John Gledhill
Biographic Data
| ID | 3580956 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John Gledhill |
| GIVEN NAMES | John |
| FAMILY NAME | Gledhill |
| SIGNATURE | GLEDHILL J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Manchester |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4275-2556 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 85 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 166 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 83 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Boon, bane, or business as usual: Perceptions of the economic consequences of peacekeeping withdrawal from Liberia
Existing studies show that the deployment of a peacekeeping operation (PKO) can provide an economic boost to the host state and its population. Some of those studies also suggest that such a boost is unsustainable and that peacekeeping exit may trigger economic downturn within host states. If that is the case, however, do some locals feel the adverse economic effects of PKO exit more than others? In this article, we argue that individuals who com…
Exploring the impact of United Nations peacekeeping operations on the external affairs of host states
Studies of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations (PKOs) typically give scant attention to an important aspect of host states’ development: their external affairs. This article identifies ways in which UN PKOs can shape the external affairs of host states, focusing on UN peacekeeping in the post-Cold War period. We present the findings of a quantitative content analysis of key UN peacekeeping documents to establish which aspects of host stat…
Glee and Grievance: Emotive Events and Campaign Size in Nonviolent Resistance
While scholars of nonviolent resistance recognize that large-scale campaigns are more likely to be successful campaigns, we currently have little understanding of why some nonviolent protests grow into mass movements while others do not. In this article, we explore campaign size and, in particular, the role of individual and collective motives in facilitating the growth of nonviolent campaigns. We start by assuming that, after campaign onset, bar…
Latin America
‘Latin’ America is a region constructed in a context of imperial rivalries and disputes about how to build ‘modern’ nations that made it an ‘other America’ distinct from ‘Anglo’ America. Bringing together people without previous historical contact, the diversity of its societies and cultures was increased by the transatlantic slave trade and later global immigration. Building on the constructive relationship that characterises the ties between so…
Developing peace: The evolution of development goals and activities in United Nations peacekeeping
Peacekeeping and development assistance are two of the United Nations’ (UN) defining activities. While there have been extensive studies of UN engagement in each of these areas, respectively, less attention has been given to the relationship between peacekeeping and development. We examine that relationship in this article. We do so by first considering whether concepts and principles that underpin peacekeeping and development cohere. We then com…
How to understand power from below without romanticism but with commitment: A tribute to Monique Nuijten
I first met Monique at the Colegio de Michoacán, when she was doing fieldwork in Jalisco for her doctoral thesis. We shared interests in both Mexican land reform communities and political anthropology generally and continued to exchange ideas back in Europe. I felt privileged to be invited to be one of the examiners of her thesis in Wageningen, which was awarded a far-from-routine cum laude distinction. I reported to the committee that I judged h…
World Anthropologies in Practice: Situated Perspectives, Global Knowledge
Reflections on the Scope and Practice of Political Anthropology
I will frame my response to the questions asked with a brief autobiographical note, because it is important to reflect on where our own politics come from. I was an undergraduate student of Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford at the end of the 1960s and engaged in left-wing social and anti-imperialist activism in those heady days, in ways that went beyond student street protests. Social anthropology, then only offered to postgraduates in…
The Pieces Kept after Peace is Kept: Assessing the (Post-Exit) Legacies of Peace Operations
Do internationally-backed peace operations and state-building efforts leave legacies of sustainable peace and viable states?1 To answer this question – which lies at the heart of the study and practice of multidimensional peacekeeping and peacebuilding – we need to document conditions that prevail after peace operations have ended, and consider the extent to which those conditions are the consequences of international interventions. That is, to u…
Governing higher education: Lessons from Britain for Brazil
Governando o ensino superior: Lições da Grã-Bretanha para o Brasil
En busca de salidas del laberinto neoliberal: Movimientos sociales y estados reconfigurados en Brasil y México
