Drop-in Dialogues: Jump In! Figure It Out!

Overview

Drop-in Dialogues is an interactive learning tool that helps students practice thinking like anthropologists.

Students are “dropped into” short excerpts from real talks by leading anthropologists and asked to listen closely, take notes, and respond to guided questions. Instead of starting with background lectures, the activity places students directly inside ongoing disciplinary conversations and supports them in figuring out what is at stake, how ideas connect, and where they might enter the discussion.

The goal is not just to understand a talk, but to develop a key academic skill: the ability to orient oneself in unfamiliar conversations, recognize important concepts, and make meaningful connections. Each dialogue is scaffolded to make complex material accessible while preserving its intellectual depth.

By working with authentic, publicly available talks, Drop-in Dialogues offers students a manageable, engaging entry point into real anthropological thinking in action.

Read more about this tool here: Shiva, Amirpouyan. 2026. "Beginning in the Middle: Teaching Theory as Orientation." Teaching Tools, Fieldsights, March 26. https://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/beginning-in-the-middle-teaching-theory-as-orientation

You can try the tool here:

Drop-in Dialogues by ethnography.ca
Instructor Guide: What Does the Tool Do?

The Drop-in Dialogues library now includes thirty curated entries, enough to function not merely as a demonstration of the format but as a complete, term-length resource for teaching the history and theory of anthropology. Each dialogue pairs a short excerpt from a talk by a leading anthropologist with guided questions and a final "insight" connection to a second thinker or concept. Because every entry doubles its reach this way — one speaker, one paired interlocutor — the thirty dialogues put students in contact with roughly sixty thinkers and a dense web of connections among them. Together they form an interconnected map that runs from the discipline's evolutionist inheritance through its major critical turns and into its contemporary frontiers.

Depending on the format of the course and the judgment of the instructor, the library can be used in several ways: as occasional theory warm-ups, as bridges between assigned readings, or — given that thirty paired entries now span the full arc of the field — as the backbone of an entire syllabus. An instructor teaching a twelve- or thirteen-week history-and-theory course could build the term directly around these dialogues, grouping them into thematic units and using the paired "insight" readings as the core texts. Others may prefer to draw on the collection selectively, supplementing their own materials. The tool is designed to support both approaches, and instructors are encouraged to sequence, cluster, and adapt the entries to fit the shape of their own course.

This page outlines how instructors can use Drop-in Dialogues to support theory learning in their courses.

What Theoretical Skills Does the Tool Develop?

Drop-in Dialogues is designed to cultivate the practice of theory, not just familiarity with theorists.

Students learn to:

  • Orient themselves in unfamiliar arguments
  • Identify key conceptual stakes
  • Situate ideas within broader debates
  • Make connections across thinkers and traditions
  • Articulate interpretive responses rather than summaries

This mirrors a core professional skill in anthropology: the ability to enter an ongoing conversation — a conference panel, a new subfield, an unfamiliar text — and quickly understand what kinds of questions are being asked and how one might respond.

Rather than treating theory as a set of positions to memorize, Drop-in Dialogues treats theory as an activity of sense-making, positioning, and linking.

What Does the Current Library Already Cover?

With thirty entries, the dialogues span the arc of a full history-and-theory course rather than a single thematic slice. The collection reaches back to the discipline's founding problems - evolutionism, "survivals," and developmental time — and forward to its most current debates. Instructors can use it to introduce or deepen discussions across areas such as:

  • The evolutionist inheritance and the critique of developmental time
  • Language, semiotics, and discourse as social action
  • Power, sovereignty, and the state
  • Colonialism, settler formations, and Indigenous refusal
  • Critiques of liberalism, secularism, and universalism
  • Neoliberal subjects and the individualization of responsibility
  • Infrastructure, energy, technology, and the digital
  • More-than-human and environmental theory; ontology and process
  • Ethics, personhood, imagination, and the form of inquiry

Because each dialogue also includes an "insight" scholar or concept, the tool introduces students to a far broader theoretical network than the speakers alone — one in which the same names recur as nodes across different conversations.

Conceptual Linkages Instructors Can Build On

The dialogues are not isolated units; they form conceptual pathways instructors can use to help students draw mental maps of the field. Some productive linkages include:

  • Liberalism and the Critique of the Autonomous Individual
  • Ontology and the More-Than-Human
  • Time, Modernity, and Developmental Thinking
  • Process and Becoming
  • Personhood Across Domains (death, memory, animals, metapersons)
  • Colonialism, Race, and Racialized Labor
  • Infrastructure, Technology, and the Digital
  • Writing, Form, and Anthropology as a Mode of Inquiry

Suggested Ways to Use Drop-in Dialogues in Theory Teaching

Because each entry is short and self-contained, the tool is highly adaptable. Instructors might use it:

  • As weekly theory warm-ups
  • As bridges between readings
  • As paired comparisons
  • As concept-mapping exercises
  • As preparation for longer texts
  • As low-stakes theory practice
  • As the organizing structure for a full course, with the entries grouped into thematic units across the term

A Sample Full-Course Sequence

For instructors who wish to use the library as a complete syllabus, the thirty dialogues group naturally into ten thematic units. The sequence below moves from the discipline's founding problems through its major critical turns and into its contemporary frontiers; it can be taught in order across a term, reordered, or trimmed to fit a shorter course. Each unit is framed by a guiding question that the paired entries can be used to explore.

