Tim Hannigan’s ‘A Brief History of Indonesia’
I’m in two minds about Tim Hannigan’s A Brief History of Indonesia (2015). Part of my brain is cruelly happy that Hannigan’s book is so deficient in covering…
Tag: Book review
Tim Hannigan’s ‘A Brief History of Indonesia’
I’m in two minds about Tim Hannigan’s A Brief History of Indonesia (2015). Part of my brain is cruelly happy that Hannigan’s book is so deficient in covering…
Tim Hannigan’s ‘A Brief History of Indonesia’
I’m in two minds about Tim Hannigan’s A Brief History of Indonesia (2015). Part of my brain is cruelly happy that Hannigan’s book is so deficient in covering…
#Review: Illegality, Inc.: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe
It is a banal insight that law creates the illegal and the conditions for illegality. At the most basic level, crossing a border without the required identification (passport)…
A response to McKee and Pritchard’s reviews of ‘One Hour in Paris’
I am grateful to Tamar McKee and Maureen Pritchard for their insightful and critical engagement with One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery (University…
Response to Daniel Münster’s review of ‘The Darjeeling Distinction’
The Darjeeling Distinction, as Daniel Münster notes in his thoughtful review on Allegra Lab, is about both a place and a product. Darjeeling is nestled in the Himalayan…
#Review: Mohawk Interruptus
In the online forum Native Appropriations, Dr. Adrienne Keene writes “When you’re invisible in society . . . every representation matters” (Keene 2015). Keene’s need to explore, triangulate and discus…
#Review: Wrapped in the Flag of Israel
How can we conceive of the contemporary relationship between race, poverty, and bureaucracy? Smadar Lavie’s latest publication, an account of her experience as a Mizrahi single mother dependent…
#Review: When Humans Become Migrants
The current humanitarian crisis is not only a flux of events that have been occurring recently, despite the impression created by the latest media coverage. Indeed, statistics do…
#Review: Children and Borders
In September 2015, an image of a three year old Syrian child, lying lifeless on a Turkish beach, travelled the world in a matter of hours. In tragic…
#Review: Boyhood. Twelve Years on Film
“Fate met Chance; I don’t know what she said to him but it was something about pictures and time” (Lorelei, 104). It is nearly impossible, in writing this…
#Review: Migrants in Translation. Caring and the Logics of Difference in Contemporary Italy
Contemporary phenomena of migration and human trafficking pose challenges to modern states, which may struggle to deal effectively and fairly with how to address issues of integration and…
#Review: Governing Refugees. Justice, Order and Legal Pluralism
I was visiting Chiang Mai, Thailand, at around the same time travel magazines began to herald Myanmar as the “it” destination of 2015. When I mentioned my desire…
#Review: The Gloss of Harmony. The Politics of Policy-Making in Multilateral Organisations
I spent much of my fieldwork at a department of the UK Government grappling with a confusing dynamic between civil servants I worked with, and their ‘stakeholders’ from…
REDUX: The Rise and Fall of Human Rights in Occupied Palestine – by Lori Allen
When Lori Allen‘s The Rise and Fall of Human Rights: Cynicism and Politics in Occupied Palestine appeared last year, it was – of course – a book of timely…
#Review: Anthropology, Theatre and Development #Performance
In their introduction to Anthropology, Theatre and Development: The Transformative Potential of Performance, Alex Flynn and Jonas Tinius do an admirable job of lending conceptual coherence to the…
#Review: Kabul Carnival. Gender Politics in Postwar Afghanistan #Performance
I recently had the challenging pleasure of reading Julie Billaud’s Kabul Carnival on my first visit to Afghanistan. As a hybrid practitioner-academic who has spent the last couple…
#Review: After the Revolution. Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia
What is the relationship between democracy, development, disappointment, and failure? Is it possible to learn something about ‘democracy proper’ from an Eastern European context, fraught with problems…
#Review: Children of Afghanistan: The Path to Peace
In 1978, psychologist Jack Flasher defined the term ‘adultism’ as a way of perceiving children “not only as unconditionally subordinate until they attain legal adulthood but also, as…
#Review: On the Doorstep of Europe. Asylum and Citizenship in Greece
On the Doorstep of Europe is a vividly written ethnography of the asylum process in Greece, “with its ethos of mystification, unpredictability, and arbitrariness” (p.217), as well as very…
#Review: Gender in Refugee Law. From the Margins to the Centre
Since gender sensitivity was first given recognition under the official UNHCR Guidelines in the 1990s, approaches in decision making processes and the legal framework have constantly been influenced…
#Review: Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age – REDUX
Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age makes for a sobering reflection when read against the backdrop of recent global media stories about child and adult migrants…
anthro in the news 9/7/15
Chagos update The Financial Times reported on continuing efforts in the U.K. and elsewhere by displaced Chagos Islanders to return home and receive compensation for their forced…
#Review: Street Corner Secrets. Sex, Work, and Migration in the City of Mumbai
Albertin Sarrazin once wrote, “whether you’re on the lam or whether you’re out hustling, gold is worth nothing compared to silence” (p.149). Those marginalised into prostitution are exploited…