Tanto en Brasil como en México, las elecciones de 2018 resultaron en un "cambio del régimen" importante. Aunque la victoria de la ultraderecha en Brasil parece una réplica de tendencias en los estados Unidos y Europa, expresando un rechazo de la clase política establecida, algunos analistas ven el triunfo de López Obrador en México como un fenómeno de la misma índole, sugiriendo que se trata simplemente de versiones "derechistas" e "izquierdistas…
The Brazilian Crisis and the Ghosts of Populism
Studying Peace and Studying Conflict: Complementary or Competing Projects
“Peace” and (violent) “conflict” are often seen as conceptual mirror images of one another; peace is the absence of conflict, and conflict is the absence of peace. Given this conceptual interdependence, some scholars see that the study of war-making and the study of peacemaking are complementary—or even functionally identical—academic projects. Others, however, see that studies of violence and war-making are antithetic to studies of peace and pea…
In memoriam Stephen Nugent, 1950–2018
Voted out: Regime type, elections and contributions to United Nations peacekeeping operations
Previous research has suggested that leaders of democratic regimes are particularly willing to contribute troops to United Nations peacekeeping operations because backing ‘liberal’ peacekeeping allows them to support the diffusion of liberal institutions. However, evidence used to sustain this argument is based on contribution patterns during the decade of peacekeeping that followed the Cold War. In this article, we argue that there has been a re…
Reworking the Universal in an Interconnected World
Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth ( ASA )
The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth is a learned society that aims to promote the teaching, research, and broader professional application of social anthropology in and beyond the United Kingdom, and at the same time it is a national professional association that seeks to defend and advance the interests of the subject of anthropology and its practitioners. Discussing both aspects of the association's mission, tod…
Neoliberalism
Anthropologists have explored neoliberalism in terms of both the political economy of capitalism and the development of new techniques for governing people, often integrating both perspectives. Anthropological interest in neoliberalism reflects its relevance to both advanced capitalist societies and the global South, although considerable emphasis has been placed on how local historical factors and postcolonial settings produce varieties of neoli…
Governance Issues in Development
The end of the Cold War produced a new focus on the importance of “good governance” on the part of international development organizations. However, by adopting a managerial approach to supporting macroeconomic policies that furthered a neoliberal model of capitalist globalization, the Bretton Woods institutions turned their backs on alternative paradigms favored by some UN agencies. Anthropologists have not only highlighted the ethnocentrism of …
A Divided Discipline? Mapping Peace and Conflict Studies
Scholars in the field of peace and conflict studies have long worried that their discipline is divided – between studies of war and war making, and studies of peace and peacemaking. However, empirical research into the existence, extent, and nature of such a division is scarce. We remedy this by addressing two questions: 1) how is work in the field of peace and conflict studies distributed between its two nominal pillars: “peace” and (violent) “c…
Availability without access? Globalization and socio-political cleavages in emerging economies
Scholars argue that globalization is reconfiguring socio-political cleavages. No longer do class divisions dominate. Rather, the argument goes, societies are increasingly divided between ‘cosmopolitans’ (who welcome globalization) and ‘communitarians’ (who do not). While that may be the case, studies generally consider the impact of globalization on cleavages in advanced, rather than emerging, economies. Here, we address the latter context. By ex…
Disaggregating Opportunities: Opportunity Structures and Organisational Resources in the Study of Armed Conflict
In studies of armed conflict and civil war, it is common to distinguish between explanations that focus on the motives of insurgents and accounts that examine opportunities for rebellion. But what do scholars actually mean by ‘opportunities’? Some invoke the concept when referring to contexts in which states cannot suppress rebellion. For others, opportunities exist where insurgents have access to resources that facilitate the realisation of coll…
Atores Em Disputas Urbanas: Os Espaços Contenciosos Do Urbanismo Neoliberal
Requalificação Urbana E Despejos Em Centros Novo E Antigo De Salvador
A cidade de Salvador replica o processo de "acumulação por espoliação", característico de um urbanismo neoliberal em todo o mundo. Neste artigo, comparamos como atua a lógica da requalificação urbana em duaszonas da cidade. A primeira é uma grande e historicamente combativa favela localizada na região que tem se tornado o mais moderno "novo centro" da cidade. Nela, a chave dos problemas são os novos projetos demobilidade urbana e a construção de …
