The tool factory Bolshevik in Gabrovo was the largest tool factory in the Balkans, picture from the scientific fund “Modern and Contemporary History” from the Regional History Museum, Gabrovo, 1970s. https://h-museum-gabrovo.bg/?p=7268 In the early 1970s, the socialist state of Bulgaria was starting to develop a series of interconnected systems for the automated governance of different… more...
Image 1: Supporters of the Tisza Party follow the election results at the party’s election-night event held at Batthyány Square, Budapest. Photo by Julianna Ugrin On the night of 12 April, in the wake of the landslide victory of the Tisza Party, Hungary erupted into collective euphoria. Images from election night quickly spread across global… more...
Image 1: István Bibó (on the left) and Ferenc Erdei (second from the right) in the company of sociologist-psychologist Viola Tomori and Erdei's father in 1940. Photo source: Wikipedia. With the global rise of illiberalism in the twenty-first century, the reputation of Viktor Orbán’s regime has far exceeded Hungary’s actual geopolitical and economic weight. During… more...
Image 1: 2025 Indonesian student protests in Central Jakarta. Photo by David Wadie Fisher-Freberg Political upheavals can feel like riding a roller coaster - exhilarating at the beginning, full of adrenaline rush, until it suddenly stops. This is what happened to the biggest protests against Prabowo administration and its erratic policies in late August-early September… more...
President Donald Trump meets with Faith Leaders from across the country to pray in the Oval Office, Wednesday March 19, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley) One of the most troubling features of Trump-era politics is not simply nationalism, authoritarian style, or contempt for institutions. It is the extent to which large parts… more...
Image 1: Areas affected by floods in West Sumatra in 2025. Photo by Indonesian Air Force Amid the outpouring of public solidarity for the victims of floods and landslides in Sumatra, one development deserves close attention. The term “natural disaster,” long used to describe such events, is increasingly being questioned and replaced with a more… more...
The appointment of a female former TV persona as the new U.S. ambassador to Greece drew some derisive, if not openly sexist, comments. Such a choice by President Trump, the analysts pointed out, is symptomatic of Greece’s supposed marginality within U.S. strategic priorities. However, Kimberly Guilfoyle’s first statements upon arriving in Greece suggested precisely the… more...
Image 1: Bombing scene in Tehran, 2 March 2026. Anonymous photographer. Shared via the Telegram channel Vahid Online. No, dear Rira,my letter must be short,must be simple,with no talk of ambiguity or mirrors.I will write to you again:We are all well—but do not believe me. (Ali Salehi, Iranian poet) The Sense of an Ending —… more...
Image 1: Narrow spaces for shipyards in the bay of Tuzla. Photo by author How do companies handle responsibilities to people and the environment when they operate abroad? What tools do they use, and what are the effects? These have been throughgoing concerns in my work during the last 10-15 years of research in Turkey.… more...
Image 1: Photo shared by Donald Trump on social media of a handcuffed and blindfolded Nicolás Maduro aboard USS Iwo Jima. Anyone who knows Venezuela knows that things happen fast there. It is a function of the hectic pace of urban life in a society that is highly subject to the play of global energy… more...
Image 1: The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, with COP30 mascot, Curupira. Photo by Ricardo Stuckert This year, COP30 took place in Brazil. Unlike last year’s COP29 in Azerbaijan, this one aimed to be an inclusive climate summit. The Brazilian COP organizers explicitly welcomed activists, while a large people’s summit was also… more...
Image 1: Jason Hickel's research focuses on political economy, inequality, and ecological economics 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… more...
Image 1: “No Kings Day” call to action poster, by nokings.org 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… more...
Image 1: The reinstated Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University, 23 April 2024. Photo by Abbad Diraneyya. 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… more...
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… more...
Image 1: Derelict shaft used by so-called illegal miners in Stilfontein to access mining tunnels. Photo by Kimon de Greef 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… more...
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… more...
Image 1: COP29 International Climate Change in Baku, Azerbaijan, illustration by Zulfurgar Graphics By hosting the UN’s global Climate Change conference COP29 in Baku (11-22 November 2024), Azerbaijan presents itself as a climate-responsible oil state and new political ally and donor for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) struggling with the impacts of climate change. Yet… more...
