Anthropological Perspectives on the War in Ukraine

Please note this event occurred in the past.
March 10, 2022 10:30 am - 12:00 pm ET

On February 24, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and in so doing shocked the world. As bombs fell on Ukrainian towns and villages and Russian troops moved in, leaving in their wake a towering wave of refugees, many external observers have tried to make sense of the war’s causes, implications, and possible outcomes.  A popular explanatory trope has been that of competing imperialisms, which though important, threatens to recenter the West, while downplaying complex regional histories and erasing local agency. Meanwhile, members of various global publics have been asking why this war deserves so much attention, when earlier invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and ongoing wars in Syria, Yemen, and Libya either never featured as news stories or are slowly fading from view. Much ink has also been spilled on the apparent explosion of humanitarian sentiment and solidarity which Ukrainian refugees have received, which appears to stand in sharp contrast to violent and racialized policing of Fortress Europe during the ongoing global refugee crisis.  

This panel brings together a group of leading and emerging anthropologists who work in Ukraine and Russia to problematize and push past these frames for thinking about this war, and explore the deeper historical and political context within which these events are unfolding. As anthropologists, we come together to demonstrate the crucial importance of grounded, ethnographic understanding of the cultural terrain that gives this particular conflict shape, without losing sight of the banality of wartime violence that holds in its grip many other parts of this globe.  

As a collective, relying on our knowledge and expertise, we will attempt to answer the question of what is happening, and why it matters, even as some of us are rendered speechless and others are in a war zone. This event is brought to you by the Society for Anthropology of Europe, and Soyuz: The Research Network for Postsocialist Cultural Studies, and co-sponsored by EASA and APLA. 

Ukraine Specialists 

  • Catherine Wanner, Professor of History, Anthropology and Religious Studies, Penn State, School of International Affairs
  • Jennifer Carroll, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, North Carolina State University
  • Denys Gorbach, PhD candidate at Sciences Po Paris, affiliated to MaxPo Center for Coping with Instability in Market Societies
  • Dafna Rachok, PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington (Currently located in Ukraine)

Russia Specialists 

  • Douglas Rogers, Professor and Chair of Anthropology, Yale University
  • Julie Hemment, Chair and Professor of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst 

Moderator:  

  • Dace Dzenovska, Associate Professor in the Anthropology of Migration, Oxford University