Citizenship and the Social Geography of Deep Neo-Liberalization
From the vantage point of the bleak social landscapes of the "divided cities" of Latin America, the meaningfulness of the focus on deepening the rights of citizenship that accompanied the shift to more democratic political regimes is far from obvious, despite some apparently positive developments accompanying the transition to neo-liberalism. This paper examines the reasons for the resilience of neo-liberalism despite the popular protests that ne…
A Divided Discipline? Mapping Peace and Conflict Studies
Scholars in the field of peace and conflict studies have long worried that their discipline is divided – between studies of war and war making, and studies of peace and peacemaking. However, empirical research into the existence, extent, and nature of such a division is scarce. We remedy this by addressing two questions: 1) how is work in the field of peace and conflict studies distributed between its two nominal pillars: “peace” and (violent) “c…
Indigenous Autonomy, Delinquent States, and the Limits of Resistance
This paper focuses on struggles by Mexican indigenous communities to defend their patrimony and guarantee their own security in an environment dominated by the parallel power of organized crime, paramilitary violence, impunity, and a neo-extractivist economy. After reviewing the relationships between the radicalization of indigenous autonomy demands and transformations of the Mexican state, analysis focuses on recent developments involving a Nahu…
The Mexican Contribution to Restructuring US Capitalism: Nafta as an instrument of flexible accumulation
■ This article analyzes the history of Mexico-US migration in relation to the contemporary social impacts of labor market restructuring, relocation of production, and global lifestyle and real estate investments in the transnational space defined by NAFTA. Mexico is not simply a supplier of cheap labor that enables US capital to confront globalization. Economics is entangled in politics and a specific history of racialized labor markets, neocolon…
Power in political anthropology
This paper reviews the development of anthropological studies of power since the 1970s. It relates anthropological work to broader trends in the social sciences, such as the pervasive influence of Foucauldian perspectives, whilst emphasising what is distinctive in anthropological approaches and contributions to wider debates. The evolution of the field is related to the broadening of anthropology's objects of study, to its questioning of Eurocent…
Evolution and Ecology: Essays on Social Transformation
States of Contention: State-Led Political Violence in Post-Socialist Romania
Throughout the 1990s, Romania's transition from authoritarianism was witness to repeated instances of intense collective violence. Specifically, miners from the country's Jiu Valley region descended on Bucharest—attacking civilians, offices of the free press, and the headquarters of opposition parties. This article attends to the strikes of June 1990 and, in so doing, addresses the broader issue of political violence during the early phases of a …
The Power of Ethnic Nationalism: Foucault's Bio-power and the Development of Ethnic Nationalism in Eastern Europe
Although the ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ brands of nationalism are frequently contrasted, the origins of the civic/ethnic dichotomy remain under-theorised. By building upon Michel Foucault's The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, this article argues that, during the eighteenth century, the articulation of power shifted across the board from a pre-modern control over the ending of life, to a modern expression of power as control over the production of life …
Finding a new public face for anthropology
Agrarian Social Movements and Forms of Consciousness
Interest in 'social movements' which are not simple expressions of class opposition is nothing new in Latin America. For decades, anthropologists and historians have dedicated themselves to the study of rural 'millenarian' movements and to urban phenomena ranging from syncretic religious move? ments to barrio organisations focused on specific demands for urban services. There have always, of course, been those who have argued that everything shou…
Voted out: Regime type, elections and contributions to United Nations peacekeeping operations
Previous research has suggested that leaders of democratic regimes are particularly willing to contribute troops to United Nations peacekeeping operations because backing ‘liberal’ peacekeeping allows them to support the diffusion of liberal institutions. However, evidence used to sustain this argument is based on contribution patterns during the decade of peacekeeping that followed the Cold War. In this article, we argue that there has been a re…
The people's oil
