What does it mean to think of drones as culture? If culture is the range of social practices through which we come to understand and engage in our shared world, then drone cultures might be the myriad ways in which drones are embedded into our everyday lives as well as our fantasies about what kinds of lives that drones make.
What happens to people after an earthquake destroys their homes? What is daily life like under a humanitarian regime? Is aid a gift or is it a form of power? A House of One’s Own explores these enduring questions as they unfold in a Salvadoran town in the aftermath of the 2001 earthquakes.
Anthropologist Sheri Lynn Gibbings shows that information politics are the principal avenues through which the municipal government of Yogyakarta city seeks to implement its urban projects. Information politics are also the primary means through which street vendors, activists, and NGOs can challenge these plans. Through extensive interviews and lengthy participant observation in Yogyakarta, Gibbings shows that both state and non-state actors engage in transparency, rumours, conspiracies, and surveillance practices.