Foreign policy played a minor role in the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in September. The vice presidential exchange between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz on October 2 barely touched on it. Yet less than a month before the US elections on November 5, it is foreign policy that may upend the… more...
Image: White Sulphur Springs, NY, photo by author MAKE AMERICA THINK AGAIN. That’s the bumper sticker on my friend’s pickup and that’s what I hope for. I like evidence and data, and I detest TV talking heads, “alternative facts,” and political zealots of all stripes. I want people to think about policies and how these… more...
Spectators at the final concert of the World Social Forum, Mumbai 2004 (author: Claudio Riccio, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ilriccio/135304963/in/photostream/) From Andheri to Goregaon—it’s five kilometers. Half an hour by Ambassador in the north Mumbai traffic. Windows down—through them, the usual fumes: chai, wood smoke, diesel exhaust. Plus, the blinding, crunchy, almost chewable dust of the industrial area, a… more...
Image 1. Javier Milei signing controversial emergency decree containing liberalization reforms on 20 December 2023. Photo by Presidency of Argentina At the heart of Buenos Aires lies the lovely Calle Florida. The experience of walking through this street that is exclusively dedicated to pedestrians was anything but lovely though since in the one kilometer from… more...
Image 1: Encampment at the University of Amsterdam on the 6th of May, photo by Luisa Steur In the morning of the 6th of May, inspired by the swelling global wave of student solidarity encampments for Palestine, a group of students set up tents on a field of the University of Amsterdam Faculty of Social… more...
With the triumph of Javier Milei in Argentina’s November 2023 national election, the country has followed the contemporary global trend of electing far-right governments. Through his frequent television appearances as an “economic expert”, Milei successfully mobilized voters against the country’s dominant political elites, which he denigrated as “la casta” (“the caste"). Ordinary Argentines, in this… more...
Israel's wall and de facto border with southeast Lebanon. Writing reads: "All resistance for the sake of Jerusalem." Photo taken by author in summer 2023 near Adaysseh, Lebanon. “I cannot listen to the sound of the warplanes anymore, it sounds like they are flying over our roofs,” as a resident of a south Lebanese border village described the… more...
12.02.2024 Prof. Dr. Patrick Cramer, President of the Max Planck Society Old Town, 80539 Munich, Germany CC: Dr. Ursula Rao, Dr. Biao Xiang, Dr. Marie-Claire Foblets MPI for Social Anthropology, Halle Dear colleagues, We write as Israeli Jewish scholars, working in Israel and worldwide, in support of Prof. Ghassan Hage and in protest of the… more...
In the midst of India's extensive urbanization, with more than 34% of the population dwelling in urban areas as of 2021, as per the World Bank, the complex relationship between urban transformation, poverty dynamics, and the impact of capitalism gains prominence. Amidst this swiftly urbanizing landscape, it is relevant to ask about the enduring significance… more...
Far-right political leader Geert Wilders was convicted of inciting hatred against Moroccans when he called them "scum" at an election rally in 2016. [GETTY] Last week, Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom Party (PVV) won the largest number of parliamentary seats in the Dutch national elections. The political figure is known internationally for his Islamophobia, and demands… more...
By taking control of 22 Israeli military bases and localities, sequestering over 200 hostages, and killing more than 1,000 civilians and soldiers (although many details remain ambiguous), Hamas accomplished militarily on October 7, 2023 what no other Palestinian faction has ever accomplished. Early on during the operation, Hamas declared that its goal was to liberate… more...
The unfolding genocide in Palestine today is a continuation of Israel’s 75-year-old occupation and ethnic cleansing. This article provides a perspective on the ongoing tragedy from the vantage point of the Golan Heights – often referred to as Israel's ‘forgotten occupation.’ How are the stateless Syrians experiencing this war? And why do ‘ethnic cleansing’ and… more...