This article examines similarities and differences in the development of the oil industries of Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela through an analysis of the struggles and alliances between their elites, political classes, and diverse popular forces. The analysis demonstrates that although history has produced popular skepticism over the meaning of the state's claim that "our oil belongs to the people," a popular imaginary of the potential link between…
The Pieces Kept after Peace is Kept: Assessing the (Post-Exit) Legacies of Peace Operations
Do internationally-backed peace operations and state-building efforts leave legacies of sustainable peace and viable states?1 To answer this question – which lies at the heart of the study and practice of multidimensional peacekeeping and peacebuilding – we need to document conditions that prevail after peace operations have ended, and consider the extent to which those conditions are the consequences of international interventions. That is, to u…
Resisting the Global Slum: Politics, Religion and Consumption in the Remaking of Life Worlds in the Twenty-First Century
The volatility of Latin American society is producing political challenges to neoliberal capitalism, but these are complicated by the transformations neoliberalism has wrought in everyday social life. This paper explores tensions between movements to ‘democratise democracy’ and politics orientated to controlling the national state, while also considering apolitical forms of ‘resistance’ to humiliating conditions of life and the impact of new reli…
Some Histories are More Possible than Others: Structural Power, Big Pictures and the Goal of Explanation in the Anthropology of Eric Wolf
While there are elements of postmodernist and post-structuralist thought that Wolf either anticipated or incorporated happily into his own thinking, his realist epistemology remained radically opposed to the fashions that became dominant after the publication of Europe and the People without History. He insisted that the goal of a humanistic science was to explain rather than simply to interpret 'experience-near' phenomena, and that explanation w…
The Peasantry in History: Some notes on Latin American research
Requalificação Urbana E Despejos Em Centros Novo E Antigo De Salvador
A cidade de Salvador replica o processo de "acumulação por espoliação", característico de um urbanismo neoliberal em todo o mundo. Neste artigo, comparamos como atua a lógica da requalificação urbana em duaszonas da cidade. A primeira é uma grande e historicamente combativa favela localizada na região que tem se tornado o mais moderno "novo centro" da cidade. Nela, a chave dos problemas são os novos projetos demobilidade urbana e a construção de …
Casi Nada: A Study of Agrarian Reform in the Homeland of Cardenismo
Agrarian Change and the Articulation of Forms of Production: The Case of the Mexican Bajío
It has become increasingly apparent that small-scale agriculture is not rapidly eliminated with industrialization. On the contrary, petty enterprises have proliferated, in manufacturing as well as agriculture, in core as well as peripheral regions, alongside the growth of large-scale capitalist production. This seemingly structural phenomenon is particularly confusing for orthodox Marxism, whose founders insisted that agriculture would be subject…
Studying Peace and Studying Conflict: Complementary or Competing Projects
“Peace” and (violent) “conflict” are often seen as conceptual mirror images of one another; peace is the absence of conflict, and conflict is the absence of peace. Given this conceptual interdependence, some scholars see that the study of war-making and the study of peacemaking are complementary—or even functionally identical—academic projects. Others, however, see that studies of violence and war-making are antithetic to studies of peace and pea…
Disaggregating Opportunities: Opportunity Structures and Organisational Resources in the Study of Armed Conflict
In studies of armed conflict and civil war, it is common to distinguish between explanations that focus on the motives of insurgents and accounts that examine opportunities for rebellion. But what do scholars actually mean by ‘opportunities’? Some invoke the concept when referring to contexts in which states cannot suppress rebellion. For others, opportunities exist where insurgents have access to resources that facilitate the realisation of coll…
Assessing (In)security after the Arab Spring: Editor's Introduction
More than two years after the heady days of protest and uprising that characterized the Arab Spring, the glow of revolution has given way to the intricacies and complications of regime building. Coalitions are being formed, constitutions written, judiciaries vetted, and security services (re)built. As collective attention focuses on these complexities of regime restructuring, it is worth noting that a fundamental security paradox sits at the hear…
Reinventing Anthropology, Anew
The World Trade Center and Global Crisis
