On May 4, 2026, we spoke with Professor Paul Stoller, who shared his experiences and perspectives on sensory ethnography, ethnographic storytelling, and the ethics of anthropological research. In this interview, he also reflected on his intensive, long-term ethnography among the Songhay people of Niger and how it shaped his distinctive writing style, as well as his approach to conducting ethnography as “shared anthropology.”.

Her interest in sensory ethnography arose during her ethnographic research on magic and witchcraft in West Africa, where she realized how the senses of taste, sight, touch, smell, and hearing influenced anthropologists’ experiences in the field and how they interpreted the whys and hows of social life. Stoller’s inclination toward developing ethnographic descriptions that appeal to readers’ senses led him to propose a sensory ethnography, in which ethnography is understood as a bodily process that involves the ethnographer in the physical and sensory experiences of both himself and others.

Two elements of his proposal that are explored in greater detail in the interview are, on the one hand, the power of the senses and, on the other, the power of vulnerability. Both of these components are characteristic of his work and his publications, and they serve not only to create meaningful ethnographic narratives and capture the reader’s attention, but also to “humanize” anthropological texts.

This interview with Professor Stoller is rich in stories of memory, reflection, and gratitude. After a brief introduction of our guest, the first part takes us back to his early years as a young researcher and the beginnings of his anthropological research on spiritual possession among the Songhay people in West Africa. Through his narrative, Paul Stoller shares the lessons he learned about the importance of unhurried learning and a deep understanding of the world during his 17 years of apprenticeship with the witch doctor and healer Adamu Jenitongo. In the second part, he draws on his own experiences during fieldwork on the Songhay spiritual world to address the power of vulnerability and humility in both ethnographic storytelling and anthropological research in general. He also emphasizes the importance of incorporating the senses and the sensory dimensions of “reality” when crafting ethnographic descriptions. In the third part, she shares recommendations for scholars who wish to engage in ethnographic storytelling through evocative writing and highlights the potential of Jean Rouch’s “shared anthropology” for practicing a more ethical anthropology.

Yael Dansac (and): Greetings to the magazine's beloved readers Encartes, an online magazine published by the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology. My name is Yael Dansac, and it is a privilege and an honor for me to interview our guest, Paul Stoller, for you. Welcome to Encartes, Professor Stoller.

Paul Stoller (P.S.): Thank you very much.

and: The distinguished anthropologist Paul Stoller is one of the leading figures of the “sensory turn” in anthropology. On this occasion, we will discuss the key themes that have defined his forty-year career in anthropological research. We’ll begin with his extensive research in West Africa, then move on to his approach to fieldwork, and conclude with his reflections on the future of ethnography. Before we begin, I’d like to say a few words about our guest:

Paul Stoller is professor emeritus of anthropology at West Chester University in Pennsylvania (usa uu.), and he is also a permanent faculty member at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany and a visiting professor of African Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His early research focused on the religion of the Songhay people, who live in the republics of Niger and Mali in West Africa. In that work, he focused primarily on magic, witchcraft, and practices of spiritual possession. Since 1992, Professor Stoller has conducted research on West African immigrants in New York City, exploring the cultural dynamics of informal market economies and immigration policy.

His work has made a significant contribution to the development of sensory ethnography and the anthropology of the senses. His books have shaped the academic training of several generations of anthropologists, as evidenced by the enduring importance of works such as The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology and Sensuous Scholarship, among many others.

Professor Stoller’s commitment to sharing his research has led to the publication of 16 books, including ethnographies, biographies, memoirs, and three novels. Throughout his career, he has received numerous honors, including the Robert B. Textor Award for Excellence in Anthropology, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Anders Retzius Gold Medal in Anthropology.

Part One: About Your Journey to the Spirit World

and: Let's start at the beginning: What brought you to West Africa—specifically to Niger—and what initially motivated you to conduct fieldwork among the Songhay people?

P.S.: Well, what led me to Niger was a series of circumstances. I was of draft age during the Vietnam War. I was a conscientious objector and a student activist against the Vietnam War. So, in the late 1960s, one way to avoid the draft was to apply for the Peace Corps. I applied to go to Francophone Africa because I had studied French in college. I chose Niger because it was a place where French wasn’t used much, which meant I’d be forced to learn a West African language—Songhay, as it turned out. I chose Niger and spent two years there as a Peace Corps volunteer, teaching English as a foreign language, trying to keep the students in line with my increasingly fluent French, and having an absolutely, absolutely wonderful time there. I fell in love with Niger, its people, and its way of life. And I asked myself, “How can I get back to Niger?”.

