John’s Final Epistle to The Anthropologists, Part I: The Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) at the Climax of the Neolithic

Peeping through a Keyhole, Down upon My Knees We are virtually here to discuss with you something that I would call InTRADOCtrination: Intelligent Design for Retraining the Masses The Mission?: We suggest that it is The Locking-In: The Prison-Industrial Complex, well-documented and contextualized by Angela Davis. In fact, she traces my essay’s central themes. You Say You Want […]

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The Ant Problem and Zoosemiotics

I’ve got ants in my kitchen. Now, one cannot allow ants in one’s kitchen. It’s similar to the idea of “national security”: one has to control and keep safe all that is within one’s purview. The kitchen belongs to me; I need it for my “lifestyle”. The ants do too; just like Libyans need Libya, […]

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Encircling Empire: Report #17—Consequences

Encircling Empire: Report #17—Consequences Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period, providing links and representative extracts or key passages from each resource, usually focusing on certain countries/continents and/or processes in each report. The focus of the reports ranges from imperialism discussed in broad strokes, […]

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Encircling Empire: Report #16—War, Hegemony, Ideology, and Resistance

Encircling Empire: Report #16—War, Hegemony, Ideology, and Resistance Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period, providing links and representative extracts or key passages from each resource, usually focusing on certain countries/continents and/or processes in each report. The focus of the reports ranges from imperialism […]

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Vending Distorted Afghanistan Through Patriotic ‘Anthropology’

First published in Critique of Anthropology, 2011, 31(3) 256–270 Review Essay: Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010, xi + 389 pp. ISBN 978-0-691-14568-6. $29.95 (hbk) The destabilization and military occupation of Afghanistan by the United States over the past three decades has triggered the hasty production of […]

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Peace Corps and Afghanistan

The information and discussion about the activities of and the accumulation of various forms of capital by some Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs)—all in South America—is interesting (Anthropology News, December 2011, March 2012). President John Kennedy adapted the blast “ask not what this country can do for you, ask what you can do for this country” […]

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Encircling Empire: Report #13—Revolution, Intervention, Anthropology

In this report, first two maps of social media penetration in the Middle East and North Africa, in relation to ongoing revolts; then, a long overdue catalogue of anthropologists writing online about the revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa; then a series of opposing items, those dealing with rejections of any foreign military intervention in Libya (a position best articulated by Fidel Castro), followed by statements by what would otherwise be willing interventionists, in the U.S. government, who find multiple problems with imposing a no-flight-zone, and then those articles and statements that strongly favour intervention, and the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P); finally, we end with notes on empire at work in Afghanistan.

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An Alternative Approach to Afghanistan

The military and civilian forces of the United States should leave Afghanistan. The American government has morally and politically disqualified itself from involvement in Afghanistan (and every other place in the world). This freaked out and dark minded killing machine has no business in the affairs of other people. During the past sixty years everything […]

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American Educated Afghans and the Destruction of Afghanistan by the United States: The Case of Zal Khalizad

The occupation of Afghanistan by the United States is not only based on misguided policies, denials of truth and glaring political realities, it is also guided by ignorance and profoundly distorted understandings of the cultural and social complexities of this devastated country. A major source of these distortions and misrepresentations is a small number of […]

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ENCIRCLING EMPIRE

Encircling Empire: Report #10, 07—18 January 2011

EE: Report #10, 07—18 January 2011 Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period. They are intended to be useful for those interested in: ● contemporary and critical political anthropology ● public anthropology ● imperialism and imperial decline ● militarism/militarization ● the political economy of the […]

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Encircling Empire: Report #9, 01—07 January 2011

EE: Report #9, 01—07 January 2011 Encircling Empire Reports is a selection of essays, blog posts, and news reports covering a given time period. They are intended to be useful for those interested in: ● contemporary and critical political anthropology ● public anthropology ● imperialism and imperial decline ● militarism/militarization ● the political economy of the […]

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