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Words: Sydney Kaster

Image caption: Courtesy of Gül Işık 

1 April

“Yet this interconnector of divine harmony and sonorous body, that is music, remains the one example of shared experience within social spaces that involves creativity, community, language, and sound.”


Sydney Kaster

Music relies on human interaction to build relationships between individuals and groups. It’s how humans understand each other without the barriers of traditional language and spoken word. Music requires the physical body, even in the instrumental form: the ears, the hands, and sometimes the feet and limbs, and in other cases, the tongue, the vocal cords, and the mouth. Sometimes, the whole body is involved, like in dancing. Music is something we listen to and enjoy, or sometimes, we have a strong distaste for it. Can we use it as a way to communicate and grow a community, either through creating music itself or, for example, sharing it from a streaming platform and sending a text to a friend who we think might like it? Are we already using music as a form of connection? And, is it truly a genuine way of building human connections, or are there other methods that are better suited?

Firstly, let us briefly return to the roots of this fine social tool and look at how it has changed over time. Over 40,000 years ago, early humans and Neanderthals used vocalisations to communicate with one another, but evolving breathing capabilities of the jaw and cranium structures led these vocalisations to be more complex, shaping what we can assume was a song-like vocalisation, sprouting the seeds of things like singing and chanting (Montagu 2017). In accordance with these changes in the human body, instruments like pipes and whistles were crafted from animal bones, leading to some of the very first tools for making music, before eventually, more developed instruments like pianos and violins came along. Soon, music became a hallmark of human interaction, turning into a positive group activity that strengthened community bonds, especially within families and closely-knit circles, and even within group tasks, leading us to the birth of work songs, proving the theory that synchronised motions made together form positive social bonds (Montagu 2017; Dunbar 2014). Music is a prime form of human interaction, creating shared swells of emotion between individuals that other means of connection can’t quite spark; it is an intimately spiritual interaction.

Harvard cognitive scientist Dr Samuel Mehr found that music is a feature of every single culture, specifically in terms of danceability and behaviour related to music, further supporting the theory that music can be considered a true builder of bonds between people, especially in a big group setting with many different types of individuals, all with varying interests and backgrounds (Atwood 2019; National Institutes of Health 2023). Music and the relationship it creates between people has been found on every continent, including Antarctica (Metallica 2013), deepening cross-cultural relationships and weaving sacred relationships with meaning and artistic purpose across borders and nations, whether in ancient Greece or modern-day Australia (In The Know 2023). It doesn’t matter where people live, where they come from, or how their day-to-day lives look; music is everywhere and a key part of our human evolution and existence. And now, music has even more capability with things like AI taking over mainstream technology and helping people build all kinds of relationships through it. We have come so far in our understanding and appreciation of music, and now we have these new fronts in creative technology to aid us.

But can AI truly bring people together through music? Can it act as an additional part in fostering human connection? Or, is it something we should tread carefully with? Regardless of our collective position on AI’s involvement in our relationships with music, we are already seeing these advances take shape. For example, take the ABBA Voyage, the virtual live show where all four members of ABBA perform through digital avatars and LED screens (Griffiths 2022). Globally, this phenomenon has become a sell-out, with even the city of London building an official arena for it, allowing people to sing along to their favourite ABBA songs while mesmerised by the projections onstage. Could this be the modern version of how our ancestors grouped up to engage in song and harmony, forming long-lasting social bonds? Is it a modern interpretation of the Greek theatre? It may well be. Concerts and other live events hosted via virtual reality are already becoming commonplace, especially after the Coronavirus pandemic, allowing fans to interact more closely with their favourite performers through platforms like Tiny Desk and the metaverse (Bär 2025).

However, this is evidently a stark contrast to the long-held ancient memory of sitting around a campfire. What would our ancestors think about these advances? And do these shifts represent our collective advancement and ideals of progress? Perhaps in some ways and in other ways perhaps not. Furthermore, does this kind of setup create a space for authentic human relationships to grow, or are these environments synthetic in a way that creates isolation even when people find themselves in oversaturated and populated spaces?