So I enrolled in a graduate program. I first studied linguistics and then switched to social anthropology, and I received a Fulbright scholarship to spend a year conducting research in Niger. It was a fantastic opportunity and the starting point for my research.

and: How did you become immersed in the religious world of the Songhai people of Niger?

P.S.: Well, you see, when I was teaching in a place called Tillabéri, on the east bank of the Niger River—a beautiful city—I had a small bungalow on the school grounds, and behind it was a sand dune. I used to hear music coming from the dune all the time, but I didn’t think much of it. But eventually, my curiosity got the better of me, and I climbed up to see where that music was coming from—it was coming from the top of the sand dune. So I climbed up there and entered the enclosure, and a man—an elderly man dressed in black—welcomed me and said, “Welcome, come see our festival.” The festival was called Holey Hori, the Festival of the Spirits.

So I walked in there, and there was this incredibly rhythmic music playing. It was fantastic music, really lively, and personally, I love to dance, right? So there I am, standing next to this guy—I’d never seen him before. His name was Adamu Jenitongo. And he saw me moving my feet and my body, and he said to me, “Well, why don’t you try dancing?” So, you know, at 22 years old, fearless and unashamed, I went out onto the dance floor; I tried to do the kind of steps they were doing. I did it. The crowd gave me a somewhat lukewarm ovation—a white man dancing this spiritual dance. Then I went back to Adamu Jenitongo, and he said to me, “Today you’ve shown us respect. You’ve shown us that you respect our traditions. Please come back whenever you hear the music. Please come back and be part of our little group here.” That was my first experience with spiritual possession.

Every now and then I would hear the music. I would go up to visit them. I watched as people seemed to be possessed by spirits; that completely fascinated me, and it was something I’d never experienced in my working-class background. As a kid from Washington, D.C., I’d never experienced anything like that. So I told myself, “I have to find out more about this kind of thing.”.

I went to college. I studied linguistics and then social anthropology, and I received a Fulbright scholarship for one year. I spent that year in two places: one called Méhana, on the west bank of the Niger River, where I studied the contrast between Islam and non-Islamic religions, particularly spiritual possession. And then I spent the second half [of the fellowship] with Adamu Jenitongo, who invited me back to his compound to study with him. My apprenticeship with him lasted 17 years. So I sat with him, listened to him, and watched him treat his patients. He would send me out into the countryside to search for medicinal plants. He would tell me where to find them and how to identify them. I watched him as he healed people. I watched him as he tried to bring healing to the community. It was a fabulous experience. For more than 17 years, I was his apprentice.

and: As you said, your training took a long time. So how did your training with these sorcerers and healers from the Songhay village change your understanding of time and knowledge?

P.S.: Well, the Songhay people and Adamu Jenitongo taught me a lot. He [Adamu Jenitongo] taught me two things. One was about time. He told me that the learning process is a slow one, that it evolves little by little—a slow epistemology. So he’d say to me, “You know, you’re young now; your brain isn’t ready to take in important information.” He’d say to me, “So I’ll teach you the basics of, you know, healing and witchcraft and the use of medicinal plants, and so on, and you’ll memorize the incantations.” A kind of rote learning. He’d say to me:

As you get older, your mind expands with experience. So, the more it expands, the more capable it is of taking in important information. Then you’ll be able to put into practice what I’m teaching you when you’re middle-aged. But only when you’re an elder. When your mind has experienced so many things—both love and loss—when you’ve gone through all of that, only then do you become an elder. When you are an elder, you continue to practice what you have learned; you continue to try to heal people, but your greatest duty is to pass on your knowledge to the next generation. That is your sacred duty.

His training—my teacher’s training—lasted 40 years. He sat with his father until his father died. He didn’t really begin practicing until he was in his 60s or 70s. He lived to be 105. So it’s a very, very slow process. And he said, “It takes a long time to understand these kinds of things. That’s why you need a mature mind—one that has been tempered by experience. And so, before I teach you something really, really serious, you have to grow older.”.

