Good bye (and good riddance) to Human Terrain System
Both Counterpunch and Inside Higher Ed ran stories recently on the end of Human Terrain System or HTS. What was HTS? A program run by the army and employing…
Tag: Violence
Review of Danny Hoffman’s ‘The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia’, by Jacqueline Knörr (2014)
Hoffman, Danny (2012): The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Critique of Anthropology 34: 124 (2014). Hoffman’s…
Review of Danny Hoffman’s ‘The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia’, by Jacqueline Knörr (2014)
Hoffman, Danny (2012): The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Critique of Anthropology 34: 124 (2014). Hoffman’s…
#Review: Sing the Rage. Listening to Anger after Mass Violence
Anger was abundant in South Africa during the 1990s. After the abolition of Apartheid in 1994, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to investigate the human rights…
The Character of Sexual Harassment at Cons
By Emma Louise Backe At an event where hundreds of individuals from around the country converge in capes and costumes, the symbols and trappings of heroism, we don’t…
DragNet: April 20 – May 3, 2015
“I think you have to have a shared collective memory of the past to recognize another human being,” writes Lawrence Jackson. His post, On Becoming More Human, examines…
Social Control in the Streets and the Suburbs: Understanding the “Code of the Suburb”
By Scott Jacques Code of the Suburb, which I co-authored with Richard Wright, is based on interviews with 30 adolescents who grew up and sold drugs in middle-class…
On violence, reality, and the parameters of social existence: A comment on Graeber’s essay.
I’ve been reading David Graeber’s The Utopia of Rules: on technology, stupidity, and the secret joys of bureaucracy lately. Slowly I should say – I’ve been…
On violence, reality, and the parameters of social existence: A comment on Graeber’s essay.
I’ve been reading David Graeber’s The Utopia of Rules: on technology, stupidity, and the secret joys of bureaucracy lately. Slowly I should say – I’ve been…
A Tale of Two Chins
Cell phones . . . couches . . . gyms and community centers . . . archaeologists of the future will unearth countless artifacts and buildings that will testify…
Terrain as Insurgent Weapon
Below is the abstract of my essay “Terrain as Insurgent Weapon: An Affective Geometry of Combat in the Valley of Death,” which I’ll present at the workshop Space, Materiality,…
Terrain as Insurgent Weapon
Below is the abstract of my essay “Terrain as Insurgent Weapon: An Affective Geometry of Combat in the Valley of Death,” which I’ll present at the workshop Space, Materiality,…
The Killable Horde
The film World War Z includes several scenes in which soldiers kill large numbers of zombies; not surprisingly, the movie comes to an end with a graphic image that…
The Killable Horde
The film World War Z includes several scenes in which soldiers kill large numbers of zombies; not surprisingly, the movie comes to an end with a graphic image that…
The Return of the Colonial
What logic connects Ferguson, Gaza and east Port of Spain? What cultural logics connect recent confrontations in Ferguson, Gaza, and east Port of Spain? The short answer is…
El abismo de las pasiones tristes
Ezequiel Adamovsky lanzó el otro día en Facebook una pregunta políticamente urgente: ¿Cómo explicar que no está bien linchar a un ser humano? En este texto canalizo una posible…
Opaque Zones of Empire
The fact that NSA-whistleblower Edward Snowden was able to leave Hong Kong despite the planetary surveillance apparatus devoted to capturing him confronts us with the problem I explore…
Opaque Zones of Empire
The fact that NSA-whistleblower Edward Snowden was able to leave Hong Kong despite the planetary surveillance apparatus devoted to capturing him confronts us with the problem I explore…
Guns, America and Anthropology
America has a problem with guns. This is certainly not news, but at the moment it is once again newsworthy. I have mentioned my position on guns here…