From: Diane M. Nelson, “Low Intensities,” Current Anthropology 60, no. S19 (February 2019): S122-S133.
Welcome back to In the Journals, a brief look at just a few articles that have been published in previous months on policing, law, and governance. These particular articles were published in their articles between January and February, 2019.
Redmond (2017) has noted that, in order to garner support for the punitive policies of the War on Drugs, Americans were presented with stories that framed those impacted by the war on drugs as enemies of the state. In the 1980’s, media outlets released a surge of stories covering the “crack crisis” that presented crime and drug use with a black face. Stories presented black males as “gangbangers” and played on historical stereotypes of black men being dangerous, predatory, criminals (Alexander 2012).
Films on the experience of inner city black Americans also reflected a negative image of these communities and their residents until around 1990. Before the 1990’s many films placed the blame for inner city problems primarily on the criminal actions of young black males (Alexander 2012, Brooks 1997). For example, in the 1970’s, directors made movies about the experiences of black inner city Americans. These films were subsequently criticized for their exploitive depictions of urban black experience. This criticisms was in part due to the fact many of the these movies had white directors. This perception by commentators lead to the term “Blaxploitation” being coined in reference to films made in the era (Brooks 1997). Black character representation during this period was often as criminally deviant characters (Bausch 2013). It would be another 20 years before those subject to War on Drugs policy would start to be depicted as sympathetic characters (Brooks 1997).
The editors of Anthropoliteia are happy to continue an ongoing series The Anthropoliteia #BlackLivesMatterSyllabus Project, which will mobilize anthropological work as a pedagogical exercise addressing the confluence of race, policing and justice. You can see a growing bibliography of resources via our Mendeley feed. In this entry, Maurice Magaña discusses seeing race and citizenship through Ava DuVernay’s documentary film, “13th.”
As the war in Eastern Ukraine grinds on, and diplomats have forgotten about occupied Crimea, there are new realities shaping the way Ukrainians are born, live, and die in this war-torn country.
Most readers will be aware that Russian troops entered Crimea in Spring, 2014 and, without a single shot, took control of key military installations, held a bogus referendum, and set up a new government. The residents of that occupied territory are now caught, so to speak, between Ukraine and Russia. This post is based on ethnographic fieldwork with individuals coming out of the occupied territories into free Ukraine in May and June 2015..
Monica Eppinger, one of the contributors to our Forum “What’s Going on in Ukraine?“, also happens to be Assistant Professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law, which offers her a unique insight on one of our other recent Forums “#Ferguson and Elsewhere“. Over at her other blog, the Comparative Law Prof Blog, she has some interesting reflections on the two. Here’s just a snippet:
Serhiy Nigoyan memorial, Ukraine (c) Monica Eppinger 2014
Two commonalities invite comparison between late summer in Ferguson and deep winter in Kyiv. First is the form of public action, street protest. It speaks of an electorate that, despite a polity’s record of holding fair elections, resorts to alternatives to usual democratic processes. The second, and most striking, commonality is the kind of spark that ignited protest, the relationship between citizen death at the hands of police and public assessments of state legitimacy.
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