Migrants and Machine Politics – review
In Migrants and Machine Politics, Adam Michael Auerbach and Tariq Thachil examine how India’s urban poor navigate and shape political networks to secure representation and accountability within …
Tag: development
A Dam’s Downstream Consequences
An anthropologist shares his story of the environmental, sociocultural, and political consequences of a hydropower dam in India for communities living downstream. Discussions about the impacts of da…
Q and A with Naila Kabeer on Renegotiating Patriarchy
In this interview with Anna D’Alton (LSE Review of Books), Naila Kabeer discusses her new book, Renegotiating Patriarchy: Gender, Agency and the Bangladesh Paradox, forthcoming from LSE Press in Septe…
Q and A with Sumi Madhok on Vernacular Rights Cultures
In this interview with Anna D’Alton (LSE Review of Books), Sumi Madhok speaks about her latest book, Vernacular Rights Cultures which subverts prevailing frameworks around human rights by exploring ho…
Conflicting Times on the Camino de Santiago
As increasing numbers of pilgrims walk the Camino, a European network of historic pilgrimage routes, those who journey to “slow down” their lives often don’t recognize the burdens…
The coopting of ‘participation’ in development discourse: observations from the ground
When concepts such as ‘participation’ that emanated from radical movements with the objective of transforming social relations and power structures are introduced and popularised in the public discour…
Two sides of the same Euro: A field note on recent farmer protests from southern Italy
Between February 8 and 9, 2024, two fleets arrived in Brindisi, a port city in the southern Italian region of Puglia. The first came by land: a parade…
Let there be Light: Frontiers of techno-Solar Capitalism
I grew up in an area surrounded by miombo woodland, located approximately 200 kilometres southeast of Lake Tanganyika. In the early 1990s, when I was five, my father…
In Delhi, Women Find Their Place on the Metro
Over the past two decades, the subway system has reshaped social relations in India’s densely populated capital—especially for women, who continue to face everyday violence in public spaces.…
Review: Making Better Coffee
Edward F. Fischer. Making Better Coffee: How Maya Farmers and Third Wave Tastemakers Create Value. University of California Press. Berkeley: 2022. ISBN: 978-0-520-38696-9 David Sutton (Souther…
Did Meat Do Neanderthals In?
Studying zinc levels in unearthed Neanderthal skeletal remains, an archaeologist examines whether the carnivorous eating habits of Neanderthals in the Eurasian Steppe contributed to their eventual ext…
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
One scholar claims that public administration has no generally accepted definition, because the scope of the subject is so great and so debatable that it is…
DECENTRALISATION and ANTHROPOLOGY
DECENTRALISATION and ANTHROPOLOGY Decentralisation is the process of dispersing decision-making governance closer to the people and/or citizen. It includes the dispersal of administration or gov…
A Somali Archaeologist Is Championing Heritage in the Horn of Africa
An interview with Sada Mire dives into the difficulties and rewards of preserving history and letting local perspectives guide heritage management in Somalia and Somaliland. ✽ Somalia and…
A History of Food Production in Yemen
In October, 2022, I participated in the Food Sovereignty Workshop at Ohio State University and discussed the issue of sustainable agriculture and water resource use to improve the…
Food Sovereignty vs. Food Aid: Why Smallscale Farming Suffers
Traditional farming in al-Ahjur, Central Highlands (photography by Daniel Martin Varisco) The early major civilizations in the Middle East and Asia with their head start several millennia ago…
Book Review: They Eat Our Sweat: Transport Labor, Corruption, and Everyday Survival in Urban Nigeria by Daniel E. Agbiboa
In They Eat Our Sweat: Transport Labor, Corruption, and Everyday Survival in Urban Nigeria, Daniel E. Agbiboa challenges simplistic understandings of corruption by offering a captivating study of Lago…
Tower of Babel, Saudi Style
the official website is https://www.neom.com/en-us Long before Abraham/Ibrahim left Ur of the Chaldees for the promised land and became the ancestral icon of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, there…
Do Children Need Special Foods?
Ultraprocessed breakfast cereals, sometimes touted as “healthy” thanks to vitamin fortification, are one of the most popular foods targeted toward kids. Education Images/Getty Images In c…
Wahhabis in the Dustbin?
This is a fascinating analysis by Hassan Hassan of the Saudi royal family trying to rewrite its past. It is available on the New/Lines website. Here is the…
Bulldozing Islamic Jeddah
mid-19th century view of Jeddah from Richard Burton’s travelogue The current de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, MBS, has promoted a major development scheme entitled Vision 2030. This…
Living Water, living with lively waters (part 2)
In What is Water? The History of a Modern Abstraction, geographer Jamie Linton (2010: 14) describes “modern water” as the following: “an abstract, isomorphic, measurable quantity that may…
Living Water and the politics and anti-politics of water in Jordan (Part 1)
We are often told that Jordan is one of the most water-poor countries on the planet and it is hard not to recognize the truth of this…
Do Things Have to Be This Way?
[no-caption] Henrik Sorensen/Getty Images Excerpted from The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. © 2021 by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Reprinted with permission from Farra…