Journal Blog
I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in June 2015 and joined an INGO (International Non-Governmental Organization) in November 2015. Since then, I have been working in several different organizations. Over the past five years, I have observed inefficient relationships between INGOs operating in Turkey and the Turkish state, leading to negative consequences for the vulnerable …
Ruth Finnegan in her Communicating: The Multiple Modes of Human Interconnection (2002) explains that human face-to-face communication is characterized by multimodality, that is, by the fact that we always communicate using a variety of interdependent channels at the same time. The tone of voice, the effectiveness of the gaze, facial expressions, body posture, hand and …
Review of “Cooked: Survival by Zip Code” (by Judith Helfand, distributed by Bullfrog Films, 2018). The film “Cooked: Survival by Zip Code” is based on the book – “Heatwave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago”.[1] The title of the film is a powerful depiction of the heatwave that ravaged across the city of Chicago …
Dopo il colpo di stato militare del 1 febbraio 2021 da parte del Tatmadaw (le forze armate del Myanmar), il 2 febbraio e’ stato nominato lo State Administrative Council, ovvero un nuovo esecutivo di governo formato in parte dai militari stessi e in parte da politici di varie fazioni. Gli esponenti del partito risultato vincitore …
Questo articolo riesamina brevemente l’attuale critica all’umanitarismo occupandosi di approcci alternativi allo spazio umanitario pubblico, alla figura dell’antropologo-umanitario, alla politica dell’umanitarismo e all’antropologia della sofferenza. Il caso studio qui riportato riguarda l’accoglienza terapeutica dei bambini di Chernobyl presso famiglie ospitanti italiane(1). Dallo spazio umanitario pubblico a quello privato Uno spazio umanitario è generalmente inteso come …
Article 3 In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions: 1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who …
Continue reading “The Helpers and the Helped: Troubling Ideas of Human Worth in Humanitarianism”
This summer evening in 1943 in Wanchai district, British Hong Kong, my grandfather lies on the bed, his racked body still atop the finely woven matting. He has tuberculosis, even though he is a doctor of tuberculosis. He is smoking opium to dull the painful contortions caused by his bloody cough, his fever, flushed cheeks, …
This paper is one of a series, written in Italian, called “Diary of an Insurrection”, a public dialogue with the reader with which the author reflects upon the global developments of Black Lives Matter. This is the fourth reflection and examines the concept of “original mixedness”, previously defined as the informal potential of the differentiation, …
The title of this paper is borrowed from my sister. During a family conversation about Covid-19 in Bamenda, Cameroon, she used the expression to describe the DIY cynical adaptations to the requirement to wear facemasks in Cameroon, which she described as entertainment. There is a scarcity of surgical masks because of border closures and strict …
Continue reading “The time of masks: everyone to themselves and Covid-19 for us all”
When future historians try to understand what ‘trafficking’ meant in the first 20 years of the 21st century, I hope this essay of mine gives them pause. This is a memoir recording how my questions about migration from 25 years ago coincided with the rise of a thing called trafficking as a major social issue. Snake Oil …
Continue reading “Snake Oil: A Memoir on the Rise of ‘Trafficking’”
As I write this today I am doing my best at “sheltering-in-place” with Mike in our California bungalow on Walnut Street in Berkeley, California. Has it been six weeks that we are in house arrest? Time and space are so transmogrified that it feels like living on a spaceship or a lifeboat. I don’t grasp …
As COVID-19 continues to spread around the world, allegations of migrant smuggling networks evolving, changing, and undergoing drastic transformations as a result of the pandemic are starting to emerge. Claims of this kind are not new. In fact, assertions of smuggling undergoing Darwinian transformations tend to follow the aftermath of border closures, ramped-up immigration enforcement …
Continue reading “The “real” transformation of migrant smuggling in the time of COVID-19”
In what ways can Laura Nader’s concept of “harmony ideology” (1990) help us shed light on an ongoing international legal dispute over genocide accusations? In her village ethnography from rural southern Mexico of the 1960s, Nader demonstrated that Talean Zapotec judges were “active in articulating a harmony model for dispute resolution” in order to prevent …
Continue reading “Harmony ideology at The Hague: Myanmar before the International Court of Justice”
Like the concept of ‘terrorism,’ now notions and strategies of ‘safe zone’ or ‘security zone’ are shaping the colonialist state’s expansionist wishes and international illegitimate actions. Today, powerful nation states, such as the USA against Mexico, India against Kashmir, Europe against North Africa, Saudi Arabia against Yemen, Russia against Ukraine and China against Uygur, continue …
Public anthropology, a term initially coined by Robert Borofsky for a book series at the University of California Press, became popular in the late 1990s. Ithas been both endorsed and criticized. Endorsements have emphasized the need for a shift in scholarly attitude toward society at large, while criticism has pointed out the potential overlapping with …