Category Archives: Blog
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 […]
Quirin Rieder: Drinking tea with the IMF: sticking to prices and protesting inflation in Aliabad, Northern Pakistan
Aziz put down the newspaper and sighed. “This is bad, the situation is bad”. Sitting in his small tea shop, he had just finished his routine practice of reading out loud some articles from the local Urdu newspaper K2, that publishes on issues in Gilgit-Baltistan (one of the Pakistani parts of Kashmir). Normally this is […]
Daromir Rudnyckyj: When is inflation a problem?
Amidst the media frenzy in recent years regarding inflation, it is worth asking when, and for whom, is inflation actually a problem? As economists are quick to point out, in the conventional monetary system the upsides and downsides of inflation are not equally distributed across populations. To illustrate, those on fixed incomes or who hold […]
Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier and Mélissa Gauthier: Inflation as pressure: coping mechanisms from Eastern Cuba
When the daily Miami-Santiago de Cuba flight landed in Cuba in May 2024, a passenger at the back of the plane shouted in Spanish: !Ya llegaron los dolares! “The dollars have arrived!” Everyone on board started laughing and clapping. In making that announcement, the Cuban passenger referred to the fact that visitors to Cuba were […]
Eva van Roekel: Money and ruin: hyperinflation and moral loss in the complex humanitarian crisis in Venezuela
A few months before the Covid-19 lockdowns were implemented globally I travelled to the border between Venezuela and Brazil for a stint of ethnographic fieldwork about the complex humanitarian crisis. By that time more than five million Venezuelans had left the country, and hyperinflation was mindboggling. Inflation had reached more than 9500%, making living and […]