Category Archives: Blog

Petra Rethmann: The German question: Solidarity, Lexit, nation

On 14 May 2017, in North Rhine-Westphalia’s (NRW) state (Bundesland) election, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won in emphatic fashion. Emphatic, here, does not express itself in numbers—33 percent for the CDU—but in the fact that the party won at all. The Social Democratic Party (SPD), which from 1966 to 2005, and then from 2010 […]

Focaal Volume 2017, Issue 78: Boredom after the global financial crisis

We are pleased to announce that the latest issue of Focaal – Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology has recently published and is available online at its new home, www.berghahnjournals.com/focaal.

World Refugee Day: Free articles from Berghahn Journals

The United Nations recognizes World Refugee Day annually on June 20 to raise awareness of and show support for the millions of refugees who have been forced to flee their homes each year. This year, the UN Refugee Agency will also launch its #WithRefugees petition to send a message to governments that they must work together […]

Alessandro Zagato: “Spokesperson for the people and candidate for the media”: An indigenous woman for the 2018 presidential elections in Mexico

María de Jesús Patricio, known as Marichuy, is an indigenous Nahuatl woman born on 23 December 1963 in Tuxpan (“land of rabbits”), a small town located in the south of the state of Jalisco, where she grew up in a condition of extreme poverty. She is mother of three. As a child, she spent time […]

Alfredo Saad-Filho: “Fora Temer—eleições diretas já!”: Brazil’s political rupture and the left’s opportunity

This post is tied to our 2016 series on the Latin American pink tide, and it originally appeared on openDemocracy on 23 May 2017 (CC BY-NC 4.0). The Brazilian Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores—PT) won the country’s presidential elections four times in a row; first with Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2006, 2007–2010), then with his hand-picked […]

Steve Reyna: Replacing Lady Liberty: Trump and the American Way

Der Spiegel, a well-thought-of magazine, ran in February 2017 a cover depicting the newly elected President Donald Trump, standing with one arm upstretched brandishing a bloody knife and the other arm raised flaunting Lady Liberty’s severed head, blood dripping from its wound. Lady Liberty is the Statute of Liberty. The cover came after Trump’s ban […]

Antonio De Lauri: Times of walls: The politics of fencing in the contemporary world

In his well-known poem “Mending Wall” (1914), Robert Frost effectively depicted the act of walling: Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. … He will not go behind his father’s saying, And he likes having thought […]

Focaal Volume 2017, Issue 77: Nonrecording states

Bruce Kapferer: Ideas on populism: The paradox of democracy and the rise of the corporate state

“All forms of the state have democracy for their truth, and for that reason are false to the extent that they are not democracy.” — Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right “The power of the people is always greater than that of the people in power.” — Wael Ghonim, a Google executive at […]

Florin Poenaru: Romanian protests: A cake with three layers (and a cherry on top)

In the past four weeks, Romania has witnessed some of the biggest protests in the post-communist era. Hundreds of thousands of people in cities across the country took to the streets to protest a government bill that would potentially decriminalize corruption offenses and therefore help the case of the ruling Social Democratic Party leader. Hence, […]