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 …

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 …

Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) in time of crisis. Observations from ethnographic fieldwork on board LNG carriers  

Introduction November 2022, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I am sipping evening tea with Dario, an electrician from Ukraine, one of the 25 seafarers working on board a the liquified natural gas (LNG) carrier I have been living and conducting ethnographic fieldwork on for almost a month. During this time, I have …

‘I’ve seen things …’ and other pleasures of war

This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. “The world is not in your books and maps. It’s out there”, Gandalf noted turning his glance towards the moonlit window. “You’ll have a tale or two to tell of your own when you come back”, he …