And so, I kept coming back, and I grew older and older, but he died before I became an old man; nevertheless, I understood the fundamentals he taught me and have incorporated them into my own life. When I was a young researcher, I wrote articles and tried to refine the theory, and so on. Later, as a more experienced researcher, I began to think about the aspects you mentioned. As a veteran researcher, as an elderly scholar, I will continue to write articles and books. But my true mission is to pass on what I have learned to the next generation of researchers, and I do so through writing workshops.

Which brings me to the following question: How did my education influence my writing? At the beginning of my fieldwork, I wrote my first book, which was titled In the Shadow of Sorcery, but the original manuscript was never published. The reason was that I had conceived it as an academic paper. It had an introduction, a literature review, results, analysis, and theoretical relevance. But since I cared so much about my professor, Adamu Jenitongo, I told myself, “I have to go and show him what I’m doing. Get his approval.” So I went to Niger one summer, during the rainy season there, and told him what I wanted to do. And he said, “All right.” I told him, “I’m going to translate this academic paper as best I can into Songhay so you can understand what I’m trying to do here.” “All right,” he said. “The only thing is, we’ll be talking about deeply esoteric matters. I don’t want people to hear us. So come to the spirit hut [where he slept]. Come to the spirit hut in the middle of the night.”.

So, for him, it was around 2:00 a.m. I showed up in the middle of the night. He welcomed me with open arms. There was a dim flashlight, and I began translating my academic text for him. He listened attentively, and after about five minutes of translation, he said to me, “You know, I’m a little tired. Why don’t you come back tomorrow, okay?” So I replied, “All right, Baba, no problem.” I came back the next day, same thing—five more pages. “I’m tired,” he said, “come back tomorrow.” This went on for two and a half months. I was really sleep-deprived, getting up at two in the morning for five or ten minutes to translate this text. And during all that time, he never said a word. He just listened, without saying a single word. Then, finally, it was time for me to leave. I said to him, “Well, Baba, you know, I’m leaving tomorrow. You haven’t said a single word about this work I’ve done.” And he gave me a big, big smile and said, “Well, it’s not that good.” I asked him, “What do you mean?” He replied:

There isn't enough of me in it, and there isn't enough of you in it. Your knowledge is the product of our relationship. So you should talk about our relationship, our mutual appreciation, our love of knowledge, and our love of tradition. Talk about those things instead of how this is going to improve the theory of magic.

He didn't use those terms [theory of magic]. Then he said something that profoundly influenced everything I wrote afterward. He said, “Create something that my grandchildren and your grandchildren can appreciate, discuss, and comment on.” So, basically, what he was saying was: “Create something—whether it’s a text or whatever—that has ‘endurance,’ that stands the test of time; time will pass, and it will remain relevant to people.” So, in my case, I sent this book—which was published in 1987, a long time ago—to my granddaughter, who is now a sophomore in college, and she’s reading it as I speak. So we’ll see what she has to say about it.

The point of all this was, of course, that the ideas in that text are, in a sense, somewhat fleeting. He said, “Don’t think that what I have to say to you is what you have to do. What’s important is that the text, the movie, or whatever you present be such that people pay attention to it, talk about it, and use it in their own way. Because time, you know, changes everything.”.

So, basically, he told me, “Write stories that reach a wide audience and stand the test of time.” And that’s what I’ve been trying to [do]. Not all of my books are stories, but most have a narrative element. Some are full-fledged narratives. That’s what I’ve tried to do because I wanted a wide audience to read what I wrote. Every writer, of course, wants to be read, right? And my professor understood that. That’s why I started writing narrative ethnographies and fiction as well—precisely for that reason.

Part Two: On Your Approach to Fieldwork and Sensory Anthropology

and: Your books are full of examples, and your learning process, as you said, spanned several decades. So you’re always drawing on all those lessons you learned, all those valuable moments. Could you share with the audience which moment most challenged your assumptions as an anthropologist or most fundamentally changed your perception of reality and your beliefs?

