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

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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.

Conversations about Gaza on the Bus

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NANCY LINDISFARNE writes:

There were two huge Gaza demonstrations in London in October, and after the enormous one in early November, 2023, I started wearing my Palestinian kefiya scarf or my big Free Palestine badge, or both, whenever I went out.

The first day after the demo I walked to our local shops and on the way, my favourite homeless person, Simon, stood up, hugged me and said, ‘We Can’t Let Them Get Us Down’.

I was surprised and deeply touched. I’m white, Simon is black. Neither of us is Palestinian, nor Muslim, nor are either of us from the Middle East. But he’d seen my badge and completely got it. His hug was about solidarity, about empathy and about understanding that ‘There but for the grace of god, go I’.

It was an important moment for me, but things since then have been very strange.

Four months on, where ever I’ve been in London, or around southern England, I see that the only person on the street who is wearing a kafiyeh or a Free Palestinian badge is me.

I remember the intifada that started in 1987 and went on for six years. Then, lots and lots of people, on the streets, and at work, signalled their support. But not now. Not this time round.

And yet – yet – an opinion poll in the UK back in December said that 71% of the population supported a ceasefire, 12% were against a ceasefire, and 18% were undecided. That was already a large majority for a ceasefire and a ceasefire now.

Two months on, at the end of January, the International Court of Justice at the Hague ordered Israel to comply with a range of humanitarian measures or risk a verdict of genocide. And as people watch the continuing horror in real time on their phones, they have become fiercer in their anger and filled with disgust at the equivocation and hypocrisy of politicians on both sides of the political divide.

So why am I the only person signalling this when I walk out to the shops in January?

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Climate Dispatch from Afghanistan

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JONATHAN NEALE

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, reports 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. We are meeting at the University of Nangarhar, in the east of Afghanistan, about twenty miles from where I originally did my fieldwork. I’ve been to a lot of climate change conferences in the last twenty years. This one is different.

I am aware that many readers will be appalled to read anything about the Taliban that seems even vaguely sympathetic. My purpose in this article is not to defend the Taliban. But it is important to make it clear that the leadership of the Taliban, and indeed the whole government, now take climate breakdown very seriously.

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

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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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The Meaning of Ceasefire: Gaza, Genocide, Resistance and Climate Change

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Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write:

Sooner or later, there will be a ceasefire in Gaza. When it comes, it will be a defeat for Israel. After all, the main goal of Gazans, Palestinians and the global solidarity movement has been a ceasefire. And the ceasefire will come about because of solidarity, resistance and a global mass movement from below.

Since the attack of Oct. 7, the Israeli government has said their aim has been to exterminate Hamas. But it has been clear from the outset that the only strategy they could imagine has been to kill a very large number of Gazans. In their effort to re-establish control they have chosen to kill enough people to leave all Palestinians terrified for a generation. They say their aim has been to eliminate Hamas fighters and supporters, but in fact their targets have been the children, women and men of Gaza. The 25,000 people who have died are not collateral damage. They are the damage.

This is why a ceasefire will be a defeat for Israel.

[This article was first published on Fight the Fire on 5 Feb 2024.]

The Military Situation

The first line of resistance to the Israeli onslaught are the Hamas fighters. Israel is not winning this war. They began bombing Gaza more than 100 days ago, and they invaded with ground troops and tanks almost three months ago.

At the end of January, the Financial Times said that Israel controlled a strip across the center of Gaza. They no longer control the North. There is fierce fighting in the South, where the Israeli military says it will take many months to “win”. Even then the Israeli military will face a long guerilla war.

Every anti-colonial war in the last eighty years has been mainly a guerrilla war. If Israel cannot stop guerilla attacks, they will not have won.

It is unclear how many Israeli soldiers have been withdrawn from Gaza, but it is a substantial number. They have been withdrawn because they may be needed for a war in Lebanon, but also because mobilizing so many reservists has hurt the Israeli economy.

But military victory has clearly not been the war aim of the Israeli government. To repeat, their aim has been to kill as many Gazans as possible to terrify all the whole population. Genocide is not a mistake; it is the strategy. Because they cannot win on the ground, they rely on bombing, hunger and disease.

Solidarity

Hamas is important, but the solidarity from Gazans as a whole matters more. This is a people in resistance.