The algorithm swiftly gets it –yes, I am sucked in by news about Gaza- and collapses my social media platforms’ feeds into a monothematic thread that mirrors my recently (re)ignited preoccupation with the genocide of the Palestinian people. A Middle Eastern, female illustrator’s art work I started following on Tuesday shows up at the top… more...
With the destruction of Gaza by Israel under way and the humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territories worsening day by day, a recurrent question is raised in mainstream media, TV shows and many academic circles: Is Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks on October 7 proportionate or not? Some say it is. Others say… more...
In recent work, several authors in anthropology have analyzed how the extreme right is being configured and acquiring a considerable pull on the mainstream (see: Kalb, 2023a; Semán & Wilkis, 2023, https://www.focaalblog.com/2023/05/11/pablo-seman-and-ariel-wilkis-rebellion-of-the-bastards-the-rise-of-the-extreme-right-in-argentina/). I want to take their reflections further and focus on the uncomfortable question about the role of “traditional” political forces in paving the… more...
On 1 July 2021, 148 years after slavery ended in the Dutch West Indian colonies, Femke Halsema, the Mayor of Amsterdam, said: ‘For the active involvement of the Amsterdam City Council in the commercial system of colonial slavery and the global trade in enslaved people I, on behalf of the College of Mayors and Aldermen,… more...
How does Recep Tayyip Erdoğan do it? In Spring 2023, the economy is in a mess, inflation accelerating, and corruption rife. Government aid in the wake of a devastating earthquake in Southeastern Anatolia on 6th February was badly mismanaged. The natural disaster revealed the structural shortcomings of poorly regulated construction and real-estate markets, symptomatic of… more...
The growth of extreme right-wing forces in the Argentine political process expresses the combination of global trends and specific trends associated with local political history. It also expresses the need to understand the embeddedness of these political preferences in the social experiences shaped by the generalized decline of the middle and popular classes, sedimented in… more...
The shock among the Dutch chattering classes on 16 March was palpable. The right-populist Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB) – established in 2019 by a small communications firm, bankrolled by the powerful Dutch agrifood complex and led by a former journalist for the meat industry – had in one go massively increased its vote share in the… more...
On March 1st 2023, an impromptu protest rally took place outside the headquarters of Greece’s only railway company, Hellenic Trains (HT). HT is the passenger carrier of the recently privatized and formerly publicly owned carrier of Hellenic Organization of Railways. The word ‘Assassins’ and the phrase ‘Your profits, our deaths’ were written on the walls… more...
On May 21, 2022 the cover of The Economist left no space to the imagination: a set of skulls replaced the grains of a wheat straw, and the world was soon going to experience a ‘Coming Food Catastrophe’. Although there is no doubt that the prospect of world food security looks anything but pleasant, I… more...
Zavaleta: “[Apparent states] appear to be Western… in all respects but somehow they are not. What misfires here is a structural concept of sovereignty that is ultimately incompatible with the condition of non-centrality in the world, at least in history such as it has occurred until now…. They have only a vague sense of self-certainty,… more...
This panel was convened by Ida Susser at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2022 - Unsettling Landscapes. It builds on the workshop Vision and Method in Anthropology: Forty Years of Eric Wolf’s ‘Europe and the People Without History’, on 23/24 September 2022, organized in the framework of the ‘Frontlines of Value’ project at the… more...
In April 2022, University of Pennsylvania Press published A Feast of Flowers: Race, Labor, and Postcolonial Capitalism in Ecuador, by University of Toronto anthropologist Christopher Krupa. Tracing the expansion of capitalism in the largely rural, agrarian canton of Cayambe, Krupa’s book is an historically informed ethnography of Ecuador’s cut flower industry. In the interview below,… more...
Global production networks, as we know today, have repeatedly failed to ensure the rights of workers and their health and safety. These failings have been exposed time and again whenever there has been a disaster. To address these failings, transnational activists have long been arguing for various types of multi-sectoral initiatives (MSIs) in global supply… more...
At the end of July, a remarkable event unfolded in three distinct but significant sites in Canada. Pope Francis, the Argentinian current supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, travelled to Maskwacis, Ste. Anne de Beaupré and Iqaluit on his “penitential pilgrimage” in Turtle Island (the Indigenous name for North America), an historic visit intended… more...
