South Africa – ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Protecting the Pandemic from the People: Perpetual Panic, Permanent Emergency

There are some suggestions that the Omicron variant could well end “the pandemic”. And that is a problem. It is a problem on two fronts. First, a variant that not only defeats the “vaccines,” but that also reduces the pandemic to a minor endemic phenomenon, is not one that can be exploited to generate profits for […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Encircling Empire: Report #23—Obama’s Scramble for Africa

Special thanks for leads and commentary that were useful for this report goes to Crossed Crocodiles, a website devoted to Africa and U.S.-African relations. This report–the last Encircling Empire Report for 2013–is fairly long given that it provides detail on a relatively comprehensive pattern of recent events which, taken together, paint a portrait of what […]

by John Allison

Fidel’s Acceptance of Election to the People’s Assembly

Havana. February 25, 2013 We do not struggle for glory or honors, we struggle for ideas we consider just. DEAR compañeros, I deeply appreciate the noble gesture of the people electing me as a deputy to Cuba’s National Assembly of People’s Power. The time I take for my comments today will not be long, nor […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Keep Your Money: A Series on Dignity

This is the first part of a series on dignity that will appear on ZA, featuring the usual collage of songs, history, documents, and short essays. While there are treatments of “dignity” in Western philosophy, it is interesting to note the absence of the idea as a concept in the works of most anthropologists, which […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Encircling Empire: Report #5, 01-08 October 2010

EE: Report #5, 01—08 October 2010 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 […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Team USA at the 2010 FIFA World Cup: Motivation Unthinkable without the Military

In a military-dominated culture, where the militarist ethos tries to reach into every little corner of social experience and attempts to appropriate every possible making of cultural meaning, this is the latest for our files: Team USA at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa was apparently unable to think of motivation, discipline, and […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

The War Criminals’ Roundup: Serbia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Israel

Following up on some of the links to stories I posted on twitter, this is a selection of notes and extracts from articles that each deal in some way with the issue of war crimes. ••••••• ••••••• ••••••• ••••••• ••••••• “Round Up the Usual War Criminals!” — Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch, (May 8-10, 2009, pertaining to […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Sex Beats Money, Hitler Beats Gandhi: More Google Insights

Unlike my previous post on Google Insight statistics for anthropology searches, this time I am not making the mistake of closing the pages without preserving a link so that others can investigate the searches. Having conducted a number of queries using Google Insights, I realize that I risk becoming addicted to this service, with the […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Current (Anti)Colonialist Discussions in the News: African Focus

I meant to mention previously that we can observe, after a decline and almost dismissal of ideas of imperialism, dependency, and colonialism in the 1990s academic and anthropological literature to be specific, one can see a return of the terms “imperialism,” “empire,” and “colonialism” in the titles of mainstream journal articles. It’s nice to see […]