ETHNOMAD
“When the Fire Burns Low, the Stories Begin”
“Voices, Landscapes, and Memory”
explores how environmental pressure and economic necessity reshape daily decisions in forest-edge communities. As traditional livelihoods narrow, clay extraction and brickmaking emerge as survival strategies, drawing people deeper into protected forests. Through field observation, the article traces how these choices alter land, water, and risk, linking upstream deforestation to downstream flooding and revealing the quiet trade-offs made when survival leaves little room for alternatives.
Rohingya: The Meaning of Belonging explores the Rohingya beyond crisis narratives, tracing how history, language, faith, and cultural practice shape identity in the face of displacement. Grounded in historical research and lived experience, the article examines belonging not as a legal category alone, but as something carried through memory, movement, and everyday life across borders.
The Path They Remember examines how routes of movement endure long after borders, fences, and policies attempt to erase them. Drawing on field observations and oral memory, the article follows paths remembered through use rather than maps, where people, animals, and seasonal labour continue to move along inherited lines. It shows how memory, landscape, and survival remain intertwined in frontier spaces where official boundaries rarely reflect lived reality.
When Conservation Hurts examines how Indigenous and tribal communities are displaced from their lands in the name of environmental protection, and what is lost when conservation excludes the people who have long sustained these landscapes. Drawing on examples from India, Africa, the Amazon, and Madagascar, the story challenges the idea of empty wilderness and explores why conservation is most effective when authority, knowledge, and responsibility remain rooted in place.
The Work of Staying Human reflects on what humanitarian action is and what it was never meant to be. It is not a solution to war, displacement, or political failure. It is the work of easing suffering, protecting dignity, and remaining present when systems falter. Drawing on lived experience from Afghanistan, Lebanon, Nigeria, and Bangladesh, this piece examines how humanitarians continue to hold the line as crises become permanent, budgets shrink, and responsibility remains.
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Written by Farhana Akter, Living With the Hills explores everyday life in Bangladesh’s hill regions, where communities navigate steep terrain, fragile ecosystems, and the quiet pressures of climate change and development. Through close observation and local voices, the article reflects on adaptation, resilience, and what it means to live in a relationship with the land that shapes both livelihood and identity.
The Emery Way traces the deep connection between wine, land, and inheritance in Saint Émilion through the story of Château Coutet, one of the region’s last family-run estates on the limestone plateau. Centred on la façon émeri, an eighteenth-century glass sealing method, the article examines how heritage survives amid UNESCO recognition, rising land values, and growing pressure from global capital.
Carbon Elsewhere is an essay on climate responsibility, conservation, and the quiet ways its costs are displaced. Drawing on years of fieldwork from Madagascar to East Africa, the article examines how carbon offsetting, fortress conservation, and climate finance reshape land, livelihoods, and power, asking who truly bears the burden when responsibility travels further than emissions.
This essay traces life in self-built neighbourhoods from Karachi to Dhaka through the lens of friction rather than poverty. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, it examines how effort accumulates or resets, how traditional knowledge sustains continuity, and why development often stalls when it fails to recognise where daily life actually slows, strains, and holds together.
The Origins of Oil Painting
Rogan silk painting is a fragile survival from the western edges of South Asia, a technique whose very name comes from the Persian word for oil. The paint is prepared from flax seed, slowly simmered until it thickens into a resinous mass. The artist balances a lump of this oil on the base of his thumb, adjusts the consistency with a touch of lime, and begins to draw. A slender metal stylus, the sua, guides the line of paint across silk, one hand steadying the cloth from below while the other moves above in delicate rhythm.
"Living heritage and the architecture of survival.."
From firelight in Worimi country to Rohingya camps in exile, this essay explores the power of intangible cultural heritage. Story, song, dance, and art are not performance but transmission, carrying law, memory, and sovereignty across generations. When culture is silenced, societies fracture. When it is practiced, resilience takes root.
"The Ancient Art of Navigation"
Navigation is one of humanity's most ancient and universal skills. Every journey, whether to the corner shop, a child's school, or across uncharted terrain, is a testament to our ability to find our way in a complex world. Yet navigation is far more than a practical act of moving from point A to point B. It is a story that weaves together culture, survival, and ingenuity, reflecting how humans have connected with their environment and each other across
millennia.
