Free Daily Podcast Summary
Ethnographic Imagination Basel: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Basel Social Anthropology
Ethnographic Imagination Basel (EIB) – a series on reimagining the world from the mundane – is produced by the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. It is a research, educational, and public engagement initiative exploring innovative forms of political imagination through ethnographic practice. The podcast promotes ethnography not only as a tool of scholarly research but also as a mode of imagination available to all, a means for pursuing deeper intercultural, contextual understanding and more ethical ways of being in the world.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 3 days ago33 min
Adeline Masquelier - On Spirits
Coming Soon.
- Sep 16, 202630 min
On Humor - with Mirco Göpfert
How can humor help us better grasp the world in which we live? In this episode, we explore how humour, comedy, parody and laughter are central to understanding political power today, with Mirco Göpfert, professor of social and cultural anthropology at Goethe University in Frankfurt. Göpfert’s body of work explores humour and satire, attending to the complex dissonances and absurdities of the political sphere. He examines humour and satire not only as epistemic practices but also, quite centrally, in relation to the anthropology of the state, bureaucratic practices, violence and security, crime, power, and resistance.Amongst his numerous articles are “Epistemophilic Obsessions: Espionage, Secrets and the Ethnographer's Will to Know”(2020), “Surveillance in Niger: Gendarmes and the Problem of `Seeing Things`”(2016), “Travelling Police: the Potential for Change in the Wake of Police Reform in West Africa (with Jan Beek)” (2015). This episode features discussions around his more recent work on humour, including articles such as “Dissonance: Cartooning in Iran” (2024), “Humor, and the Study of Things That Don't Match” (2022), “On dictators and clowns” (2020), “An Artistic Reaction to Perceived Injustice: Cartooning, Resistance and Textures of the Political in Iran” (2020).Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel.Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel
- Jun 23, 202632 min
On Bodies - with Sabine Mohamed
How can embodiment be a key site from which to tackle the world in which we live?This episode, On Bodies, features Sabine Mohamed, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, who discusses the ways in which historical and social transformations are shaped by corporeal experiences.Sabine's research examines the relationships among bodies, race, infrastructures, and futures in East Africa and other regions. Her scholarship broadly addresses urbanism, infrastructure, borders, migration, ports, and trade, with a key focus on how bodies and race mediate conceptions of the future. Working primarily in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Germany, Mohamed's current book project ethnographically investigates the interconnections between blackness and experiences of urban and national dispossession.Her ongoing research traces the experiences of female laborers as they navigate economic exchange, Chinese investment, and resource extraction within the East African corridor. This work interrogates the complex intersections of labor, race, and gender. In parallel, she is engaged in a long-term project that examines Black feminist movements, sexualities, and practices of belonging in contemporary Germany.Her publications have appeared in a range of international and interdisciplinary journals, including Verge, Modern Africa,Tertium Comparationis, and New Writing, as well as in edited volumes, such as Disembodied Territories (2022) and Counter_Readings of the Body (2021)Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel.Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.
- May 1, 202629 min
On Migration - with Charles Piot
How do migrations foster the development of imaginative strategies, and in what ways do the constraints encountered during these transitions prompt innovative approaches to navigating and reshaping our world? In this episode, we examine migration, focusing on the aspirations, economic factors, and intermediaries that have influenced transnational mobility. Our guest, Charles Piot, investigates migration within the context of the post-Cold War political economy of Togo in West Africa.Charles Piot is a professor of cultural anthropology, African and African American studies, and gender, sexuality, and feminist studies at Duke University. His research focuses on the political economy of West Africa, addressing themes such as modernity, development, migration, diaspora, and the enduring impacts of colonialism in both rural and urban Togo. His recent ethnographic work examines how neoliberalism shapes emerging imaginaries of the future, particularly regarding aspirations for transnational mobility. He has authored several books, including Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa (1999) and Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War (2010). In this episode, we will center our discussion on his book The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles (2019), co-authored with Kodjo Nicolas Batema, which received the 2020 Victor Turner Prize in ethnographic writing.Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel.Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) in collaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.
- Mar 16, 202630 min
On Endings - with Anne Allison
How can thinking about funerals and life's endings offer new ways to imagine our worlds? In this episode, On Endings, our guest Anne Allison, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University, discusses planning for life endings and how it has shifted in recent decades.Allison's work examines the intersection of political economy and everyday life in the context of late capitalist, post-industrial Japan, and how changing configurations of family care and sociality in Japan sharply transform what is possible when it comes to dying. Among the key foci of her work are sexuality and maternal labor toys and comics youth and irregular workers as well as most recently practices of death and dying and his author of books such as Nightwork: Sexuality, Pleasure, and Corporate Masculinity in a Tokyo Hostess Club (1994) Permitted and Prohibited Desires Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan (2000) Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination (2006), and Precarious Japan (2013). This episode focuses on her most recent book, Being Dead Otherwise, published by Duke University Press in 2023. A book that won the 2025 John Whitney Hall Book Prize. Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel.Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) incollaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.
