My first book, Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine: How Occupied Landscapes Shape Scientific Knowledge has just been published by the MIT Press. The MIT page has a summary and quotes from Laleh Khalili and Stefan Helmreich, two people whose work I really admire. The book is available online via independent bookstores in the Netherlands and the US, and it's… Continue reading The book exists!
Student of Segregation
An Israeli Professor's Trip through the Jim Crow South I've been thinking about the international circulation of racist expertise. James Q. Whitman has published a new book, Hitler's American Model. It's about how the Nazis of the 1930s and 1940s studied the racist legal system of the United States as part of their efforts to take away the rights of… Continue reading Student of Segregation
Feminizing Urban Studies
Last week Marguerite van den Berg organized the excellent workshop, "Feminizing the City?" at the University of Amsterdam with Linda Peake, who also gave a lecture. The workshop focused on the (lack of) overlap between urban studies and feminist theory, and Willem Boterman and I were the discussants. During the workshop, Linda Peake spoke about her important… Continue reading Feminizing Urban Studies
Magical Minions
Magical Minions: Dominance and Diversity in the US Popular Media Privilege and Performativity Privilege is a complex concept that has different meanings in specific contexts. I’m just back from the Judith Butler conference at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and one of Butler’s responses to a question has stuck with me when thinking about intersectionality, specifically in… Continue reading Magical Minions
The Feminizing City?
Check out this great workshop and lecture (May 18, Amsterdam) on post-Fordist gender, labor, and the city with Linda Peake, organized by Marguerite van den Berg & Carmen Ferri. Willem Boterman and I will be responding. For the workshop, email registration is required, and instructions are here. Entry is free, and lunch and coffee will be provided.… Continue reading The Feminizing City?
Algorithm Island
I've just returned from an excellent Algorithm Studies Network workshop on the island of Sandhamn in Sweden (photos at center and top left). It was organized by Francis Lee and Lotta Björklund Larson, and after every talk they asked us to write our impressions and ideas on sticky notes that were then collected and organized into groups (photo… Continue reading Algorithm Island
Sherlock Explains It All
"From a drop of water, a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link to it." "By a man’s finger-nails, by his… Continue reading Sherlock Explains It All
Primate Planet
“My people will crouch and conspire and plot and plan for the inevitable day of Man's downfall—the day when he finally and self-destructively turns his weapons against his own kind…. When the sea is a dead sea, and the land is a wasteland….“ I want to write about the difficulty of being open and responsive… Continue reading Primate Planet
Ephemeral Infrastructures
Recently we've been writing about Paul Edwards' (2006) notion of infrastructural globalism, or how "'the world' is produced and maintained" through infrastructures that are aimed at spanning the globe. Walking around London after the bodies conference, I came back to thinking about how different infrastructures come to be seen as ephemeral or obdurate, and how they come to be seen as belonging… Continue reading Ephemeral Infrastructures
Circulating Bodies
My thanks go out to Kristin Hussey, Sarah Morton, and everyone involved in the Corpses, Catalogues, and Catalogues conference last week! There were so many wonderful talks, and the full list is available here. Amber Kiri Aranui spoke on the repatriation of Maori ancestral remains. Ginna Camacho of Equitas presented on the role of bioethics in forensic… Continue reading Circulating Bodies