On June 19, 2022, the united left party, NUPES (New Ecological and Social Popular Union), cobbled together by Jean-Luc Melenchon in less than two months, won enough seats to become the official opposition in the French National Assembly. How should we understand the growth of this left alliance in France which seems to have taken… more...
The February 2021 military coup in Myanmar put an end to the country’s ten-year period of quasi-civilian electoral rule—the so-called democratic transition, as it was optimistically called. Since then, nation-wide anti-coup protests, a violent military/police crackdown, and the emergence of a decentralised armed resistance movement have garnered extensive international and domestic media coverage. Far less… more...
Presidential elections will happen in Somalia on Sunday, 15 May 2022. This will most likely not bring peace and stability to the war-torn Somali society. To the contrary, the elections and their aftermath will, in all probability, perpetuate and even worsen to political crisis in the country. On the one hand, the electoral process has… more...
Matan Kaminer’s reflections on the workshop, “Rethinking surplus populations” is full of interesting insights and challenging puzzles. As he says, “operationalizing this concept [surplus populations] for the analysis of particular ethnographic cases throws up real problems.” (Kaminer, 2022). A task preliminary to operationalizing the concept, however, is the task of clarifying what it refers to.… more...
I was recently privileged to participate in a workshop about the Marxian concept of the “surplus population,” convoked by Stephen Campbell, Thomas Cowan, and Don Kalb as part of the Frontlines of Value research group at the University of Bergen. The workshop, featuring participants of different generations, academic fields and geographic specializations, was educating and… more...
A review article on The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Allen Lane, 2021. The Dawn of Everything’s central idea is challenging. We are told that humans are politically adventurous and experimental – so much so that after a spell of freedom and equality, people are inclined… more...
Although historically and geographically diverse, but sharing religious cultural roots, contemporary Sri Lanka and Thailand are both characterised by authoritarianism. This parallel cannot be explained as simply due to both countries being Theravāda polities. Nevertheless, dominant politics in both countries express elements of conservative ethno-Buddhism, within the cultural markers of national identity and contested political… more...
Image 1: Social distancing signs. Photo by ©Acabashi CC-BY-SA 4.0 To understand the massive world-disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic we need a sociology of complicity. Since the different waves hit the planet, we have been hearing repeatedly two crucial phrases: 1) “we are all in this together” (or the opposite: “we are not in this… more...
Identity and class While identity is of course a fundamental category in European philosophy at least since Aristotle, its politicization is a much more recent phenomenon. One can say that it is only in the second half of the 20th century that the development of cultural anthropology and sociology lays the theoretical ground for such… more...
David Graeber was certainly one of the most cited anthropologists of the early 21st century. More than a year after his untimely death, a substantive conversation about his scholarly legacy is slowly emerging. I want to contribute to such a critical assessment of his oeuvre by concentrating on his book “Utopia of Rules” published in… more...
In Greece, during the summer of 2021, we saw again a proliferation of wildfires that went on for days, like in 2020. While the climate change argument makes sense, at the same time Greece has experienced wildfires for many decades now. In the post-dictatorial Greek popular imaginary, fire represents the creative destruction process of a… more...
QAnon, Deep State, pedophile plots, George Soros, stolen elections, 9/11 truthers, Obama birthers, 5G penetration, the anti-maskers, the anti-vaxxers… We slow-working, ever so reflective anthropologists are being inundated with one conspiracy theory after another. A May 2021 survey reveals that 15% of Americans and 23% of those who call themselves Republicans believe that ‘the government,… more...
In 2021 a modest long-haired Sakha man named Alexander Gabyshev was arrested at his family compound on the outskirts of Yakutsk in an unprecedented for Sakha Republic (Yakutia) show-of-force featuring nine police cars and over 50 police. For the third time in two years, he was subjected to involuntary psychiatric hospitalization. Some analysts see this… more...
