Category Archives: Blog
Barbara Karatsioli: Syriza and the return of the political
The electoral win of Syriza in Greece substantiates cross-European objections to austerity. Contrary to recurrent warnings that have for years emphasized how Syriza’s electoral victory would jeopardize Greece’s future in Europe and plunge the economy further into crisis, the first weeks in government underline that Syriza’s rise to power may be just what was needed […]
Nicolas Martin: Democracy subverted: Inequality, liberalism, and criminal politics in the Indian Punjab
A number of liberal scholars of India, ranging from Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze to James Manor, all broadly view democracy as the solution to a variety of social evils including poverty, inequality, corruption, crime, and even violent conflict. They all acknowledge that Indian democracy is at times a messy affair, but they share a […]
Theodoros Rakopoulos: The future lasts a long time…or is it here already? The Left in power in Greece
On the evening of 16 June 2012, after the announcement of the electoral results that had brought Syriza to second place behind the conservative New Democracy (but at 27 percent, risen almost seven-fold from the previous elections), Alexis Tsipras came on the stage in the midst of bittersweet celebrations in central Athens. Syriza , the party […]
Theodora Vetta & Anastasios Grigorakis: Promising the meta-austerity era: Directions and dilemmas
Thessaloniki, 21 January 2015. Since the announcement of the Greek elections, Greece has once again become the center of global attention. We know that just by watching the news on Greek TV channels. We learn bits and bytes about the discussion that has opened around possible scenarios for debt restructuring, possible domino effects of a […]
Vintilă Mihăilescu: Santa Klaus: Presidential elections and moral revolt in Romania
On 20 December 2014, Romania got its new president: Klaus Iohannis. The processes surrounding this election deserve mention and anthropological scrutiny. Almost exactly twenty-five years after the execution of the Ceausescu couple on Christmas Day 1989, Romania is celebrating a brand new sort of President: a “Santa Klaus.”
Jonah Lipton: Intimacy, transformation, and danger in Sierra Leone
During my fieldwork in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in 2013–14, I witnessed the unfolding of the current Ebola crisis that is so heavily affecting the region today. I saw how the regulations put in place to stop the spread of the virus impacted livelihoods, restricting transport and closing businesses, schools, and borders. It is no exaggeration […]
Karin Ahlberg: On the utility of truth in Egyptian terrains of necropolitics
In fall 2013, an alleged spy was put behind bars in the Qena governorate in Upper Egypt. The accused’s name was Menes, and his summer residency was Hungary. Menes was caught by a villager who spotted a suspicious device on Menes’s body, and he was put in custody until he was released by an attorney. […]
Philip Proudfoot: Interventions, Conspiracy, and the (Un)making of the Islamic State in Syria
Introduction With the rise of the Islamic State—ad-Dawlah al-Islāmīyah (“Da’ish”)—senior figures in the American and British establishment reportedly considered working with the Syrian government to “fight this threat.” As of 23 September 2014, such debates are academic—US bombs are falling over Aleppo and Raqqa. It’s unknown if the regime clandestinely offered its approval; what we […]
August Carbonella & Sharryn Kasmir: Blood and Fire: Toward a Global Anthropology of Labor
Blood and Fire is a volume of the “Dislocations” series published by Berghahn Books. The immense dislocations and suffering caused by neo-liberal globalization, the retreat of the welfare state in the last decades of the twentieth century, and the heightened military imperialism at the turn of the twenty-first century have raised urgent questions about the temporal […]
Chris Hann: The Expansion of NATO and the Contraction of Eurasia
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in South Wales held 4–5 September 2014 was heavily mediatized in member countries as a “wake-up call” for this military alliance, for Europe, and even for Western civilization. Violence in eastern Ukraine, for which Vladimir Putin alone was allegedly responsible, was said to be catapulting the world back […]