Why Political Ambiguity Appeals to the Masses
Participants in the Shetkari Sanghatana movement ardently supported a message that allowed for a wide variety of interpretations. Michael Youngblood On a December day in 1996, close to…
Tag: politics
We Need to Talk About “Gun Violence”: Reflections on Terminology and Contexts of Violence by Joe Anderson
Among the many political challenges of our time, gun violence in America has emerged as one of the most divisive. A retreat into partisan communities prevents us from…
Not Safe Spaces: On Protest & Exclusion in DC Restaurants
David Beriss It seems like every social crisis gets played out, one way or another, in restaurants. Lately, a few people who work in the Trump administration have…
Patrick Neveling: HAU and the latest stage of capitalism
As anthropology assesses an increasing number of reports about abuse, bullying, sexism, and financial misconduct and fraud at its now shooting-star journal HAU, it is important to keep…
#Report: Envy and Greed: A Political Economy of Accusation and Critique
On the fourth and fifth of June, the anthropology department at the London School of Economics and Political Science hosted a workshop exploring how accusations of envy and…
Politics in environmental research infrastructure formation: When top-down policy-making meets bottom-up fragmentation
By: Elena Parmiggiani, Helena Karasti, Karen Baker, and Andrea Botero The environmental sciences have been a fertile ground for the development of scientific infrastructures (a.k.a. cyberinfrastructur…
Anthropology on Immigration
Stand with Migrants Against Fascism In 2011 the American Anthropological Association (AAA) issued a General Statement on Immigration. This 2011 statement was a testimony to a need for…
Anthropology on Immigration
Standing with Migrants In 2011 the American Anthropological Association (AAA) issued a General Statement on Immigration. This 2011 statement was a testimony to a need for rethinking immigration…
Is Health Activism a Collective Responsibility? by Beza Merid
During the tumultuous “repeal and replace” frenzy in the spring and summer of 2017, the US House of Representatives and Senate moved quickly to consider bills intended to…
Becoming White
Policing Whiteness Karen Brodkin’s 1998 book, How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America was a crucial entry in a genre of studies…
Digital Food Activism – a book review by Michelle Pentecost
Digital Food Activism Tanja Schneider, Karin Eli, Catherine Dolan and Stanley Ulijaszek (eds.) Routledge Series in Critical Food Studies, 2018, 234 pages A Swiss academic scans the…
Congosa politics: Rumours and elections in Sierra Leone, by Diana Szanto
The red party. APC political rally in Freetown Congosa in Krio means gossiping and spreading rumour, but its connotations are much darker than in English. It equals with name…
The Limits of Academic Freedom
We need to acknowledge the role we all play in silencing research. Consider the times we have dismissed a colleague’s idea because it ‘isn’t worth it’, or immediately…
On Thinking with People and their Escapes: A Review of Unfinished through Storytelling by Onur Günay
Unfinished: The Anthropology of Becoming João Biehl and Peter Locke, editors Duke University Press, 2017. 400 pages. If hierarchy is the key to sociological knowledge production, what…
Italy’s populist alliance and the national anti-migrant consensus
The League’s Matteo Salvini and the Five Star’s Luigi Di Maio have entered into coalition to form a government in Italy [AP] You can read my latest piece…
Venezuela & Anthropology
Will Venezuela Recover? As Venezuela holds elections on 20 May 2018, questions of “Will Venezuela recover?” or “Will Venezuela collapse?” arise. When seen in a regional context…
#Review: Working the System
Working the System is a great book. It holds the promise of its subtitle and offers a deep ‘political ethnography of the new Angola’. Through rich ethnographic snippets…
Diaspora, Gender & Mediated Revolution
In several relatively recent papers (2017, 2015a, 2015b) I’ve made the point that for tens of millions of Egyptians, the uprisings of 2011 weren’t something they physically experienced…
party -stay or go?
Rosa writing to Henriette Roland Holst, August 2011 is firm, chastising and correct, and it seems effective, Holst forms a new group which later enters the SPD, although…
Starbucks Enlightenment
Image credit: “Starbucks, Race and ‘Corporate’ Anthropology,” CFM Public Affairs Blog (March 2015). Is Anthropology better than Starbucks? In late March 2018, anthropology rais…
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…
#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…