The Eastern edges of the European Union stand as landscapes of transformation and socioeconomic and cultural flux, situated between shifting empires and layered histories. Their in-betweenness mirrors a duality of political imaginaries: remnants of collapsed past utopias colliding with the alluring yet hollow promises of contemporary global capitalism. These places also inhabit the peripheries of… more...
Image 1: Untitled (Ánima, Silueta de Cohetes) 1976, by Ana Medieta While explaining the origins of Gramsci’s definition of hegemony to an interviewer, the labour historian Michael Denning (2023) suggested taking a Jeopardy! approach to social theory, which is to say: “rather than try to define a term, give a term, and the question to… more...
The silence around the salience of race in development and humanitarianism (see White 2002, Kothari 2006) has lately been interrupted by an increased attention to white saviourism, especially in social media and celebrity humanitarianism (Benton 2016, Toomey 2017, Pallister-Wilkins 2021, Budabin and Richey 2021). This body of literature provides crucial insight into the deep entanglements… 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...
Humanitarian action is marked by a striking disjunction between the universalising humanist vocabulary that undergirds its ethical commitments, and the taxonomies of racialised difference that govern its dispensation of moral concern and material aid. […]
On November 14, 2023, at the University of Toronto, we, the conveners of the Political Economy Discussion Group, an informal transnational group of anthropologists working in political economy, brought together an in-person group of more than 25 colleagues to discuss the question of the status of contemporary fascism. […]
It was often said, in the course of the transition from communism to capitalism in the 1990s and 2000s, that Eastern Europeans are good at surviving. The IMF and the World Bank praised the local population’s capacity to “subsist” through small-scale agricultural production, “relieving” welfare budgets or helping shoulder the liberalization of prices. In fact, […]
Coronavirus has provoked some of us to think about our worlds in new ways and to consider different horizons of change. Yet in many pandemic-related discourses and policies, I have been frustrated to see hegemonic ideals about care, kinship, and residence distract attention from empirical realities and adequate solutions. Examples range from the ubiquitous representation […]
Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar is not David’s first published book, but it is based on his doctoral thesis and, in this sense, his first, major scholarly work. We are led in this discussion by Prof. Maurice Bloch and Prof. Jonathan Parry—two of David’s colleagues at the LSE and engaged readers of David’s work. […]
This post is part of a feature on “The Political Power of Energy Futures,” moderated and edited by Katja Müller (MLU Halle-Wittenberg), Charlotte Bruckermann (University of Bergen), and Kirsten W. Endres (MPI Halle). In a little restaurant in the midst of a foggy day, Talita served me chicken, rice, salads and a glass of local […]
This post is part of a feature on “Debating the EASA/PreAnthro Precarity Report,” moderated and edited by Stefan Voicu (CEU) and Don Kalb (University of Bergen). Contemporary anthropological praxis sits at the intersection of two ethical traditions. Many anthropologists are equipped with both a sophisticated understanding of the ethics and politics of representation and a […]
This post is part of a feature on “Urban Struggles,” moderated and edited by Raúl Acosta (LMU Munich), Flávio Eiró (Radboud University Nijmegen), Insa Koch (LSE) and Martijn Koster (Radboud University Nijmegen). As a result of welfare reform and continuing budget cuts, social service agencies in the UK have struggled to make ends meet and […]
This post is part of a feature on “How Capitalists Think,” moderated and edited by Patrick Neveling (University of Bergen) and Tijo Salverda (University of Cologne). This contribution focuses on the decades-long struggle of workers and citizens in an industrial town in Northern Italy against the hazardous asbestos cement industry. It analyses the dividing lines […]
This post is part of a feature on the 2017 UK elections, moderated and edited by Patrick Neveling (SOAS, University of London). As I left Bournemouth train station this afternoon, a homeless man approached me and asked for some change. Shelters in Bournemouth and elsewhere in the United Kingdom charge money to rough sleepers on […]
This post is part of a feature on anthropologists on the EU at 60, moderated and edited by Don Kalb (Central European University and University of Bergen). Earlier this year, a curious incident occurred in Auckland that ignited a heated debate over the meaning of the term “European.” A new student club calling itself the Auckland […]
