Mobile Secrets

Julie Soleil Archambault

Thesis supervisor Seeking students

Associate Professor, Sociology and Anthropology

Thesis supervision details

Supervised programs: Social and Cultural Anthropology (MA), Social and Cultural Analysis (PhD)

Research areas: anthropology; sub-Saharan Africa; health and wellbeing; materiality; kinship and intimacy; human-plant relations and gardening; new media; social transformation; wellness, fitness and the body; post-socialism.

Contact information

Email:

juliesoleil.archambault@concordia.ca

Websites:

Academia.edu
Sweaty Ethnography

Biography

I completed my PhD in anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) in 2010 and held several teaching positions in England, including at the London School of Economics, the University of Birmingham and the University of Oxford, before joining the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in 2016.

Teaching activities

Teaching 2016-17

Honours seminar (ANTH 495)

Kinship and relatedness (ANTH 361)

Peoples and cultures of sub-Saharan Africa (ANTH 326)

History of anthropological thought (ANTH 301)

Writing ethnography (ANTH 620)

Publications

2024. “Concrete Times”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 53: 293-308.

2024. “Corps déplacés : le fitness et la visibilité des femmes au Mozambique”, Anthropologie et Sociétés, 48 (2): 101-119.

2024. “Progress”, in The Social Properties of Concrete, edited by Eli Elinoff and Kali Rabaii, Punctum Press.

2022. 'Sweaty motions. Meaning, materiality and the emerging workout ethic in Mozambique', American Ethnologist, 49(3): 332-344.

2021. 'In pursuit of fitness: bodywork, temporality, and self-improvement in Mozambique', Journal of Southern African Studies, 47(4): 521-539.

2021. 'Urban precarity and aspirational compromise: feeling otherwise in a Mozambican suburb', City & Society, special issue on Urban Precarity, 33(2): 303-323.

2021. 'Concrete violence, indifference and future-making in Mozambique', Critique of Anthropology, 41(1): 43-64.

2020. 'Rêves de béton et ontologies relationnelles dans une banlieue Mozambicaine', Anthropologie et sociétés, 44(1): 203-214.

2020. "In shape in Mozambique: bodywork and the different qualities of body fat”, Food, Fatness and Fitness: Critical Perspectives

2018. 'One beer, one block': concrete aspiration and the stuff of transformation in a Mozambican suburb, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 24(4):692-708.

2017. Mobile Secrets. Youth, intimacy and the politics of pretense in Mozambique, University of Chicago Press.

2017. Cementing the future: from crisis to prosperity?, The Corridor, Tau Tavengwa and Leonie Newhouse(eds.), Max-Planck Institute, p. 37-39.

2016. Taking love seriously in human-plant relations in Mozambique: toward an anthropology of affective encounters, Cultural Anthropology, 31 (2): 244-271.

2014.“Rhythms of insecurity and the pleasure of anticipation”, in Ethnographies of Uncertainty in Africa, edited by David Pratten and Elizabeth Cooper, Palgrave Macmillan, 'Critical Contributions to the Ethnography of Development’ series, pp. 129-148.

2013.Cruising through uncertainty: cell phones and the politics of display and disguise in Inhambane, Mozambique, American Ethnologist, 40(1):88-101.

2012. ‘Travelling while sitting down’: mobile phones, mobility and the communication landscape in Inhambane, Mozambique, Africa 82(3): 392-411.

2012. “Mobile phones and the “commercialization” of relationships: expressions of masculinity in Southern Mozambique”, in Gender and Modernity in Global Youth Cultures, edited by S. Dewey and K.Bison, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, pp. 47-71.

2011.“Breaking up “because of the phone” and the transformative powers of information in Southern Mozambique”, New Media and Society, special issue on mobile communication and the developing world, 13(3):444-56.

2010. “La fièvre des téléphones portables: un chapitre de la ‘success story’ mozambicaine”, Politique africaine, no. 117:83-105.

2010. “ ‘À procura de rede’: redes de redistribuiçãoe modalidades de género na utilização do telefone móvel”, in Economia Extractiva e Desafios de Industrialização em Moçambique, edited by Luís deBrito, Carlos Nuno Castel-Branco, Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Economicos: Maputo, pp. 163-174.

2009. “Being cool or being good: researching mobile phones in Mozambique”, Anthropology Matters, 11(2), 1-9.