Anthropology and Social Change

I was invited to deliver the keynote speech for a three-day conference on Michael Burawoy.
Another verse of a long goodbye to my dearest colleague, friend, and comrade…
Thanks to Portuguese sociologists for organizing this conference.
Details of the conference 🧵

Call for Papers: The Greyzone of the Green Transition - Environmental Inequalities in Central and Eastern Europe - ecoJust home The Greyzone of the Green Transition is a conference dedicated to advancing conversations on environmental justice in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It brings together senior , doctoral, and postdo...

CFP: "The Greyzone of the Green Transition – Environmental Inequalities in Central and Eastern Europe." International conference in Romania, May 2026. Keynotes by Stefania Barca, Erik Swyngedouw, and Andrej Grubačić.
#envhist #envhum

The History of Women’s Studies Is a History of Conflict Women’s studies programs in the United States are threatened by authoritarian pressure. For example, the Ohio legislature restricts how marriage and abortion can be presented in the college ...

“Contradicting this idea that feminism is no longer relevant, gendered rhetoric is now a primary mode of bolstering state power. Insidiously, feminist language is being reappropriated to justify the erasure of feminist ideas and feminist history.”

“A Second Enlightenment”: Greg Grandin on Latin America, the United States, and the Creation of Social-Democratic Modernity “My books try to explain a tension.”

“Gaitán’s murder is the climax of the book, a death foretold, an event so compressed with hope that its explosion sent historical shrapnel in all directions.”

In a new interview at PB, Greg Grandin discusses the execution of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.
www.publicbooks.org/a-second-enl...

To understand the uprising and crisis in Indonesia, here is our selection of articles from ALR: labourreview.org/indonesias-u...

Front cover of a book titled Inventions of a Present by Fredric Jameson

Carolyn Lesjak reviews Fredric Jameson in NLR 154:

‘In contrast to “the private lives of currently fashionable autofiction”, the works discussed here “try to write the collective, or at least register the crisis of the individual attempting to do so.”’

newleftreview.org/issues/ii154...

Noise, Vibration, and Dust: A Wildcat Strike in Armenia’s Largest Mine | Long-Haul Mag This summer, the Canadian Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) brought a strike of running trades workers at Canadian National Railway (CN) and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited (CPKC, or just “CP”) t...

longhaulmag.com/khudoyan-noi...

Curious about mostly online our activist Anthropology MAs+PhDs?

Sign up for the Sept 5, 4pm Pacific Time Info Session with our founding department chair, Andrej Grubačić: www.ciis.edu/events/anthr...

Train in Anthropology informed by methodologies from Anarchism to Marxism.

Join an academic department with a distinctive commitment to solidarity with populations and struggle, critiques of capitalist and colonial dominance, and the nation state! Graduate empowered to help build a better world we all know as possible! 2/2

Anthropology Degrees - Info Session 6/30/2025 | CIIS Attend an info session on June 30, 2025 to learn about the Anthropology & Social Change online Ph.D. and M.A. degree programs at CIIS in San Francisco.

Interested in our low-residency MA+PhD in activist Anthropology? Sign up for the Info Session, June 30, 5pm Pacific Time: www.ciis.edu/events/anthr... 1/2

Image of a fit Caucasian masc person decked out in matching rainbow pants, blazer, umbrella, sunglasses, and necktie over a bare chest, making an exuberant “let’s party” gesture.

News photo of the anti-ICE rioters in L.A. ducking LAPD teargas behind a makeshift barricade made of repurposed pink metal park furniture.

Brands Me and my
marketing to gay friends:
gays:

…readings but include multiple modes of engagement that reflect a commitment to learning outside systems of domination. This will most certainly include some unlearning as well.” 8/8

…on anti-blackness, The Standing Rock curriculum, and recent material from the Abolitionist Collective, and others. Students will also research and produce curricula that are relevant for communities where they are located. Note that curricula are not limited to… 7/8

Whether or not the university education system on the whole will reinvent itself accordingly, we can draw on its resources to learn with and contribute to community based political education. In this seminar we will read such existing curricula as We Charge Genocide Again… 6/8

…intervening in the university curriculum was to save lives. We could say that higher education is again (or still) in crisis, a crisis of legitimacy and relevance for large portions of the world population. 5/8

From the Future Pedagogies Course:
“Nesbit Crutchfield, member of the 1968 San Francisco State Universitys student strike which led to the creation of Black Studies and Ethnic Studies university departments in the United States, recalls that their primary reason for… 4/8