Image 1: Shows Tuzla Plenum, 2014 (Photograph by Tamara Opačić from H-Alter, 17 February 2014, http://h-alter.org/vijesti/plenum-je-uvijek-korak-ispred, Used with permission). The space where I live and work is described and prescribed by its past, by what it no longer is: post-Yugoslav, post-socialist, post-conflict, some even claim post-colonial. This world is rarely framed in terms of what… more...
For the first time since El Salvador’s mid-20th century military dictatorship, a single political party dominates both the legislative and executive branches of the government, and by all accounts aims to control the judiciary soon as well. The Nuevas Ideas or “New Ideas” party, the political vehicle of populist president Nayib Bukele, recently used its… more...
‘Blue lives matter,’ says the mantra of police fragility. The mythology about defenseless officers being hunted and killed by criminals is indeed a powerful one, mobilized by right-wing politicians endorsed by police unions in countries such as Brazil and the United States. In the case of Brazil, a global reference in police terror, the narrative… more...
Stuck At the height of this pandemic’s third wave, with many of us sitting in what by now feels like an eternal lockdown, images of a gigantic ship stuck inside the Suez Canal seem to have provided more than just a welcome distraction. The vessel, unable to move one way or another, proved to be… more...
On February 22nd police forces entered the campus of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, heavily beating many students, arresting 31 of them, and teargasing all those present, including teaching staff. Students had taken over the administration building of the University, protesting against a new bill on “Admission in higher education, protection of academic freedom, and… more...
One day last October, I happened to spot an acquaintance’s post on Wechat. It was a simple message thanking all ‘Ant-izens’ (people who work in Ant Financial of Alibaba) for their hard work, followed by a short video advertising Ant’s upcoming IPO. It came from a data scientist who had given up his high-paid job… more...
Times are a Changing. The Trump phenomenon as a whole, his election, his presidency, the events of the Capitol, Joe Biden’s accession and Donald Trump’s impeachment are moments of radical process. They form a dynamic in and of themselves. They express the chaos and transition of the moment but they are also and at the… more...
Image 1: Leith Mullings Official Website; an invaluable repository for Black feminist anticapitalist anthropology (Screenshot from page; http://leithmullings.com, 17 Feb 2021) Leith Mullings, Social Justice Anthropologist Jeff Maskovsky, City University of New York Leith Mullings’ death is a terrible blow to anthropology – and a heartbreaking loss to those of us who were lucky enough… more...
International media coverage of the February 1st military coup in Myanmar has been rather consistent. The focus, overwhelmingly, has been on the detention of State Counsellor and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, with speculations about the political machinations of Myanmar’s commander-and-chief, Min Aung Hlaing. In this way, the developing story has orbited around the… more...
As Covid-19 has washed over Latin America like a tsunami and the pillars of shaky economies have shuddered under lockdowns, the priority of profits over public welfare stands out in starker relief, restating the need for effective public policies and demanding government intervention more than ever. Such an unprecedented moment poses strong challenges for the… more...
On May 31, 2020, the US exploded in protest to address the super-exploitation of racism, which has uniquely scarred its history. This was followed by international demonstrations, including massive demonstrations in Paris against police brutality, a common theme of the Gilets Jaunes, a protest starting in November 2018 that I was studying. However, this time… more...
The purpose of this work is to examine and elaborate on the relationship between the people of Native North America and the material and ideological content of developmentalism as examined within the fields of anthropology and Native American or Indigenous studies. I observe that Indigenous North American peoples are frequently excluded from discussions of economic… more...
Tiny bodies, the remains of little children entombed without name or mercy, are uncovered in Tuam, a small Irish town in Co. Galway in the west of Ireland, at the site of a former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in 2017. The excavation, part of a Mother’s and Baby’s Home commission of inquiry (set up in… more...
The first two cases of COVID-19 in Indonesia were announced on 2 March 2020, quite late compared to other countries. The first patient was a 31-year-old woman who came into contact with a Japanese citizen – who later tested positive – at a dance event in South Jakarta. She then passed it on to her… more...
https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1268281502875422721 David Graeber at a protest in London, June 3rd 2020 David Graeber: Anthropologist and Revolutionary David was the most important anthropologist of his generation and by far its most brilliant and effective public intellectual. He reached wider audiences than anyone of us, possibly even larger than Margaret Mead in anthropology’s heydays. His message was… more...
