Coronavirus & Academia
It’s 3 May 2020 in the United States. People say we are past the peak coronavirus surge, but it remains a slow-moving disaster. And at a time when…
Tag: politics
Book Review: Resisting Neoliberal Capitalism in Chile: The Possibility of Social Critique by Juan Pablo Rodríguez
In Resisting Neoliberal Capitalism in Chile, Juan Pablo Rodríguez examines two recent social movements leading the social and political contestation against neoliberalism in Chile, not only showing ho…
Sharryn Kasmir: Prospects for Left Politics in the United States amid Coronavirus and Capitalist Crisis
Sharryn Kasmir, Hofstra University & University of Bergen Several weeks into the global pandemic, the gravity of the COVID-19-triggered economic crisis in the United States is coming into…
Governing COVID in Brazil: Dissecting the Ableist and Reluctant Authoritarian by Francisco Ortega
Brazilians, says Prime Minister Jair Bolsonaro, are so tough they can fend off this pesky COVID-19 virus, the same virus that has killed more than 147,000+ people worldwide…
Will Asia Rewrite Human History?
Archaeologists dig at a site called Al Wusta in Saudi Arabia. Klint Janulis Please note that this article includes images of human remains. The Nefud Desert is a…
“Stay the fuck at home” by Des Fitzgerald
On April 5th, NHS Million, an unofficial campaign for people who “love and cherish” the UK’s National Health Service, tweeted a video of a distressed nurse recording a message in…
How are Foreign Domestic Workers Implicated in the Pro-Democracy Protests in Hong Kong?
by Charlotte Brill ‘’My eyes were very painful’’, said an Indonesian migrant worker who was caught in a cloud of tear gas on her day off. This tear…
The balcony: normativity lessons in times of crisis by Rebeca Ibáñez Martín
The balcony has become a powerful domestic space symbolizing corona-solidarity in the south of Europe. Movie clips of Italians singing their national anthem from their balconies were broadcast…
Capitalism and the Coronavirus Conspiracy
In France, like many other places, social confinement due to the Coronavirus unfolded quickly. On March 12, President Emmanuel Macron addressed the country to announce the first nation-wide…
Populist Pharmakons by Juan Carlos Gabaldon
On March 22, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro delivered a long cadena– an impromptu speech carried live by public and regime-controlled TV stations – dedicated exclusively to COVID-19. Wearin…
Science in Dark Times: a syllabus on science, technology, and medicine under illiberal political regimes by Bharat Jayram Venkat
Modi, Trump, Bolsonaro: three avatars of a moment marked by the rise of a far-right populism, what many commentators have even described as a revitalized fascism. As I…
exoticism, revolutionary tourism, solidarity
What does solidarity look like? There have not been enough in the way of critiques of revolutionary tourism, of the exoticist trap of romanticising rebel movements abroad while…
Coronavirus: Less Humanitarianism, More Politics!
This essay was written seated on my couch, trying to make sense of the contemporary ‘state of emergency’ as the world around me has gradually come to a…
What’s Wrong With “the Chinese Virus”?
Most Americans take it for granted that in the 1960s, more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers died in something called the Vietnam War. In Vietnam, however, there is no…
On being voices of prudence in times of a pandemic – #Corona
Many academic disciplines have a lot to say these days about COVID-19. There are the medical experts, of course, epidemiologists, virologists, microbiologists, weighing in on the validity of…
Mariya Ivancheva: The casualization, digitalization, and outsourcing of academic labour: a wake-up call for trade unions
Mariya Ivancheva, University of Liverpool The UK higher education sector has seen decades of escalating injustices that academic trade unions need to confront head-on. As one of the…
Spy Plane Photos Open Windows Into Ancient Worlds
NASA painted this U-2 plane to cover up its real purpose: espionage. Armstrong Flight Research Center/NASA In a darkened room of the U.S. National Archives, we stood over…
Arctic Security and Anthropology
Our colleagues Gunhild Hoogensen Gjorv with Marc Lanteigne launched the Routledge Handbook of Arctic Security, of which they are the main editors, and where there are some chapters…
Book Forum: Daniel Renfrew’s Life Without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay by Andrés Romero
Introduction Daniel Renfrew’s Life Without Lead: Contamination, Crisis, and Hope in Uruguay (2018) is a masterful undertaking on the anthropology of disaster and its everydayness. An ethnograp…
Research on posters
Can someone in the UK souvenir one of these fab posters for me please (for ‘research’ purposes). I find them amazing. Yes, I know, it was the flip-floppery…
Trade
Issues of trade have come to renewed attention, as the global trading system has been rocked by upended agreements and cries for economic populism. Anthropology has long been…
When Harmony Silences Resistance
Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong hold up their hands to represent their five demands for the city’s government. Vivek Prakash/Getty Images Since Samuel (a pseudonym) started marching…
Teri Silvio on her new book, Puppets, Gods, and Brands
https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/product/puppets-gods-and-brands-theorizing-the-age-of-animation-from-taiwan/ Interview by Ilana Gershon Ilana Gershon: What first led you to start thinking about animation? …