If higher education is in crisis, we take that as an opportunity to shed destructive assumptions and to re-imagine horizons of possibility from the ground up. Join our info session to learn more! 3/8

Sign up for our next info session, April 15, 5:30pm pacific time: www.ciis.edu/events/anthr...
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Join a department-wide commitment to solidarity with populations, training in theory generated by social movements, and a singular emphasis on nonstate spaces. 2/8

Got a political project with populations in struggle? Interested in a low-residency MA+PhD that seeks to unlearn as well as to learn, pushing outside the limitations and norms of higher education as imagined within a colonial and capitalist framework? 1/8

“Coolyori hotline bling times three” classic meme format with anime femme in sunglasses, patterned after the Drake hotline meme. In the first frame, the character has a stern gesture of refusal and the text reads “higher education is doing fine.” In the second frame she’s got a satisfied expression with a “finger gun” type expression signifying approval, and the text reads “ higher education is again in a crisis of legitimacy.” In the third frame, the same expression as in frame two, but with the “finger gun” gesture of approval in both hands, stylized sparkles and flames behind her signifying a degree of high-intensity. The text reads “higher education was always in a crisis of legitimacy.”

Refusal of business as usual saves lives.

From our course, Alternative Economic Systems “This course offers a critical examination of economic possibilities, alternative production systems, and subjectivities that can be considered “postcapitalist” in that they strive to transcend what is conceivable within the current socioeconomic order.”

Interested in our low-residency MA+PhD in activist Anthropology? Sign up for the April 15, 5:30pm Info Session to learn more! www.ciis.edu/events/anthr... Train in ethnography with populations in struggle, graduate with the tools to help make a better world

When I’m in a ___ and my opponent is ___ meme format with a comically flabbergasted Squidward in the bottom left reacting to an image above. Text by Squidward reads “when I’m in a critique of political economy contest and my opponent is David Graeber” Image above is a black and white photo of Graeber seated in a couch, probably at London School of Economics, in a lobby on the ground floor, a window to the street behind him, dressed in khaki pants, blazer and vest, his dress shirt unbuttoned at the neck. Palms raised and eyes upraised, he is gesturing as though in mid-speech. Bold text above him reads (from his book Debt: The First 5000 Years) “Money has no essence. It isn’t “really” anything…”

Rest in Power, David Graeber

From our course, ANTH 6111 Migration, Borders, and Citizenship.

“This course situates the migration crisis within a global frame, and attends to migrant and refugee struggles, showing how the modern border is an important elements of the worldwide regulation of human mobility.”

Interested in our low-residency MA+PhD in activist anthropology, which centers anticapitalist methodologies? Sign up here for the April 15 5:30pm Pacific Info Session: www.ciis.edu/events/anthr... Train in ethnography with populations in struggle!

Dog-killing, prison photo op taking “ICE Barbie,” Kristi Noem in her “police ice” labeled drab uniform, with her infamous Rolex on her left wrist. In the forefront, a large mockup of the watch labeled with its retail price, $45,000.

If “end-stage capitalism” were a single picture.

An “alternate timeline” meme of the (imprisoned in real life) beaming Kurdish Freedom movement leader Abdullah Öcalan in a green button up shirt appearing implausibly on the cable tv program “The Daily Show.” Host John Stewart gestures for the camera toward our PM Press book, Building Free Life: Dialogues with Öcalan, a yellow book with Öcalan’s face on the cover.

In our Societies Against the State course this Spring, we are studying the Kurdish Freedom Movement all semester!
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Curious about our low-residency MA+PhD in activist anthropology? Sign up today to join the April 15, 5:30pm Pacific Info Session: www.ciis.edu/events/anthr...

📹Subcomandante Marcos removes his mask!
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Interested in our low-residency MA+PhD in activist anthropology, including research in solidarity with populations in struggle? Sign up for the April 15, 5:30pm Pacific Info Session: www.ciis.edu/events/anthr...

Interested in our low-residency MA+PhD in activist anthropology? Sign up here for the April 15, 5:30pm Pacific Time online Info Session: www.ciis.edu/events/anthr...

📹Department friend @davidgraeber (RIP🖤) from davidgraeber.org on the Paradox of Sovereignty

YouTube video by Anthropology and Social Change at CIIS Eyal Weizman "Conditions of Life Calculated..." on the Gaza Genocide -David Graeber Memorial Lecture

Eyal Weizman 4th Annual David Graeber Memorial Lecture+the Q+A, up now: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfD1...