draw their expertise from their life and work when determining methodological, ethical, and conceptual approaches. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Jacob Weger can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/02/anthropology-sts-and-the-politics-of-imagination-in-navigating-socio-environmental-change/. About the post: Imagination is a critical resource in the pursuit of sustainable futures, yet it is often constrained by powerful structural forces and vested interests. Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies (STS) offer unique perspectives and tools that can help identify tacit imaginaries and shed light on alternative ones, opening such discussions to a wider range of shared visions of what is possible or desirable in order to cultivate more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable worlds.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by sebastian levar spivey can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/02/lonely-planet-looking-for-connection-citizen-science-seti-research-at-nasa/. About the post: The stakes here are cosmic and immediate: who are humans in extraterran (not yet extraterrestrial) relationships, and what becomes of the Earth when it exists as a participant with, rather than antithesis to, other heavenly bodies? In such a welter, careful attention must be given to the way worlding, knowing, and relating are (differently) enacted, with which stories and ideas those enactments occur, and in what ways these enactments matter.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Kimberly Sanchez can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2024/01/water-scarcity-hydropolitics-and-the-importance-of-materiality-at-the-foothills-of-the-rocky-mountains/. About the post: As one of many in a very visible, linear collective, surface waters and irrigation infrastructures like canals, dams, and reservoirs foster knowledge of other water users such as Jose as well as the need to actively maintain a steady flow of water in order to enjoy a similar flow of health, wealth and happiness for herds, families and communities. Through comparing two cases of water use among livestock producers in Wyoming, we are reminded of the need to take account of the material conditions that help give form to social relations, particularly those which constitute fluid publics.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Renzo Taddei can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/12/milei-crowds-and-concrete-waves-in-argentina/. About the post: Thousands of individuals were now one massive block moving up and down. The stands shook. I felt the largest reinforced concrete stand in the largest soccer stadium in South America tremble beneath my feet. For a second, I was filled with panic. If the vibration reached the resonance frequency, the disaster would be of monstrous proportions.

In this special episode, we revisit the 2023 edition of CASPR: CASTAC in the Spring, an annual online event held by CASTAC. This year, guest speakers convened to discuss the topic of "digital ethnography." Transcript available at https://blog.castac.org/2023/12/platypod-episode-eight-caspr-2023/

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by ZIYA KAYA can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/11/algorithmic-imaginations-in-agriculture-automation/. About the post: Agricultural digitization not only sparks the imagination of humans being replaced by automation and data but also creates participatory models in corporate settings that aim to incorporate farmers’ know-how and practices into technology development. This participatory approach to technology development contributes to capital accumulation in new ways in parallel with the digitalization of everyday life. Moreover, it leads to the emergence of novel imaginations about automated farm work while also redefining the value and the division of labor on farms.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Lucas Nishida can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/11/high-costs-entangled-politics-what-all-comes-inside-a-medications-packaging/. About the post: In this process, the medication is not merely a chemical compound but is a product of and produces a network of relationships: with clinical trials and research results, with research subjects and their hopes and activism, with a production industry and its private health logic, with international intellectual property agreements and patent records, with a global drug market. All of this comes imported with the medication packaging when it comes to incorporating the drug into SUS. (This episode is available in additional languages on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.)

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Madhura Rao can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/11/belly-versus-bin-how-digital-autoethnography-brought-me-back-from-the-brink-of-disordered-eating/. About the post: I had become adept at ignoring rancid smells and increasingly comfortable with cutting off mouldy bits before consuming a visibly deteriorating product. These developments concerned me but not enough to pause and reflect. If food was going in my belly, it was staying out of the bin and that was a good thing.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Rebecca Carlson, Heikki Wilenius and Jonathan Corliss can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/10/on-algorithmic-divination/. About the post: Algorithms are tools of divination. Like cowry shells, scapular bones or spiders trapped under a pot, algorithms are marshaled to detect and relay invisible patterns; to bring to light a truth which is out there, but which cannot ordinarily be seen.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Adwaita Banerjee can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/10/plastic-chronicles-navigating-mumbais-material-mazes/. About the post: It is here, amidst a sea of discarded materials, that a relationship evolves—one between the waste pickers, the myriad forms of plastics, and the urban space that surrounds them. This bond is grounded in empirical observations that bring order to the chaotic array of plastics, tying together the intricate dance of humans and materials within the city's polyphonic rhythms.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Manon Lefevre can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/10/funeral-for-an-embryo/. About the post: Not long ago, it seemed that the science lab and the Catholic cemetery were two distinct worlds. Yet, surprising discursive and material connections complicate that dominant narrative. Rather, I found that the two sides of the laboratory walls were already entangled in surprising ways.

This bonus content is a reading from Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. The full post by Gabrielle Hanley-Mott can be read at https://blog.castac.org/2023/10/how-to-imagine-the-unknown-choosing-an-arm-prosthesis/. About the post: An important cause of anxiety for her was how to choose a prosthetic and which one to choose. According to her, during one appointment, her doctor gave her a prosthetics catalog to look through, which she found useless. Without being able to see how someone would use different types of hooks, or someone to explain how two myoelectric elbows were different, that catalog was just a bewildering list with pictures.