FocaalBlog

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Khalid Syaifullah & Wardatul Adawiah show how the recent devasting floods in Indonesia are rooted in the country's history of colonial extractivism. focaalblog.com/2026/03/11/kha…

Ahmad Moradi shares first impressions of news concerning Iran in the last 10 months. #IranWar focaalblog.com/2026/03/05/ahm…

Ana Ivasiuc discusses how the police's racialization of sight and smell in the Roma camps at the periphery of Rome "fabricate (in)security, rendering the Roma as dangerous subjects to be perpetually governed.” focaalblog.com/2026/03/03/ana…

Erella Grassiani and Nir Gazit discuss the two aspects of sensorial warfare in Palestine and Israel: intentional use of weapons that attack the sense and the sensorial byproducts of militarization. focaalblog.com/2026/02/18/ere…

The greening of Norwegian ships depends on precarious workers in Turkish shipyards. Ståle Knudsen gives a summary of a longer report he wrote on the #greentransition in the Norwegian maritime sector and what should be done to ensure workers' rights. focaalblog.com/2026/01/28/sta…

Safety gadgets aesthetically enact a sense of security. Alice McAlpine-Ridell describes these devices and how residents of #Brooklyn, #NYC make use of them. focaalblog.com/2026/01/26/ali…

Maja Sisnowski talks about how the smell of food and the gut feeling of health and welfare workers helps with securing emergency shelters in Germany. focaalblog.com/2026/01/23/maj…

The latest instalment in the Dipohoorn and Salem edited Sensing (in)security feature: Laust Lund Elbek writes about how the tacit knowledge described as 'the police nose' works in Denmark and the way in which it conceals structural biases. focaalblog.com/2025/12/24/lau…

The security of residential buildings in urban Brazil reveals layered social, gendered, and racial hierarchies. Durão & Heil on the colonial and neoliberal legacies structuring the life of workers providing (more-than-)security to condos residents focaalblog.com/2025/12/24/sus…

The project, in which I have participated from the very start—though not actively, especially in recent years—has come to an end. I think it was an important point of convergence for the intellectual left from Eastern Europe and left a rich archive. A new project is coming soon: redder, more eastern, more organized, reflecting the evolution of the left in the region and the trends that will define the global future.

LeftEast was born 13 years ago. 1679 articles, 663 authors, and 8 summer schools later, it is coming to an end. Thank you to all who contributed! And no farewells from us: in the next couple of weeks we'll be announcing its successor projects! lefteast.org/farewell-state…

Aaron Kappeler highlights the internal and external contradictions of the Venezuelan socialist project and how Maduro's leadership gave the US the opportunity to put an end to it. focaalblog.com/2026/01/12/aar…

New post: Bjørn Enge Bertelsen discusses how banging pots at night became a form of secure collective resistance in the context of violent clashes over the contested 2024 Mozambican elections that lead to 400 dead and thousands of injured. focaalblog.com/2025/12/24/bjo…

Drawing from research with the Akwesasne and her recent experience as a US citizen, Beatrice Jauregui describes a growing sense of insecurity taking hold of those who thought were immune up until now to border security politics. focaalblog.com/2025/12/22/bea…

Jolien van Veen discusses how a religious centre inhabited by Afro-Brazilian spirits provides a sense of atmospheric security in one of Rio de Janeiro's violent ridden neighborhoods. focaalblog.com/2025/12/22/jol…

‘To sense (in)security is to inhabit a world where matter, technology, and emotion converge.’ We are rolling out a new feature on how the materiality and ideology of (in)security is sensed, edited by Tessa Diphoorn and Tomas Salem focaalblog.com/2025/12/22/tes…

Oane Visser discusses the presence of food movements at #COP30, showing how their presence in and on the streets next to the conference changed in the past years. focaalblog.com/2025/11/27/oan…

it’s today! join us if you’re @AmericanAnthro annual meeting

You are warmly invited to join us at the launch of Don Kalb's latest open access book, the sprawling Value and Worthlessness, at the annual meeting @AmericanAnthro Speeches, wine, and fun are provided for comrades, friends, and enemies. @BerghahnAnthro @berghahnbooks