Nevertheless, we humans in our fascinating ways remain connected across countries and cultures like never before in this digital age. Someone halfway across the world could be watching a performance by someone they might never meet in person, in a region they’ve never even heard of, in a language they’ve never spoken. We must at least recognise these advancements in the name of more authentic human relationships, and more choice in terms of the music we can listen to and the people we can interact with. We have many tools that can connect us to others, whether it’s through music, AI, or shared linguistics. Yet this interconnector of divine harmony and sonorous body, that is music, remains the one example of shared experience within social spaces that involves creativity, community, language, and sound. It is a relationship-building block in its own right, unbounded across location, economic status, religious belief, and even further. Music can be made with just about anything at any time with any kind of instrument. It can be as basic as tapping your foot on the floor or emitting a low hum. Making music doesn’t require money, rules, a designated time and place, or anything too restrictive. It simply requires the maker  to be creative and put their mind and body to work, either individually or in a group environment.

Now, more than ever, with issues like loneliness and digital addiction on the rise, people need to find ways that bring happiness, connection, and socialisation into their hearts and homes and I believe that music is a great way to start repairing that disconnection from self and from community. After thousands of years since its initial creation, music remains a genuine way of building community and enriching the lives of ourselves and those around us, and even those in foreign lands with the technological capabilities of 2026. So, to the reader, I ask you to ponder the following questions: how can you build your communities through music and the arts? And what makes you feel like you belong to a community of genuine connection and shared values?

References

Atwood et al. (2019). Universality and diversity in human song. Science, 366(6468). https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aax0868

Bär et al. (2025). On the edge of a digital event era: Which innovative factors influence the willingness to pay for virtual concerts?. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 10(5). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jik.2025.100776

Dunbar et al. (2014). Music and social bonding: “self-other” merging and neurohormonal mechanisms. Frontiers, 5(1096). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01096

Griffiths, Daniel. (2022, December 28). ABBA Voyage: How does it work? MusicRadar. https://www.musicradar.com/features/abba-voyage-how-does-it-work-best-of-2022

In The Know (2023, October 25). Music’s Historical Influence: From Ancient Greece to Modern Times. Musicians Institute. https://www.mi.edu/in-the-know/musics-historical-influence-ancient-greece-modern-times/

Metallica (2013, December 9). Metallica Freeze ‘Em All in Antarctica. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nNx-zgqOfk

Montagu, J. (2017). How Music and Instruments Began: A Brief Overview of the Origin and Entire Development of Music, from Its Earliest Stages, Frontiers, 2(8). https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2017.00008

National Institutes of Health (2023, September 13). Is Music a Universal Language?. NIH Common Fund. https://commonfund.nih.gov/earlyindependence/highlights/music-universal-language

                  

Words: Ameyaa Mallik
Images: Ameyaa Mallik

Image caption: The pastures open into a wide vantage point, revealing the snow peaks above and the dense forests from which we climbed. The children run between stray cattle roaming through the abundant grass.

20 March 2026

“...in living with the Van Gujjars, I came to understand musafiri as more than getting from one place to another. Musafiri functioned as a practice in which abundance is measured not by accumulation but by moving in step with what the land provides.”


Ameyaa Mallik

The cross-hatched husk roof kept us protected from the pouring rain, while the empty space where the door should have been let in the sound of loud, chirping thrushes and the smell of slowly wetting soil. As the sun began to set, Javed stepped outside the hut to recite the azan, the call to evening prayer. On the cusp of being coarsened by puberty, his voice, still gentle, spilled down the mountain valley, and the musical highs and lows of the call, together with all of us huddled around the warmth of the slow-burning hearth, held back the nipping Himalayan chill.

For over a thousand years, the Van Gujjars have lived as nomadic buffalo herders across the western Himalayan region of North India. In 2025, I worked briefly with the NGO organisation, The Society for Promotion of Himalayan Indigenous Activities, which led to my initial introduction with the Van Gujjars. Thereafter, throughout the summer, I visited the Van Gujjars living across the densely forested mountain areas of Uttarakhand and the jagged, seasonal riverine plains of neighbouring Uttar Pradesh. I carried with me very little, including a duffel with an extra pair of pants, a camera, a pocket diary, and questions about subsistence ways of living – hugely accustomed to, yet deliriously critical of, my own urban lifestyle, as I was. The camera in this process became what it had always been: not a tool for documenting the chronology or facts of events, but a means of reclaiming the chance to reflect on the feelings we were experiencing together and alone. I only hoped to remember later when Ambu Ji milked the buffalo mid-afternoon while everyone was asleep, when Amna nudged me to take a stroll in the searing overhead sun to snatch a break from the congregation in the hut, or when I stood under the towering oaks, endlessly humbled.

