Category Archives: Blog
Arpan Roy: Introduction: Staying-With Palestine. Making and Remaking Postcolonial Worlds
Extrajudicial arrest, termination from employment, suspension of university enrollment, being declared persona non-grata (Karl 2025), police violence at demonstrations, harassment at airports, online doxxing, and, in the case of six-year old Wadea al-Fayoume, a martyrdom in a strange land—these are some of the ways in which solidarity with Palestine has, since October 2023, been rebuked […]
Jason Hickel, Don Kalb, Maria Dyveke Styve, and Federico Tomasone: Reorganize Production to Serve Life, Not Profit
On 15 May 2025, Jason Hickel – economic anthropologist, leading degrowth theorist and author of popular works such as The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions and Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World – delivered a provocative lectio magistralis as the Third Annual Global Research Programme on Inequality […]
Marc Edelman: This Year in the United States, Flag Day Is No Kings Day
From large cities to small towns, “No Kings Day” will counter Trump’s birthday spectacle with people power. “Nah, he wouldn’t really do that.” I’ve lived in the Upper Delaware Valley for five years, first in Pike County, Pennsylvania, and now in Sullivan County, New York. My county went 58% for Trump last November, and several […]
Sindre Bangstad: The IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism and Academic Freedom
Cancelling Mbembe On June 6 2024 I was present in the grand hall that is the University Aula of the University of Bergen in Norway when my friend Achille Mbembe received the prestigious Holberg Prize from the University of Bergen (UiB). I had been there in the same hall when Mbembe, arguably the most widely […]
Anna Balazs: War, displacement, and cultural heritage: reflections on a workshop
“On the form, I ticked that I had got enough pads. I ticked that I had been instructed. I ticked that I had applied for microloans, more than once. I ticked that I had been encouraged. I ticked that I had nowhere to live. I ticked that I had nowhere to study. I ticked that […]
Chris Hann: Humiliation, Hubris and Hamartia: the emotional history of the Ukraine war
Introduction Soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in an earlier post on this blog (Hann 2022), I emphasized the geopolitical and economic interests of the west, especially US corporations. I extended my analysis in 2024 in the Focaal journal itself (Hann 2024a; 2024b), where my article benefited from the critical insights of Denys Gorbach […]
Dr. Kristina Jonutytė: Ethnographic research of minoritised groups in increasingly remote settings: A roundtable discussion
One of the main strengths of ethnographic methodologies is immersed, long-term research, which enables in-depth learning and a holistic vision of a given issue. Restricted or volatile access to ethnographic field sites thus presents not just practical difficulties but it raises a host of important methodological, epistemological, ethical and other questions. A roundtable discussion at […]
Christi van der Westhuizen: Necropolitics at South Africa’s Stilfontein Mine
An uncaring government and a gang of unscrupulous criminals. Caught between them are people regarded as expendable – people who, pushed into a desperate situation because of poverty, turn to dangerous work that exposes them to a merciless police “service”. But then, in contrast to the aforementioned, there is also a community that tried to […]
Mona-Lisa Wareka, Fiona McCormack & Bronwyn Isaacs: Alternative Anthropologies: Kete Aronui from the Waikato
As three anthropologists working at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, Aotearoa (New Zealand), we experience anthropology in our daily work in the context of our local histories, communities and politics. While many anthropologists are familiar with the critiques of anthropology that play out in the USA or Europe, the narratives and practices of anthropology […]
Görkem Akgöz: “The Sad Truth” Then and Now: Pasts and Presents of Danish Refugee Policy
This text was originally published in Swedish in Arbetar Historia (No.191-192, 2024). Special thanks to the editors for granting permission to republish. In 2015, during the peak of what became known as the “refugee crisis,” global attention turned towards an unexpected actor: Denmark. Long regarded as a liberal refuge and one of the first signatories […]