The folly of little kings
On Monday, May 25th, 2020, Cuba’s new president, Miguel Diaz-Canél, involuntarily found himself in the spotlight. Diaz-Canél had become the […]
War and its absurdities
When Nadja was evacuated from the bomb shelter in eastern Ukraine, she took her cheese with her. She took the
“Great job, mommy!” On the absurdity of teaching Ethiopian women to breastfeed
One scalding hot June day in 2014 in a remote village health post in North Shewa, Ethiopia, I attended an
Of rails and rubbish: critique and the absurdity of cleaning days
In January 2020, the Senegalese President Macky Sall announced a nation-wide ‘Cleaning Day’. Together with a ‘Zero waste’ campaign and followed
The violent face of bureaucracy
Whenever I meet Merule, a 42-year-old Nigerian citizen living undocumented in Milan, Italy, I am struck by the number of
Anthropology and absurdity: Introduction
Anthropology is often seen as the discipline that makes “the strange familiar and the familiar strange”. Here, however, we are
Trolley homes and hopes for the future
This year, once again, the national capital of India is witnessing a farmer’s protest, amidst state repression, media blackout and
The Complexity of Human Rights: A Discussion of Sally Engle Merry’s Work
Human rights are avowedly universal but must be translated by local activists to make sense in specific contexts, a process
Climate Preconstruction in Coastal Africa
The climate crisis is upon us. Extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, hurricanes, heatwaves and fires are increasingly wreaking
Two sides of the same Euro: A field note on recent farmer protests from southern Italy
Between February 8 and 9, 2024, two fleets arrived in Brindisi, a port city in the southern Italian region of