For more than a century, coal was central to the configuration of political relationships between citizens and the state in Asturias, Spain. However, since the 2010s, EU-wide energy transition policies have brought about the end of what was once a strategic coal enclave in northern Spain’s mining basins. Coal’s end has devalued the product and producers of coal and weakened tightly embedded networks of unions, political parties, and workers. Yet, while policy shifts have destroyed Spanish coal production, they have also repurposed coal infrastructure for the distribution of imported coal. This article analyzes the shifting claims, demands, and responsibilities that coal gave rise to and shows how the demise of coal citizenship has led to gendered, generational, and xenophobic fractures. It argues that, as the transition advances, mining ruins and discarded workforces are resignified within novel projects of political belonging, thus giving rise to new forms of energy citizenship.
Abstract This article examines humor in the Egyptian uprising of 2011 and its immediate aftermath to understand its role in sustaining and shaping protest and its possibilities. It argues that protest humor operates in three interconnected ways: as a means of creating and sustaining communitas through days of struggle; as a reflection of the ambivalences of sustaining protest and of being invested in systems one is also protesting; and as a means to resolve those ambivalences by focusing communitas on one goal. Through an analysis of satire, parody, and invective, it suggests that protest humor creates solidarities but also places limits on what can be included in the revolutionary process and how long it will last. It also can be co-opted and used against the revolution.
Abstract In recent attempts to decolonize the anthropological curriculum, anthropologists have returned to Jomo Kenyatta's Facing Mount Kenya (1938). This article contextualizes Kenyatta's book and his political person within the Kenyan colonial period and contemporary struggles for land and freedom. It warns anthropologists against romanticizing Kenyatta by grasping his fundamental conservatism in relation to the politics of his day and his oligarchic government after independence. The article also argues that ongoing (de)colonial histories of struggle ought to be at the core of attempts to decolonize anthropology. Beyond epistemological and ontological decentering, this means taking stock of the material and political legacies of (post)colonialism and the contemporary ongoing struggles to which they give rise.
This article examines the competing attitudes toward labor that emerge from the interplay between formal and informal labor systems in Shenzhen, China. Drawing on ethnographic research at the Sanhe labor market, I argue that the privatization of labor markets and state-led efforts to formalize employment relations have paradoxically reinforced precarious informal labor, deepening labor fragmentation while sustaining low wages and high profits. While many migrant workers strategically navigate these precarious conditions to combine income streams, others—such as the so-called “Sanhe Gods”—embrace their marginality, rejecting conventional labor norms. Their anti-economic stance not only challenges dominant narratives of work and productivity but also complicates conventional understandings of class identity and consciousness within China’s evolving labor landscape.
While the most obvious targets of anti-immigration mobilizations in the global north are migrants themselves, this article examines a less visible conflict inherent to such mobilizations, not structured along the ethnic divide of “us” vs. “them.” Focusing on the Italian border town of Ventimiglia—an emblematic space of the EU’s “refugee crisis”—it analyzes the resentment, suspicion, and anger among residents of a white working-class neighborhood toward the local “welcome culture”—volunteers, activists, liberal church groups, and NGO professionals supporting migrants in transit. This resentment, it argues, must be read in relation to autochthonous workers’ experiences of devaluation, dispossession, and disorganization in the absence of a language of class, offering critical questions and filling a gap in ethnographic research on the social bases of neo-nationalist movements.
Abstract The lockdown in Shanghai (Spring 2022) sparked a flood of funny memes, songs, artworks, and short videos shared on WeChat platforms. Based on an analysis of over five hundred posts, we analyze three moments: First, the humor at the start of the lockdown, characterized by parody and irony and clearly infused with a strong sense of Shanghaineseness. Second, during the lockdown, more critical humorous voices became prominent. Third and finally, in the aftermath of the lockdown, these voices conflated with protests on the street. Thus, our analysis shows that seemingly lighthearted posts contributed to the sudden dismantling of China's zero-Covid policies in December 2022, attesting to the continued possibility of political critique in a context of intensified authoritarianism.