02.

The days are divided around the care of the buffalo. The children in the family often keep watch over the herd while they graze, and the buffalo listen intently to their whistles and voices, knowing exactly which direction each call signals.

The term the Van Gujjars use for nomadism is musafiri, the Urdu word for wayfaring or journeying. Fricatively soft, musafiri appears in Urdu poetry as a term associated with ‘epiphany’ – walking as a way of accessing a territory beyond the usual and, hence, walking as wisdom. Similarly, in living with the Van Gujjars, I came to understand musafiri as more than getting from one place to another. Musafiri functioned as a practice in which abundance is measured not by accumulation but by moving in step with what the land provides. At the same time, it carried a personal weight beyond ecologically driven migration, as an inherited and cherished way of life. The elders living farther from the high-altitude forests and pastures spoke of those places with deep longing. Lal Sain, working part-time as a watchman at a mango grove in the foothill plains, told me, “Wait till you have seen the rivers of grass up there; there’s nothing quite like it.” So addicted to walking in the forests was Lal Sain in his youth that he was known to pack up and leave for a few days, aside from the usual migratory patterns. He would take a buffalo along and drink its milk for sustenance, carrying his belongings himself instead of loading the animal, out of care. Now, in the plains, he slips into the neighbouring deciduous sal forest from time to time for a better night’s sleep.

The forest is their home, and their knowledge of it runs deep. When I was down with the flu, Rani rubbed leaves of Lantana camara on my palms, bringing immediate relief. According to her elders, the flowering shrub had been introduced by the British in colonial India as an ornamental plant. Curiously, the same plant is hazardous in the mountains, yet in the plains it offers healing; these subtleties were carefully learned by watching the buffalo, who munch on it in the plains but leave it out in the mountains. As among the few vegetarian nomadic communities in the world, the Van Gujjars primarily consume dairy as the most accessible resource, supplemented by greens, herbs, and berries, oftentimes sourced from the forests. The abundance of wild-growing foods in the higher-altitude forests is one of the reasons Hasina eagerly awaits her family’s migration uphill, as she says while we collect wild fern nodes for dinner.

05. 

Resting on a bed of pine needles after reaching the alpine pastures.

Challenges have always laced their movements across these lands, which they have continually resisted and negotiated. An example of this is the 1990s grassroots Van Gujjar movement, supported by local NGOs and extensive media coverage, which sought to undo Cartesian dualism, or the nature–human divide, that influenced conservation policies. With rapid development and changing local sociopolitical dynamics, increasingly impacted by global and transnational forces, the hurdles faced by the Van Gujjars have grown to encompass more than matters of ecological concern. Over two decades after the Van Gujjar movement, diminished public support for the cause has produced a reconfigured marginality wherein the Van Gujjars continue to assert their presence in the forest, yet their voices are far less heard when problems arise. The paths to the pastures, once forest trails, have become concrete roads dotted with growing threats such as traffic, denser populations, and a socio-political climate increasingly seeped in Hindu nationalism, and violence perpetuated against Indian Muslims. Saffron now deluges the green of Uttarakhand, provoking loose claims that cast the Muslim Van Gujjars as outsiders seizing more than one home, when in fact their home has always been walking with the swell of the seasons, the shield of canopies, taking only what is needed, and care as lived praxis.

07.

Throughout much of the day, when they are not out grazing, the buffalo remain in a shed close to the Van Gujjars’ dera. Here, the elders look after them, balancing the fresh grass they graze on outside with meals of dried husk. While milking the buffalo, the Van Gujjars take a few sips of the milk as a calf would, in a process known as dhar. “Boiled milk could never taste the same,” she says.

08. 

Playing with pebbles while the buffalo herd grazes nearby.

Back in the searing plains, we walked along dried riverbeds, taking the buffalo herd out to graze. The buffalo moved at an apathetically slow pace, giving us too much and too little to do in the meantime. We played games, tossing and catching river stones when we weren’t lounging on stubby patches of grass. Rani, who was my age and became a friend in no time, was fond of poetry and whispered a few lines she had written, later admitting they might have been influenced by a dialogue from a Bollywood film: “Hazaaron manzilein hongi, hazaaron karwaein hongi; zamaana humein dhoondega, hum na jaane kahaan honge.” (There will be a thousand destinations and a thousand caravans; time will look for us, but the search will be futile.)