P.S.: Yes, two examples. First example: My teacher, Adamu Jenitongo, sent me to Wanzerbé, which is the major center of witchcraft among the Songhay people. It’s in the middle of nowhere. It sits on top of two sand dunes. It’s very, very far from any source of water. To get there, I had to ride a horse for two days, practically crossing the desert. Finally, I arrived, and one of the people from my village, Méhana—where I worked—had a father who was married to the great sorceress of Wanzerbé. When I arrived there after two and a half days on horseback in very, very high temperatures, I was told that the great sorceress, whose name was Kassey, had heard that I was coming and had decided to leave. But I was able to see her companion, a woman named Dunguri.

So my friend Sidi took me to meet Dunguri. And usually, in Songhay, when a traveler arrives, they’re welcomed with great warmth and hospitality. But Dunguri was very cold and not at all hospitable. And that really surprised me. Then she looked at my rings—you know, I wear rings. She looked at my rings, which my teacher [Adamu Jenitongo] had given me, and asked, “Where did you get your rings?” My teacher had told me, “Never reveal the origin of the rings.” So I said, “Well, you know, I was in a village called Ayourou, and I saw the rings and bought them.” And she said, “Aha. Sure.” Well, then she let me go, so to speak.

The rings indicated that he was an apprentice. So I went back to the other side of town, had a good meal, and went to sleep in a little adobe house. And I couldn't sleep. I heard a tapping on the roof. I didn't know what it was. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t move my legs. I felt the numbness spreading from my feet up to my thighs, slowly creeping toward my chest, and I thought, “This is [the end].” I was afraid of dying. Then my teacher told me, “In those circumstances, recite a spell called genjihow”, which brings the forces of the forest into balance, creating harmony in a disharmonious situation. So I began reciting that text and kept reciting it because I didn’t react like a scholar, but like an apprentice. I reacted like an apprentice. Then, little by little, I began to feel sensation returning to my thighs, then to my legs and feet. I kept doing it. I couldn’t get out of bed, but by dawn I was already able to feel things and was able to get out of bed.

My friend Sidi came over and said to me, “You look terrible. Have you been getting enough sleep?” I replied, “Well, not much.” I didn’t explain to him what I thought had happened. I said to myself: “According to the logic of witchcraft, if someone tries to do something, it’s like a test. So I had to go see Dunguri again.” So I went to see Dunguri. This time he came out with a big smile. She took my hands and said, “Now I know you’re a man with a strong heart. Come into my house and we’ll start learning.” So I said, “Thank you,” but I wasn’t very confident. I told her—you know—it was like a kind of confrontation with mortality. So I said, “No, it’s okay. Thanks anyway, but I have to go back.” So she left. I left.

I didn’t return to Wanzerbé for many years after that. And I spoke with my teacher [Adamu Jenitongo], and my teacher said, “Well, she was testing you. You know, she wanted to see if you were worthy of continuing on the path of power. You passed the test, didn’t you? You defied death.” And I said, “Well, you know what? I don’t think I want to continue on the path of power anymore. Take me down the path of plants.” There were two paths I could take. “Take me down the path of plants,” [I said]. And so, toward the end of my apprenticeship with him, we studied plants. He sent me into the mountains to gather plants. We prepared concoctions and decoctions. We performed ceremonies together using the plants I had gathered. I learned a great deal. I collected many plants to analyze chemically back in the United States.

The path of the plants was more in tune with my psychological sensibilities. I didn’t have the mental fortitude necessary to constantly face the possibility of death. Most people in that world [the path of power] live constantly looking over their shoulders, thinking, “Someone is going to do something to me.” And I didn’t want anything to do with that. So that happened at the beginning of my fieldwork. That experience gave me a sense of the power of witchcraft. I couldn’t find any rational explanation for it. None at all. People would say, “Oh, it was a nightmare,” or “You’re hallucinating,” “Have you taken any drugs?” None of that. Dunguri knew exactly what was going on, and my teacher knew exactly what had happened. And I said to myself [on the path of the plants], “This is the path for me, for my psyche. I don’t have the psychological strength to walk the path of power.” So I followed the path of the plants and learned a great deal from my teacher.

