Clashing scales of #Brexit
Mainstream newspapers, politicians and commentators across Europe instantly expressed dejection and bitterness in the face of the Brexit outcome, and avid Brexiteers have typically been portrayed as x…
Tag: Europe
The Flexibility of Language
An interesting article came out today entitled Bojophrenia: a new word for a new world. Of interest to linguists, discourse analysts or anthropologists looking to describe the ever changing…
Thinking about Refugee Integration in Berlin
Aleppo soap. Photo courtesy Inga Treitler Anthropology has had a long and productive conversation around ethics, and the nature of our involvement in the communities we study. In…
Water, democracy, neoliberalism
Sidney Mintz’ classic work on sugar illustrated how “following the thing” can tell us about deeper cultural and political issues. Now, Anthropologist Andrea Muehlebach’s recent work “finds water…
In the Journals – February 2016
Welcome back to In the Journals, a look at recent publications in the world of security, law, crime, and governance. The February issue of Cultural Anthropology is…
#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)…
#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…
Elissa Helms: Men at the borders: Gender, victimhood, and war in Europe’s refugee crisis
This post is part of a series on migration and the refugee crisis moderated and edited by Prem Kumar Rajaram (Central European University). Even for the kind of conservative…
Céline Cantat: Migration struggles and the crisis of the European project
This post is part of a series on migration and the refugee crisis moderated and edited by Prem Kumar Rajaram (Central European University). In April 2015, when four boats…
Far right Front National first party in French regional elections
Very bad results in France’s regional elections: exit polls set xenophobic far right Front National (FN) first nationwide with over 30% of the votes; Sarkozy’s centre-right Republicans at…
Terror in France and ISIS’ Revolution: Anthropologists try to see the whole picture
(draft, post in progress) More surveillance, more bombs, more border controls, less democracy, less freedom: Europe is reacting hysterically after the deadly terror attacks in Paris one week…
Terror in France and ISIS’ Revolution: Anthropologists try to see the whole picture
(draft, post in progress) More surveillance, more bombs, more border controls, less democracy, less freedom: Europe is reacting hysterically after the deadly terror attacks in Paris one week…
Polo & Odoric on the Pole Star
One of the many marvels noted by both Odoric of Pordenone and Marco Polo is the disappearance of the north star, presumably Polaris (α Ursae Minoris), when…
Polo & Odoric on the Pole Star
One of the many marvels noted by both Odoric of Pordenone and Marco Polo is the disappearance of the north star, presumably Polaris (α Ursae Minoris), when…
Polo & Odoric on the Pole Star
One of the many marvels noted by both Odoric of Pordenone and Marco Polo is the disappearance of the north star, presumably Polaris (α Ursae Minoris), when…
Peter Frankopan’s ‘The Silk Roads’ – a talk at Blackwell’s
Yesterday afternoon I went to Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford to see the Byzantinist Peter Frankopan talk about his new book, The Silk Roads, which seems to be…
Peter Frankopan’s ‘The Silk Roads’ – a talk at Blackwell’s
Yesterday afternoon I went to Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford to see the Byzantinist Peter Frankopan talk about his new book, The Silk Roads, which seems to be…
Peter Frankopan’s ‘The Silk Roads’ – a talk at Blackwell’s
Yesterday afternoon I went to Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford to see the Byzantinist Peter Frankopan talk about his new book, The Silk Roads, which seems to be…
Prem Kumar Rajaram: Beyond crisis: Rethinking the population movements at Europe’s border
Crisis The refugee crisis in Europe is fabricated. Like most “crises,” the recent onset of people from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan trying to cross into the…
From the Centre of Europe to the End of the World: Intimate reflections on activism, healing and belonging in the field
I was not feeling any particular excitement or thrilling feverishness. Preparing for the unknown journey into fieldwork in Santiago de Chile to research inner dynamics of the student social…
NEW! — Chris Hann: The new Völkerwanderungen: Hungary and Germany, Europe and Eurasia
I spent the last weeks of August and the first days of September in Hungary, close to the European Union’s border with Serbia. Never before had a routine…
The Spider
The thought crept into my mind today and refused to let go of my brain. It said ‘What if we have no f*ing clue?’ Going to bed with…
In the Journals – August 2015
Welcome back to In the Journals, a round-up of recent journal publications on security, crime, law enforcement and the state. After a brief hiatus over the summer, we’re…
Un/Inhabitable Worlds: The Curious Case of Down’s Syndrome by Gareth Thomas
In her superb exposition of staring, Garland-Thomson (2009) draws attention to Chris Rush’s artistic piece Swim 2 which depicts a woman with Down’s syndrome in a regal pose…