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Afghanistan, Pakistan and Climate Breakdown

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By Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale

A million and half people face forced deportation from Pakistan, and many more face drought and climate chaos in Afghanistan.

From 1978 to 2021 civil wars and invasions ravaged Afghanistan. That’s 43 years. Since the Americans left in August 2021, there has been peace. But in the two years after the withdrawal of any American aid, the economy has shrunk by a third, to under a dollar per person per day.

According to IMF and World Bank figures, in 2023 Afghanistan has become the poorest country on earth. And now Pakistan is forcibly deporting one and a half million people to that bleeding country.

[This article was first published in The Ecologist, 6 December 2023]

Afghanistan has always been a poor country. At least half is mountains or desert. Less than a tenth of the country can be farmed.

That’s how it was when each of us did anthropological fieldwork there, separately, in the early 1970s, Nancy in the northwest and Jonathan in the east. Back then, half a century ago, there was already a long drought and famine caused by climate change. Those droughts have returned again and again. In the last drought, in the winter of 2021, the United Nations had to feed more than 20 million people to prevent famine, more than half the population. And they had to do it again last winter, and they may have to do it again this winter.

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Working Class Ecosocialism

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Stopping Climate Change and Building Another World

Jonathan Neale

This article is about stopping climate change and about fighting for a world based on love and sharing. My argument is that both these projects have to go together. But for either project to work, both climate activists and socialists have to change, fundamentally and fast. And there has to be a deeper change, a change in all humanity. We may well fail. But with these ideas we have a chance.

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Nancy and Jonathan in Conversation with Miranda Melcher about Why Men?

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Miranda Melcher of the New Books Network interviewed us (Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale) about our book Why Men? A Human History of Violence and Inequality.

Miranda introduced us by saying, “This book is fabulous and fascinating, and asks some really big questions, like why do we have patriarchy and warfare all over the place? And was this inevitable?”

And then the three of us are off. The podcast of the interview is one hour and thirteen minutes long, which gives you a potted version of the whole book. You can listen to it here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/why-men

Palestine and Climate Change: Greta stands with Gaza

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Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write:

Last week Greta Thunberg posted the picture above on her Twitter (X) account. Many people in the press criticized her because they themselves supported the Israeli bombing and opposed a ceasefire. Some of those people called her, ludicrously, antisemitic. There was also criticism from some climate activists in Germany, Austria and Israel. Beyond that, there was little open criticism from the climate movement, and much support on social media.

This is a historic moment for the global climate movement. This article explains why.

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‘Secrets Make Us Sick’ – Neoliberal Explanations of Addiction

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Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write: Last week’s post was about the powerful novel Demon Copperhead. Addiction was a central part of that story. This post is about how neoliberalism changed the ways that Americans understand addiction.

Over the last forty years the neoliberal elite have changed the ways people’s understanding of their own suffering. They have done this by making suffering seem natural and genetic.

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Demon Copperhead – Mockery, Truth Telling and Empathy

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Nancy Lindisfarne

It feels presumptuous to write about Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. It is a magnificent book, and as we shall see, speaks eloquently for itself.

Kingsolver writes of Appalachia and the heart-breaking truths of people many other Americans despise as red necks, hillbillies, as people so stupid they’ve been suckered in by Trump. And she goes to war on their behalf – against big pharma and their hired killer reps, against schools where bullying is the norm, against a childcare system in which foster kids can be enslaved and against a system where racism is everywhere the bottom line.

Dicken’s David Copperfield shocked, then wrung the hearts of the caring Victorians and exposed the venal and vicious class power of those other Victorians, the school masters, the factory owners, the people with money, the people who used and abused the poor.

Mockery, truth-telling and empathy were Dickens’ weapons, and they are the ones Kingsolver wields to do battle. She gives no quarter to the rich and powerful, but neither does she forgive the smug liberals and the progressive lefties for believing the suffering of Hilary Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ is self-inflicted and deserved.

The sweep of the book is enormous. The whole system is its setting.

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“Even a Dog Understands No” – An Update on the Harvard Abuse Case

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Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale

Harvard students enter the classroom to protest. Notice the posters.