On 30/10/2022, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) of the Workers’ Party won an exceptionally close runoff election against the current far-right president of Brazil, Jair Messias Bolsonaro. For volunteers of a community kitchen (Cozinha Solidária) of the leftist Homeless Workers Movement (MTST), Lula’s victory represents an enormous relief and a hope after the long […]
This post is part of the Modes of Production feature moderated and edited by Patrick Neveling and Joe Trapido. From the sixteenth century onward, European trading networks grew ever more extensive. In some places, they displaced or directly subjugated the indigenous population early on. In others, merchants entered trading relationships with locals. In some parts […]
Capital’s resilience as technologies and cultures change lies in the systematic priority placed on value development and extraction. However, this does not imply that actors in these systems clearly understand their roles in the process. As industries change, equal amounts of optimism comingle with confusion as practitioners experiment with new roles and practices that they […]
On 11 February 2011 I stood in Tahrir Square surrounded by millions celebrating the toppling of Mubarak following eighteen solid days of battle. Around me were people from all walks of life: Saʿidis (“Southerners”) who came all the way from villages in the south, street children turned rebels, family members of martyrs who were killed […]
In the American Anthropologic al Association (AAA) panel on “Anthropology’s Public Engagement with Capitalism: Beyond Gifts versus Markets” (Chicago, 2013), Don Kalb and Patrick Neveling asked us to advance on the genealogies that prevail as alternatives to anarchist and Maussian envisionings of communalism and societies against the state. They entreated us to visit perspectives that […]
Image 1: A portrait of the first chief minister of Kerala, E.M.S. Namboodiripad displayed at thekolaya (a Ravi Varma painting could be observed on the adjacent right wall), photo by T.P. Bineesh Communism continues to thrive both as a ubiquitous presence and a powerful electoral force in the south Indian state of Kerala. Established in… more...
This is the second in our series of blogposts in relation to the Budhan podcast project, a community led initiative that has sought to capture the experiences of some of the most marginalised communities in India during the COVID19 pandemic. In this post we focus on a fundamental transformation engendered through the project - a… more...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgIQ2txzvlA “Near Ahmedabad’s civil hospital, in a small dilapidated house. A dog lives with his wife and their children. After two days, the dog returns to his home. After seeing him, the wife says: “Oh! Look at your face, it is glowing First tell me where you have been for two days? The dog shakes… more...
During the lockdowns of spring 2020, short videos became a popular means of reflecting on new experiences of quarantine and social distancing. Passed around on social media platforms, downloaded in microseconds, and stored on smartphones where they became nested amidst other videos and photos, Corona videos brought about smiles amidst anxious circumstances and reflected meaningful… more...
Prof Helder Macedo is the emeritus Professor of Portuguese Literature at Kings College London. He is a highly regarded writer who has received many honors in Portugal. He was Secretary State for Culture in Portugal shortly after the Carnation Revolution. Portugal celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the revolution on the 25th of April 2024. Prof… more...
Karl Polanyi Research Center for Global Social Studies and the Commission on Global Transformations and Marxian Anthropology – IUAES, in cooperation with the Working Group for Public Sociology ‘Helyzet’, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Focaal - Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, and FocaalBlog, organized a conference on the 26-27 May, 2022, in Budapest, addressing the escalating… more...
David Bozzini is a research fellow at the Graduate Center, CUNY, where he is researching on Eritrean deserters movements and on the resistance to digital surveillance. He co-edits Tsantsa, the journal of the Swiss Ethnological Society. Gabriella Coleman is an anthropologist and holds the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University in… more...
David Bozzini is a research fellow at the Graduate Center, CUNY, where he is researching on Eritrean deserters movements and on the resistance to digital surveillance. He co-edits Tsantsa, the journal of the Swiss Ethnological Society. Gabriella Coleman is an anthropologist and holds the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University in… more...