On 7th June 2020, the bronze statue of Edward Colston in the English city of Bristol was pulled down by Black Lives Matter protesters with a rope, rolled a short distance down the road, and dropped into the harbor with a gurgle. Colston was a merchant who became rich in the late seventeenth-century selling sugar,… more...
Richard H. Robbins, SUNY Plattsburgh One feature of both the economic recession of 2007/2008 and the present Covid-19-induced economic collapse is increased central bank bouts of quantitative easing. The U.S. Federal Reserve, after pumping about $500 billion in the economy in 2008 is adding $2.3 trillion as of April 2020, while the European Central Bank… more...
Don Nonini, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Insa Koch’s recent (2020) FOCAAL blog, “The Making of Modern Slavery in Austerity Britain,” reminds us that enslavement and the bodies of black people are profoundly interconnected, and the link to challenges to “the punitive turn” and police abuse in the UK by the Black Lives… more...
Enikő Vincze, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoc On May 28th the liberal Romanian government published the last data on the employment situation. This is therefore a good time to review the fate of Romanian labor in and after the lockdowns. I argue that we see a deepening of the export oriented neoliberal paradigm that demonizes the “social”… more...
Insa Koch, London School of Economics States' claims that they are relieving human suffering have become a central element of their ongoing liberal legitimation amid their production of deepening inequalities. The British government's modern slavery agenda in relation to “county lines” provides a case in point. County lines is the name given by the police… more...
Mao Mollona, Goldsmiths College, London One thing is sure. If just briefly, the pandemic struck at the heart of capitalism. It paralysed the economy, broke the bureaucratic machine of nation-states and forced conservative governments worldwide to pass quasi post-capitalist policies which, only a few months earlier, were considered too radical even for the radical Left.… more...
Don Kalb, University of Bergen At some point in late January I told my family over WhatsApp with the Marxist bluster they usually enjoy from me that if Covid was to come to the West it would be the end of capitalism. Wuhan was already in lockdown and a red alert was sounding for many… more...
Gavin Smith, University of Toronto “One of the many perils lies in normalizing the ‘batshit crazy’ presently underway.”—Wallace, Liebman, Chavez & Wallace 2020: 5 The COVID-19 pandemic has stripped the veneer off capitalist society whether in its softer social democratic version or its bare-faced pseudo Darwinian version. Both the cause and the cure are down… more...
Sophia Hornbacher-Schönleber, University of Cambridge COVID-19 is wreaking havoc in Indonesia. The government ignored the crisis for too long, relying on a dubious religious discourse of divine protection. When it finally reacted, its response was unsystematic and favored economic stability over health and welfare measures. Although the government has neither imposed a strict lockdown nor… more...
Sharryn Kasmir, Hofstra University & University of Bergen Several weeks into the global pandemic, the gravity of the COVID-19-triggered economic crisis in the United States is coming into focus. As of this writing, some 22 million people were put out of work, one in four small businesses face permanent closure, and a third of renters… more...
Ramesh Sunam, Waseda University, Tokyo Suraj (name changed), arrived a year ago from Nepal to study at a Japanese language institute in Nagoya, Japan. He was working part-time at a convenient shop to make a living. Unfortunately, Suraj’s situation has changed in the last two months following the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19). In March,… more...
At the end of February, the center of Italian capital encountered an unexpected problem. Not an unforeseeable one, but one that was not previously thought possible in the highly integrated European tertiary hub of Lombardy. Some weeks of contradictory official announcements passed by. Local and central governments, experts, and politicians first closed the few institutions… more...
A prolonged wait at the pharmacy, a long queue before entering a supermarket. Experiences like this, today increasingly common, can help us to see how the spreading of Coronavirus is transforming our society. Yet, more precisely, the global pandemic, and the measures put in place by the Italian government to attempt to counteract it, are… more...