Last February, almost a year ago, we published a long read about the struggle of three anthropology graduate students and their union against alleged sexual harassment at Harvard by Professor John Comaroff. (You can find that article here.) This is a short update.

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Afghan Women, Universities, Hunger and Climate Change

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Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale

On Dec 19th the Taliban government announced that women would no longer be allowed to attend universities. On Dec 24th they announced that women would no longer be allowed to work for foreign funded NGOs. These are ugly developments.

As so often before, both the Taliban and the Western powers are playing with women’s lives for their own political ends. This note explains how and why.

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A Poem – On Meeting a Liberal Feminist

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Nancy Lindisfarne

Thinking about Afghanistan – Nancy Lindisfarne

In the spring of 2006, I had tea with a woman I knew slightly but thought might become a friend. We sat at a low table in the Senior Common Room at SOAS. The room is attractive, curved at the far end, light and airy. A portrait of the explorer Richard Burton looked down on us.

My new acquaintance was short and dressed in beige in an academic hippy style. She began, without preamble, before we’d properly settled in: ‘I’ve travelled in the Middle East’, she said, and then, with that presumed authority some English women can manage, she let fly the racist crap.

‘I’ve seen what it’s like.’ Unstoppable, wringing her hands, she told me of her concern for Afghan women and began telling stories. Horror stories, every one.

‘Did the women themselves tell you these stories?’ I asked. ‘Well, no, not exactly.’

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Me Too: The Economists Organize

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Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write:

This short post is to update our readers on the Me Too firestorm that is beginning in economic departments in universities in the United States. [1]

Jennifer Doleac is an associate professor of economics at Texas A&M University. That is to say, she has tenure. Which is good, because on October 20 she sent out a dynamite of a tweet:

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Defending Abortion Rights: Lessons from American History

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By NANCY LINDISFARNE and JONATHAN NEALE

May 3, 2022. The news has just leaked that the Supreme Court is planning to overturn Roe v Wade. This is appalling, and enraging, and Americans have a massive fight on their hands. This booklet looks back at abortion politics in the United States since 1964, to show how Roe v. Wade was won in the first place, and how it was defended. You can download the booklet as a pdf here.

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One Day Strikes – A lesson from history

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Jonathan Neale writes: One chapter on the 1982 hospital workers strikes in Britain from a book I wrote many years ago seems very relevant now. I hope it will be useful, in different ways, to university workers and hospital workers. You can download the chapter here.

I was an occupational therapy technician in a geriatric hospital during the 1982 strikes, and a shop steward in the National Union of Public Employees. Reading what I wrote back then, I can feel my pride in my fellow workers and my rage at the leadership of our unions. I was angry because our leaders were introducing what was then a new strategy – one day strikes, two-day strikes, five-day strikes, regional rolling strikes, and so on.

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Putin, Modi and Trump: Ukraine and Racist Right-Wing Populism

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Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale

The invasion of Ukraine is appalling. The resistance is heroic. The situation is moving fast, and each step is politically revealing. There remains a great deal of confusion about Putin and Ukraine in the United States and Britain. This long read aims to unpack some of that confusion and to explain Putin’s rise, how he fits into the global racist right, and his reasons for invading Ukraine.

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From Afghanistan to Ukraine

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Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale

Six months ago, in a post about the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, we wrote: “This is a turning point in world history. The greatest military power in the world has been defeated by the people of a small, desperately poor, country. This will weaken the power of the American empire all over the world.” The consequences of the American defeat are now playing out in Ukraine. Putin, understanding the weakness of American power, is pushing to change the balance of power further.

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Harvard, Sexual Politics, Class and Resistance

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A long read by Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale

As we write, the case of alleged sexual harassment by John Comaroff, a professor of anthropology at Harvard, is exploding. The Harvard case is particularly egregious, not least because of the elite status of the university.

In this piece we treat the Harvard case as part of a much wider set of problems concerning class, sexual politics, inequality and resistance. Our focus initially is on universities in the United States. But we need to remember that academic enterprise today is utterly international. Everywhere the industry relies on similar economic models, has similar intellectual concerns and fosters the considerable mobility of professionals and students from workplace to workplace around the globe.

We are particularly addressing anthropology and other graduate students in the United States and across the world. Our aim is to try to answer some of the difficult questions that come up again and again in online discussion of the case.

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