Celebrities and the grotesque
The presentation by Veena Das, “Techniques of Power and the Rise of the Grotesque” made me reflect on how this
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Ten Lessons from Africa’s Struggle for Rights and Democracy
Most adult Africans have, at one point in their lifetime, woken up to martial music on the radio, an unfamiliar
Read more“Indefensible” Book Launch Boston, Event Summary
The global arms trade is suffused with corruption, imperils the vulnerable, and makes us all less safe. Yet arms merchants
Read morePresident Donald Trump is a Threat to World Peace
In its 106 years of existence, the World Peace Foundation has committed to understanding and promoting peaceful relations among and within nations, as well as analyzing the causes of war. Today, based on our expertise and given the statements and actions of the current President of the United States, we are obliged to take a step without precedent, which is to name U.S. President Donald Trump as a major threat to global peace.
Read moreOn the women’s march
On Saturday, January 21, historic Women’s Marches took place across America and across the world, touching every continent with messages
Read moreBankrupting Kleptocracies is a Dangerously Bad Idea
Kleptocracies are bad. A kleptocracy going bankrupt is dangerous. The Enough Project should know better than to advocate it. One
Read moreVirtual issue of African Affairs on South Sudan
Alex de Waal has a new essay introducing African Affairs‘ virtual issue on South Sudan. As the journal’s editors explain,
Read moreDesigner Activism and Post-Democracy
Celebrity philanthropists like Bono, Madonna, George Clooney and Angelina Jolie have become the public face of the humanitarian agenda, along with gala events such as Comic Relief in Britain and its counterpart Red Nose Day in the USA. There’s nothing new about the social elite becoming publicly involved in ‘good causes,’ but today’s highly-networked configurations of power, business, media and charity are different: ‘designer’ activists, campaigners and philanthropists are flourishing as never before. But there’s a puzzle: there is little evidence that celebrity endorsements contribute to higher levels of donations to their favored charities, and opinion polls suggest that celebrity advocacy has a peculiar legitimacy with the public.
Read moreRound-up: debates on knowledge production in fragile states
If you missed the round-table discussion on Humanity Journal’s blog discussion on the changing nature of knowledge production in fragile states,
Read moreModels for archives
The absence of an archive to capture primary source data on conflict does not mean that there are no models to inform such an endeavor. In this essay, we introduce several models of archives related to human security issues and discuss some of the challenges that would be involved to create an archive for social science data.
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