Unit 1 — Inheriting Evolutionism: The Discipline's Founding Problem
What kind of time does anthropology assume, and who gets placed "earlier" on it?

  • Graeber (Evolutionism) → Bakhtin
  • McLean (Survivals) → Deleuze

Unit 2 — Language as Social Action: The Semiotic Turn
Is language about transmitting content, or about the social relations an utterance proposes?

  • Silverstein (Interactional Textuality) → Jakobson
  • Kohn (Sylvan Thinking) → Manning, on semiosis beyond the human (can also be held for Unit 8)

Unit 3 — Power, Sovereignty, and the State
What becomes visible when sovereignty and law are studied as lived practice rather than abstraction?

  • Jobson (Petro-State) → Coronil
  • Sahlins (Kings; Reversal of Durkheim) → Lefort
  • Thomas (Repair vs. Reparation) → Ferreira da Silva

Unit 4 — Colonialism, Settler Formations, and Refusal
Is the colonial relation a past event or an ongoing structure — and does critiquing it require changing our politics, our metaphysics, or both?

  • Simpson (Settler Colonialism) → Povinelli
  • Todd (Indigenous Knowledge) → Barad
  • Teaiwa (Anti-heroic History) → Enloe
  • Slyomovics (Sculptural Colonization) → Stoler

Unit 5 — Liberalism, Secularism, and Universalism as Theoretical Problems
Whose freedom, whose person, whose reason — and what does anthropology see once "the liberal individual" is denaturalized?

  • Abu-Lughod (Saving Discourse) → Mahmood
  • Farmer (Global Health; Cultural Blame) → Benton
  • Keane (Morality; Human-Animal Relations) → Descola
  • Hirschkind (Embodiment; Abstraction) → Asad

Unit 6 — Neoliberal Subjects and the Individualization of Responsibility
How does the entrepreneurial self become "common sense," and what does it render invisible?

  • Goldberg (Postracialism) → Wekker
  • Besnier (Sport Migration; Cruel Optimism) → Gershon

Unit 7 — Infrastructure, Energy, and the Technological Fix
Is technology a neutral tool or a materialized — and often colonial — relationship?

  • Boyer (Technological Fix) → Larkin
  • Seaver (Algorithmic Traps) → Schüll
  • Udupa (Digital Unsettling) → Browne

Unit 8 — Beyond the Human: Ontology, Semiosis, and Ecological Crisis
What is anthropology once "the human" is no longer the obvious center, and how does that reframe ecological crisis?

  • Tsing (Feral Effects) → Haraway
  • Ingold (Growing-in-Making) → Manning
  • Viveiros de Castro (End of the World; Time v. Space) → Malabou
  • Strathern (Immanentism; Death as Generative) → Bloch
  • (Kohn, from Unit 2, may be taught here instead)

Unit 9 — Personhood, Memory, and the Material
Where does personhood reside, and how do objects and substances carry it?

  • Hage (Lenticular Ontology; Diaspora) → Seremetakis
  • Allison (Shukatsu; Anticipatory Subjectivity) → Butler

Unit 10 — Ethics, Imagination, and the Form of Inquiry
If critique is not just exposure, what does anthropology contribute, and how should it write to do that?

  • Pandian (Writing as Intervention) → Sedgwick
  • Garcia (Collective Cathartic Writing; Limit-Experience) → Bataille
  • Pandolfo (Passageways; Imagination) → Rilke

Instructors are encouraged to treat this sequence as a starting point rather than a fixed structure. Several entries sit comfortably in more than one unit — Kohn bridges Units 2 and 8, Keane connects Units 5 and 8, Thomas links Units 3 and 9 — and these overlaps are themselves useful, since they let students trace how a single conceptual thread runs across different conversations.

A Growing Resource

These thirty dialogues already support a full course, whether used in part or as a complete syllabus. The structure remains open by design: additional entries can deepen coverage of particular theoretical traditions, add historical figures, or introduce new thematic clusters. As the library continues to grow, instructors will be able to assemble an even wider range of sequences to suit their own teaching.

