FREE BOOK: Thank God We’re Secular: Gender, Islam and Turkish Republicanism

NANCY LINDISFARNE with RICHARD TAPPER

Jonathan Writes: This is a treat. It’s the English translation of Thank God We’re Secular: Gender, Islam and Turkish Republicanism, by Nancy Lindisfarne with Richard Tapper. The book was originally published in Turkish by Iletisim in 2001. The book is in two parts. Part One, pages 1-150, has never been published in English before. Here Nancy develops an analysis of republicanism and Islamic practice in Turkey. This is, almost uniquely, an analysis that is historically grounded, fiercely feminist, solidly socialist and deeply sympathetic to the religious lives of ordinary Turks. Pages 151-400 are re-edited versions of previously published articles by Richard and Nancy that grew out of their joint fieldwork in a Turkish town in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Download the translation as a pdf here.

Climate Dispatch from Afghanistan

Jonathan Neale writes: Earlier this month I returned to Afghanistan for the first time in 51 years. Back then I had been a young anthropology student doing fieldwork with pastoral nomads. Now I write books and articles on climate breakdown. I had been invited back to give a keynote address at the first International Climate Change Conference in the country. I’ve been to a lot of climate conferences. This one is different.

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Nothing Began in October – Humanitarianism, the Election of Hamas and the Israeli Lockdown in 2006

Gaza in 2021

TAKIS GEROS writes: From January 2006 to January 2007, I worked for a Greek NGO which provided aid to the health sector in the Palestinian territories. The following paper was delivered to an international conference at Panteion University in Athens in November 2008. The continuities between 2006 and Biden’s “humanitarian airdrops” today are important, sobering and have a series of serious implications for the Gazan survivors in the future.

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