09. 

Looking up while searching the forest floor for wild strawberries on our way down from the pastures.

Writer Bio

Ameyaa Mallik (b. 2004, Delhi, India) is a photographer interested in emotional interiority, the ways our chosen and surrounding geologic landscapes reflect and extend it, and image-making as a conscious process with the ability to hold space between loss and change.

Words: Courtney Boag
Images: Dr. Gillian Tan speaking at Nostos gathering

Preprint publication of forthcoming paper

1 October, 2025

“The stakes are high, but I believe that in bridging differences, fostering ethical dialogue, and preserving the capacity to think with rather than over others, anthropology can serve as a bulwark against the flattening logics of speed, scale, and superficial knowledge.”



Courtney Boag

In a world accelerating at a pace where artificial intelligence processes data at scales and speeds far beyond human cognition  (Sauerbrei and Pruszynski 2025; Galatzer-Levy et al. 2024) and where social media infrastructures amplify insight, opinion, and extremism (Whittaker, Looney, Reed and Votta 2021; Van Bavel, Rathje, Harris, Robertson and Sternisko 2021; Shaw 2023), the question of how we preserve human capacities for reflection, relationality, and ethical engagement has never been more urgent. Contemporary societies, driven by efficiency, productivity, and quantifiable outcomes, can often marginalise the slower, ambiguous, and often contradictory practices of observation, dialogue, and reflection through which we apprehend complexity, cultivate nuance, and resist polarising dichotomies (Tyler, Boldi and Cherubini 2022; Vasist., Chatterjee and Krishnan 2024; Turner and Smaldino 2018). It is in this present day complexity that anthropology, and the practice of ethnography in particular, must be recognised, not merely as an academic or methodological undertaking, but as a vital training ground for metacognitive awareness and for developing what I propose as “translational capital”.

I would like to propose from the outset of this paper that ethnographic practice can function as a dual cultivation; firstly, as a form of metacognitive training in which practitioners can learn, not only how to observe and interpret others, but also how to attend to reflexively in their own witnessing, assumptions, and interpretive frameworks (Trigger 2025; Erkonan 2020; Stodulka, Dinkelaker and Thajib 2019; Davies 2008). Secondly, I argue that it can operate as a means to develop “translational capital”, a theoretical concept I introduce here, which aims to capture the capacity to convert deeply contextual, often messy cultural insights into intelligible, ethically grounded, and actionable forms for diverse audiences, from policymakers, organisational leaders, and civic stakeholders to the broader public.

To make this argument I weave three strands of thought. Firstly, I very briefly situate ethnographic practice within the literature on metacognition aiming to theoretically illustrate how it can potentially embody metacognitive dispositions (although I provide no empirical evidence for this and simply aim to spark theoretical discussion on this here). Secondly, I offer a concise (given the scope of this paper) history of translation work across disciplines and propose how my notion of “translational capital” seeks to build on existing literature around Bourdieu’s (1986) foundational work on the "forms of capital”, Star and Griesemer’s (1989) work on ‘boundary objects’ (see also: Caccamo, Pittino and Tell 2023). Boundary objects, knowledge integration, and innovation management; A systematic review of the literature. Technovation, 122, Article 102645., literature on knowledge brokering (Vallance, MacKillop, Downe and Notman 2025; Karcher et al. 2025; MacKillop, Connell, Downe and Durrant 2023; Bandola-Gill 2023; Krystallis and Jasim 2023) and work on the the sociology of translation (Dadich and Boydell 2023; Bielsa 2010, 2011, 2022; 2024). Lastly, I draw from the case of the monthly Nostos gathering hosted by Anthroprospective to illustrate how metacognitive insight and translational capital might be realised and potentially developed further in public and relational settings with both academic and non-academic audiences. I conclude by making a case that in an age of technological mediation, anthropology’s metacognitive capacities and translational potential become essential tools for bridging differences, mediating dialogue, and sustaining our shared humanity in the face of rapid digital, technological, social, ecological and political shifts.

