The latest issue of Anthropology in Action (32/1), co-edited by group member Samira Marty in collaboration with Pardis Shafafi and Keir Martintakes HBO’s White Lotus (2020, 2021, 2025) as an anthropological provocation to explore how privilege operates through luxury tourism, labour, and wellness, and how the show digitally and through global marketing techniques reverberates beyond the screens.

The issue opens with an introduction by the co-editors. The White Lotus, a tv show that has captivated audiences globally by staging the spectacle of extreme wealth, here becomes a lens through which the contributors examine what popular representations of privilege can and cannot do. The introduction asks where entertainment ends and critique begins, and whether the two can ever be cleanly separated.

For a brief introduction to the special issue, listen to the podcast conversation with Marty, Martin, and Shafafi.

You can read the full special issue here (open access).