Emily de Wet

Emily de Wet is a cultural anthropologist interested broadly in the tensions of power between hegemonic systems and structures and people's everyday lives. In other words, how are lives shaped by overlapping forms of structural violence and how do people work to create alternative forms of value, care, and meaning in response to, and in spite of, these violences?

Her research in Cape Town, South Africa explores the relationships between urban racially segregated and systematically marginalized informal settlements/townships and the rest of the city through the lens of "vibes" - the intangible, ephemeral but deeply meaningful parts of life in townships that are obscured by narratives of poverty and violence. Using ethnographic methods and mapping, she explores how residents understand the ways that "township vibes" shape their lives and movements, how vibes emerge and differ, and how through people's daily lives, townships are shaped into not simply urban margins, but vital and vibrant social centers. This work led her to further research on women in the informal food economy, food and racial identities, water access and climate change, interlinking capitalist expansion and racism, and expressive cultures.

Emily is currently writing on the inequity embedded in the formal response to the 2018 water crisis in Cape Town, and on the multiple meanings and forms of value manifest through the preparation and consumption of sheep's heads in townships in South Africa.

She is also working on a collaborative multispecies autoethnographic project in which she and her collaborator are looking to their own experiences of ethnographic fieldwork in Cusco, Perú and Cape Town, SA to consider the ways that eating animals are embedded in multiple forms of radicalized, gendered, and species hegemonic violence and resistance to such violence.

Her current research is focused on multispecies justice through the lens of the US food System, food access, and industrial farming.

Emily has designed and taught classes on global cities and inequality, global development, the anthropology of food, food justice in the United States, anthropology and policy, and ethnographic methods.

She has also worked as a lead research analyst doing research and evaluations work related to public health programs in the US.