Journal Blog
On Unsustainable Refugee Livelihoods and the Politics of Time in Humanitarian Governance. Estella Carpi with Amina al-Halabi[1] In this short article, in an attempt to question the politics of time that humanitarian governance implicitly rests upon when managing refugee lives, we question the contradiction residing in imposing long waits on refugees who are selected for …
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 …
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 …
Continue reading “‘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. Traditional war practices, such as killing are not easily linked with sexual intimacies in war. The image of a soldier is that of a rough-ridding macho-man driven by the desire to kill characterised by bigotry. While this …
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. There has been significant scholarly interest in the militarised and enclaved spaces of international intervention and war(Chandrasekaran, 2010; Fisher, 2017; Weigand and Andersson, 2019). Afghanistan’s “kabbuble”, Baghdad’s ‘Emerald City’, or Mogadishu’s airport ‘green zone’, are among the …
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. War and waring are extremely playful events. Warriors playfully lighten the burden of brutalities that either their anticipation hunts them or they are exposed to in combats. However, warriors’ playfulness is considered intensely transgressive fun by civilians …
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. The experience of military violence during the German ISAF operation has not only been essentially new to German society and the armed forces but also and particularly to the Bundeswehr soldiers. For the first time since the …
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. Anything is better than to have nothing at all happen day after day. You know that I do not love war or want it to return. But at least it made me feel alive, as I have …
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. Yugoslav historiography counted seven major Axis military operations undertaken against the Yugoslav partisan forces during the Second World War. Each of the offensives had as its goal elimination of the partisan resistance and the pacification of the Yugoslav countries. …
This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. Soldiers participate in wars for various reasons, some of which are historically, politically and culturally contingent, and others shaped by individual circumstances and dispositions. While research on the U.S. and U.K. militaries has often highlighted soldiers’ desires …
An exploration of soldier humor This blog post is part of the Experience of War conference, March 24, 2023, funded by the WARFUN project. Are soldiers funny? On the face of it, military life does not appear to hold a lot of fun: soldiers relinquish civil liberties and accept the possibility of injury and death, hierarchy …
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 …