News/Research

Christo Sims Published in the Journal of Cultural Anthropology

11 Apr, 2018

Christo Sims Published in the Journal of Cultural Anthropology

Christo Sims, a published author, a BCNM alum, and a professor at the University of California, San Diego, explains ethnographers' struggles and the possible benefits and repercussions of relying too dependently on design in anthropology.

The Journal of Cultural Anthropology published his work in March 2018 as a part of the "Keywords for Ethnography and Design" series, a collection of short essays that explore the same issues in which Sims also explored. The series captured "issues facing ethnographers working on or in collaboration with design as a field."

Sims writes: "My concern is that if ethnographers lift up and laud the terms and techniques of professional designers without also practicing a rigorous form of self-critique, then they risk paddling themselves into a professional eddy that churns on the valorization of ethnographic experimentation for the sake of ethnographic experimentation. As I have argued elsewhere (Sims 2017), such eddies are a form of antipolitic."

His full published work can be read here.