What's going on in Ukraine?

“What’s Going on in Ukraine?” Timeline on Allegra

As part of our ongoing collaboration on Ukraine coverage, and in an effort to give a little context to the discussion, the Allegra blog has put together an AMAZING timeline of events (with a little help from our own contributors Michael Bobick, Jennifer Carroll, Monica Eppinger and Taras Ferirko).  Here’s just a taste:

In its mission to promote anthropology’s societal relevance, Allegra has launched a discussion with the insights of specialists of the region into the current Ukrainian situation. Last week in this mission we joined forces with a virtual roundtable with Anthropoliteia – Part 1. We’ll soon follow with Part 2, but first a short recap of the main events is in order – just WHAT is going in with this crises, and WHEN has everything started concretely?!

With this goal in mind we have summarised the events into a timeline, starting with November 21, 2013 – summarising all the joint wisdom by the Allegra & Anthropoliteia ‘Ukraine teams’  and constructed with wonderful diligence by Allegra’s very own Ninnu Koskenalho!

The backstory for the crisis in Ukraine begins with Russia’s historical affinity with the Crimean peninsula, and with the power politics of Ukrainian leaders Viktor Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko. The current crisis is seen to have begun late last year, when political decisions sparked protests that quickly grew in size. As with the Arab Spring, the iconic location of the protests is the Independence Square, Maidan Nezalezhnost, in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev

via WHAT IS GOING ON?! Ukraine Crisis Timeline | Allegra.

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What's going on in Ukraine?

Little green men: Russia, Ukraine and post-Soviet sovereignty

The editors of Anthropoliteia would like to welcome Alexei Yurchak with the latest entry in our developing Forum What’s Going on in Ukraine?
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What's going on in Ukraine?

Ukraine Roundtable

Ukraine memorial

Memorials for the dead along Institutka St. © Jennifer Carroll

Both Allegra and Anthropoliteia have been busy covering the political developments in Ukraine and Crimea, so we decided to “collaborate” on our coverage by bringing together the various contributors to pause and reflect on the question: “What has struck you the most, or been most noteworthy, about the developments in Ukraine—from EuroMaidan to Crimea—so far?” Continue reading

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Dossiers

Thoughts on policing in Turkey – Football and beyond

The editors of Anthropoliteia would like to welcome a special guest post from Yağmur Nuhrat as part of our series of anthropological reports From the Field

Over the past summer, international audiences became aware of severe police violence during Turkey’s Gezi protests. In summer 2013, what started out as a peaceful demonstration in Istanbul to save a public park quickly led to a national uprising against the government. The resistance was marked with intense police violence in the form of tear gas, plastic bullets and pressurized water from cannons. In October 2013, Amnesty International called these actions “gross human rights violations.” Continue reading

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Announcements

Welcome to the new Anthropoliteia.net !

© The estate of Edward Wolfe

P.C. 77 by Edward Wolfe c.1927

We are happy to continue announcing the exciting changes that are rolling out here at Anthropoliteia. You’ve already heard about our new snazzy design and two of our new features, “Dispatches” and “In the Journals“.  In the meantime we’ve also snuck in our very own domain name: anthropoliteia.net  For most of you this should make very little difference, in any.  Your browser and rss reader should automatically redirect you from our old WordPress address to the new one, but this change affords us a greater deal of flexibility with the site design going forward. Continue reading

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Dossiers

Views of Venezuelan Protests Part II: La Desconfianza and the Venezuelan Opposition

The editors of Anthropoliteia would like to welcome a special guest post, the second in a series from Rebecca Hanson on recent political developments in Venezuela. A version of this piece originally appeared on the blog Venezuela Politics and Human Rights as “La Desconfianza: The View from Western Caracas II
Mural from a wall in Catia © Rebecca Hanson

Mural from a wall in Catia. The literal translation is “knee on the ground” but the term originally arose from the military to refer to the position of a shooter with one knee on the ground to take a shot. Chavistas use it metaphorically to mean that they are prepared for battle or to do whatever it takes to protect the Bolivarian Revolution. © Rebecca Hanson

“It makes no sense! You go into a Chavista’s house and Chávez and Maduro’s faces are everywhere but you open their fridge and it is empty!  Empty!” This was the passionate reaction I received from an acquaintance I was chatting with yesterday when I commented that protests in Caracas have not seemed to receive support from popular sectors in the city.

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Dossiers

Views of Venezuelan Protests Part I: Where are the Poor Protestors?

The editors of Anthropoliteia would like to welcome the first in a series of special guest posts from Rebecca Hanson on recent political developments in Venezuela.   This piece originally appeared on the blog Venezuela Politics and Human Rights as “Venezuelan Protests from the View of Western Caracas

Images of burning tires, masked youth, and clashes between citizens and state security forces have accompanied almost all news coverage of Venezuela for the past few weeks.  And these well-documented protests and the government response to them have, as blogger Francisco Toro wrote, changed the political game in Venezuela for the foreseeable future.

To fully appreciate these changes, however, we need to also appreciate the geographical limits of the opposition protests. Taking into account where protests are not occurring, and why, is important in understanding what they represent for residents who do not live in the zones where protests have erupted.

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Announcements, In the Journals

New Feature: In the Journals

The editors of Anthropoliteia are pleased to announce yet another in a planned series of new features that will be appearing here on the blog over the coming month.  We’re calling this new feature, which will be part of the “Round Ups” suite of regular features, “In the Journals” and it will  digest anthropoliteia-related articles and special issues appearing in academic journals, on a quarterly basis (for now). 

In addition I’m happy to introduce one of our new “Section Editors,” David Thompson.  David is currently a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, having earned a B.A. from the University of Sydney. His work focuses on prisons in Rio de Janeiro as institutions that subvert as much as they reinforce the established social and political order of the city; hosting different legal, political, humanitarian, evangelical, community and narcotic projects that then bleed out into the urban fabric of a city saturated with discourses on crime and justice.  We’re super happy to have him on board.

If you have any suggestions for journals we should be keeping tabs on for this feature, or if you want to call our attention to a specific issue or article, send an email to anthropoliteia@gmail.com with the words “In the Journals” in the subject header.

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DragNet, What's going on in Ukraine?

Recap of Ukraine Coverage

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Dossiers

The Perlocution Will Not Be Televised: The Oscar Pistorius trial and the fate of language

The editors of Anthropoliteia would like to welcome a special guest post from Thomas Cousins

On Monday 3 March, 2014, the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius began with a flurry of international media coverage. The famous “Blade Runner”, now made infamous for shooting and killing his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day 2013, is defending his actions as a case of mistaken identity. The fact of the shooting is not in doubt, and as Margie Orford’s oped (now gone viral) brilliantly shows, the three bodies at stake and their arrangement in relation to one another is clear. Those three bodies are: the cyborg body of the Olympic athlete now fallen from grace; the “exquisite corpse” of the former model; and the imagined body of the racialized stranger intent on robbery, rape, and murder.

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