Journal Blog
Climate change is going to be the game change to the humanitarian world. How? By sheer necessity. There is no other way. Otherwise, the humanitarian system will be overworking its way into exhaustion and oblivion. The current international humanitarian system is not fit for purpose to stem what is coming its way. The latest IPCC …
Blog 1 Blog 2 Lake Poopó, chronicle of a death foretold? Lake Poopó is a shallow, saline lake situated in the Andean highlands of Bolivia at an altitude of about 3,700 meters. It constitutes the country’s second largest lake, after Lake Titicaca. While the lake’s size has always been subject to extreme variability, its surface …
Blog 1 Blog 3 On 9 August 2017, a couple dozen activists gathered in front of the Castle of Good Hope in central Cape Town to mark International Indigenous People’s Day. Constructed between 1666 and 1679 at the behest of the Dutch East India Company, the Castle is South Africa’s oldest surviving colonial building and …
Blog 2 Blog 3 On a warm September evening in 2021, we joined a group of residents, researchers, and activists at the centre for contemporary art Kunsthal, which is part of the 13th century Caermersklooster, the old Carmelite convent in Ghent’s historic city centre. On the trail of plundering iconoclasts, poor working class families, young …
In this ethnographic account, Astrid B. Stensrud explores the ways in which water is perceived and used. Based on 13 months of ethnographic work between 2011 and 2014, the book provides a vivid description of how social practices, legal frameworks, and the changing weather due to climate change and insecure water supplies influence the pluralities …
In Sovereign Forces John-Andrew McNeish, an anthropologist based in Norway, offers a fresh perspective on “resource sovereignty,” identifying sovereignty, at various scales and in different spaces, as a vital analytic concept for understanding land, territory and energy development in Latin America and beyond. Reflecting on more than twenty years of ethnographic engagement and research projects in …
The term ‘coming out’ is still unfamiliar to many Indians. It is safe to say that it is a new term known mostly to the urban, English-speaking world of India who are familiar with gender and sexual minorities. Coming out of the closet can mean different things to different people; it can be an emancipatory …
Continue reading “Transcending identities: Narrative reflection on the ritual of coming out”
Introduction The October 2018 migrant caravans prompted migration to be reconfigured as a political issue in the Central America–Mexico–United States region. Described as a forgotten crisis by the European Commission (European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, 2021), transit and settlement migration from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador to Mexico had until then been invisible …
Continue reading “The construction of an internal humanitarian border: the case of Puebla, Mexico”
This short book is an ethnographic essay on the constitution of the abused subject through testimony in the Italian judicial system. How do experiences of intimate violence get translated into legally intelligible language? How does the ambivalence and trauma of intimate partner violence complicate the articulation of experience in the court? What inadequate institutional structure …
After Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a large-scale military invasion of Ukraine on Thursday morning, 24 February 2022, European publics and leaders have responded urgently with nearly unanimous condemnation and rallied to support the Ukrainian state and people. Like many others, we are deeply troubled by the unfolding of war. However, as scholars studying war, …