We suck at (academic) politics
Ninety percent of the time if you were to read a blog post about academics and politics it would be a rant about “identity politics.” This isn’t going…
Tag: politics
#Podcast Interview Round Up: The Best of March
This month’s round up of the best anthropology podcasts brought to you in collaboration with the ever amazing New Books in Anthropology features motorcycles, Catalonians, sex work and the truth.…
Burning bookshops is the new face of fascism, draped in a flag, and making America hate again.
Andy Zee talk worth hearing. The Joy of bookshops. I love it. They mean it – as he says, the place is named “revolution AND books”. Although a…
Can you imagine? Reflections on the SL elections and implications for penal policy and practice, by Andrew Jefferson and Luisa Schneider
Sierra Leone has a new president. And despite being challenged prior to the elections, the two party-system dominated once again. After two five-year terms under Ernest Bai Koroma…
What if people stop funding the U.S.?
What happens if the US runs out of money? This post is a part of a series examining the possibility of a rather quick US collapse, rather than…
Marching for Science w/Valorie Aquino – This Anthro Life
On this episode of This Anthro Life, hosts Ryan Collins and Adam Gamwell are joined by TAL correspondent and guest host Astrid Countee and by a very special…
Collapse and/or Authoritarianism
When will US Government Collapse? This post on “When will US Government Collapse?” is part of a series examining the possibility that rather than a slow, processual decline…
What should you do?
(if the United States collapses, that is) This series has been examining the question of When will the United States collapse? The decline of US hegemony is usually…
When will the US Stock Market Collapse?
As in the previous post on When will the United States collapse?, I’ve been working on a draft of this for a couple months. So I might have…
When will the United States collapse?
As of 4 April 2018, I had been working on a draft of this post on “when will the United States collapse” for a month or so. I…
Patrick Neveling and Tijo Salverda: How capitalists think—about belonging, moralities, global entanglements, and historical social processes, for example
Given that nowadays most people live in societies organized according to capitalist principles and given that few oppose those principles fundamentally, capitalists may well constitute the world’s lar…
Fragile Security or Fatale Liaisons? Reflections on 2 March 2018 Attacks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, by Sten Hagberg
On Friday 2 March 2018 around 10 o’clock, two coordinated of terrorist attacks took place in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. The first attack involved gunmen seeking…
Jostling for power: Sierra Leone’s election runoff, by Luisa Enria and Jamie Hitchen
After six days of patiently waiting, during which 25% increments of Sierra Leone’s 7 March presidential vote were gradually released, on the evening of 13 March, chair of…
Reaching Out, Looking In: On Research, Refusal, and Responsibility by Tess Lanzarotta
The papers in this series, “Critical Histories, Activist Futures,” have captured some of the exciting conversations that took place during a conference titled “Critical Histories, Activist Futures: Sc…
Guns & Anthropology
For the March issue of Open Anthropology we will be highlighting anthropological responses and ethnographic resources on the topics of guns, gun violence, gun safety, and gun control.…
Institutional Inconsistencies: The Case of “Transgender” by V Varun Chaudhry
The CDC’s recent attempt to dictate and regulate possibilities for funding and research included attention to broad swaths of people, including those deemed “vulnerable” and/or receiving “entitlements…
Racism by any Other Name Is Still Racism
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces in December 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed and issued Executive Order 9066 in the name of national security.…
The De-socializing of Jim Kim? by Jon Shaffer
The 12th president of the World Bank Group, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, is arguably the most powerful anthropologist in the world. As the co-founder of the groundbreaking NGO…
Ep. #7 The knowledge we value: Dipesh Chakrabarty talks the contentious politics of knowledge production
“Doing history ideally is like doing anthropology of people who are gone, except that you don’t have native informants, you only have these written fragmentary sources. But the…
The legacy of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Why ‘great aspiration’ is not quite enough, by Leena Vastapuu and Maria Martin de Almagro
The first elected woman head of state in Africa, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, has just stepped down from her office in Liberia. Her successor George Weah assumed the position…
Living and F*cking with Acronyms: A response to Dennis Altman’s call to rethink LGBTI
Last week Australian academic Dennis Altman published a provocative piece in The Conversation, suggesting that it was time to re think the label LGBTI. In the place of…
Defining “Social Justice” at the Academic Medical Center by Marco A. Ramos
I am delighted to contribute to this series on the Critical Histories and Activist Futures: Science, Medicine, and Racial Violence Conference. As captured by the submissions published here…
REDUX: “Cleaning Up the Streets” #AnthroState
Hillbrow, Johannesburg: It’s April 2008. I am in the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel, one of Johannesburg’s most happening nightclubs since the Apartheid era. As with the Hillbrow…
The state of the state in #Africa
How political authority and legitimacy are sustained in societies marked by socio-economic inequality and political exclusion has been a long-standing preoccupation in the social sciences. Especially …