#PoliticalEngagements: Defiant Engagements
Working in political environments that run counter to our personal values and commitments, and with people who are challenging these contexts in different ways, led us to think…
Tag: activism
#PoliticalEngagements: Introduction
Ethnography and Political Engagement This Thematic Thread emerged from a workshop organised (online) at the LSE in February 2021, entitled “In the moment and after the fact: Ethnographic…
When Cash Rules: A Local Researcher/Activist’s Fieldnotes on “Passive Locals” Living Around Mailiao’s Petrochemical Complex
Yunlin is a coastal county in Western Taiwan famous for its agricultural produce, also known as “the barn of Taiwan.” However, the exchange value of agricultural produce has…
Miss Tampon Liberty
In the 1980s, when menstruation was generally considered taboo, artist Jay Critchley made art out of discarded plastic tampon applicators washed up and collected on local beaches. With…
Reading Lists: Waste Colonialism and Palestine
When there’s conflict, academics and teachers will often put together a reading list or syllabus to show the breadth and depth of knowledge on a topic that is…
Theorie des #Hashtags
Der Hashtag ist längst zu einem Zeichen für die kollektive Verschlagwortung der Welt geworden. Es verspricht die Anhäufung öffentlicher Aufmerksamkeit auch für marginale Stimmen. Gleichzeitig bringt e…
Writing Life No. 9: An interview with Danya Fast by Robert Lorway
It is 11 am in Vancouver. Danya sits at a desk beside a large window that looks out onto tree tops and electrical wires. Rain pools in the…
Data Activism and Petro-Public Knowledge “Across Borders”: The Formosa Plastics Global Archive
When our research group entered the Formosa Plastics museum in Taiwan, the first thing we noticed was a massive piece of kauri wood, sitting protected under a dome…
Solidarity, infrastructure and critical pedagogy during COVID-19: Lessons from Brazil by Dominique P. Béhague
Even before the pandemic hit Brazil’s favelas, residents began organizing to protect themselves — against both the novel coronavirus and the government’s active suppression of effective public …
Chronic Experimentation by Kane Race
The introduction of effective combination antiretroviral therapy for HIV disease in 1996 was commonly narrated as a major event that transformed HIV from an inevitable death sentence into…
On Wishcycling
Wishcycling is the process of placing discards into the recycling bin even when there’s little to no chance for their recovery. The term entered common use over the…
The Spectrum of Research and Practice in Guatemalan Science Studies
On November 21, 2020, protestors flooded the historic and political center of Guatemala City over the congressional approval of a budget bill of nearly twelve billion dollars (or ninety-nine billion…
Mobilizing Cemeteries, Representing Ancestors: The Infrastructure of Protest and the Anti-Petroleum Complex Movement in Pengerang, Malaysia
Resisting the “Rotterdam Port of the East” In 2011, the prime minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, and the CEO of the national oil company Petronas, Shamsul Azhar Abbas,…
Snake Oil: A Memoir on the Rise of ‘Trafficking’
When future historians try to understand what ‘trafficking’ meant in the first 20 years of the 21st century, I hope this memoir gives them pause. Recording how my…
Sexworkers’ long history as political experts, English translation: Thierry Schaffauser
I’ve translated Thierry’s reflections published the other day as faithfully to his tone as I could and checked with him, so here’s the piece with the same title,…
Sexworkers’ long history as political experts: Thierry Schaffauser
The other day Thierry Schaffauser posted some reflections on facebook on the history of sexworkers as thinkers and leaders in activism for social change. Objecting to the exclusion…
Mourning while fighting for justice: The first months of the NOI DENUNCEREMO association, Bergamo, Italy by Chiara Alfieri
This post was co-authored by members of CoMeSCov program who contributed to the development of research questions, data collection tools and data analysis: Firmin Kra, Francesca Mininel, Fleur…
There’s no such thing as “We”
Put simply, evoking the universal “we” is a way to discard differences and maintain business as usual.
Staying (at Home) with Brain Fog: “Un-witting” Patient Activism by Emily Lim Rogers
Scene 1: It’s Sunday afternoon, around one o’clock, and a group of a dozen or so people log onto a video call from their apartments. Occasionally someone’s cat…
Black Latinx Activists on Anti-Blackness
A few weeks ago, the Association of Latina/o & Latinx Anthropologists (ALLA) released a statement condemning anti-Black violence and calling for “an intimate reckoning with anti-Blackness and whit…
“Islands in a sea of disbelief” – Militant activism in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany
It took us six years, but I’m very pleased to announce that, at last, our book: Islamic Militant Activism in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany – ‘Islands in…
Films & videos on media activism & more
This is a selection of films and videos on mediated activism, anthropological perspectives on media and culture, and globalization and (de)colonization in relation to media.Compiled by Philipp Budka…
Towards anthropological self-de-confinement #PostCoronaUniversity
While we now seem to be approaching post-confinement, and after the closure of campuses and improvised conversion to online teaching, there has been much discussion regarding the long-term…
Remembering Dr Abhay Xaxa, 1983-2020
“So I draw my own picture, and invent my own grammar, I make my own tools to fight my own battle, For me, my people, my world, and…