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.

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...

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...

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’.

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.

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.

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...

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...

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.

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...

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.

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.

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?

📢📢📢 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/...

📢📢📢 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/...

📢📢📢 New Article Alert 📢📢📢 Inés Escobar González's 'When property becomes rent' is now available in AE 53.1 Early View. The piece is part of the 'Property and Other Fictions' Forum. Access here: anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

📢📢📢 New Article Alert 📢📢📢 Cheryl Mattingly's 'Surprise and the singular plural: A critical phenomenology of disability worlds' is now available in AE 53.1 Early View: anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

📢📢📢 New Interview Alert 📢📢📢 From the Cold War to the manosphere: Toxic masculinities, women's rights, and today's gender wars—AE interviews Greg Downey and Kristen R. Ghodsee Find it in AE 53.1 Early View: anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

📚📚📚New Book Review📚📚📚 Andrea Muehlebach reviews // "Justice in the balance: Democracy, rule of law, and the European Court of Human Rights" // By Jessica Greenberg, Stanford University Press, 2025 Find it here in AE 53.1 Early View: anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Emanuela Nadia Borghi's "Embodying Trauma, Listening to Hope" -- now in the Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart: Loss and Found Special Collection. Read here: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

Maryam Fouad's "Awful Anthropology" -- now in the Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart: Loss and Found Special Collection. Read here: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

Deborah A. Boehm's "Hard To See" -- now in the Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart: Loss and Found Special Collection. Read here: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

Meghna Roy's "Blending Art and Science" -- now in the Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart: Loss and Found Special Collection. Read here: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

Hassan F. Virk "Life, Still Life, and Death in Northern Pakistan" -- now in the Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart: Loss and Found Special Collection Read here: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

Lucas Rozell, Emily Reynolds, and Kathryn E. Goldfarb's "Living Archives" -- now in the Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart: Loss and Found Special Collection Read here: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

Chiara Pussetti "The Bird’s Lament" -- now in the Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart: Loss and Found Special Collection. Read here: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

Oriol Pascual Pérez's "El Afecto en la Experiencia Etnográfica de la Muerte" -- now in the Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart: Loss and Found Special Collection. Read here: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

Karina Hoření's "The Past is a Möbius Strip: Ghosts in Post-Displacement Central Europe" -- now in the Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart: Loss and Found Special Collection. Read here: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

Hanna Dosenko's "For Kostya: Brother, Friend, Warrior" -- now in the Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart: Loss and Found Special Collection. Read here: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...

Read Salwa Tareen's introduction to the Anthropology that Breaks Your Heart: Loss and Found Special Collection. The online collection explores 'what it means to witness and record heartbreaking anthropology.' Access here: americanethnologist.org/online-conte...