Invisible Lines, Sacrificial Children and Touchy Subjects: Ethics in Psychiatric Anthropology
As I now write up my data, I’m representing people that I can no longer consult. I can only draw on the words they gave me and the…
Tag: Blog
Living and F*cking with Acronyms: A response to Dennis Altman’s call to rethink LGBTI
Last week Australian academic Dennis Altman published a provocative piece in The Conversation, suggesting that it was time to re think the label LGBTI. In the place of…
Why YOU Should Be an Academic Cyborg (and Maybe Already Are)
Although I’ve often been heard to sigh and groan that “technology hates me”, just like any other self-respecting anthropologist, in this post I want to consider just what…
Quinn Slobodian: Against the neoliberalism taboo
Daniel Rodgers has written the latest would-be obituary for neoliberalism as a category of analysis, hot off the press in the first 2018 issue of Dissent magazine. Like…
The Price of Eggs: Iran’s protests beyond democracy and capitalism
As the dust settles on Iran’s recent bout of protests, the surge of commentary, punditry, and analysis is likely to continue, no longer working to explain these apparently…
Annual Health Check?
“That will be next year’s project”, say many of us. “By then, I’ll be ready for it”, we might add. These kinds of statements also featured in several conversations…
NDNHISTORYRESEARCH End of the Year 2017 Wrap
This year, 2017, has shown a lot of growth after the 2016 breakout year, capping two years of amazing histories being written, and an awesome response from my…
David Hamou and Ida Susser: Where to Catalonia?: Is this commoning? What for independence?
As we sit here in Barcelona, a historic center of anarchism and left resistance, the questions debated in the most recent Focaal special section “Exploring the urban commons” confront us.…
Focaal Volume 2017, Issue 79: Exploring the urban commons
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…
Mahmudul H Sumon: An anonymous visit to a garment factory in Bangladesh
After the Tazreen Fashions factory fire (2012) and the Rana Plaza collapse (2013), which killed 119 and 1,136 workers, respectively, the garment sector of Bangladesh has seen the…
Jeremy Morris: Cheesed off, but not because of sanctions: Russians adapt to immiseration as global capital increases its grip
With the constant, confusing, and often misinformed media noise around Russia, you would be forgiven for believing a number of unhelpfully distorting half-truths: that Russia has been a…
Are You Living in Haste?
Can you engage in the present moment and let go of your other concerns while not engaged in a) an activity that demands all your attention (e.g. rock…
Nithya Natarajan: Behind the Indian Boom
“Behind the Indian Boom: Inequality and Resistance at the Heart of Economic Growth” is an exhibition curated by Alpa Shah and Simon Chambers, located in the Brunei Gallery…
New journal: Public Anthropologist
Dear Allies, we are happy to share with you the news about the launch of the new journal Public Anthropologist. Founded by our ally Antonio De Lauri and published by…
Like a Skin
For those of us who have grown up in the ‘West’, we tend to think of religion as a customizable category. Some of us are born into a…
It’s Not Just Your Parents’ Fault
Did you know that your mind is a cesspit of anger, and fear, and unresolved moments from your childhood? It’s not just you. Apparently everyone is living in…
Axel Rudi: Independence from Whom? The Aftermath of the Kurdish Referendum
In the future, people will say, “On the 16th of October, it happened again.” The Kurds were once again betrayed by the international community. Afraid of losing their…
In Academia, All You Need is Love
Questions about Exploitation and Invisible Work in Academia It is an open secret amongst academics that universities exploit the labour of their academic staff, and more importantly, that…
Johan Fischer: Veg or non-veg? On fieldwork and food in India
Reporting from an ongoing fieldwork in Hyderabad, India, the central topic of this piece is the ways in which the vegetarian and the nonvegetarian are understood, practiced, and…
When ‘White Privilege’ Becomes Uncomfortably Familiar
Author: Nonie Tuxen, PhD candidate in the Sociology of Education at the ANU. Nonie’s research explores youth engagement with international education and how class status is correspondingly (re)produce…
The Restitution of the Dead
On the 7th of September 2017, Syrian national Mouaz Al-Nass, a singer and drummer, recorded and then uploaded a video of himself reciting the adhan, the Islamic call…
Soe Lin Aung: Three theses on the crisis in Rakhine
By now, the main contours of the recent events in Rakhine State, in western Myanmar, are well-known. On August 25, an insurgent group calling itself the Arakan Rohingya…
Joe Trapido: Breaking Rocks: Music, Ideology and Economic Collapse, from Paris to Kinshasa
Breaking Rocks is a volume of the Dislocations series published by Berghahn Books, a series closely associated with Focaal and FocaalBlog. The immense dislocations and suffering caused by…
Chris Hann: Hayek versus Polanyi in Montréal: Global society as markets, all the way across?
The workshop “Geographies of Markets”—hosted over three days in mid-June 2017 by the Karl Polanyi Institute of Political Economy at Concordia University, Montréal—gave scholars from a wide range…