Coming to Malaysia – protection, responsibility and labour
The so-called ‘boat people crisis’ in the Andaman Sea has been brewing for a long while. Economic migrants and refugees attempt the perilous sea crossing to reach safety…
Tag: politics
Linguistic Challenges to China’s Centralizing Control
Challenges to authoritarian states’ control of language can be so complex that they exceed the states’ ability to manage them all. Electronic expression of resistance and increasi…
21. Review of Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous
Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous. Gabriella Coleman. Brooklyn, NY: Verso Books, 2014. 464 pp. John Postill RMIT University Melbourne, 12 June 2015 forthcoming, Americ…
A prize for Edward Snowden
But will he be able to travel to Norway? A few months ago, it was as if everybody wanted to be Charlie (Hebdo). This gesture was laudable enough…
A prize for Edward Snowden
But will he be able to travel to Norway? A few months ago, it was as if everybody wanted to be Charlie (Hebdo). This gesture was laudable enough…
A prize for Edward Snowden
But will he be able to travel to Norway? A few months ago, it was as if everybody wanted to be Charlie (Hebdo). This gesture was laudable enough…
Barcelona’s local elections in the global spotlight
Less than a week ago, on 24 May 2015, local and regional elections were held across Spain. In Barcelona, Madrid and other major cities, new anti-establishment candidates either…
Pushed offshore, the ‘boat people’ crisis demands regional response
In recent days, some 2000 refugees and migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar have come ashore in Aceh, Indonesia, and Langkawi, across the Strait of Malacca in Malaysia. Thousands…
The immigrants ‘crisis’ and the limits of Facebook
Photomontage realised by Vento Ribelle and posted on their Facebook page on the 20 April 2015 and shared by left-wing individuals in Grano. This post is prompted by the…
Is Weibo on the way out? For some in China, it was never in.
Weibo: share your thoughts with the world (assuming, of course, you actually want to). Photo: bfishadow (CC BY 2.0) I read with interest Celia Hatton’s BBC News article published…
20. Hacking politics: civic struggles to politicize technologies
This is the 20th of 42 posts in the ongoing Freedom technologists series. By Sebastian Kubitschko via Civic Media Project Despite the longstanding equating of hacking as infused…
Presentation: Open Access / Science & Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie
Budka, P. 2015. Open Access / Science & Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie. Präsentation am Institut für Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie, 14.04.2015. Was bedeutet freier Zugang zu wiss. Inhalten &a…
Anthropology is Taking Over the World
The first clue that anthropology is taking over the world is in the March 2015 issue of American Anthropologist, where Virginia Dominguez writes that she is Taking Over…
15. Location technologists: the politics of digital media in a ‘special region’ of Indonesia
Chapter proposal to Location Technologies in International Context, Rowan Wilken (Swinburne Uni of Tech), Gerard Goggin (U of Sydney) & Heather Horst (RMIT), eds. John Postill RMIT University…
Killing People is Always Wrong (Andrew Chan & Myuran Sukumaran)
Indonesia is about to execute two Australian men, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, for trafficking drugs. They were arrested in 2005 after a tip-off from the Australian police,…
Workshop note on digital media and socio-political change
By Victor Lasa On 20 February 2015, Dr John Postill convened a workshop with fellow RMIT scholars and research students around the topic of “Digital media and socio-political…
Annual Review of Anthropology, Climate Change, Anthropocene
This is a guest post by Sean Seary, a Hartwick College graduate interested in understanding human interactions with biological and social environments, and how anthropology can use that…
Riots, Rage and Populism: Voices from the Austere City
Greetings from Naples. Photo by Maurizio Albahari. Pope Francis for President. It’s the latest provocation of Italian comedy sketches, but it generates bitter laughter. It speaks to the…
Privilege, Empathy And Politics
According to anthropologist Barbara King, one alternative to the 2014 Merriam-Webster Dictionary word of the year “culture” is “privilege.” For the political anthropologist, Pr…
Charlie Hebdo
Let’s say some guy in a bar starts mouthing off against another patron’s mother. He says she’s a fat moose with a ginger beard, and it’s funny…
hope: the first anthropological emotion
During the comments from the Anthropology and Storytelling panel at the #AAA2014 meetings: “The first anthropological emotion is hope” (Carole McGranahan). As McGranahan clarified in a fol…
乌镇时代 | Wuzhen Times
The first World Internet Conference was held November 19-21, in the scenic water village of Wuzhen (proudly endorsed by 7,000 years of history). English-language tech bloggers and news…
Cultures of Dependency
fundamental social change is hard to achieve because cultures of dependency are deeply entrenched in the local political culture. In political theories of social change like Marxism, under…
“humans just like us” (Michel-Rolph Trouillot 2003:137)
Reading Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s final chapter in Global Transformations, “Making Sense: The Fields in which We Work” and reflecting on what I’ve been teaching in Cultural Anth…