Ethnographic practice is, at its most rigorous, not merely a set of tools for data collection, but a sustained engagement with the social world in which curiosity, ethical commitment, relational sensitivity, and reflexivity intertwine (Ingold 2021). Inhabiting liminal spaces of cultural, political, social, and epistemic difference, ethnographers are trained to dwell with ambiguity (Alimardanian and Heffernan 2024; Horvath, Thomassen and Wydra 2022; Deener 2017; Turner 1969), attend to cultural nuance (Geertz 1993; Clifford and Marcus 1986), be cognisant of power and structural inequalities (Abu-Lughod 1990; Foucault and Sheridan 1979; Graeber 2014; Giles 2021) and surface unspoken assumptions about the “mundane” (Ortner 2006; Das 2007; Brown 2006; High, Kelly and Mair 2012). Subsequently, the skills cultivated through ethnography can therefore be understood, not only as methods of intellectual inquiry, but as exercises in relational cognition, ethical engagement, and translation as they equip practitioners with the capacity to thoughtfully mediate complexity in a world that is increasingly defined by speed, scale, efficiency, epistemological and ontological binaries and technological mediation (Ingold 2018).

Critically, I propose that ethnography is a powerful form of metacognitive training. Metacognition, that is the thinking about one’s own thinking, is foundational in educational, cognitive, and developmental literature (e.g. Flavell 1979; Nelson and Narens 1990; Veenman, Van Hout-Wolters and Afflerbach 2006; Paris and Winograd 1990; Schraw and Dennison 1994). Recent advances have also emphasised that metacognitive capacities vary culturally, are socially mediated, and are amenable to training and reflection (Proust 2013; Proust and Fortier 2018). For instance, research on the cultural origins of metacognition shows that different cultural practices shape the ways people monitor and evaluate their own thought processes (Heyes, Bang, Shea, Frith and Fleming 2020).

Likewise, when ethnographers enter the “field” (the place where they will conduct their ethnographic work), they are not only observing others; they are absorbing, contesting, and revising their own categories, interpretive frames, and positionalities in real time (Erkonan 2020; Stodulka, Dinkelaker and Thajib 2019; Davies 2008). They learn to attend to the recursive feedback loop, that is, how their presence and questions shape what they see, and how what they see reshapes their thinking. In this sense, ethnographic fieldwork can be conceptualised as an embodied metacognitive lab; a space in which thinking and rethinking, noticing and adjusting, become habitual and others, albeit very few and with more of an opaque empirical link to metacognitive outcomes, have begun empirically and theoretically exploring this synergy in the literature (Zhang and Fathi 2025; Bruun 2019; Southcott and Crawford 2018)

In addition, pedagogy in ethnographic methods itself increasingly foregrounds practices that promote the ethnographers own personal reflection, collaborative inquiry, and decentring researcher privilege (Negrón et al. 2024; Trigger 2025; Davis 2008). Models such as vertically integrated projects, team-based learning, and explicit reflection modules are also helping students not just to do ethnography, but to develop awareness of how their own interpretive lenses mediate meaning (Zhang et al. 2023). These pedagogical trends echo calls across anthropology to realign disciplinary practices with ethical, relational, and socially responsive aims (Negrón et al. 2024; Ingold 2018). Therefore, I argue, albeit in a preliminary and theoretical way given I lack currently empirical evidence for this direct causal link, but draw from the rich pool of literature already conducted on ethnography (Erkonan 2020; Stodulka, Dinkelaker and Thajib 2019; Zhang and Fathi 2025; Davies 2008; Ingold 2021; Geertz 1993; Clifford and Marcus 1986; Negrón et al. 2024; Alimardanian and Heffernan 2024; Giles 2021), that ethnographic practice holds potential for training metacognitive sensitivity, that is,  the reflexive capacity to hold one’s own interpretive stance lightly, to monitor when one’s assumptions are strained, and to adjust those assumptions in dialogue when in the field.

Before elaborating on translational capital, it is necessary to situate the concept of translation within its broader theoretical genealogy from knowledge translation, linguistics and sociological theory, and then to show how my concept aims to build upon and extend these understandings. In the health and implementation sciences, knowledge translation models (see: Woolf 2008; Greenhalgh and Wieringa 2011; Smith, Molldrem, Farroni and Tumilty 2023; Fort, Herr, Shaw, Gutzmen and Starren 2017) emphasise the movement of research findings into policy and practice in a linear trajectory to denote that the impact of this dissemination (often made manifest in medical or scientific innovations) will travel from “bench to bedside” (Greenhalgh and Wieringa 2011). However, this use of “translation” often neglects the relational dynamics, positionality, identity work, and the affective labour inherent in translation work (Taxt 2024; Püttmann, Ruhose, and Thomsen 2023; Ho, Looi, and Goh’s 2020; Dadich and Boydell 2023). Evidently, here the concept of translation holds its own specific technical meaning, which doesn’t always map cohesively into the social sciences.

