About Anthropology of the Everyday

Anthropology of the Everyday: A Collaborative Exhibition of Tomorrow’s Anthropologists is an Australian Anthropological Society funded exhibit of creative works by participants in the Stone Soup workshop series, Anthropology of the Everyday: The Art of Creative Nonfiction. The workshop series and culminating exhibition was designed to introduce young people from different backgrounds to the field of anthropology, and to utilize the tools of ethnographic research both to enhance their creative writing skills and to increase cross culture understanding.

The works of two cohorts of the Anthropology of the Everyday workshop series are displayed here. The Humanitarian Service Team cohort is made up of eleven young people residing in Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Uganda. The Stone Soup/Society of Young Inklings cohort is made up of eight young subscribers to Stone Soup and/or the Society of Young Inklings residing in the United States. Following the online workshops and the launch of the website, students will have the opportunity to share select works between members of each cohort as the basis for reflexively discussing their experiences with one another.

These workshops introduced participants in both cohorts to anthropology and concepts foundational to ethnographic research that emphasizes personal narrative and storytelling, which they endeavored to incorporate into their creative writing toolbox. Participants practiced layering the narrative, sensory detail of personal experience, interviews and self-reflection, with the more objective description of gathered observation and textual investigation, as they located their own experiences within a broader framework. They did so through the writing activities displayed here, including: Deep Observation, Ethnographic Interviews, Memory/Self as Character, and Reflections on the inherent link between ethnography and creative writing.