- Nov 27, 202533 min
On Display - with Friedrich von Bose
How does the act of displaying items allow us to reassess our connection to the past and guide us towards new futures? In this episode, we will explore the concept of display, which includes the showcasing of images, objects, ideas, and bodies in museums and beyond. Our guest is Dr. Friedrich von Bose, Director of the Museum der Kulturen Basel, who merges imaginative approaches with scholarly research and curatorial practice. His academic and curatorial work has primarily focused on the political implications of display concerning colonialism, racism, and the future of anthropology museums. As a cultural anthropologist and former curator at the Humboldt Forum, von Bose has also served as a Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the Institute of Social Anthropology and Empirical Cultural Studies at the University of Zurich, concentrating on the History and Theory of Museum Ethics since 2023. Before this, he oversaw research and exhibitions at the three ethnological museums of the State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony (State Art Collections Dresden): the Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig, the Museum of Ethnology Dresden, and the Ethnology Museum Herrnhut, where he was responsible for the long-term strategic development of research and exhibition programs. von Bose’s publications include:Researching Colonial Provenances. Final Report of the Project “Provenance of Colonial-Era Collections from Togo in the Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden and the GRASSI Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig”, (2024)“Concerning curatorial practice in ethnological museums. An epistemology of postcolonial debate” in: Conal McCarthy, Philipp Schorch (Eds.): Curatopia. Museums and the future of curatorship (2019)Das Humboldt-Forum. Eine Ethnografie seiner Planung (2016) “The making of Berlin‘s Humboldt-Forum. Negotiating history and the cultural politics of place” (2013)Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel.Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) incollaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.
- Oct 15, 202529 min
On Extractivism - with Mark Goodale
In this episode On Extractivism, the conversation centres on how the unpredictability of extractive economies opens and forecloses various futures, a global market premised on the extraction of natural resources and raw materials. Our guest is Mark Goodale, professor of cultural and social anthropology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland whose work explores lithium extraction, new global green economies, and the long histories of extractivism in South America. His research encompasses law, human rights, politics, ideology, and long-term ethnographic studies in Bolivia, where his projects have examined government justice and recognition under Evo Morales' human rights activism. Goodale is the author of numerous books, such as Dilemmas of Modernity. Bolivian Encounters with Law and Liberalism (2008) Surrendering to Utopia. An Anthropology of Human Rights (2009), Anthropology and Law. A Critical Introduction (2017), A Revolution in Fragments. Traversing Scales of Justice, Ideology and Practice in Bolivia (2019) and Reinventing Human Rights (2022)This episode focuses on Extracting the Future. Lithium in an Era of Energy Transition (2025), Goodale`s most recent book.Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel.Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) incollaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.
- Sep 29, 202529 min
On Plastics - with Brenda Chalfin
How can plastic offer us an important window into today's epochal conundrum? This episode, On Plastics, looks at a historically salient material, ever so complexly entangled in our bodies and everyday life, with our guest Brenda Chalfin, whose ethnographic work explores plastic along with other material flows in the contemporary social life of urban Ghana. Chalfin is a professor of anthropology at the University of Florida, where she has also held the position of director of the Centre for African Studies. Her research primarily investigates issues related to state formation, urban environments, material infrastructures, and political economies across West Africa. She has paid particular attention to the public life and governance of material flows from plastics to human waste to water, offshore oil and indigenous commodities.Chalfin is the author of numerous articles and the author of Shea Butter Republic (2004), Neoliberal Frontiers. An Ethnography of Sovereignty in West Africa (2010) and Waste Works. Vital Politics in Urban Ghana (2023).Host: George Paul Meiu, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel.Production: Zainabu Jallo (Institute of Social Anthropology) incollaboration with the New Media Center at the University of Basel.
About Ethnographic Imagination Basel
Ethnographic Imagination Basel (EIB) – a series on reimagining the world from the mundane – is produced by the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Basel. It is a research, educational, and public engagement initiative exploring innovative forms of political imagination through ethnographic practice. The podcast promotes ethnography not only as a tool of scholarly research but also as a mode of imagination available to all, a means for pursuing deeper intercultural, contextual understanding and more ethical ways of being in the world.
Customized Recaps
AI-powered recaps with compact key takeaways, quotes, and insights.
Straight to Your Inbox
Get key takeaways from Ethnographic Imagination Basel in a 5-minute read.
Save Hours Every Week
Stay current on your favorite podcasts without falling behind.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Podzilla's Ethnographic Imagination Basel daily summary?
It's a free AI-powered email that summarizes new episodes of Ethnographic Imagination Basel as soon as they're published. You get the key takeaways, notable quotes, and links & mentions — all in a quick read.
How does the Ethnographic Imagination Basel podcast summary work?
When a new episode drops, our AI transcribes and analyzes it, then generates a personalized summary tailored to your interests and profession. It's delivered to your inbox every morning.
Is this an official Ethnographic Imagination Basel product?
No. Podzilla is an independent service that summarizes publicly available podcast content. We're not affiliated with or endorsed by Basel Social Anthropology.
Can I get summaries of other podcasts too?
Absolutely! The free plan covers up to 3 podcasts, any in the catalog. Basic raises that to 15, Pro to 40 and Max to 100. Browse our full catalog at /podcasts.
How often does Ethnographic Imagination Basel release new episodes?
Ethnographic Imagination Basel publishes monthly. Our AI generates a summary within hours of each new episode.
What topics does Ethnographic Imagination Basel cover?
Ethnographic Imagination Basel covers topics including Science, Social Sciences. Our AI identifies the specific themes in each episode and highlights what matters most to you.
Start getting Ethnographic Imagination Basel summaries tomorrow morning.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.
Free forever for up to 3 podcasts. No credit card required.