Don Nonini: The China Conundrum and The Current Conjuncture
Strategic Ambivalence or Disguised Conflict? China’s Reactions to Russia’s War on Ukraine and to Covid Why does China’s response so far to the Russian invasion of Ukraine “not…
Author: Focaal Web Editor
Focaalblog: New Times? Confronting the Escalating Crises of Global Capitalism
Karl Polanyi Research Center for Global Social Studies and the Commission on Global Transformations and Marxian Anthropology – IUAES, in cooperation with the Working Group for Public Sociology…
Ida Susser: Melenchon: the creation of a left political bloc
On June 19, 2022, the united left party, NUPES (New Ecological and Social Popular Union), cobbled together by Jean-Luc Melenchon in less than two months, won enough seats…
Alice Tilche & Akshay Khanna: Embodying emotions in theatre and film
This is the second in our series of blogposts in relation to the Budhan podcast project, a community led initiative that has sought to capture the experiences of…
Denys Gorbach: Ukrainian identity map in wartime: Thesis-antithesis-synthesis?
The cultural and linguistic heterogeneity of Ukraine is a well-known fact, used and abused in explanations of the ongoing war. Having taken root in the early modern period…
Volodymyr Artiukh: The political logic of Russia’s imperialism
The debate around the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the previous contributions in FocaalBlog, has shifted from the ‘either NATO or Russia’ dichotomy to a more nuanced exchange…
Khin Thazin and Stephen Campbell: How the Myanmar coup has impacted migrant workers abroad
The February 2021 military coup in Myanmar put an end to the country’s ten-year period of quasi-civilian electoral rule—the so-called democratic transition, as it was optimistically called. Since…
Alice Tilche & Akshay Kanna: The Village of the Dead
“Near Ahmedabad’s civil hospital, in a small dilapidated house. A dog lives with his wife and their children. After two days, the dog returns to his home. Af…
William Suárez-Gómez and Ismael García-Colón: Puerto Rico: Resistance in the world’s oldest colony
In July 2019, Puerto Rico was in turmoil. An organic movement asking for the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló emerged throughout this US colonial territory. After 12 days…
Ståle Knudsen: Debts and the end for infrastructure fetishism in Turkey
The immense new Istanbul Airport, additional spectacular bridges over the straights, the Marmaray metro/train tunnel under the Bosporus, high-speed trains, highways, extension of the Istanbul metro ne…
Evan Smith: Love milkshakes, hate racism: A short history of throwing food at the Far Right
An earlier version of this article first appeared on Hatful of History. In the last month, milkshakes have been lobbed at several far-right candidates in the European elections…
Stephen Campbell: Touring Myanmar’s leftist history
For more by the author, see his article “Putting-Out’s Return: Informalization and Differential Subsumption in Thailand’s Garment Sector” in Focaal, freely available to all rea…
Tereza Kuldova: Think before you “heart” it: NZ street gangs guarding mosques in the aftermath of terror a PR stunt
Over the past two days, my Facebook feed has been flooded with shares of articles featuring New Zealand patched street gangs and outlaw motorcycle clubs—Mongrel Mob, Black Power,…
Heiko Henkel and Sindre Bangstad: The politics of affect: Anthropological perspectives on the rise of far-right and right-wing populism in the West
This is the first part of a panel held during the 2017 American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The second part is freely available to all…
Focaal Volume 2019, Issue 83: The anthropology of austerity
We are pleased to announce that the latest issue of Focaal – Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology has recently published and is available online at www.berghahnjournals.com/focaal. This issu…
Michaela Schäuble: Ecstasy: A review of two recent exhibitions on consciousness-expanding experience
In his classic Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession, I. M. Lewis (1971) contends that ritual, belief, and spiritual experience are the three cornerstones of…
Luisa Steur: A Women’s Wall against the fascist menace in Kerala? Some less-comfortable observations
On New Year’s Day, the world was treated to the spectacle of a 640-kilometer-long “Women’s Wall” in Kerala (South India). This human chain of more than five million…
Kristóf Szombati: Protesting the “slave law” in Hungary: The erosion of illiberal hegemony?
In recent weeks, Hungary has again made international headlines. This time, it was a popular movement born out of resistance to the latest rewriting of the labor code—which…
Joshua Clover: The roundabout riots
Much has been written about the gilets jaunes and their relation to both politics, of the left and the right, and historical waves of labor unrest. In this…
Agnieszka Pasieka: Who is afraid of fascists? The Polish independence march and the rise of the (far?) right
“Polish leaders marched with the far right” was perhaps the most common description of the massive demonstration that took place in Warsaw on National Independence Day, 11 November.…
Victor Albert: Brazil’s Homeless Workers’ Movement is an assertive social work organization
On 21 October, Jair Bolsonaro, the now president-elect of Brazil, made an announcement via his smartphone that was transmitted to crowds of supporters gathered in São Paulo: “Criminals…
Cemile Gizem Dinçer and Eda Sevinin: Migration, activist research, and the politics of location: An interview with Nicholas De Genova (part 2)
The second part of this interview with Nicholas De Genova moves into an analysis of the so-called refugee crisis since 2015 and possibilities for militant academic research that…
Cemile Gizem Dinçer and Eda Sevinin: Migration, activist research, and the politics of location: An interview with Nicholas De Genova (part 1)
In Turkey, especially after the Syrians’ arrival following 2011, the field of migration studies has more or less confined itself to mainstream discussions such as integration, social cohesion,…
Flávio Eiró: On Bolsonaro: Brazilian democracy at risk
Picture a street handcraft market in a touristic village called Porto de Galinhas in Pernambuco, Northeast Region of Brazil. A few days before the second round of the…