In critical sociology and science and technology studies, translation came to be conceptualised in more relational terms during the “cultural turn” of the late twentieth century as a critical departure from the use of positivist epistemologies and linear models of causality that were being used to formulate research enquiries (Fassin and Steinmetz 2023). This epistemological rupture, or “concept-quake” as Steinmetz (2023) describes it sought to foreground the more symbolic, discursive, and interpretive dimensions of social life by recognising that knowledge is not only socially mediated and historically relative but also embedded in systems of power, representation, and struggle (Dadich and Boydell 2023; Bielsa 2010, 2011, 2022; 2024; Fassin and Steinmetz 2023; Foucault 1972; Geertz 1973, 1993; Latour 2005). This shift brought disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, psychology and science and technology studies to the fore, where the entanglement of knowledge and society is considered constitutive of research itself, not peripheral to it. Some major contributions that emerged from this period were Bruno Latour’s (2005) actor-network theory which emphasised enrolment, alignment, and negotiation in networks of humans and nonhumans. Pierre Bourdieu’s (1986) concept of the “habitus”, the “field” and forms of capital which aimed to draw attention to how social, cultural, and symbolic forms of capital are deployed, negotiated, and converted across fields. Clifford Geertz (1973) developed the concept of “thick description” within anthropology to describe the process of ethnographic translation which is particularly influential here as I seek to flesh out the significance of ethnography, not only as a training in metacognition, but also, for its ability to help us develop “translation capital”.

Likewise, linguistic studies developed new insights into the process of translation in the 1980s and 90s (Even-Zohar 1978, 1990; Toury 1995; Bassnett and Lefevere 1990), where attention shifted from linguistic equivalence to rather acknowledge the political, ideological, and cultural work of translation and to trace how power, identity, and language shape meaning (Bielsa 2010, 2012, 2022, 2024; Doorslaer and McMartin 2022; Barbin 2014). This movement towards a “sociological turn” of translation has helped redefine scholarly communication not as a technical act of dissemination, but as a culturally embedded, institutionally mediated, and performatively enacted practice. Bielsa (2021) frames translation not as a tool of neutral intercomprehension but as a social relation forged in “spaces of incommensurability”. Translation, in this view, is a political act of provisional meaning-making across sites of epistemic and cultural tension.

A particularly important contribution here is Star and Griesemer’s (1989) concept of boundary objects, which explains how artefacts, formats, and practices enable knowledge to travel across different social worlds without requiring consensus. Recent reviews (Caccamo, Pittino, and Tell 2023) demonstrate how boundary objects function in knowledge integration and innovation by providing shared reference points across communities with divergent epistemic commitments. This literature helps explain how knowledge can move between groups. However, it leaves under-examined the question of who is able to mobilise these objects effectively and what capacities enable this movement.

Similarly, the contemporary literature on knowledge brokering (Bandola-Gill 2023; Krystallis and Jasim 2023; Vallance et al. 2025; Karcher et al. 2025) examines the roles, repertoires, organisational forms, and attributes that support the mediation of knowledge between research, policy, and practice. This scholarship moves beyond linear models and emphasises relationality, trust, negotiation, and contextual sensitivity. Yet here too, the focus remains on roles, organisations, and practices rather than on the embodied, cultivated capacities that allow individuals to perform this work across domains.

Building on this theoretical lineage and in particular the work of Bourdieu (1986), Bielsa (2011, 2012, 2022, 2024), and Geertz (1973), I introduce the concept of “translational capital”. Translational capital shifts the analytical focus from translation as a process, role, or object to translation as a cultivated human capability. It refers to the accumulated dispositions, skills, and sensibilities that enable individuals to render complex, contextually embedded social knowledge intelligible, actionable, and ethically grounded across divergent social worlds. Where boundary objects explain the mechanisms through which knowledge can travel, and knowledge brokering explains the roles and organisational practices that support this movement, translational capital explains the capacity that makes such movement possible. It is a form of capital developed through sustained ethnographic training, reflexivity, and cross-context engagement that allows actors to navigate epistemic, cultural, and institutional difference without collapsing nuance.

