Humanitarianism from Below:‬ Alter-Politics and Struggles for the Universa‬‭l‬ ‭
2024-01-25 09:00 - 2024-01-26 17:00 (Europe/Zurich) | Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
This workshop explores the ongoing emergence of humanitarianism from below as central to the transformation of humanitarian landscapes around the world. It aims to research the space between international Western-led humanitarianism and the diverse practices of welfare, support and solidarity that make up humanitarianism from below. The workshop thereby analyses a politically salient and increasingly visible scale of humanitarianism that both mirrors and challenges the logics of international humanitarianism. Actors involved in such humanitarianism from below often reside in ambivalent settings that are subject to multiple constellations of power and they evade pre-defined containers such as “Western” and “Global South/North.” The workshop establishes an analytical optic onto such movements, institutions and ad-hoc initiatives as part of comparable forms of “alter-politics” (Hage 2015) that are not simply defined by opposition against dominant forms (“anti”), but rather offer different notions and critiques of humanity (“alter”) in a time of global transformation. Critically interrogating the notion of humanitarianism as “an ethos, a cluster of sentiments, a set of laws, a moral imperative to intervene, and a form of government” (Ticktin 2014: 274) the workshop addresses the urgent need to better understand actors that are outside but not necessarily disconnected from the established spectrum of international humanitarianism. To this end, this workshop brings into conversation anthropological approaches to humanitarianism with concepts from political anthropology exploring solidarity, alter-politics and universalism. Download the workshop program here: Humanitarianism from Below

Infrastructure’s Long Shadow: From Central Asia to Ukraine
2024-04-08 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States
by Till Mostowlansky
Infrastructures can be conceptualized as networks that link up the built environment, people and technology. They might include energy, transport or communication, whilst also relating to natural resources, human bodies and other species. These networks often remain invisible when they function as planned yet suddenly appear in the public imagination when they fail, get destroyed or become subject to spectacular political projects. Over the past decade, infrastructure has also resurfaced as an issue of public interest in sites as diverse as the United States, China and Ukraine, often involving pressing concerns around security, economic stability and basic needs. However, with this focus on the present and future, the longer histories of infrastructure are often neglected. As a result, core features of infrastructure, such as the materialization of mundane violence, political control as well as socio-economic transformation remain less understood. Drawing on social science literature on infrastructure and fifteen years of research in Central Asia, this talk discusses concepts that might prove useful to study cases from Ukraine in the long view.

Evicting the Living God: Trans-imperial Islam and the Soviet Union on the Eve of Partition
2024-04-10 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States
by Till Mostowlansky
The establishment of Soviet rule in the southern parts of Central Asia bordering the British Empire has largely been researched through the lens of geopolitical competition. Virtually nothing is known about how the region’s Muslim populations experienced this period of revolution and war leading up to the 1947 partition of India. Using Persian, Russian and Urdu sources, this talk explores the Muslim networks that linked Central Asia with South Asia at the time. It further discusses how the study of these trans-imperial connections contributes to a nuanced understanding of attempts at re-engagement, as well as persistent disconnection, in the present.

Transforming Landscapes of Aid: How Gulf Business, the War in Ukraine and Equestrian Sports Change Small-Town Kyrgyzstan
2024-04-16 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States
by Till Mostowlansky
Over the last decade, international development in Kyrgyzstan has undergone significant transformations. Despite the ongoing presence of diverse foreign organizations, notable shifts have occurred with the emergence of new contributors to aid, such as entities from the Gulf states, alongside increased trade revenues from China. This talk centers on a small town in southern Kyrgyzstan, delving into the concrete materialization of these influences within its social and political landscape. Drawing upon continuous ethnographic research conducted since 2022, the talk explores the intersection of Islamic charity with the state, the influence of excess on ideas of the good, and how equestrian sports serve as a catalyst for redistribution.

