Minerva Martins

“Using a slogan from ANT, you have 'to follow the actors themselves', that is try to catch up with their often wild innovations in order to learn from them what the collective existence has become in their hands, which methods they have elaborated to make it fit together, which accounts best define the new associations that they have been forced to established.”
― Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory

“Nevertheless, for the most part the intangible dangers of being observed by unintended audiences are considered secondary to the convenience of instantaneous access to this “virtual campfire” from the comfort of the home. While online social networking sites are often disparaged as poor replacements for human interaction that encourage superficial relationships, my ethnographic analysis reveals how some people, American youth in particular, are incorporating this medium into their everyday practices in more or less meaningful ways. Through elucidating both the dangers and possibilities of this medium, I seek to encourage people to create their own “virtual campfires” as a supplement to, rather than a replacement of, their offline lives. Through participation and sharing in meaningful ways- from conversation to creating art- we might begin to see these sites as vehicles for healing the widely-felt loss of community and the pervasive sense of alienation experienced by so many.”
― Jennifer Anne Ryan, The Virtual Campfire: An Ethnography of Online Social Networking

“A vagina or a penis need not cause gender identity from the inside to be relevant in staging oneself as a woman or a man. The extent to which they are relevant depends on the scene. Out in the streets one does not need a penis to perform masculinity. But in communal showers at the swimming pool, it helps a lot. So there they are, the genitals: on stage.”
― Annemarie Mol

“When pressed, the Suyá would say that the only ones who still knew what they meant were the beings that taught the songs to the Suyá in the first place. One can go no further, for it is hard for an anthropologist to get translations directly from jaguars, birds, bees, and extinct enemies.”
― Anthony Seeger, Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People