Category Archives: Blog
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 […]
Philip McMichael & Birgit Müller: The Land-Grab Trap: Is There a Will to Govern Global Land Grabbing?
Pause in the negotiations in the Red Room of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) How to govern the “global land rush”1 was at issue in the final negotiations on the Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems at the Committee for World Food Security (CFS) in Rome, held 4–8 August 2014. For […]
Steve Reyna: Bloat and tents: Further thoughts on Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy
This brief note suggests some directions that a rising Marxist anthropology might consider taking. Sandy Smith-Nonini and Donald Nonini have done a wonderful job explaining why Carbon Democracy is a “brilliant” book that is “essential reading for anthropologists” (2014), especially for those concerned with the political economy of fossil energy. Elsewhere, I have reviewed Timothy […]
Sandy Smith-Nonini & Donald M. Nonini: Fueling the Neoliberal Turn: Why We Need to Engage Timothy Mitchell’s “Carbon Democracy”
A central, perhaps the central, question in political economy today is how forces of democracy, including organized labor and its allies, can regain a degree of control over corporate capitalism in the neoliberal era. Equally pressing (and related) is our need to confront climate change and replace fossil fuels with alternative energy resources. While the […]
Gavin Smith: Chasm: Interrupted Lives
Over the last few years I have found myself talking to people who have experienced radical displacements in their lives as a result both of economic distress and of political disturbance. They have been obliged to “move on,” to “move out,” to “move away.” Yet these are not really narratives that help put order into […]
Gustavo Lins Ribeiro: IMPACTS OF THE DIGITAL ERA ON SCHOLARLY WORK
It is hard to make comments on the contemporary world without simultaneously prospecting the future. These endeavors are entangled. Under strong momentary impressions, we may believe we are facing pressing issues, but what seems so important today may quietly disappear into oblivion. At best, it is possible to scan the likelihood of various unfoldings in […]
Marc Edelman: Dispatch from Geneva: A Treaty on Transnational Corporations? A Declaration on Peasants’ Rights?
An anti-TNC protest The anthropology of human rights has devoted increasing attention to how diverse groups and societies interpret and implement (or not) international legal norms. The pioneering work of Sally Merry and her collaborators on how global women’s rights norms are enacted in local contexts saw this as a “vernacularization” process.1 Numerous scholars have […]