Exploring Wedding Rituals and Cultural Bonds Across the Globe
The rhythmic pounding of dhol drums reverberates through the air, mingling with the scent of marigold garlands in an Indian courtyard. Halfway across the globe, the soft chants of a Shinto priest echo through a tranquil shrine in Japan, while in a Saharawi desert camp, ululations pierce the night sky in celebration of a union. Marriage, one of humanity's oldest institutions, is a canvas of rituals reflecting the colours, values, and traditions of diverse cultures worldwide.
Sharing Stories of life
We were not all born to write. While some people invest a lifetime of work into the written word, others pass on their ideas, knowledge, history, and heritage through oral interactions. Writing is sometimes limiting, and many people choose to use other creative ways to explain what is happening in their community, culture, or personal experience.
The story of Ireland and Palestine is not one of identical suffering but of shared memory, two peoples separated by geography yet bound by the experience of occupation. Both have lived under foreign rule, both were partitioned by imperial decree, and both have seen their histories rewritten by others to justify their subjugation.
STONEMASONS, CULTURE, AND THE SHAPING OF HERITAGE
Stone is not merely a material; it is the oldest canvas, the quietest witness, the most enduring storyteller. Long before words were scratched onto its surface or temples were raised in its honour, stone recorded the world in its grain, the shifting of seas, the rise and fall of mountains, the breath of vanished forests. To shape is not simply to build, but to uncover what already lies within.
Living with India's wildlife in the
Sariskar Tiger Reserve.
In the complex web of life on Earth, humans and wildlife share a relationship marked by both symbiosis and conflict. This dynamic, evolving over millennia, echoes the broader narrative of our role within the natural world. With the advent of agriculture, this relationship underwent a profound transformation. Once an integral part of the ecosystem, humanity began exerting dominion over it, reshaping the environment and our place within it.
"Continuum People, and the Fragile
Journey of Freedom"
There are still corners of the planet where no road has been cut, where rivers have no names on maps, and where memory is passed by story rather than machine. Anthropologists estimate between 100 and 200 uncontacted or voluntarily isolated groups remain, most in the Amazon Basin, theAndaman Islands, and the forests of Indonesia and Papua.
Culture, Climate, Malthus and the Fragile Grounds of Belonging"
Everything is in motion. Ice retreats from mountain peaks, seas encroach upon coastlines, forests ignite, and rivers fade. Human lives, too, shift with the weather, as communities search desperately for stability in a world that no longer feels fixed. Yet these movements are not merely physical; they resonate deeply within us, unsettling our emotional bonds, reshaping social structures, and challenging spiritual foundations. As our connection to place erodes, so too do the ancient layers of culture begin to unravel.
When tech billionaires like Elon Musk sound the alarm on population decline, it is rarely a neutral observation. Musk, who has repeatedly warned of a "population collapse," frames it as one of the greatest threats to civilisation. But this warning emerges not in a vacuum; it is situated within a world where borders are increasingly militarised, migration is criminalised, and the free movement of capital is celebrated far more than
the free movement of people.
Forest Loss and Life Inside the Matrilineal Margins of West Sumatra
In West Sumatra, forest loss unfolds quietly through brick kilns, debt, and inherited land. In one of the world’s last matrilineal societies, women hold the ground while fire, belief, and craft knowledge shape survival on an island prone to earthquakes, floods, and climate extremes. An ethnographic account of forest thinning, resilience, and life lived between the sun and the clouds.
The universal language of dance has emerged as a companion to everyone at some point in life. It is an unspoken narrative that unfolds across cultures, countries and continents. Dance can provoke joy, sorrow, pain, passion, love, war and aggression.
As I had done many times over the past few years, I was once again making my way to the outpost village of Kraska, hidden deep within Rajasthan's Sariska Tiger Reserve. Home to the Gurjar people, a Hindu tribal community, Kraska is a place where life still moves with the rhythms of pastoral tradition. For generations, the Gurjars have raised buffalo and goats, their livelihoods intertwined with the land in a semi-nomadic existence.
"The pre-dawn air is crisp as I step onto the sand; the only sound is the gentle rustle of
offshore winds teasing the face of the waves. This is dawn patrol, when the ocean is at its most peaceful, the first golden glow of sunrise casting long shadows on the empty beach. The chill of the morning bites at my skin as I shed the warmth of my clothes and slip into my wetsuit.
