Perpetual War
Perpetual War Text by Katherine T. McCaffrey. Photos by Bonnie Donohue. Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, is home to 107 abandoned military bunkers, a legacy of the U.S. naval…
Tag: colonialism
anthro in the news 11/30/2015
ISIS recruits through friends and social media An article in the New York Times on ISIS recruitment provides extensive commentary from cultural anthropologist Scott Atran, co-founder of the…
Artillery in Melaka, 1511 CE
In 1511, a Portuguese force under Afonso de Albuquerque successfully invaded the city-state of Melaka on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. At the time, Melaka…
Artillery in Melaka, 1511 CE
In 1511, a Portuguese force under Afonso de Albuquerque successfully invaded the city-state of Melaka on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. At the time, Melaka…
Artillery in Melaka, 1511 CE
In 1511, a Portuguese force under Afonso de Albuquerque successfully invaded the city-state of Melaka on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. At the time, Melaka…
Denialism and Anti-History
Why David Cameron is simply wrong about the past… As historian Liam Hogan suggested of British PM David Cameron’s dismissal of any dialogue about reparatory justice during his…
Denialism and Anti-History
Why David Cameron is simply wrong about the past… As historian Liam Hogan suggested of British PM David Cameron’s dismissal of any dialogue about reparatory justice during his…
Denialism and Anti-History
Why David Cameron is simply wrong about the past… As historian Liam Hogan suggested of British PM David Cameron’s dismissal of any dialogue about reparatory justice during his…
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! — 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,…
The Price of Freedom
What do the end of slavery and the European financial crisis have in common? Recently, the BBC ran a two-part documentary in the UK on how slave owners…
The Price of Freedom
What do the end of slavery and the European financial crisis have in common? Recently, the BBC ran a two-part documentary in the UK on how slave owners…
The Price of Freedom
What do the end of slavery and the European financial crisis have in common? Recently, the BBC ran a two-part documentary in the UK on how slave owners…
Caribbean military encounters
How the relationship between the Caribbean and foreign military forces in the 20th century had many different incarnations and forms, and left lasting legacies… The Caribbean Studies Ass…
From Home Movies to Homs
The amateur film is becoming a global visual lingua franca, a consequence of the conjuncture of the digital with new and widely accessible film technologies (notably the camera…
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.”…
The Corruption Complex
The cultural logics of corruption and how they can be found in T&T Writing about corruption from the petty to the massive in Africa, anthropologist Jean-Pierre Sardan proposed…
‘Colloquial Malay’
I bought Colloquial Malay, the book I'm using to study Jawi, for £3 at a second-hand bookshop in Oxford. I want to say a few words about it…
Bruno Latour: Imperialist?
I recently saw a blogpost that took Bruno Latour and his disciples/fellow travellers to task for being colonialist ('An Indigenous Feminist’s take on the Ontological Turn: ‘ontology’…
Weapons of Anti-Blackness
Chik-V and Ebola and the realities behind conspiracy theories Listening to local radio shows, reading the newspapers, and talking to colleagues and friends it is clear Chikungunya (Chik-V)…
Chinese political scientist endorses positive sides of European colonialism
I am reading Wang Yizhou’s book Creative Involvement: The Evolution of China’s Global Rise (as is often the case, the book is in Chinese but also has an…
The Return of the Colonial
What logic connects Ferguson, Gaza and east Port of Spain? What cultural logics connect recent confrontations in Ferguson, Gaza, and east Port of Spain? The short answer is…
The Perpetually Confused Conflicts in the Middle East–public lecture by William O. Beeman with discussion from Portland Oregon
The Perpetually Confused Conflicts in the Middle East Attached is a recording of a lecture given to the “Thirsters” civic group in Portland, Oregon on August 7, 2014…