Bad Habitus: Anthropology in the Age of the Multimodal
Research-creation and writing project
2018 - ongoing
Organized by Kate Hennessy, Stephanie Takaragawa, and Trudi Lynn Smith, with contributors
Continuing in the trajectory to “expand beyond Eurocentric, colonialist, and ableist ways of doing what we do, with or without technology” (Chin 2017: 541), we seek to build on our article Bad Habitus: Anthropology in the Age of the Multimodal (Takaragawa et. al. 2019) towards more substantive academic engagement, exhibition, and publication. In 2018 we asked: How do technologies work, how are they produced, by whom, and under what conditions? Can multimodal anthropology address technological democracy in an era where it is largely agreed that the internet has failed to increase or produce democratic conditions? What does multimodal anthropology fail to recognize? How does the use of increasingly ubiquitous new technologies in anthropological praxis subsequently elide issues of power, resource equity, and representation? How do artistic and research-creation practices allow for critical engagement with the material, social, and political implications of the emergent multimodal in anthropology today?
Following panel presentations at the Meetings of American Anthropological Association (2018 and 2022) and an online exhibition, we are now working towards an edited volume.
Publications and Presentations
Hennessy, K., Takaragawa, S., Smith, T. (chairs and curators) (2022).
Bad Habitus Revisited. Panel presentation and online exhibition. 2022 Meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Seattle WA. https://badhabitus.com/.
Panelists and artists: Maryam Kashani, Brett Gaylor, Nadege Nau, Jon Corbett, Vanessa Campbell, Dante Cerron, Olivia Chen, David Gaertner, Daisy Rosenblum, Patricia Alvarez Astacio, Gabriel Dattatreyan, Arjun Shankar, Reese Muntean, Harjant Gill, Stephanie Takaragawa, Trudi Lynn Smith, Steve DiPaola, and Kate Hennessy
Takaragawa, S., Smith, T., Hennessy, K., Alvarez Astacio, P., Chio, J., Nye, C., Shankar, S. (2019)
Bad Habitus: Anthropology in the Age of the Multimodal. American Anthropologist 121(2):517-524. [pdf]
Takaragawa, S., Smith, T., Hennessy, K., organizers and chairs (2018).
Bad Habitus: Multimodal Anthropology in the Age of Technoscience. Roundtable Presentation. Meetings of the American Anthropological Association, San Jose CA. Nov. 17, 2018. Presentations by Takaragawa, S., Smith, T., Hennessy, K., Alvarez Astacio, P., Chio, J., Nye, C., Shankar, S.