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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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 …
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.
IT’S TOO COMPLICATED, THEY SAY
A Reckoning in Seven Movements I. To Begin With Fire There are nights I wake with my hands curled into fists,nights when I cannot unclench my teethbecause somewhere a child is drinking saltwater and dying anyway.Somewhere a child is fed by moonlight and still starving. I see the names of the dead in the lines …
Public/applied/professional anthropologists on gentrification. Reflections from Milan, Italy.
Milan, Italy’s economic capital, continues to experience notable growth, with a projected 1.1% increase in added value for 2024, according to Assolombarda – an association representing entrepreneurs in the metropolitan city and surrounding provinces of Lodi, Monza, Brianza, and Pavia. Despite these positive economic indicators, the city faces conflicting dynamics that disproportionately impact its most vulnerable populations.
The Rise of a Lone Soldier Influencer: Radicalization and Daily Life in the Context of Israel War on Gaza, 2023-2024
This paper analyzes the depiction and promotion of the most recent escalation of the Israeli war waged on Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territory through social media by a specific “lone soldier influencer” and Israeli and pro-Israel non-profit organizations during a six-month time frame (October 7, 2023 – April 7, 2024). The research delves into …
Dove sei, Europa?
Il 26 gennaio 2024 la Corte di Giustizia dell’Aja ha accolto la denuncia presentata dal Sudafrica e ordinato a Israele di prendere misure immediate per evitare il genocidio dei palestinesi a Gaza. Nonostante il cessate il fuoco rimanga un obiettivo complicato, è stato un momento importante perché l’ordine della Corte ha confermato quello che diversi …
How South Africa rescued humanity (and International Law) at the International Court of Justice
Since the creation of the United Nations, and in line with the civilizing mission’s rhetoric used to justify colonialism, racist arguments about the African continent as halting, obstructing, defying and subverting accountability for mass atrocities have been rehearsed in major political and academic circles in the West. In international diplomatic arenas as well as in …
Anger on the move
24 November 2023. Gaza: at least 14,854 people killed, including 6,150 children and 4,000 women; and at least 36,000 injured. At least 6,800 missing. The Al Jazeera ‘Israel–Gaza war in maps and charts: Live tracker’ also shows the dead in the Occupied West Bank, which, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the Palestine Red Crescent …
The Courage of Historical Truths
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 …
Gaza is not a humanitarian crisis: on self-defence, depoliticising language, and contextualisation
On Thursday evening October 26, EU member states finally agreed to a formal declaration calling for ‘humanitarian corridors and pauses’ of the shelling in Gaza. The declaration also expressed concerns for the ‘deteriorating humanitarian situation.’ While some have celebrated this move as a display of European unity and care for Palestinian lives, other have criticised …
Climate Change and Retreatist Anthropology
Laura Nader, in a 2013 interview (De Lauri 2013)—the message of which is no less salient today—stated: “For me anthropology is the freest of scientific endeavors because it potentially does not stop at boundaries that interfere with the capacity of the mind for self-reflection. This is a moment for new syntheses in a world that …
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AI’s Truth, Lies, and Ethos
Summary: Conversational artificial intelligence is often a form of storytelling, and underlying some of AI’s stories is an artificial ethos that could be insidious. I am a cultural anthropologist and I’ve been ruminating on the cultural impact of artificial intelligence. I recognize AI’s potential for increasing knowledge, productivity, and generating medical breakthroughs. There is no …