Here, I argue that anthropologists carry a unique ability to broker cross-cultural insights and therefore are embedded within fertile ground to develop forms of translational capital that are integral skills for the next economy and indeed, for fostering bridges and dialogue across diverse contexts.

I would like to propose that translational capital can be conceptualised in three interrelated dimensions. Firstly, “cognitive translational capital” can be understood as the capacity to extract patterns, frameworks, and interpretive insight from rich, messy social phenomena and communicate them coherently to different audiences while preserving critical nuance. Secondly, “affective translational capital” can be understood as the ability to attend to, interpret, and translate emotions, values, ethical stakes and relational contexts across audiences by generating empathy, resonance, and shared understanding. Lastly, “structural translational capital” enables the capacity to navigate institutional, disciplinary, professional, and organisational terrains, connecting domains (academia, policy, media, civic life) with ethical acumen and strategic sensitivity. I argue that, by emphasising relational, interpretive, and ethical dimensions, translational capital highlights the distinctively human skills, such as reflexive judgement, metacognition, empathy, and context-sensitive reasoning, that algorithms or artificial intelligence cannot replicate. Here, anthropology is well placed as it cultivates these capacities by enabling practitioners to observe, interpret, and mediate difference, sustain dialogue, and generate actionable insight that resonates across social, cultural, and institutional boundaries. In this sense, translational capital represents a critical and uniquely anthropological skill set which I believe is essential for navigating the complex terrains of contemporary society.

Translational capital is both distinct from, and connected to, Bourdieu’s (1986) foundational work on the forms of capital. While Bourdieu (1986) conceptualises economic, social, cultural, and symbolic capital as resources accumulated and deployed within specific social “fields”[1], translational capital differs in that it is less about accumulation within a single field and more about movement across fields, epistemic contexts, and institutional or social boundaries. Where “social capital” indexes networked resources and “cultural capital” reflects mastery of domain-specific knowledge and dispositions, “translational capital” rather emphasises the ability to mediate, reinterpret, and convey knowledge across heterogeneous fields by translating complex and field-specific knowledge into forms that are intelligible, actionable, and ethically attuned for audiences with differing assumptions, needs, and epistemic frameworks. Likewise, while “symbolic capital” signals legitimacy within a field, translational capital seeks to generate authority across fields by leveraging relational, cognitive, and affective work to render knowledge socially and institutionally salient beyond its disciplinary and epistemological boundaries. In this way, translational capital seeks to extend Bourdieu’s (1986) framework by arguing that forms of capital can be derived, not necessarily from what one knows, or who one knows, but how one translates cultural difference, epistemological schisms and brokers knowledge and understanding in dynamic and socially diverse contexts.

By framing ethnography as metacognitive training and translational capital as its pedagogical product, I propose a conceptual bridge between internal reflexivity and external translation. I argue that the disciplined cultivation of cultural awareness, interpretive sensitivity, and ethical attentiveness within ethnographic practice enables practitioners to move beyond the constraints of a single field by converting relational and cognitive insight into actionable forms of understanding that resonate across professional, social, and civic domains. Translational capital, therefore, positions anthropology not only as a knowledge‑producing discipline but as a practical, relational, and ethically attuned mode of engagement that is capable of informing dialogue and greater understanding across diverse forms of social, institutional, and public life.

Building on this early theoretical grounding for translational capital, I wish to briefly draw on nearly a decade of my work with Anthroprospective and the more recent Nostos series that we’ve held, which together foster the creation of relational “third spaces” (Lefebvre 1991). The monthly Nostos events that we hosted seek to bridge the worlds of academic research and everyday social life by creating conditions for anthropological insight to be actively translated and made meaningful to broader publics. During these gathering, we invite participants into more generative and reflective dialogue with guest anthropologists on topics ranging from relational ethnography and multispecies engagement to cultural ritual and the intersection of technology and society. Within these “contact zones” (Pratt 1992) or “counterpublics” (Fraser 1990), academics are invited to translate highly complex research into accessible formats through storytelling to cultivate greater understanding of various issues through an anthropological lens to a broad audience, many of whom come from non-academic or minimally anthropologically literate backgrounds. What has been particularly rewarding in hosting these events, however, is the frequent feedback from our community indicating that these monthly gatherings, and the knowledge shared within them have enable participants to articulate and make sense of aspects of their lived experiences that had previously been difficult to conceptualise, by providing new language, conceptual frameworks, and relational perspectives through which they can interpret social phenomena.

