Samar Al‐bulushi
Biographic Data
| ID | 101935 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Samar Al‐bulushi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Samar |
| FAMILY NAME | Al‐bulushi |
| SIGNATURE | AL BULUSHI S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9884-2895 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 42 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Securing Paradise: Colonial Whiteness and the Geopolitics of Nation-Branding in the Age of “Terror”
(Counter)-Mapping US Empire in Africa
This essay scrutinizes the visual configurations that continue to shape critical understandings of Africa and its relationship to war and empire in the twenty-first century. It explores how maps of US military bases simultaneously enable and foreclose critical analysis, reproducing a lingering fascination and preoccupation with US technological and military power. Against theorizations of empire that privilege the spectacular, the omnipotent, and…
Security Regimes: Transnational and Imperial Entanglements
This article reviews key theoretical and methodological contributions that anthropologists have made to the study of what we call security regimes. While anthropologists have been instrumental in denaturalizing discourses of security, much of the existing literature on who security actors are or where their work and force are to be found remains focused on the masculinist frontlines and visibly spectacular instances of security state power. We ad…
From the Sky to the Streets, and Back
Against the Eurocentric, heteronormative paradigms that continue to structure analysis of post-9/11 global warfare, this article asks what it means to decenter the view from the imperial war room, illustrated most poignantly in the 2016 thriller Eye in the Sky. Highlighting the role played by the Kenyan state in the ongoing war against the Somali militant group al-Shabaab, it takes seriously the African subjects who co-constitute geographies of w…
Security from the South
This introduction offers “security from the South” as a method and an analytic to trace the colonial continuities, the imperial geographies, and the forms of difference through which people become subjects of, resist, and shore up security regimes across the world. Rather than one overarching set of politics, practices, and ideas that constitute “security,” the essay insists on a pluriversal lens onto a world in which security regimes appear begu…
Race, space, and ‘terror’: Notes from East Africa
Citizen-Suspect: Navigating Surveillance and Policing in Urban Kenya
This article privileges the grounded geographies of the war on terror, focusing on those who grapple with its everyday policing powers. Informed by ethnographic research in the cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, I explore how Kenyan Muslim activists experience and make sense of the networked assemblages of police power that transform urban spaces into "gray zones" that fall within the ambiguous spectrum between war and peace. As US-trained Kenyan pol…
SomeoneTellCNN: Cosmopolitan militarism in the East African warscape
In October 2011, the Kenyan military invaded southern Somalia with the stated purpose of addressing the threat posed by the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab. This article illustrates how the Kenyan state invokes the ongoing fight against Al-Shabaab to perform what Merje Kuus refers to as "cosmopolitan militarism," shifting attention away from the material dimensions of war and geopolitics to more abstract, imaginative domains. Cosmopolitan milita…
Against Humanity: Lessons from the Lord's Resistance Army by Sam Dubal
Reviewed by: Against Humanity: Lessons from the Lord’s Resistance Army by Sam Dubal Samar Al-Bulushi Sam Dubal, Against Humanity: Lessons from the Lord’s Resistance Army. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. 277 pp. Drawing on ethnographic research among former members of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda, Sam Dubal’s Against Humanity grapples with how the concept of humanity is mobilized—both in official discourse abo…
"Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture, "Spaces and Times of Occupation
"Peacekeeping" as Occupation: Managing the Market for Violent Labor in Somalia
As the “war on terror” expands across the African continent, multilateral institutions assume key roles in the deployment of newly militarized sociopolitical formations to physically and militarily occupy ‘ungoverned’ spaces. Focusing on the African Union Peacekeeping Operation in Somalia (AMISOM), this article explores the everyday legitimating work required to operationalize the demand for reserve armies, offering insights into the relationship…
Peacekeeping as Occupation: The African Union Mission in Somalia
Citizen-Suspect: Navigating Surveillance and Policing in Urban Kenya
This article privileges the grounded geographies of the war on terror, focusing on those who grapple with its everyday policing powers. Informed by ethnographic research in the cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, I explore how Kenyan Muslim activists experience and make sense of the networked assemblages of police power that transform urban spaces into "gray zones" that fall within the ambiguous spectrum between war and peace. As US-trained Kenyan pol…
"Peacekeeping" as Occupation: Managing the Market for Violent Labor in Somalia
As the “war on terror” expands across the African continent, multilateral institutions assume key roles in the deployment of newly militarized sociopolitical formations to physically and militarily occupy ‘ungoverned’ spaces. Focusing on the African Union Peacekeeping Operation in Somalia (AMISOM), this article explores the everyday legitimating work required to operationalize the demand for reserve armies, offering insights into the relationship…
