Abstract This afterword to the theme section on in/visibilizing statehood agrees that capitalism in combination with contemporary state processes is integral to the growth of global conflict and war. But it notes that this is particularly so when socioeconomic and political reproduction depends on war as its principal dynamic. This is especially apparent in what may be termed “plunder states,” which have emerged throughout history and prior to the emergence of capitalism. These highlight the society-annihilating potential of societies (state and non-state orders) whose reproductive dynamic is founded on war, a potential most likely thoroughly achievable through capital allied with the creation of technologies especially suitable for the pursuit of war.

Abstract This article explores why supporters of the Kurdish Freedom Movement give their offspring to guerillas, despite parents’ knowledge of the likely violent death this can entail. Drawing on extended fieldwork in Iraqi Kurdistan, the article argues that the answer can be found in the lived ideology of the movement, where those who are killed are not seen as tragic figures who shatter social worlds. Instead, remade as martyrs, the dead become figures who perpetuate, renew, and give life to the struggle, and therefore to the people themselves. Accordingly, the ideology provides a means for the movement to create an autonomous revisualization of itself in the face of the surrounding states’ warfare governance. Appreciating such situated understandings of life and death is crucial if researchers do not want to inadvertently circumscribe informants’ revolutionary/utopian projects.

Abstract Diplomacy and the arms trade are no strangers; for many decades, arms have been exchanged as part of the creation of state alliances. The sale of guns, warplanes, knowledge, and, increasingly, (cyber) security technologies is, therefore, a politically embedded endeavor and part of the way states govern themselves. Here, I use the case of Israel and its vast global security industry to study the sale of weapons. I analyze the accompanying diplomatic relations between states as a form of warfare governance. I investigate this “securitized diplomacy” through its security narratives, which are infused with deep racist ideology and which also have a normalizing, legitimizing, and sanitizing effect regarding the industry itself, its weapons and technologies, its violence, and the (international) actors involved.

Abstract Tracing processes in which “philanthrocapitalism” generates benefits enables exploration of value-making through hierarchical global relations. Peripheral vision based on fieldwork in Rungwe District shows putative beneficiaries’ ways of valuing support exceed donors’ intentions. The philanthropic intervention model is organized around the concept of a chain of value addition by and for farmers. This is represented by increased income, which remains elusive. Drawing on the work of Nancy Munn, David Graeber, and Elizabeth Ferry, this article explores transformations (in how value is conceived and pursued) through which rural Tanzanians negotiate political-economic constraints. They prioritize cultivating relations with those who have resources rather than following their instructions to maximize milk production. This is a different value chain approach through which people try to build a life.

This article draws on historical and ethnographic research conducted in Portugal to examine how the logic of human needs quantification serves as a central point of political struggle among various social actors, each driven by conflicting political motivations, moral commitments, and valuation debates during periods of crisis. It argues that this logic should be understood as a site of struggle where different actors delineate the material, moral, and political boundaries that shape the fulfillment of basic needs, the allocation of resources, and the organization and management of social hierarchies regarding needs and their carriers. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that political struggles over the logic of human needs quantification during each crisis have been crucial in negotiating capitalist welfare futures.

Abstract The official narrative of Mexico's so-called War on Drugs, often framed within rigid boundaries and clearly defined divisions, obscures the more porous and diffuse forms of war governance that emerge through unpredictable violence. Based on extensive ethnographic research and press documentation of feminicides in the indigenous region of Zongolica, along the Gulf of Mexico, this article investigates how the construction of impunity—rooted in the discursive devaluation of women's lives, bodies, and testimonies—reveals deeper forces of territorial conquest and the expansion of extractivism. It also explores the hidden dynamics shaping the transformation of state sovereignty in indigenous territories, marked by exploitation and systemic violence, alongside the resistance efforts of organized indigenous women.

This article illustrates and discusses the contemporary strengthening of activism triggered by a spiritual stance in Europe. Ethnographic research with Italy’s No Green Pass movement (2021–2023) shows that vaccine hesitancy and conspiracy theories were blended with the sacred goal to protect what is perceived as divine harmony. The opposition to the ruling elite and its technological innovations was motivated by the desire to safeguard a cosmological and natural order, seen as gravely menaced. Activists referred to a spiritual perspective to interpret who chose to join the movement (the awakened souls), what were the useful political tools (love and high vibrations), what the near future will bring (the catastrophic triumph of Evil), and what is the prophesied road to salvation (the restoration of harmony).

Gorbach, Denys. 2024. The Making and unmaking of the Ukrainian working class: Everyday politics and moral economy in a post-soviet city. New York: Berghahn Books. Ishchenko, Volodymyr. 2024. Towards the abyss: Ukraine from Maidan to war. London: Verso.

Abstract War is changing globally. This collection suggests that the notion of “warfare governance” provides an analytical tool to grapple with a contemporary world where most wars and forms of large-scale or endemic violence unfold in domains, territories, and on scales beyond the format and trope of a war with clear fronts. Crucially, what we argue to be forms of warfare governance has risen in prominence beyond widely disseminated and mass-mediated global theatres of war to become a key mode of governing where in/visibilization is central. Further, by moving away from depictions of war that align with theatre metaphors, we underline the importance of revisiting and rethinking the number of small wars and insurgencies.

This article critically examines how fairness reframes aid provision to people seeking asylum impacted by Australian border deterrence policy. During fieldwork from 2015 to 2020 in a volunteer-run foodbank in Melbourne/Naarm, principles of fairness facilitated intimate, everyday volunteer-shopper relationships and a shared moral framework. This held potential to de-exceptionalize aid, circumventing humanitarian power dynamics by enabling dignity and social justice. Yet fairness also paradoxically perpetuated an unequal politics of life—mirroring national narratives stigmatizing boat arrivals as undeserving of generosity, justifying foodbank regulations and assumptions, and sustaining neoliberalized welfare provision through responsibilizing volunteers. My term “familiar humanitarianism” encompasses the contradictory potential within fairness to both bolster and counter exclusionary borders and neoliberal agendas, bringing fresh insights to the anthropology of humanitarianism.