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Category: Geschiedenis

Apology

by Peter Versteeg – “Apology” is another word for acknowledgmentAcknowledging the past, but not just any kind of pastIt is a formal word for a moral occasionNo emotion, no affectionIt is neither personal nor individualIt…

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Pardoning the innocent: the early modern witch hunt as traumatic heritage?

A History Month (Maand van de Geschiedenis) contribution by Peter Versteeg – We live in a time when calls for public apologies for all kinds of historical wrongs are everyday business. Recent attention to victims…

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Anthropology and religion at the Vrije Universiteit – a short history

By Matthias Teeuwen The Vrije Universiteit originally had a strong confessional commitment to the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and I have always wondered how anthropology meshed with this confessional background. I wondered particularly at…

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Photo Essay: Finding a place for historical nostalgia in Postcolonial Anthropology

by Yatou Sallah I have long been intrigued by the anthropological framing of Africans in the context of postcolonialism. As scholars and theorists in the field attempt to uncover the remnants of the horrendous control…

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In the meantime on the other side of the world…

By Marina de Regt     While we were all busy watching the US elections in the first week of November, an armed conflict broke out on the other side of the world, in the already turbulent and instable Horn of Africa. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his efforts to bring about peace between the almost 20-year stalemate between Ethiopia and Eritrea, ordered a military offensive in response to an attack launched by the TPLF (the Tigray People’s Liberation Front) on the national defence force. It resulted in hundreds of deaths amongst whom many civilians and thousands of refugees fleeing their homes in the northern part of Ethiopia crossing the border to Sudan. Last week, when the results of the US elections were finally clear, the conflict has caught the attention of the Western media. Within a very short time Abiy Ahmed’s image as a peacemaker is receding in the eyes of the international community, and he is being pressured to stop the military attacks. But what is really going on in Ethiopia, and how can we explain the fact that this young and promising Prime Minister felt forced to use violence?

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Is kennis van de Nederlandse antropologische traditie nog wel relevant voor hedendaagse antropologen?

VINCENT DE ROOIJ Historici verdedigen de relevantie van hun discipline vaak door te beweren dat kennis van het verleden nodig is om het heden te begrijpen en beter te doen in de toekomst. In die…

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