An Account of Intimate Interest
This poem is an account of materiality through time-tracking and place-making, viewed from within the contours of home while wearing the ethnographer’s lens.
An Ordinary Humanitarian Society: Trust and Solidarity in Contexts of Confrontation
Growing public outrage with the political responses to conflicts and complex emergencies have led to increasing calls for solidarity with affected populations that identify a shared humanity. Disenchantment with political authority makes it more important than ever for the humanitarian sector to engage with the political discussion, rather than distancing from it in the quest …
Identity Politics: Reflections from Turkey
When Frantz Fanon (1961) framed the legitimacy of anti-colonial armed struggle in The Wretched of the Earth, he likely did not imagine that his arguments would resonate, some seventeen years later, with a movement: Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK—Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê), which would adopt armed resistance in the context of the Kurdish struggle in Turkey. Important scholars …
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LOST PREDICTIONS III
This blog post is a response to LOST PREDICTIONS by Fiona Murphy and Eva van Roekel, and LOST PREDICTIONS II by Maruška Svašek, with and without ChatGPT (depending on who you’re more afraid of). Any emotions expressed here are entirely fictional, except empathy, which stubbornly insisted on staying. The old lamp buzzed faintly, like a …
LOST PREDICTIONS II
This blog post is a reply to LOST PREDICTIONS by Fiona Murphy and Eva van Roekel Maruška Svašek without ChatGPT Karel entered the museum with a visceral urge to be surrounded by artefacts. To be sucked in by the collection and erase himself. The trip to Berlin had shaken him to the core. On top …
The Politics of Bad Writing
Let’s be honest. Anthropology is plagued by dull, pretentious, and sometimes even meaningless prose: language that is at best imprecise and at worst incomprehensible. Now and then, examples of clear and evocative writing emerge from the literature like flowers from the weeds. Yet many anthropologists will privately acknowledge that the general state of the discipline’s …
LOST PREDICTIONS
Professor Karel Mulder sat at his desk, wreathed in the noble decay of academia—a kingdom of paper that had long since declared independence from any attempts at order.
An invitation: Lost Predictions as novella, syllabus and glitch in the machine of academic publishing
What happens when the prediction fails, but the system marches on as if it hadn’t? When the algorithm forgets what the body remembers?
The Laughing Perpetrator
In photo and video material of violent conflict, a phenomenon regularly occurs that needs interpretation: perpetrators of violence who appear to enjoy their actions, or bystanders laughing or smiling while others commit violence.
International Joking Relationships
What can soldier humour tell us about international relations? To begin with, humour is a universal social practice …
When Soldiers became Spiritual: Wartime Beliefs
The dominant discourse about war is that soldiers deployed and fighting in it dominate the landscape, and the animals which live in it. This paper focuses on the ways that Zimbabwean soldiers were made to understand the sacredness and spirituality of the Democratic Republic of Congo landscape: river water, swamps, snakes and ghosts by the local Congolese civilian people.
Fun in War? On Researching Fun and Entertainment in the Yugoslav Partisan Struggle.
Commenting on my research for the WarFun project, someone once remarked that I must be using a very broad definition of fun — one that, apparently, included everything. In a way, they were right. But my usage of the term fun did not come from nowhere. It gradually emerged through engaging with the sources I had at my disposal.
When adrenaline draws you in. Reflections on film and skydiving in the aftermath of Argentina’s ‘dirty war’
I am currently wrapping up an essay film, Falling, about my fraught relationship with Pepe and his brother, two retired Argentine military officers whom I met during my doctoral research on crimes against humanity from the perspective of those who suffered and those who perpetrated political violence.
Songs of Fire and Rice: Post-Electoral Song Protests in Mozambique
Women have always helped shape Mozambique’s political narrative. Today, that role is more visible than ever. Their political commentary, through song, dance, or digital media, is forceful and clear.
African agency in response to EU externalization efforts
Diplomatic pressures on countries in West Africa to cooperate on migration-related issues has been high, and growing, in recent years. Numerous policy initiatives underscore this, going back to the 1992 Declaration on Principles Governing External Aspects of Migration Policy, which included the idea of EU return agreements with countries of origin and transit. Most recently, …
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