At the time, I thought that healing and witchcraft were a power struggle: making people sick, curing them. And that is part of it. But what I actually learned later was that I wasn’t perceptive enough to understand what had happened to me. I didn’t have enough experience to understand what I was talking about. Later, I realized that the goal of witchcraft is to heal—to make people feel whole again, to make people feel comfortable in their own skin. And if you do that, that is the task of the most seasoned elder witch: to make people feel comfortable and to repair the dissonance in social life, as well as to heal the wounds of vengeance. The challenge of this approach was to deal with nature’s vengeance and create balance and harmony. That was the lesson he taught me, and I was too inexperienced to understand it. I didn’t understand it until I myself became seriously ill.

My second experience with mortality was due to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. When I went through that ordeal, I put into practice what I had learned from my teacher. I burned resins at home and recited incantations. Every time I went for treatment, I recited the genjihow, the spell that harmonizes the forces of nature. The first time, when I went to my first chemotherapy session, I told my doctor—who was a pretty cool guy and very open-minded (we were in his office, and my brother was with me)—“Well, we have to shake hands, and I have to face this possible death from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma—which has no cure—from this perspective.” He [my doctor] said, “Well, all right. Let’s do what you’re going to do.” So I recited the genjihow, we shook hands, and then I spat in all four cardinal directions of his office—which was very sterile—and he asked, “What was that?” I replied, “It’s the genjihow. ”Healing can’t happen if there’s a lack of harmony between, say, my body and the external environment. It just can’t happen that way.“ He said, ”That’s cool! I like that.“ Then he went to prepare the chemotherapy and immunotherapy drugs he was going to administer to me. He came back and said, ”Let’s go meet your oncology nurse.“ So we went back to that large room where there were a lot of people hooked up to IVs receiving chemotherapy or immunotherapy. He introduced me to a woman named Kelly, who was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen in my life—really. And she looked at me with a big smile and said, ”Paul, I’m going to take very, very good care of you.“ So I turned to my doctor and said, ”See? It’s already starting to work.”.

And so, [West African wisdom] has influenced my life. I mean, I have divination shells. Sometimes I burn incense. It has helped me take things more slowly and taught me to appreciate the juxtaposition between love and loss—two fundamental aspects of the human condition. It has inspired me to write stories and blog posts. It has helped me lead writing workshops to try to pass on my knowledge to the next generation of scholars. Considering all the challenges I’ve faced, it has allowed me to live—knock on wood—a full and fulfilling life.

and: Incorporating sensory experiences—as well as vulnerability—is, I believe, one of the defining characteristics of your work. You have to put yourself out there when you do ethnography and not be afraid to feel or to let what you’re studying affect you. So my next question would be: How can anthropologists better incorporate sensory experience into their work?

P.S.: Well, first of all, there’s a fantastic, very well-known Swiss artist, Paul Klee, and his lectures were compiled into a series of notebooks. His students took notes during his art classes, and in one of them he talks about how to paint a tree, how to paint the forest. And he said: “When I enter the forest and want to paint it, I have to open myself up to the forest and let the forest enter me. And then, once the forest is inside me, I’m able to break free from this kind of colonization of the forest. I need to paint, and my painting is my escape from this colonization.”.

But when you do that—when you open yourself up to another person—it’s risky; it creates a kind of vulnerability that is, you know, profound. Because you’re taking risks. You’re revealing yourself to someone. Many of the healers I worked with would look at you and know who you were. Adamu Jenitongo looked at me and knew who I was almost immediately. He looked inside me and knew my secrets. He knew my defense mechanisms. Instead of pushing them aside, he said, “Let’s talk about the real things.” So, if you do that as a writer and create a sense of vulnerability, it generates a kind of human connection between you, as the writer, and the reader. It encourages the reader to turn the page. If you’ve read memoirs or novels—or even ethnographies in which the ethnographer discusses some of their vulnerabilities—it humanizes the text. It draws the reader into the text in the same way that the forest entered Paul Klee’s body, allowing him to create his art.

So, you know, I think that's more or less how that vulnerability has influenced me. I think vulnerability is a key to successful writing, whether it's fiction, creative nonfiction, or ethnography.

and: How do you balance academic rigor with literary expression? You, for example, often blend ethnography with storytelling.

P.S.: The writing workshop I teach is called “Weaving the World.” The name comes from my research in New York, where I was trying to figure out how to write about the experiences of West African immigrants. Their stories were truly fascinating, but I also wanted to talk about the informal economy; to discuss original art versus copied art; to talk about how West Africans develop a certain degree of cultural confidence in a foreign land. All those kinds of things. There’s a lot of psychological literature on that.