The World Trade Center disaster is an event of such significance that it exhausts interpretation. This is not because of the enormity of the event itself. Numerous humanly caused destructed of just the last hundred years dwarf it in scale, and the attention now addressed to it may over the next year appear disproportionate. But events are never significant in the imagination of human beings independently of the way they are socially constructed i…
Eric R. Wolf: An Appreciation
The Relation Between Archaeology and Anthropology
The Spatial Organisation of Culture
Evolution and Ecology: Essays on Social Transformation
Agrarian Change and the Articulation of Forms of Production: The Case of the Mexican Bajío
It has become increasingly apparent that small-scale agriculture is not rapidly eliminated with industrialization. On the contrary, petty enterprises have proliferated, in manufacturing as well as agriculture, in core as well as peripheral regions, alongside the growth of large-scale capitalist production. This seemingly structural phenomenon is particularly confusing for orthodox Marxism, whose founders insisted that agriculture would be subject…
The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution
Europe and the People Without History
The Peasantry in History: Some notes on Latin American research
Reactions
Agrarian Social Movements and Forms of Consciousness
Interest in 'social movements' which are not simple expressions of class opposition is nothing new in Latin America. For decades, anthropologists and historians have dedicated themselves to the study of rural 'millenarian' movements and to urban phenomena ranging from syncretic religious move? ments to barrio organisations focused on specific demands for urban services. There have always, of course, been those who have argued that everything shou…
A Narrative History: Book Review
Conflict in the Archaeology of Living Traditions
Entering a new era: Welcome to the US Editorial Group
Casi Nada: A Study of Agrarian Reform in the Homeland of Cardenismo
Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture and Ideology in the Mexican National Space
Spent Catridges of Revolution: An Anthropological History of Namiquipa, Chihuahua
From “Others” to Actors: New Perspectives on Popular Political Cultures and National State Formation in Latin America: Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531…
Neoliberalism, Transnationalization, and Rural Poverty: A Case Study of Michoacán, Mexico
Introduction - structural adjustment, neoliberalism and the Mexican countryside on audacity and social polarization - an assessment of rural policy under Salinas social life and the practices of power - the limits of neocardenismo and the limits of the PRI the transnationalization of regional societies - capital, class and international migration a rush through the closing door? - the impact of Simpson-Rodino on two rural communities the family u…
Uma exploração muito particular: O caso da migração mexicana para os EUA
No mês de abril do ano de 1997 entrou em vigor nos Estados Unidos uma lei que regulamenta a imigração ilegal explicitando a responsabilidade dos imigrantes, juntamente com a lei de reforma da assistência pública, pena de morte e antiterrorismo. A combinação de tais medidas, supostamente contrárias ao " terrorismo" , num conjunto de medidas que pretende reformar leis migratórias, nos oferece uma visão preliminar do clima ideológico que já tem cons…
The Mexican Contribution to Restructuring US Capitalism: Nafta as an instrument of flexible accumulation
■ This article analyzes the history of Mexico-US migration in relation to the contemporary social impacts of labor market restructuring, relocation of production, and global lifestyle and real estate investments in the transnational space defined by NAFTA. Mexico is not simply a supplier of cheap labor that enables US capital to confront globalization. Economics is entangled in politics and a specific history of racialized labor markets, neocolon…
Contesting regimes of truth: Continuity and change in the relationships between intellectuals and power
(1998). Contesting regimes of truth: Continuity and change in the relationships between intellectuals and power. Identities: Vol. 4, Regimes of Truth, pp. 515-528
Eric R. Wolf: An Appreciation
Power and Its Disguises: Anthropological Perspectives on Politics
Power And Its Disguises - Second Edition: Anthropological Perspectives on Politics (Anthropology, Culture and Society)
Popular Movements and State Formation in Revolutionary Mexico: The Agraristas and Cristeros of Michoacán
This book significantly advances the paradigm of studying state formation as “negotiation of rule,” exemplified by Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent’s pathbreaking collection, Everyday Forms of State Formation (1994), by demonstrating that it can help us to answer comparative questions. Purnell seeks to explain why a socially, economically, and ethnically diverse set of rural actors rebelled against the state under the banner of the cristeros in t…
Finding a new public face for anthropology
Political science (66 works) · Sociology (61 works) · Law (49 works) · Politics (38 works) · Law (29 works) · Political economy (26 works) · History (23 works) · Economics (17 works) · Geography (16 works) · History (16 works)