NEW! — Chris Hann: The new Völkerwanderungen: Hungary and Germany, Europe and Eurasia
I spent the last weeks of August and the first days of September in Hungary, close to the European Union’s border with Serbia. Never before had a routine…
Author: Focaal Web Editor
FocaalBlog Event: CUNY Panel Discussion on Puerto Rico’s Debt Crisis
On Tuesday, September 8, the City University of New York (CUNY) Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies is hosting a free panel discussion and presentation based…
NEW! — Joe Trapido: Elections, politics, and power in central and southern Africa
The conference “Elections in central and southern Africa, dynamics of exclusion and participation,” at SOAS on 26 June 2015, prompts me to some personal reflections. Elections in central…
NEW! — Ismael García Colón & Harry Franqui-Rivera: Puerto Rico Is NOT Greece
Notes on the Role of Debt in US Colonialism Early July 2015, at an event discussing the Greek debt crisis hosted by the German Federal Bank in Frankfurt,…
NEW! — Alan Bradshaw: European austerity and collective blame
According to Richard Seymour (2015), current European austerity politics ought to be regarded not as a temporary period of economic rationalization during crisis but rather as a shift…
NEW! — John Levack Drever: Sublime-sound-of-the-one-hand [Ryōan-ji]
My soundscape composition Sublime-sound-of-the-one-hand [Ryōan-ji] sounds out the acoustic ecology of the “quintessential … karesansui dry landscape garden” (UNESCO 1993: 41) Or, put another way, to …
NEW! — Chiara Ambrosio & Caterina Pasqualino: Tending to the Garden
Caterina Pasqualino is an anthropologist whose research within the realm of Gypsy flamenco for the past twenty years has culminated in her seminal book Flamenco Gitan. Her interest…
NEW! — Dave Lewis: “Field Work”
My engagement with the ideas and practices of fieldwork stems from my interest in anthropology and the classification of human “types” through the “science” of anthropometry in the…
NEW! — Ida Susser: An interview with Vicente Navarro
From the underground resistance under Franco to Podemos Vicente Navarro is a leading analyst of the history and origins of the financial crisis in Spain (and Europe in…
NEW! — David Cooney: The Montréal student protests
Vers un Automne Érable?1 Whenever threatened, the first thing power restricts is the ability to linger or assemble in the street. —Henri Lefebvre2 In September of 2014, I…
NEW!—Theodoros Rakopoulos: Of direct and default democracy: The debt referendum in Greece
Thessaloniki, 4–5 July 2015 Default has a twofold meaning: it means both “taken for granted,” or the known path, and an economic halt on someone’s debts. Greece has…
Sharryn Kasmir: Mondragón coops and the anthropological imagination
In 2013, Fagor Electrodomésticos, the home appliance division of the world-renowned Mondragón cooperative group, declared bankruptcy. The announcement disheartened coop advocates who consider Mondragó…
Manissa Maharawal: Shut it down: Notes on the #blacklivesmatter protests – Part 2
Part 2. Breaking windows and broken windows policing: “Do we have the same level of outrage when a young black person gets killed as we do when a…
Marieke Brandt: The hidden realities behind Saudi Arabia’s Operation Decisive Storm in Yemen
In recent weeks, as part of Operation Decisive Storm, a military coalition of ten predominantly Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia has been shelling military installations, arms stockpiles,…
Andrea Luka Zimmerman: Estates of being: Thoughts on the place of living and working
“Between the experience of living a normal life at this moment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give a sense of that life, the…
NEW! — Martin Webb: Contemporary Indian anti-corruption movements and political aesthetics
To appreciate the role of aesthetics in politics, we might look to the recent resurgence of popular anti-corruption movements in India. In 2011 and 2012, mass protests by…
NEW! — Massimiliano Mollona: Ethnographic filmmaking and the political imagination: A review of “Desert People” by Ian Dunlop (1967)
In the opening sequences of Desert People (1967, 49 minutes, Australian National Film Board), we read, “This is a film on two families of the western Australian desert.”…
NEW! — Susana Narotzky: Hope for Change: The Problem with Podemos
Podemos is hailed by many as the only hope in a Spanish landscape devastated by austerity. In the elections to the European parliament (2014), Podemos received 7.97 percent…
Tim Anderson: Theorizing the social musician
Capital’s resilience as technologies and cultures change lies in the systematic priority placed on value development and extraction. However, this does not imply that actors in these systems…
Rajalakshmi Nadadur Kannan: Copyright, capitalism, and a postcolonial critique of Karnatic music
Karnatic music, or South Indian classical music, is understood as “religious” music, deemed to be “divinely inspired,” and performers are seen as embodying the divine. Because of its…