But I was stuck. I had all this fantastic material and didn't know how to fit it in. A weaver sat down next to me. Weavers in Songhay are called chakay. He said to me, “Why don’t you write your book the same way a weaver weaves a blanket? You take several different threads, combine them, and weave them into a pattern that creates a complete tapestry. For us, a blanket tells a story, doesn’t it? Give it a try.”.

That's what I did with my book titled Money Has No Smell. Essentially, these are the life stories of three West African immigrants who are merchants in Harlem, New York. Their stories encompass all sorts of information about the informal economy, the history of long-distance trade, originality versus imitations, trademark law, copyright law, and psychological adaptation to a foreign land. All of these elements are implicit in their stories. I tell the story and reach a point where they say, “I have these counterfeit items,” and then I put three dots on the page and write a more discursive section on the anthropology of originality, or I discuss the anthropology of the informal economy, and so on. In “Weaving the World,” I teach techniques whose ultimate goal is to fuse narrative with cultural analysis. So it’s like weaving.

Part Three: On Ethnographic Narrative and Shared Anthropology

and: I understand, and it’s very easy to see this “fabric” when we read your work, which is, in a way, timeless. You mentioned that several of your books were published in the late 1980s, and yet they feel so relevant in today’s world—in this increasingly polarized world. So, how can sensory ethnography help build bridges between different cultures and ways of being in the world?

P.S.: I think people take the senses for granted. And the senses have been pushed to the background in ethnographic writing. I believe that, first of all, if you describe how a place feels, how it smells, how it tastes, or if you describe how a character speaks or walks, that humanizes the text and creates a sense of “what it’s like to be in this place at a specific moment with this particular person or group of people, or during this ritual.” This creates a vividness that, in my opinion, stands the test of time. I also believe it’s ethical. If you try to recreate the sensory context in which people live—especially if you describe them as characters—it highlights their humanity. The ethical problem is this: very often we want to portray the people we describe in anthropology as entirely positive. “They’re fantastic; they do this, they do that.” And that’s a good thing, but there’s always a hidden side, isn’t there? There’s jealousy. There’s betrayal. That’s also part of social life. Therefore, if you don’t describe that in sensory terms, you may be depriving those people of a part of their humanity.

and: In the reflections you’ve shared with us so far, you’ve emphasized the importance of building close, long-term relationships with our research partners, approaching them with humility and respect, and also not being afraid to “unlearn” and “re-learn” how to conduct ethnographic research. So, to wrap up: what advice would you give to anthropologists who want to adopt a more ethical approach to anthropology?

P.S.: Well, one thing is that every group of people studied by anthropologists has its own epistemology. They have their own theory of learning. So I’ve adopted the Songhay theory of learning. My professor [Adamu Jenitongo] insisted on it. And I resisted for a long time, because I wanted to write my dissertation, I wanted to publish in journals, etc., etc. To do that, you have to follow a certain protocol.

But, for me… the most important thing is what Jean Rouch called “shared anthropology.” “Shared anthropology” isn’t just about the ethnographer and his informant. It’s based on a kind of shared social trust that develops with a person. So my teacher, Adamu Jenitongo, treated me like a surrogate son, and it is through our friendship—through our mutual love, frankly—that my ethnography grew and flourished, and continues to grow and flourish.

There is nothing more important in this field than forging lasting friendships. This idea was passed on to me by my mentor, Jean Rouch, who also worked among the Songhay people. He had friendships that dated back 40 or 50 years. They were people with whom he collaborated. And because of that, they shared. They had a shared history—a history built on trust forged over years of giving and sharing experiences. Rouch never betrayed their trust.

As for my teacher, there are some things he has asked me [not] to say. He told me, “Never reveal this or that,” and I have upheld that shared trust. So that notion of social trust based on long-standing relationships and friendships is, in my opinion, the key to being able to write about another group of people with accuracy and respect.

It’s true that every time I returned to Niger, the bonds of social trust I had—not only with Adamu Jenitongo but also with others—were renewed. I kept going back again and again and again. And they would say, “You’re back, you’re back.” And they’d find out what I’d been doing and say, “Well, that’s good.” There’s a man I met during my first field trip to Méhana in the 1970s; he’s become a doctor and has just been elected canton chief in western Niger. He was a surgeon in Germany, and now that he’s retired, he spends half the year in Germany and the other half in Niger. We’ve been friends for 50 years. We stay in touch. We’ve shared so many things and have been able to open up to one another without shame, with respect and fond memories.