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Noel Sweeney
For centuries, the storyteller, "the seanchai," held a sacred role in Irish society: part entertainer, part historian, a channel of ancestral lineage. They carried the myths, the legends, and sometimes music, and often acted as a kind of moral compass for those who chose to listen. Today, however, in the age of individuality, technology, and digital distraction, it may seem like the Irish oral storytelling tradition is at risk of fading.
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Emily Anna Mavridou
Can a community preserve its identity after assimilation into a dominant culture for 50 years? And does the longing to return to a place and the nostalgia for how life once was ever fade away? These are questions that affect all communities on the island of Cyprus, especially after the 1974 conflict. The Maronite community of Cyprus, "a religious minority," has been among
those fighting to preserve its identity.
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Suss Van Lee
Acomedido is a Spanish upbringing principle still visible in parts of Latin America and Spain. It is about being helpful without being asked, taking responsibility, and contributing to the community without expecting a reward. In many Latin American villages, children help with cooking or cleaning during local festivals, not because anyone orders them to, but because it feels natural to be part of the whole.
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Emily Anna Mavridou
Growing up I was always hearing that you could find great quality produce at great prices at the vegetable market and for some reason the direct contact with the producers and its relaxed environment always excited and intrigued me. So, I thought why not go and visit the nearest vegetable market and also be immense in the experience? So one Saturday morning I visited the 'OXI vegetable market in the center of Nicosia close to the Eleftheria Square. OXI means no in the Greek language (one of the official languages in Cyprus), and its pronounced 'ohi.
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Camila Torres Coto Aguilar
Across the world, crafts hold the weight of history, woven, carved, or threaded into everyday life. Deep within ancient ruins, archaeologists have discovered artefacts that were once used thousands of years ago. From spears and weapons to kill animals, to temples for worshipping and rituals, these physical ties symbolise the functions and life of ancient cultures. Crafts are also a vehicle for incarnating the natural ecosystems surrounding a community.
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Hannah Morissey
The sands of the Thar Desert (marked in red) stretch across northwestern India and into southeastern Pakistan. In this arid expanse, the searing winds of the 'Great Indian Desert' carry the centuries-old melodies of the Langa and Manganiyar people. For centuries, these Muslim hereditary folk musicians have shaped Rajasthani folk music with their soulful cadences, enlivening the halls of their patrons across the desert villages of Barmer, Jaisalmer, and Jodhpur.
Honeybees are genuinely an undervalued marvel of nature. As pollinators, honey makers, and mesmerising flying creatures, they perform a delicate dance that sustains much of our ecosystems. Approximately one-third of the food we consume owes its existence to the diligent pollination efforts of honey bees. Unique among insects, honey bees are the only species that produce food directly consumed by humans. Their contributions extend far beyond honey; they pollinate over 150 commercial crops, making them indispensable to global agriculture and food supply.
The rhythmic chants of ancient mantras echoed through the temple as the ocean churned, and Vasuki, the serpent, writhed between the gods and demons. The air was thick with tension, and the poison Halahala seeped into the universe, threatening all life. In desperation, the gods turned to Lord Shiva, the compassionate one regarded as both destroyer and restorer. Understanding the gravity of the situation, Shiva swallowed the poison to save all of creation.
The global food system is at a critical juncture. Across the world, the average age of farmers is rising, while fewer young people are entering agriculture. This article explores the stark realities behind this trend-why the next generation is turning away from farming, the impact of water scarcity and climate change on food production, and the depletion of nutrients in our soils.
The train to Jaipur pulls out of Jaisalmer close to midnight. The desert air is cool, the yellow bulbs of the platform cast long shadows, andthe carriages hum with anticipation as passengers climb aboard. Inside the sleeper coach, the day's benches have folded into three bunks stacked tight against the wall. Bags are tucked under heads as makeshift pillows, sandals lie scattered beneath the bottom bunks, and people shift, sigh, and settle.
In 40 years of travel, I regularly get asked: what is your favourite country? While the thoughts of so many people and places always bring a smile, contributing to the soul, it is difficult to go beyond the enchanting and complex island, nature, and people of Madagascar. If you haven't been yet, then definitely put it on the list of places to visit in this lifetime.
In the vast, golden expanse of the Algerian Sahara, the Saharawi refugees have endured for five decades, carving out a life amidst one of the harshest landscapes on Earth. Here, in the shadow of endless dunes and under an unyielding sun, resilience becomes a way of life.