Security Regimes: Transnational and Imperial Entanglements
This article reviews key theoretical and methodological contributions that anthropologists have made to the study of what we call security regimes. While anthropologists have been instrumental in denaturalizing discourses of security, much of the existing literature on who security actors are or where their work and force are to be found remains focused on the masculinist frontlines and visibly spectacular instances of security state power. We ad…
Race, space, and ‘terror’: Notes from East Africa
SomeoneTellCNN: Cosmopolitan militarism in the East African warscape
In October 2011, the Kenyan military invaded southern Somalia with the stated purpose of addressing the threat posed by the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab. This article illustrates how the Kenyan state invokes the ongoing fight against Al-Shabaab to perform what Merje Kuus refers to as "cosmopolitan militarism," shifting attention away from the material dimensions of war and geopolitics to more abstract, imaginative domains. Cosmopolitan milita…
Peacekeeping as Occupation: The African Union Mission in Somalia
"Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture, "Spaces and Times of Occupation
"Peacekeeping" as Occupation: Managing the Market for Violent Labor in Somalia
As the “war on terror” expands across the African continent, multilateral institutions assume key roles in the deployment of newly militarized sociopolitical formations to physically and militarily occupy ‘ungoverned’ spaces. Focusing on the African Union Peacekeeping Operation in Somalia (AMISOM), this article explores the everyday legitimating work required to operationalize the demand for reserve armies, offering insights into the relationship…
SomeoneTellCNN: Cosmopolitan militarism in the East African warscape
In October 2011, the Kenyan military invaded southern Somalia with the stated purpose of addressing the threat posed by the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab. This article illustrates how the Kenyan state invokes the ongoing fight against Al-Shabaab to perform what Merje Kuus refers to as "cosmopolitan militarism," shifting attention away from the material dimensions of war and geopolitics to more abstract, imaginative domains. Cosmopolitan milita…
Against Humanity: Lessons from the Lord's Resistance Army by Sam Dubal
Reviewed by: Against Humanity: Lessons from the Lord’s Resistance Army by Sam Dubal Samar Al-Bulushi Sam Dubal, Against Humanity: Lessons from the Lord’s Resistance Army. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. 277 pp. Drawing on ethnographic research among former members of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda, Sam Dubal’s Against Humanity grapples with how the concept of humanity is mobilized—both in official discourse abo…
Race, space, and ‘terror’: Notes from East Africa
Citizen-Suspect: Navigating Surveillance and Policing in Urban Kenya
This article privileges the grounded geographies of the war on terror, focusing on those who grapple with its everyday policing powers. Informed by ethnographic research in the cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, I explore how Kenyan Muslim activists experience and make sense of the networked assemblages of police power that transform urban spaces into "gray zones" that fall within the ambiguous spectrum between war and peace. As US-trained Kenyan pol…
From the Sky to the Streets, and Back
Against the Eurocentric, heteronormative paradigms that continue to structure analysis of post-9/11 global warfare, this article asks what it means to decenter the view from the imperial war room, illustrated most poignantly in the 2016 thriller Eye in the Sky. Highlighting the role played by the Kenyan state in the ongoing war against the Somali militant group al-Shabaab, it takes seriously the African subjects who co-constitute geographies of w…
Security from the South
This introduction offers “security from the South” as a method and an analytic to trace the colonial continuities, the imperial geographies, and the forms of difference through which people become subjects of, resist, and shore up security regimes across the world. Rather than one overarching set of politics, practices, and ideas that constitute “security,” the essay insists on a pluriversal lens onto a world in which security regimes appear begu…
Security Regimes: Transnational and Imperial Entanglements
This article reviews key theoretical and methodological contributions that anthropologists have made to the study of what we call security regimes. While anthropologists have been instrumental in denaturalizing discourses of security, much of the existing literature on who security actors are or where their work and force are to be found remains focused on the masculinist frontlines and visibly spectacular instances of security state power. We ad…
Securing Paradise: Colonial Whiteness and the Geopolitics of Nation-Branding in the Age of “Terror”
(Counter)-Mapping US Empire in Africa
This essay scrutinizes the visual configurations that continue to shape critical understandings of Africa and its relationship to war and empire in the twenty-first century. It explores how maps of US military bases simultaneously enable and foreclose critical analysis, reproducing a lingering fascination and preoccupation with US technological and military power. Against theorizations of empire that privilege the spectacular, the omnipotent, and…
Political science (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Politics (5 works) · Gender Studies (4 works) · Gender, Security, and Conflict (4 works) · Global Security and Public Health (4 works) · African history and culture studies (3 works) · Anthropology (3 works) · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics (3 works)