Economic anthropology and AI
Who owns a relationship?
From fear of abandonment to the self as a mine. What happens when a company can change who is on the other side
AI · Anthropology · Culture
AIthropology Lab
Exploring AI anthropology: how artificial intelligence shapes culture and social life, through the lens of social and cultural anthropology.
Today's radar
Remembering, knowing, finding — when machines need to make the human legible
Three signals on conversational memory, expert work and cultural discoverability show how AI is turning human practices into computational infrastructure.
Academic analysis
Essays that explore questions of anthropology and artificial intelligence in depth, with rigour, argument and academic references.
NotesObservations and lines of inquiry
Readings, hypotheses, findings and cross-disciplinary connections in anthropology, artificial intelligence and contemporary culture.
RadarSignals of the week
Brief, curated readings on anthropology, AI, culture, technology and contemporary social life.
Opening archive
Latest entries
Notes
The right not to appear
From the human safari to the algorithmic gaze: when Indigenous isolation becomes content and refusal of contact acquires value.
Economic anthropology and AI
The self as a mine: Appadurai in Bielefeld
Arjun Appadurai calls the ‘mineable self’ a new commodity made of relationships, stories, profiles and data. A reading of his 2026 work on personhood, affect and artificial intelligence.
Note
Nokia · The sisu that would not fit in an American pocket
From rubber boots to SMS, from T9 to Asha, and from the collapse of the mobile-phone business to AI networks. A story about Nokia, Finland and the shifting geography of technological power.