Chris Hann: Beleaguered pseudocontinent: Happy birthday, Europe!
This post is part of a feature on anthropologists on the EU at 60, moderated and edited by Don Kalb (Central European University and University of Bergen). Sixty…
Author: Focaal Web Editor
Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Norway and the transformation of the EU
This post is part of a feature on anthropologists on the EU at 60, moderated and edited by Don Kalb (Central European University and University of Bergen). In…
Antonio De Lauri: Times of walls: The politics of fencing in the contemporary world
In his well-known poem “Mending Wall” (1914), Robert Frost effectively depicted the act of walling: Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling…
Focaal Volume 2017, Issue 77: Nonrecording states
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.co…
Bruce Kapferer: Ideas on populism: The paradox of democracy and the rise of the corporate state
“All forms of the state have democracy for their truth, and for that reason are false to the extent that they are not democracy.” — Karl Marx, Critique…
Florin Poenaru: Romanian protests: A cake with three layers (and a cherry on top)
In the past four weeks, Romania has witnessed some of the biggest protests in the post-communist era. Hundreds of thousands of people in cities across the country took…
Stephen P. Reyna: Is Mr. Trump a legitimacy crisis?
In the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, one US representative, John Lewis, fueled widespread media debates with a claim that he does not believe Mr. Trump to…
Carlos de la Torre: Trump: Fascist or populist?
Douglas Kellner in American Nightmare writes, “certainly [Donald] Trump is not Hitler and his followers are not technically fascists, although I believe that we can use the term…
Kate Crehan: Gramsci/Trump: Reflections from a fascist jail cell
Antonio Gramsci, condemned by Benito Mussolini to twenty years in prison, wrote his celebrated prison notebooks while sitting in a succession of fascist jails. He reflects on some…
Steven Sampson: Angry white males as suffering subjects
“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain…
Steven Sampson: Angry white males as suffering subjects
“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain…
Steven Sampson: Angry white males as suffering subjects
“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain…
Steven Sampson: Angry white males as suffering subjects
“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain…
Focaal Volume 2016, Issue 76: Adivasi and Dalit political pathways in India
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.co…
Gavin Smith: Out of the academic enclosure
Marc Edelman ends his recent piece on FocaalBlog, “The forces of justice and decency will need to move from feel-good slacktivism to the streets, to face-to-face engagement, whether…
Marc Edelman: The nastiest candidate won: Now what?
In the end it was filmmaker Michael Moore who got it right. It wasn’t Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com, with his sophisticated polling models, or Nobel Prize winning economist…
Leo Grob: Ruptures, Consolidations, Continuities: Reconsidering Global Economic Processes since 1945
This conference report was first published in H-Soz-Kult; the full conference program can be found here. The 1970s increasingly move into the spotlight of contemporary history research. The…
Jonathan DeVore: Reflections on crisis, land, and resilience in Brazil’s politics of distribution
The rightful share and the lion’s share Brazil is at a critical juncture. Improvements in social welfare that have been achieved over the past two decades threaten to…
Lesley Gill and Norbert Ross: What’s Class Got to Do with It?
Unsettled by Donald Trump’s bigotry and xenophobia, liberal pundits have struggled to understand his improbable anointment as the nominee of the Republican party. Many have sought answers in…
Bruce Kapferer: Brexit and Remain: A pox on all their houses
A crisis is always good for humor. The English satirical magazine Private Eye caught the spirit of uncertainty and the possible tragedy of Brexit—that many of those who…
Sian Lazar: Learning to live with crisis: How Brexit brought Latin America home to me
The European Union is a free trade area that enables multinational corporations to take advantage of low tax regimes for their head offices and of low labor costs…
Karen Sykes: The estranged citizens of Brexit
It was political 16 June 2016 I first heard the BBC Radio 4 announce the death of the Labour MP for the Spen Valley, West Yorkshire while I…
Alessandro Zagato: Teachers struggles and low intensity warfare in the south of Mexico
The teachers’ campaign in defense of public education and against the neoliberal reforms being introduced by the Mexican government has ignited a new cycle of social struggles and…
Douglas R. Holmes: No Exit: London, July 2016
I arrived in London on 10 July, a few weeks after the Brexit referendum. I was in Parliament the following day—the day Theresa May was named the new…