This article provides a sociohistorical and ethnographic study of the role of public action in market-making processes by examining how tourism has been mobilized as a tool for development in the Penedès wine district (Spain). It analyzes the state-led processes shaping local tourism markets by tracing three interconnected processes: the institutionalization of tourism as a field of public intervention; the construction of tourism-related public problems and agendas; and the configuration of place through multiscalar and cross-sectoral policy interventions. The analysis follows how tourism policies, actors, and rationalities circulate across state structures, forging new institutional arrangements and linking economic and territorial objectives. By focusing on situated practices, alliances, and symbolic representations, the study shows how public action contributes to the shaping economies.
Abstract This introduction locates the theme section “Humor, coping, and resistance” in relation to anthropological literature on agency, power, and social suffering as well as the field of humor theory, including anthropological approaches to humor. It asks about the role of humor in theories of agency and, vice versa, the role of agency in theories of humor. Discussing the three case studies, it develops an argument about the significance of agentic forms of humor, ranging from subtle coping to outright resistance, in oppressive and conflictual environments. Yet, it also points to the limits of the agency of humor due to censorship and grave power asymmetries that nevertheless can have the effect of making people resort to another agentic quality of humor that accentuates ambiguity and elusiveness.
Abstract Palestinian humor has a significant influence on how people deal with social suffering and political violence. The article argues that humor serves as an agentic force, which manifests Palestinians’ agency under dire conditions that is amplified through the uses of online networks and platforms. Exploring the work of Palestinian artist Amer Shomali, the article relies on anthropological approaches to social suffering and agency and links them with theories of humor. Shomali's wit is more than a sudden reaction to uncertainty and calamity; rather, it can be considered as a tool of resistance to cope with the Israeli settler colonialism and its consequences. The article shows that the narratives that emerge through his work reflect various layers of people's agency and the reality of Palestinians’ lives.
This article examines humor in the Egyptian uprising of 2011 and its immediate aftermath to understand its role in sustaining and shaping protest and its possibilities. It argues that protest humor operates in three interconnected ways: as a means of creating and sustaining communitas through days of struggle; as a reflection of the ambivalences of sustaining protest and of being invested in systems one is also protesting; and as a means to resolve those ambivalences by focusing communitas on one goal. Through an analysis of satire, parody, and invective, it suggests that protest humor creates solidarities but also places limits on what can be included in the revolutionary process and how long it will last. It also can be co-opted and used against the revolution.
The lockdown in Shanghai (Spring 2022) sparked a flood of funny memes, songs, artworks, and short videos shared on WeChat platforms. Based on an analysis of over five hundred posts, we analyze three moments: First, the humor at the start of the lockdown, characterized by parody and irony and clearly infused with a strong sense of Shanghaineseness. Second, during the lockdown, more critical humorous voices became prominent. Third and finally, in the aftermath of the lockdown, these voices conflated with protests on the street. Thus, our analysis shows that seemingly lighthearted posts contributed to the sudden dismantling of China's zero-Covid policies in December 2022, attesting to the continued possibility of political critique in a context of intensified authoritarianism.
Homing in on a series of events that unfolded in the context of post-tsunami reconstruction in India's Tamil Nadu state, this article explores how people at the margins win small concessions from the state by deploying forms of power that the latter cannot effectively countervail. Marshaling analyses of tsunami reconstruction and its anchoring in late neoliberal developmentalist policy frameworks, as well as the rich and complex history of incorporation and autonomy shaping fisher-sovereign relations, I argue that a dynamic reading of power enables an analysis of autonomy and agency shaping engagements with sovereign power. To this end I supplement my ethnographic account of post-tsunami events with a historical ethnographic reading of locally popular narratives, in order to consider how such actions might be viewed as strategic and resistant.
Palestinian humor has a significant influence on how people deal with social suffering and political violence. The article argues that humor serves as an agentic force, which manifests Palestinians' agency under dire conditions that is amplified through the uses of online networks and platforms. Exploring the work of Palestinian artist Amer Shomali, the article relies on anthropological approaches to social suffering and agency and links them with theories of humor. Shomali's wit is more than a sudden reaction to uncertainty and calamity; rather, it can be considered as a tool of resistance to cope with the Israeli settler colonialism and its consequences. The article shows that the narratives that emerge through his work reflect various layers of people's agency and the reality of Palestinians' lives.