Quiet Aid across the Balkans and Central Asia
2024-04-26 15:30 - 18:00 (Asia/Bishkek) | American University of Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

From Paucity to Sanctity of Trust: Ethics of Cryptocurrency Use for Muslims in Central Asia
2024-06-08 11:00 - 12:45 (Asia/Almaty) | Turan University, Almaty, Kazakhstan
by Gulzhan Begeyeva
Since 2017, Central Asia has witnessed a burgeoning interest in cryptocurrency, propelled by the region’s emergence as a hub for crypto mining activities amid increasing restrictions in China. This, coupled with some regional governments’ intent to capitalize on the market for decentralized finance, has sparked notable public debates regarding the alignment of digital currencies with Islamic financial principles. As Central Asian Muslims question cryptocurrency’s permissibility and adal/haram nature, local religious institutions and experts have emerged as arbiters to establish the reliability and trustworthiness of the crypto financial instruments within the regional context. As a matter of fact, in 2019 and 2022 the muftiate of Kazakhstan has publicly proscribed the use of cryptocurrency for the country’s Muslims by issuing and reiterating a respective fatwa. Furthermore, albeit as of February 2024 the mufti of Kyrgyzstan hasn’t provided any fatwa on this matter, the country’s muftiate members actively advocate against the use of cryptocurrency among its public.
Using this case study of the public discussions around cryptocurrency in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere in the region, our ongoing interdisciplinary research project aims to explore the growing field of Islamic financial ethics in Central Asia. We intend to understand how local religious authorities navigate the nexus between the state imperatives, local demand for Islamic financial expertise, and the global production of Islamic knowledge. One key aspect of our study is examining the link between sacred and trust. In particular, by focusing on how the governing bodies of Islam in Central Asia, i.e. muftiates, construe the phenomenon of cryptocurrency, we theorise how sacredness/sanctity can function as a powerful mechanism that insures trust and, as a result, cooperation among rational actors. Among other things, the present work illustrates what appears to be an altogether neglected aspect of the study of the concept of trust in current economic orthodoxy. Namely, it argues that David Krep’s (1990) paradigm setting article on trust in economics, which offers a solution for the problem of absence of trust arising from unforeseen contingencies occurring in transactions, suffers from theoretical incompleteness. The latter concerns the element of sacredness/sanctity that remedies the absence of trust dilemma in Krep’s model. To demonstrate this dynamic, the current study applies the thesis stemming from the economy of conventions – a French school thought that espouses interdisciplinary and institutionalist approach in economics.

Post-Fieldwork Workshop
2025-02-02 - 2025-02-03 | Istanbul, Turkey

Revisiting Anthropology and History: Fieldwork, Archive, Temporality
2025-09-25 09:00 - 2025-09-26 14:00 (Europe/Zurich) | Geneva Graduate Institute, Geneva, Switzerland
While the disciplines of anthropology and history have developed in a reciprocal relationship of rapprochements, mutual borrowings and fierce annexations, more recently, explicit reflection on this relationship have become rare. Anthropologists engage with temporality, the past, and the archive without necessarily making recourse to historiography. Historians, as they engage in reflections on globalizations – past and present – often ignore anthropology’s conceptual toolkit. However, there are at least two areas in which a cross-disciplinary engagement is promising. For both anthropology and history, an engagement with each other enlarges an understanding of temporality, both with respect to frames of analysis and ways of narrating scholarship. Such an engagement also expands spaces of scholarly analysis that are defined by fieldwork and the archive, i.e., employing archival methods for fieldwork as well as conceptualizing the archive as a field-site.
This workshop, addressing graduate students in both anthropology and history, aims to explore this constellation from two perspectives: 1. the workshop seeks to engage the participants in discussions on the role of history in anthropological approaches to social worlds. 2. participants analyze, employing an anthropological view of historical research, the timeliness and situatedness of their own research projects in the present.
Furthermore, the workshop will address, amongst others, the following questions: What role can fieldwork play in historical work? What might be the position of the archive in anthropological research? How can we think about change over time in anthropological research and how should we reflect on the presence of the present in historiographical work?
Program: Revisiting History and Anthropology
