A Virtual Experiment
Are smugglers parasites profiting on human desperation, or do they provide a service to those on the move? Click on the question, and you’ll see a selection of…
Tag: Violence
Introduction to “On the Ground”
The very public lynchings of black men, women, and children prompted much concern, discussion, and action at the 2014 Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association in Washington,…
Confronting Rape Culture
The November 19, 2014, publication of “A Rape on Campus” in Rolling Stone magazine threw the University of Virginia into a frenzy of institutional responses. The article reported…
The Symbolic Violence of Choice
“Hasn’t he got any patriotism?” [Colonel Cathcart asked]. “Won’t you fight for your country?” Colonel Korn demanded. “Won’t you give up your life for Co…
Workshop: Critical Engagements to Irregular Migration Facilitation
Irregular immigration has produced political heat across the world. Dramatic photos of migrants crammed into wretched boats circulate in the media, while journalistic accounts tell stories of poor…
A View From the Train Tracks
In September 2015, the disturbing image of a drowned Syrian toddler named Aylan Kurdi, whose body had washed ashore on a beach in Turkey, triggered an international outcry…
Making Sense of Violence Against Minority Women: Notes on Skepticism, Discomfort & Privilege in #Fieldwork
What is it like to do fieldwork within a marginalized social group? Especially when you – the researcher – hail from the dominant community? How do you deal…
A response to McKee and Pritchard’s reviews of ‘One Hour in Paris’
I am grateful to Tamar McKee and Maureen Pritchard for their insightful and critical engagement with One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery (University…
Burundi, I, and the year of 2015, by Gudrun Sif Fridriksdottir
“I miss dancing” a friend of mine says sometime in late June. “What?” I reply, thinking I must have misheard him. “I miss dancing”, he hesitates a bit…
Ephemeral Layers: Coffee, Snapchat, and Violence
For decades, ephemeral layers at archaeological sites have been the bane of my existence. The moment I read, hear, or have to confront it at an excavation, my…
Youth Mobility, Bondage and Freedom in Cameroon, C.1940s-C.2000: National and Transnational Perspectives
On Sunday 7 July 2015, the Cameroon Radio and Television in its weekly Sunday Program, Cameroon Calling, broadcasted what shocked the public audience. It had chosen as its…
Rethinking political agency in the Middle East #project
This Allegra focuses on an exciting new feature incorporated into our beloved website a while back: namely Projects! What this feature entails are collaborations – events, even research ventures…
In defence of our universal double standards
The two series of terrorist attacks that hit Paris this year, have given rise to a series of debates and mutual accusations about grief, identity, and double standards.…
Bujumbura Burning, Part II: Misrepresentations of the Burundian Crisis and their Consequences, by Jesper Bjarnesen
Since April, Burundi’s capital of Bujumbura has been the scene of violent confrontations between security forces and civilian protesters who deplore president Pierre Nkurunziza’s candidacy in July‘s p…
Let Your Let Shine #UnitedWeStand #PrayfortheWorld
Let your light shine in the face of terror, hatred, and evil. Only if we stand united in love, will our inner light be able to banish this…
Fieldwork is haunting me, thanks to WhatsApp
When is the end of fieldwork? (Photo:Merlijn Hoek CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) When is it that fieldwork finishes? Thanks to social media, the separation between being in the fieldsite…
Popular resistance stopped the coup, by Sten Hagberg
Last week, Burkina Faso was breaking international news. In the midst of a government meeting, soldiers of the president’s security forces – the notorious Régiment de Sécurité Présidentielle…
That buried secret of ours! non-fiction and fiction on memories of violence, death politics and the economy of silence in post-revolution Iran
Mahmoud Dowlatabadi is an acclaimed and respected writer in Iran. A post stamp has recently been produced in his honor. One of his latest novels, The Colonel, was…
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…
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…