In recent attempts to decolonize the anthropological curriculum, anthropologists have returned to Jomo Kenyatta's Facing Mount Kenya (1938). This article contextualizes Kenyatta's book and his political person within the Kenyan colonial period and contemporary struggles for land and freedom. It warns anthropologists against romanticizing Kenyatta by grasping his fundamental conservatism in relation to the politics of his day and his oligarchic government after independence. The article also argues that ongoing (de)colonial histories of struggle ought to be at the core of attempts to decolonize anthropology. Beyond epistemological and ontological decentering, this means taking stock of the material and political legacies of (post)colonialism and the contemporary ongoing struggles to which they give rise.
This introduction locates the theme section "Humor, coping, and resistance" in relation to anthropological literature on agency, power, and social suffering as well as the field of humor theory, including anthropological approaches to humor. It asks about the role of humor in theories of agency and, vice versa, the role of agency in theories of humor. Discussing the three case studies, it develops an argument about the significance of agentic forms of humor, ranging from subtle coping to outright resistance, in oppressive and conflictual environments. Yet, it also points to the limits of the agency of humor due to censorship and grave power asymmetries that nevertheless can have the effect of making people resort to another agentic quality of humor that accentuates ambiguity and elusiveness.
This article examines the political significance of a distinct form of face-to-face preaching (dawat) in the transnational Islamic piety movement, the Tablighi Jamaat, against the backdrop of Pakistani nationalism. Pakistani nationalism is structured around a genealogical hierarchy that presumes that high-caste (ashraf ) Muslims are purer Muslims and that it is their task to uplift low-caste (ajlaf ) Muslims through the reform of their customary practices. By reenacting the Prophet’s example, dawat creates a “direct” relationship to God and obviates the genealogical hierarchies that structure Pakistani political life. It is this promise of sovereign transcendence that explains the millions of Pakistani Muslims that flock through the gates of the Tablighi Jamaat.
This article focuses on experiences of people in the Banija region and specifically the town of Petrinja, Croatia, after an earthquake hit the area in December 2020. It presents their reflections on being confined to “container homes” in three different situations: living in container settlements on the outskirts of town; spending time in a container shopping center; and finding shelter in containers adjacent to destroyed houses. The study shows that temporary container housing frequently turned into permanent living and working solutions during the three years of post-earthquake reconstruction. It also argues the importance of acknowledging that the sense of isolation in disaster-affected areas and the loss of potential for renovation and development do not merely arise from “container life” but reveal the longer-run “polycrisis” involved.
If universities are committed to intellectual liberation, must they also be committed to liberation from racial oppression? And if they are to be antiracist institutions, to what kind of antiracism must they adhere? Beginning with a reflection on the multiple histories of racism and antiracism at the Vught camp and prison in the Netherlands, and surveying the work of scholars such as Anton de Kom and Frantz Fanon, this article explores the obligations of solidarity that fall upon European and US universities, in the shadow of racially organized police, military, border, and prison violences, from the United States to the Netherlands to Palestine.
Gorbach, Denys. 2024. The Making and unmaking of the Ukrainian working class: Everyday politics and moral economy in a post-soviet city. New York: Berghahn Books. Ishchenko, Volodymyr. 2024. Towards the abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to war. London: Verso.
War is changing globally. This collection suggests that the notion of “warfare governance” provides an analytical tool to grapple with a contemporary world where most wars and forms of large-scale or endemic violence unfold in domains, territories, and on scales beyond the format and trope of a war with clear fronts. Crucially, what we argue to be forms of warfare governance has risen in prominence beyond widely disseminated and mass-mediated global theatres of war to become a key mode of governing where in/visibilization is central. Further, by moving away from depictions of war that align with theatre metaphors, we underline the importance of revisiting and rethinking the number of small wars and insurgencies.
