Oana Mateescu: The Romanian family referendum: Or, how I became a sexo-Marxist
“By the way, Russia had the first sexual revolution. Lenin was a big homosexual; as for Karl and Marx, I think they were together. But they realized on…
Author: Focaal Web Editor
Thomas Strong: Dispossession as historical allegory: Observing Dublin’s housing crisis
In Dublin today, an intensifying housing crisis is provoking a dramatic public response. Activists, spearheaded by groups like Dublin Central Housing Action, occupy empty properties, draping banners f…
Focaal Volume 2018, Issue 82: Capitalism and global anthropology: Marxism resurgent
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…
Massimiliano Mollona: Authoritarian Brazil redux?
On Sunday, 7 October, the Brazilian people will go to the polls to elect their next president. There has never been such a dramatic election since 15 January…
Vlad Schüler-Costa: Academic precarity and the false coin of our own dreams
A specter haunted EASA2018—the specter of precarity. Like a “frightful hobgoblin” (that, one could argue, is a more suitable, if inaccurate, translation of Marx’s Gespenst), it appeared in…
Bruce Kapferer: The Hau complicity: An event in the crisis of anthropology
Hau is a phenomenon. It burst on the scene of the relatively small academic scholarly world of anthropology capturing scholars from around the globe into its spirit. Hau…
Fiona Murphy: When gadflies become horses: On the unlikelihood of ethical critique from the academy
Something smells of bullshit. It has for a long time. Caught in the spectacular entanglements of the neoliberal university, academic work is being actively “bullshitized.” Audit cultures, the…
Don Kalb: HAU not: For David Graeber and the anthropological precariate
When HAU was launched, my grad students at Central European University were celebrating. Open access! Finally, a breach in the wall that separated the haves from the have-nots.…
Patrick Neveling: HAU and the latest stage of capitalism
As anthropology assesses an increasing number of reports about abuse, bullying, sexism, and financial misconduct and fraud at its now shooting-star journal HAU, it is important to keep…
Charles Dolph: The second time as farce? The IMF returns to Argentina
Argentina’s Mauricio Macri administration unexpectedly announced recently that it had opened negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a Stand-By Arrangement amid intense monetary an…
Ling-I Chu and Jinn-Yuh Hsu: Cold War islands and the rebordering of the nation/state: Kinma in the Taiwan Strait
Across the globe, the Cold War abruptly delineated new borders and defined friends and enemies. Yet, there are few regions in which this was as pronounced as in…
Maddalena Gretel Cammelli and Jonathan Friedman: PC Worlds: Political Correctness and Rising Elites at the End of Hegemony
Maddalena Gretel Cammelli interviews Jonathan Friedman on his new book, PC Worlds. A version of this interview has also been published in Italian on Il Lavoro Culturale. MGC:…
David Loher: Complicity or pragmatism? A labor movement and its fight against the asbestos industry
This post is part of a feature on “How Capitalists Think,” moderated and edited by Patrick Neveling (University of Bergen) and Tijo Salverda (University of Cologne). This contribution…
Kevin Poperl and Ida Susser: Inventing a technological commons: Confronting the engine of Macron
This post is part of a feature on “How Capitalists Think,” moderated and edited by Patrick Neveling (University of Bergen) and Tijo Salverda (University of Cologne). This blog…
Tijo Salverda: Aiming to keep capitalist accumulation in check: The role of the global land rush’s fiercest critics
This post is part of a feature on “How Capitalists Think,” moderated and edited by Patrick Neveling (University of Bergen) and Tijo Salverda (University of Cologne). Following the…
Hadas Weiss: Reflections on Moishe Postone’s legacy for anthropology
As anthropologists, we strive to speak up for the often marginalized and underprivileged populations we study. Aiming to do so rigorously by heeding the structures that create and…
Eeva Kesküla: How capitalists think about labor dynasties and corporate ethics
This contribution looks at the implications of how capitalists think about corporate ethics and moral obligations in monoindustrial towns. I present the cases of two mining towns in…
The Life of Viktor (An Easter Folktale from Central Europe)
Editorial note: This text was submitted by a colleague who wishes to remain anonymous; he has informed us that “this version of Viktor’s tale has been embellished in…
Georg Materna: “Two tribes of capitalists”: Neoconomists and politiconomists in a Senegalese marketplace
Research on capitalism commonly distinguishes between neoclassical economics and political economy. If neoclassical economics have dominated scientific debates since the 1930s at the latest, the ninet…
Patrick Neveling and Tijo Salverda: How capitalists think—about belonging, moralities, global entanglements, and historical social processes, for example
Given that nowadays most people live in societies organized according to capitalist principles and given that few oppose those principles fundamentally, capitalists may well constitute the world’s lar…
Focaal Volume 2018, Issue 80: The political in/of Europe
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 its new home, www.berghahnjournals.com/foc…
Marc Edelman: Sacrifice zones in rural and nonmetro USA: Fertile soil for authoritarian populism
Sacrifice zones—abandoned, economically shattered places, with growing social and health problems—are spreading in historically white rural areas and small towns across the United States. Rural declin…
David Graeber: Manufactured ignorance: The strange case of Juan Cole and the Kurdish Freedom Movement, and the International Liberal Intelligentsia
This is a story about how a well-meaning liberal American professor can end up becoming an active propagandist for right-wing forces attempting to destroy a feminist revolution. •…
Heike Becker: “Global 1968” on the African continent
Fifty years after student protests shook much of the Cold War world, in the “West” and in the “East,” “Global 1968” has become the catchphrase to describe these…