Instructor Guide: Creating Your Own Drop-In Dialogues

"Drop-In Dialogues" is designed as an Open Educational Resource (OER). While the tool comes with a default set of anthropology clips, you can easily create your own "database" using a Google Sheet. By creating your own spreadsheet, you can transform this tool into a specialized resource for specific ethnographic regions or theoretical sub-fields. Once your data is ready, you can generate a single link to send to your students that loads your custom content automatically.

1. Spreadsheet Setup

The tool reads data from a Google Sheet published as a CSV.

  • Copy the Template: Open this official template and select File > Make a copy to save it to your own Drive.
  • Maintain Headers: Do not rename the titles in Row 1. The code specifically looks for these exact variable names.

2. CSV Template Variables (The "Pedagogical Code")

Each row in your spreadsheet represents one "dialogue" segment. Use the following variables to populate the tool:

Core Clip Data

  • id: A unique, short identifier for the clip (e.g., precarity).
  • label: The title displayed in the Topic dropdown menu.
  • youtubeId: The 11-character ID from the YouTube URL (e.g., dQw4w9WgXcQ).
  • start / end: The start and end points in total seconds.

Speaker Metadata

  • anthropologist: The name displayed in the Anthropologist dropdown.
  • bio: A 1–3 sentence biography of the speaker.
  • bio_url: A link to their professional profile or Wikipedia entry (appears as "Learn more here" in the speaker card).
  • image_url: A direct link to a headshot image (ending in .jpg or .png).
  • image_source: The source of the speaker's headshot or picture (e.g., Wikimedia).
  • license: The usage rights for the video.

Step 2: Unpacking Questions

  • q1, q2, q3: Specific questions that appear in the Analyze tab to help students deconstruct the clip.

Step 4: Zooming Out (Intellectual Context)

  • insight_scholar: The name of the scholar the speaker is put "in conversation with".
  • insight_title: The heading for the extra theoretical context.
  • insight_text: The deeper theoretical connection, quote, or argument.
  • insight_source: A URL for further reading (appears as "Learn more here" in Step 4).
  • insight_image_url: A link to a related image for this insight.
  • insight_image_source: The source for the related image for this insight (e.g., Wikimedia).
  • insight_image_caption: Descriptive text appearing directly under the insight image.

3. Quick Time Conversions

The tool requires time in total seconds.

  • The Formula: (Minutes X 60) + Seconds = Total Seconds.
  • Example: If a clip starts at 14:20, your start value is (14 X 60) + 20 = 860.
  • Recommended Length: We suggest segments between 90 seconds and 4 minutes to maintain the "Drop-In" experience.

4. Publishing & Sharing (The OER Workflow)

Once your data is entered, follow these steps to deploy it to your students:

  • Publish to Web: In your Google Sheet, go to File > Share > Publish to web. Choose the specific Sheet tab and set the format to Comma-separated values (.csv).
  • Load in Tool: Copy the generated CSV link, paste it into the Customized Data Source box in the tool, and click Reload Data.
  • Generate Shareable Link: Once your data is loaded, click the Get Shareable Link button. A link will be copied to your clipboard. Email this link to your students to automatically load your custom database.

Troubleshooting FAQ for Instructors

1. The data won't load, or I get a "Load Failed" alert.

  • Check "Publish to Web": Ensure the format is set to Comma-separated values (.csv).
  • Check Permissions: Ensure your organization hasn't restricted "Publish to Web" functionality.
  • Correct URL: Paste the URL from the "Publish" window, not the browser's address bar.

2. Images (Speaker or Insight) are not appearing.

  • Direct Links Only: Use direct links ending in .jpg, .png, .webp, or .gif.
  • Wikimedia Commons: Use the URL of the file page; the tool will convert it to a usable path.
  • HTTPS: Ensure links start with https://.

3. The YouTube video starts at 0:00 instead of my start time.

  • Check Your Math: Ensure start and end columns contain only numbers (total seconds).
  • Public Videos: Ensure the video is "Public" or "Unlisted".

4. The "Step 4 Insight" tab is missing.

  • Required Fields: This tab only appears if there is text in the insight_text column.

5. My "Shareable Link" isn't working for students.

  • Reload First: You must click Reload Data before clicking Get Shareable Link.
  • Broken Links: Verify the CSV URL itself is not broken or unpublished.

Pre-Flight Checklist for Instructors

  • Data Accessibility Check: Verify Publish to web is set to CSV. Test by pasting the CSV URL in an Incognito window.
  • Multimedia Verification: Confirm youtubeId is exactly 11 characters. Verify images load correctly and "Learn more here" links work.
  • Timestamp Precision: Double-check total seconds math. Test the "Guardrail" by dragging the seek bar to the end; it should pause or loop back.
  • Pedagogical Flow: Ensure Step 2 questions match the clip content and Step 4 tabs appear where intended.
  • Final Distribution: Click Reload Data one last time, generate the link, and verify it opens correctly.