“Assisted Freedom”: Carceral Transmutation and Juvenile Offenders in Brazil
By Sara R. Munhoz In 2012, during my fieldwork in a semi-open socio-educational center on the outskirts of the city of São Paulo, I participated in a meeting…
Category: English
Inside Out: Confinement, Revolt and Repression in Nicaragua
By Julienne Weegels Since 18 April 2018, the force deployed by the Sandinista state against a surge of popular protest has left over 400 dead, over 2,000 injured,…
Teaching Anthropology in 2018
Recently, a colleague contacted me with a very interesting and specific question. At the time, I was on the road and too busy to address his inquiry. I…
Art, neuroscience and ethnography
Neuroscience The brain is a wild and wonderful thing. Even in a damaged, broken, or diseased state, it performs wonders. Oliver Sacks, neurologist and prolific writer, knew this…
Book Review: British Social Theory: Recovering Lost Traditions Before 1950 by John Scott
In British Social Theory: Recovering Lost Traditions Before 1950, John Scott revisits the history of social theory and explores the works of many obscure, overlooked or neglected theorists born in…
Bill Ivey, “Rebuilding an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America” (Indiana UP, 2018)
Bill Ivey’s Rebuilding an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America (Indiana University Press, 2018) advances the idea that we are entering a post-enlightenment world increasingly characterized by alter… Visit New…
Welcome to the Authoritarian Kleptocracy, Part XXVIII
Apologies for the very long delay in website updates! We are now really on “Welcome to the Authoritarian Kleptocracy, Part One Billion”. Here’s what happened on a personal…
Book Review: Race Women Internationalists: Activist-Intellectuals and Global Freedom Struggles by Imaobong D. Umoren
In Race Women Internationalists: Activist-Intellectuals and Global Freedom Struggles, Imaobong D. Umoren traces the lives of three black women activist-intellectuals—Una Marson, Paulette Nardal and Es…
Thinking pain by Annelieke Driessen
Care worker Annika announces that she does not want to go to Mr Moran. “He always complains.” “I’ll go”, says her colleague Robin, and turning to me he…
Taking part in and being part of giving birth: Enacting participation in a midwife-led birth situation by Annekatrin Skeide
According to her midwife Jana, Mira’s was a textbook birth: it was quite fast, even for a second birth, and proceeded without any complications. In reflecting on her…
Opening up shrinking life-worlds by Maarten van Westen
Lives change dramatically as dementia progresses. Using observations of people suffering from obsessions and compulsions, I will analyse this change along three dimensions. Obsessive-Compulsive Disord…
Peripheral participants: Thinking through distortion, displacement, nullification by Henrik Vigh
Warm haze As I spoke, people looked at me worriedly. The kindness in their eyes was mixed with curiosity and concern. Rather than answering me, they turned to…
Fed up security officers and drunk policemen in Nairobi by Francesco Colona
Greenwoods is a neighbourhood in Nairobi, Kenya, dotted with diplomatic residences. At the time of my research on public-private assemblages of security provision and the reconfiguration of citizenshi…
Refraction of participation by Jeannette Pols
Refraction of participation What does it mean to participate? What does participation do?[1] The etymology of ‘participation’ traces from the Latin word participationem, which translates as ‘sharing, …
Irfan Ahmad, “Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace” (UNC Press, 2017)
In the last few decades, questions relating to Islam’s compatibility with liberal secular democracy, or the question of why Islam remains incompatible with Western liberal norms of thought…
Against Risk Perception: The Deficit Model and Public Understandings of Risk
The deficit model frames public controversies about contamination as a lack of scientific understanding or trust in government institutions. People are seen as deficient in knowledge about an…
Review: Le plus beau métier du monde
** This article first appeared in Allegra. Republished here with permission ** by Miriam Odoni Giulia Mensitieri’s book “Le plus beau métier du monde” Dans les coulisses de…
Soziologiemagazin goes DGS Kongress 2018: Eine Reflexion
Die Panelbeiträge und Diskussionen des 39. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Göttingen wirken gedanklich noch nach, das milde Göttinger Stadtkolorit liegt noch in der Luft und…
In The Journals, August 2018 by Ann Marie Thornburg
Cultural Anthropology (Open Access) “A politics of habitability: plants, healing and sovereignty in a toxic world” Stacey Ann Langwick For Tanzanians, modern bodies bear complicated toxi…
Ep. #23 Decolonizing anthropology, with Sana Ashraf and Bruma Rios-Mendoza: this month on TFS
“We think we are supposed to be comfortable. As long as we are trying to do everything to be comfortable, we will never make a change.” In this…
From Reciprocity to Relationality: Anthropological Possibilities
In September 2018 the wonderful journal Cultural Anthropology published a special edition of their Hot Spots series that I edited. You can find the link to webpage for…
Freigeistige Organisationen als Gegenstand der Religionswissenschaft: Typen, Strategien, Widersprüche
Diesen Monat erschien die Dissertation von Stefan Schröder (Universität Bayreuth), Freigeistige Organisationen in Deutschland. Weltanschauliche Entwicklungen und strategische Spannungen nach der huma…
Salafismus in Deutschland: Gefährliche Wissenschaft? Rezension zum Werk Nina Käsehages
Wenn man diese Überschrift liest, mag das erstmal so klingen, als ob es um die Gefährlichkeit des Forschungsgegenstandes selbst ging, ähnlich einem glücklicherweise abgebrochenen Forschungsunterfange…
Institutionalisering van salafisme – Waar is de promotor? Een reactie van Ruben Gowricharn
Gastauteur: Prof. dr. Ruben Gowricharn ‘Waar is de promotor?’ Op 4 september 2018 promoveerde Mohammad Soroush aan de Tilburg University. De centrale vraagstelling had betrekking op de institutionele…