I can't think of anything more important for anthropologists—especially young ones—than to form these friendships and maintain them over time, rather than simply spending two years in one field site and then moving on to another. Stay with the same group of people. It’s hard enough to understand our own society, and it’s twice as hard to understand another society. It takes time, and you’re bound to make mistakes, but if you manage to form friendships, some will flourish and others will end—just as they do in social life in France, Mexico, or the United States. That’s the key. It’s the social glue that holds social life together.

and: Dear Professor Stoller, thank you very much for taking the time to share your experiences, your knowledge, and your perspectives—not only on sensory ethnography but also, more broadly, on the ethical commitments of anthropologists. Undoubtedly, the readers of Encartes You'll probably be interested in learning more about his work, so at the end of this video we'll provide links to his website and his main publications. Once again, I'm very grateful to him for this interview. See you next time.

P.S.: Thank you very much, Yael. It's been a pleasure.

Yael Dansac She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology and Ethnology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (ehess) and research fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies on Religion and Secularism at the University of Brussels (ulb). She was a postdoctoral researcher in the Marie Curie program—civisA 3i fellow at the European Commission, she holds a master’s degree in Social Sciences from the University of Guadalajara and completed her undergraduate studies at the National School of Anthropology and History. She has conducted intensive, long-term fieldwork in Mexico, France, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. She has been a visiting researcher at the University of Glasgow, and her work has been supported by prestigious grants such as the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. She is currently co-coordinator of the Network on Contemporary Spiritual Practices of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (easa) and a member of the board of directors of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture (issrnc). His recent publications include the volume Relating to More-than-Humans: Interbeing Rituality in a Living World (2022, co-edited with Jean Chamel, Palgrave Macmillan) and upcoming books Sacralizing Stones: Contemporary Spirituality at Megalithic Sites (Brussels University Press) and Modern Scottish Paganism: Ritual, Community, Belief (Edinburgh University Press).

Paul Stoller He is professor emeritus of anthropology at West Chester University and a permanent faculty member at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. In his more than 35 years of anthropological research and writing, Stoller has focused on the Songhay religion in the Republic of Niger and on the lives of West African street vendors in New York City. His work spans economic anthropology, visual anthropology, and the anthropology of well-being. In his most recent work, he explores how indigenous wisdom can not only improve social well-being but also help heal a troubled world. Stoller has challenged the limitations of conventional academic writing: he promotes storytelling as a way to communicate anthropological knowledge to a broader audience. Stoller has published 16 books, including ethnographies, biographies, memoirs, and three novels. Since 2010, she has been a regular blogger on culture, politics, and higher education for The Huffington Post and Psychology Today, and has become an advocate for a more public and engaged anthropology. Since 2006, he has taught workshops on ethnographic writing in Europe, North America, and West Africa. In 2013, King Carl Gustaf of Sweden awarded him the Anders Retzius Gold Medal in recognition of his scholarly contributions to anthropology. In 2015, the American Anthropological Association awarded him the Prize for Anthropology in the Media. Among his numerous publications are the following: The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology (1989, University of Pennsylvania Press), In Sorcery’s Shadow: A Memoir of Apprenticeship among the Songhay of Niger (1989, University of Chicago Press), Sensous Scholarship (1997, University of Pennsylvania Press), Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York City (2022, University of Chicago Press) and, more recently, Wisdom from the Edge: Writing Ethnography in Turbulent Times (2023, Cornell University Press).

Links to Paul Stoller's work and books:
https://www.wcupa.edu/sciences-mathematics/anthropologySociology/pStoller.aspx
https://www.pennpress.org/9780812212921/the-taste-of-ethnographic-things
https://www.pennpress.org/9780812216158/sensuous-scholarship
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3633321.html
https://www.routledge.com/Embodying-Colonial-Memories-Spirit-Possession-Power-and-the-Hauka-in-West-Africa/Stoller/p/book/9780415908771
Paths to Well-Being (blog) paulstoller@substack.com