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Clara Mattei, Austerity, and the Soviet Union

By Michel Wong. Clara Mattei might not have set out to write a Global History of austerity politics, but as a student of Global History, I find her framework of austerity as measured by the wage share very useful and would like to apply it in my own history writing. I just have one problem with it. Mattei’s framework is a framework for analysing capitalist societies, but history – even just modern history – has many examples of societies that cannot really be called capitalist. What I want to know is: can Mattei’s framework also be applied to non-capitalist societies? In the sections that follow, I shall try to test the limits of Mattei’s framework by seeing if it can be applied to one of modern history’s more important non-capitalist societies – the Soviet Union. 

Not Lost in Translation: Textbook Exploring Arabic Studies in 21st-century Germany

Clara-Auguste Süß in Conversation with Anis Ben Amor and Christian Junge. On 19 November 2024, MECAM hosted a Rencontre Ibn Khaldun in Arabic, an event format designed to share research findings with the wider public and foster open, inclusive debate. The event was organized in cooperation with the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA). Dr. Christian Junge and Dr. Anis Ben Amor led a discussion on Arabic Studies in 21st-century Germany. They presented their collaborative translation project of the German-language textbook “Arabistik. Eine literatur- und kulturwissenschaftliche Einführung” (English: Arabic Studies: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Studies”) and highlighted approaches, methodologies and challenges in the field.

The German Duldung: Legal Violence and Struggles Over the Means of Life

By Aino Korvensyrjä. Authorities and policymakers legitimised repression by portraying people concealing their passports as deceitful ‘identity refusers’.This framing is grounded in the Residence Act, which imposes ‘obligations to cooperate’ (Mitwirkungspflichten), requiring individuals to submit passports or other proof of identity to the authorities.

Navigating Inequalities: Locating Agency in the Margins and International Aid – 5in10 with Fabrizio Leonardo Cuccu

Fabrizio Leonardo Cuccu is a Alumni Research Fellow at the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM), Tunisia and a Research Assistant at the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Ireland. His research focuses on security, development and migration policies in postcolonial settings. He has published articles in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, L’Année du Maghreb and Surveillance & Society.

‘Fight your Emotions’: Affective Injustice in Wartime

By Olena Komar. Although research on affective injustice is gaining ground, no attention has yet been paid to wartime experiences. War has many destructive and devastating consequences, but against the backdrop of the physical damage it causes, other detrimental effects are muted, shadowed, and hardly noticeable. What is perceived as aggression and anger, a manifestation of temperament or trauma, is a legitimate assertion by Ukrainians of their right to identity, which is a condition for survival in a genocidal war, as well as to cultural identity instead of the imperial dissolution of colonized peoples. It is the right to have their voices understood, not just “heard.”

Remembering an Artist Who Gave Life to the Children of Gaza

By Loaay Wattad. Born in 1997, Dorgham was a Palestinian artist known and beloved by many in Gaza. Through theater, cinema, painting, and song, he brought smiles to the faces of displaced Palestinians — especially children — throughout the genocide. But Dorgham was not just a painter, filmmaker, or theater director: with his humble presence and tender voice, he gave kids whose childhood had been stolen by war the chance to dream again, and the hope that their dreams would one day come to life. On March 18, Dorgham, his wife Aya, and 26 members of his family were killed in a brutal Israeli assault that targeted his home in the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood of Gaza City. But the hope and joy he planted did not die. They still resonate in the Palestinian children who crowded into refugee tents across Gaza, where Dorgham created art projects and staged cultural productions for them — acts of resistance in their own right.

Ukrainian by Choice. Introduction to the Case of Ihor Kostetsky

By Tetiana Shestopalova. Ihor Kostetsky (1913–1983), a writer, editor, and publisher, was a huge enthusiast and promoter of Ukrainian culture. He belonged to a group of popular figures who identified as “Ukrainians by choice” in twentieth century Ukraine. This paper aims to reveal the factors behind Ihor Kostetsky’s Ukrainian choice and to characterize the peculiarities of his “volitional approach” to being a Ukrainian. Kostetsky’s self-identification as Ukrainian is not so much based on ethnicity as on the promotion of freedom of choice in national identity, which, in his opinion, was the embodiment of the struggle for independence.

“Civil Disobedience is Not a New Phenomenon” — 5in10 with Philipp Schönberger

Philipp Schönberger studied International Relations in Dresden and Law at the Humboldt University of Berlin. After his second state examination in February 2022, he started working for the environmental law NGO Green Legal Impact Germany e.V. in Berlin as a legal advisor for climate policy and the protection of climate activists. At the same time, he works as a freedom of information lawyer for the transparency initiative FragDenStaat, focusing on access to environmental information. Since 2019, he has been coordinating a litigation project against the violation of migrants’ human rights at the EU’s external borders, successfully representing more than fifty applicants before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in both interim measures and ordinary proceedings. Previous work experiences include stays at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and two law firms specializing in climate litigation.

The Porous and the Pure: An Artifactual History of Ties Between Asia, Europe, and Latin America

By Ajay Gandhi. This essay uses three kinds of artifacts to frame connections between Asia, Europe, and Latin America, between the 1500s and the present. These items – simultaneously tangible things and symbolic projections – plot a method and chronology of entanglement. The first are precious-metal decorations made in Goa, on India’s western coast, for Portuguese patrons. A second is a 17th-century painting of a young slave from India taken to the Netherlands. The third artifact is the spider’s web, and the Caribbean folk figure of the Anansi spider. Such artifacts can be read through purity and silence, as well as porosity and convergence. In this itinerary of artifacts, we begin with a social imaginary that is determined and untainted, and move to conditions that are fluid and open-ended.

Rethinking Slow Science from the Perspective of Warzone Academics

By Anastasiya Leukhina et al. With its “publish or perish” imperative, stiff competition for grants and positions, and focus on quantifiable output, neoliberal academia breeds fast science. Many academics have pointed to the need to slow down, emphasizing that good quality academic work takes time. This text attempts to expand the contextual boundaries of understanding slow science. It was born out of a conversation among eight female Ukrainian scholars, each of whom has been affected in their own way by the full-scale Russian invasion. While discussing the speed and quality of academic output, we arrived at the conclusion that the fast vs slow science debate acquires additional nuances in a war zone. The work on this text reflects the practices of slow science we are advocating for: collaborative work, sensitivity to contexts—collective and personal—and experimentation with formats.