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…
Tag: Violence
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…
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…