At the same time, these gatherings provide fertile ground for the cultivation of, and deeper understandings of translational capital as they provide the environment for which academics can develop and cultivate skills in translating their research, and indeed foundational anthropological concepts and frameworks, in more accessible ways to help foster greater sense-making around social, cultural, political or ecological issues thereby gaining greater translational capital which then can be applied to other aspects of their personal and professional lives. Likewise, it is interesting to witness the unfolding of affective translational capital as the audience members garner insights provided to them from the guest anthropologist and then apply those insights in group discussions to negotiate shared understanding and empathy on issues for which they may have vastly different viewpoints on. While Nostos and Anthroprospective do not yet constitute formal empirical demonstrations of the operation of “translational capital” or the various impacts of this form of capital in the “public sphere” (Habermas 1962), they offer compelling provisional illustrations of how anthropology, when rendered publicly accessible and relationally structured, might be able to scaffold metacognitive reflection, foster relational engagement, and generate translational skill by providing both a rich site for observing these processes in action and an invitation to further research into the social, ethical, and cognitive capacities anthropology can cultivate in contemporary society.

In the rapidly evolving contexts of the twenty-first century, I concur with (Eustorgio Rivera, Rivera-González, Escamilla-García and Carrillo Gamboa 2025; Yin, Zhang, Zhao and Tang 2024; Matos, Tonial, Monteiro, Selig and Edvinsson 2022) that relational forms of capital (such as trust, relatability, collaboration, empathy and reciprocity) will be vital to maintaining resilience in the digital era rather than purely financial or technological. Indeed, the ability to bridge perspectives across social, cultural, and professional divides and to navigate differences with ethical attentiveness, curiosity, and strategic insight is increasingly essential. It is here that I would like to land on two fundamental points. Firstly, I would like to make the case for ethnography as a vital practice in developing greater metacognitive skills that will be fundamental to the future of work and society, and secondly, that anthropologists hold unique capacities in brokering complex social phenomenon across diverse audiences whether in design spaces, innovation, climate change, legal proceedings, in media etc. and therefore this work presents itself as unique example of “translational capital” which I argue is deeply needed as we move forward.

Subsequently, in this short paper I have laid the preliminary foundations for two interlinked suggestions. Firstly, I argue that ethnography is not merely a method of social research but a vital training in metacognitive reflexivity, that is, a practice that cultivates awareness of how our frames, assumptions, and positionalities mediate what we see, shape what we ask, and filter what we say and I argue that this is increasingly important in a world where self-awareness and critical reflection are paramount. Secondly, I argue that anthropologists hold a unique ability to broker insight across social, cultural, and institutional divides, and this capacity, as I have theorised it here, can be thought of as translational capital, that is, a form of capital grounded in relational, narrative, and ethical sensibility, and essential for translating complexity into actionable understanding. Finally, in very briefly drawing together the theoretical work and the example of Anthroprospective and its monthly Nostos series, I have attempted to theoretically illustrate how metacognitive cultivation, and translational capital can co-emerge. For example, the inward scrutiny of one’s interpretive lens can feed the outward capacity to broker meaning, engage publics, and influence practice. In an age in which algorithms claim to automate “insight”, I argue that anthropology’s core human-scale skills around reflection, relationality, ethical disposition and cross-cultural translation, will continue to be distinctively vital.

As we move forward, I see the challenge we face as being both institutional and pedagogical, as how to empirically evidence and embed ethnographic metacognitive training more broadly in academic curricula, how to support public-facing translation infrastructures, and how to recognise translational capital as a legitimate scholarly output will be no small task, especially in today’s climate where we see the humanities and social sciences consistently and naively defunded and devalued (Leonard 2025; Cassidy 2025a,b,c; Townsend 2024). However, the stakes are high, but I believe that in bridging differences, fostering ethical dialogue, and preserving the capacity to think with rather than over others, anthropology can serve as a bulwark against the flattening logics of speed, scale, and superficial knowledge. In cultivating metacognitive awareness and translational capital, anthropologists, and practitioners trained in ethnographic sensibilities, are uniquely equipped to sustain the relational, reflective, and generative modes of human engagement that I argue are most urgently needed in our time.

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