Abstract
Ethnographers often hear stories that, for the listener, cannot be. Explanations that shelve away such “weird” stories into cultural boxes or reframe them as metaphors for something familiar close the door not only on the theoretical possibilities of openness, but also do not do justice to their interlocutors’ own inquiries about the world. Here, I draw upon stories of ghosts and unsettling dreams taken from my fieldwork in Thailand, both from my interlocutors’ and my own experience, as a way to contradict evidentiary regimes. Taking up the idea of “the weird” from literary studies and the Buddhist idea of contradiction, I understand such stories not as representations of the mundane workings of economy or psychology, nor as culturally-bound narratives, but instead as a co-creation of a world always unfinished and unfixed. I argue that a productive, dialogic engagement with the weird can create new possibilities for how we relate to ethnography, theory, and, of course, the worlds in which we live.
Bionote
Andrew Alan Johnson is a cultural anthropologist whose work examines urban planning, memory and haunting, and human and nonhuman worlds in Thailand, especially in the Lao-speaking Northeast. He is the author of Mekong Dreaming (Duke University Press, 2020) and Ghosts of the New City (Hawai'i Press, 2014) as well as multiple journal articles.
Johnson was a writer for the video game series Sid Meier's Civilization VI and VII. Civilization is widely considered one of the most influential turn-based strategy games ever made. As of February 2026, Johnson works for the computer game developer Firaxis Games as a senior historian.
Johnson has previously taught at Yale-NUS College in Singapore, Princeton University, and most recently at Ashoka University.