Mario Schmidt, University of Cologne Mototaxi drivers wearing face masks, supermarkets obliging customers to wash their hands before entering, hawkers selling indigenous vegetables as prophylactics against COVID-19, and strangers running away from me shouting “Corona, Corona, Corona” only to smile and break out in laughter—these are all strategies that inhabitants of Pipeline, one of Nairobi’s… more...
Mariya Ivancheva, University of Liverpool The UK higher education sector has seen decades of escalating injustices that academic trade unions need to confront head-on. As one of the biggest, most visible public higher education systems in the world, the UK is ahead of the curve in a global process of commercialization of higher education. The… more...
In July 2019, Puerto Rico was in turmoil. An organic movement asking for the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló emerged throughout this US colonial territory. After 12 days of mass protests, the governor resigned on 24 July. The international media portrayed his resignation as a successful and peaceful outcome. This is the first time that… more...
The immense new Istanbul Airport, additional spectacular bridges over the straights, the Marmaray metro/train tunnel under the Bosporus, high-speed trains, highways, extension of the Istanbul metro network, energy projects. These were highlights in a campaign video for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) candidate Binali Yıldırım in the rerun of the Istanbul mayoral election in… more...
An earlier version of this article first appeared on Hatful of History. In the last month, milkshakes have been lobbed at several far-right candidates in the European elections campaign across the United Kingdom. First it was former English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson, then UKIP’s misogynist YouTuber Carl Benjamin, and now Nigel Farage as… more...
For more by the author, see his article "Putting-Out's Return: Informalization and Differential Subsumption in Thailand's Garment Sector" in Focaal, freely available to all readers until 22 May 2019. Opening his 1990 political history, The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Burma, the Bangkok-based journalist Bertil Lintner summarized the then recent end to… more...
Over the past two days, my Facebook feed has been flooded with shares of articles featuring New Zealand patched street gangs and outlaw motorcycle clubs—Mongrel Mob, Black Power, King Cobras—acting in solidarity with the Muslim community and the 50 victims of the recent terrorist attack, be it by performing the traditional haka or promising to… more...
This is the first part of a panel held during the 2017 American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The second part is freely available to all readers in the most recent issue of Focaal here. Over the past decade, the dramatic ascendance of ethno-nationalist and right-wing populist movements and projects has been reshaping… more...
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 www.berghahnjournals.com/focaal. This issue's theme section—"The Anthropology of Austerity," guest edited by Theodore Powers and Theodoros Rakopoulos—posits that austerity is an instantiation of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and thus must be revisited in two… more...
On New Year’s Day, the world was treated to the spectacle of a 640-kilometer-long “Women’s Wall” in Kerala (South India). This human chain of more than five million women stretched the length of the state, making a spectacular statement for the “renaissance values” of women’s equity and rational thinking. Progressive organizations linked to Kerala’s Communist… more...
In recent weeks, Hungary has again made international headlines. This time, it was a popular movement born out of resistance to the latest rewriting of the labor code—which the ruling Fidesz party had already modified in 2011 to the benefit of employers—that made the news. On 12 December, amid chaotic scenes in the National Assembly… more...
Much has been written about the gilets jaunes and their relation to both politics, of the left and the right, and historical waves of labor unrest. In this article, Joshua Clover argues that the gilets jaunes are in fact a texbook example of a contemporary riot and may be best seen as an early example of… more...
“Polish leaders marched with the far right” was perhaps the most common description of the massive demonstration that took place in Warsaw on National Independence Day, 11 November. Press worldwide expressed astonishment and indignation over the fact that the Polish president, accompanied by politicians from the right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, decided to… more...
On 21 October, Jair Bolsonaro, the now president-elect of Brazil, made an announcement via his smartphone that was transmitted to crowds of supporters gathered in São Paulo: “Criminals of the MST [Landless Workers’ Movement], criminals of the MTST [Homeless Workers’ Movement], your actions will be classified as terrorism.” This was delivered as part of a… more...
The second part of this interview with Nicholas De Genova moves into an analysis of the so-called refugee crisis since 2015 and possibilities for militant academic research that challenges the increasingly hard-right consensus in Europe and beyond. The first part is published here and traces De Genova’s intellectual biography, the question of militant research, his… more...