By Peter Versteeg – This year, as Christmas approached, I felt a strong urge to visit a church. An advertisement in a vegan deli shop caught my eye: a “Peace Liturgy for Animals.” Perfect for…
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by Isa Prieto – I arrive at Chennai airport at 1 am. As soon as I step outside the airport, the humid air envelops me, and I immediately sweat. My mother, Renu, is waiting for…
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By Maaike Matelski – Ten years ago I published an article on my research with civil society actors from Myanmar, in which I described the sudden changes in ideological and physical positioning as the country…
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Door Annette Jansen Genocide en etnische zuivering komen al sinds het begin van de 19e eeuw voor, maar pas eind jaren 90 – na de bloedbaden in onder meer Rwanda en Oost-Timor – ontstonden er groepen activisten die pleitten voor militair ingrijpen door de Verenigde Naties bij massale wreedheden. Wie zijn deze antigenocide-activisten en wat beweegt hen om geweld met geweld te bestrijden? Annette Jansen onderzocht het mens- en wereldbeeld van twee groepen antigenocide-activisten: Oost-Timor-activisten, die actief waren van 1975 tot 1999, en Responsibility to Protect (R2P)-lobbyisten, actief van 2001 tot op heden.
Leave a CommentIn the context of ‘Peace Week 2010’ we present a number of posts on such subjects as war, conflict and oppression. Today, on the International Day of Peace, Thomas van der Molen discusses the conflict in Kashmir. The photos are by Dilnaz Boga.
‘We hate peace!’, a young Kashmiri dissident exclaimed during my fieldwork in the summer of 2008. He was referring to what anthropologist Cynthia Mahmood observes to be a tendency for repressive authorities in Kashmir and elsewhere to practice ‘pacification’ as part of their state security agenda. In line with both the informants in my fieldwork, and Mahmood, I favor the language of rights and justice, rather than that of peace and security. The UN General Assembly, on the other hand, presents today’s ‘International Day of Peace’, or ‘Peace Day’, as an opportunity to mark ‘our personal and planetary progress toward peace’. Yet, the relevance of ‘Peace Day’ – and indeed the concept of ‘peace’ itself – to the inhabitants of the Valley of Kashmir is doubtful, as the Government of India perpetuates its policy of ‘pacification’.
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In our new series “Antropologisch Kieskompas (Anthropological Election Compass) anthropologists express their views on important issues in the upcoming Parliamentary Elections. These include integration, development, environment, and education. The authors reflect critically on how particular current affairs are being dealt with in the public. In this week’s posting, Donya Alinejad writes about the changes to higher education and the student reactions.
By Donya Alinejad This Friday, May 21st, at 13.00, a demonstration against the financial cut-backs on Dutch education will be held in Amsterdam. Demonstrators will start gathering at 13.00 on Damplein and will lead a procession march to Museumplein, where speeches, concerts, and rallies will commence from 14.00 onward. The aim is to fill the Museumplein in defense of higher education and against the planned 20% cutbacks, thus sending a clear political message to leaders in the Hague: no more cutbacks on education. The initiators of the protests are the student groups, LSVb, ISO, JOB, LKvV, and Comite SOS. They are sponsored by radio station Wild FM and have the support of other student and grassroots organizations.
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By Pál Nyiri When I lecture on China and democracy, I show students excerpts from Carma Hinton and Geremie Barme’s 1992 film, The Gate of Heavenly Peace. In the film, one of the leaders of the Tiananmen Square student movement, referring to exaggerated stories of the 1989 massacre, asks: “Must we use lies to stand up to our lying enemy,” i.e. the Chinese Communist Party?
The same question arose in me on 30 March as I listened to Rebiya Kadeer, the “leader of the Uyghur people” according to the president of the Turkish Academic Student Association (TASA), which organised her appearance at the VU. He had asked me, as a “China scholar,” to speak at this event, which he called a “symposium”, on the situation of the Uyghur people in China.
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