Lives Lived Under Sanctions: Anthropology of Sanctions Conference, convenes leading scholars from around the world to delve into the profound effects of economic sanctions on everyday lives. Departing from conventional international relations perspectives, this unique event shifts the focus to a ground-level exploration of the impact and implications of sanctions on targeted countries such as Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Nicaragua, Sudan, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. The conference will explore the long-term consequences of sanctions on global markets and explore the emerging field of "Anthropology of Sanctions," shedding light on the lived realities of those affected by these policies. As economic sanctions continue to shape foreign policy, this conference offers a crucial platform for understanding their effects on individuals and communities worldwide.
*Please note, this conference is not open to the public
SPONSORSED BY
organizers
-
(pronounced: Nar-guess Baa-jogh-lee) is Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. She is an award-winning anthropologist, scholar, and writer. Trained as a political anthropologist, media anthropologist, and documentary filmmaker, Narges' academic research is at the intersections of media and power in Iran and the United States. Her first project focused on regime cultural producers in Iran, and was based on ethnographic research with Basij, Ansar-e Hezbollah, and Revolutionary Guard media producers. The resulting book, Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic (Stanford University Press 2019) was awarded the 2020 Margaret Mead Award (American Anthropological Association & Society for Applied Anthropology); 2020 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title (American Library Association); and the 2021 Silver Medal in Independent Publisher Book Awards for Current Events (Political/Economic, Foreign Affairs). Narges has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Jacobin. She has also appeared as a guest commentator on Iranian politics on CNN, DemocracyNow!, NPR, BBC WorldService, BBC NewsHour, and PBS NewsHour as well as in Spanish on radio across Latin America.
-
Professor in the Department of Law, Societies, and Justice at the University of Washington. She is a legal anthropologist and a former immigration and asylum and refugee lawyer. She received her JD at American University, Washington College of Law and her PhD at Stanford University. She is the author of Forgiveness Work: Mercy, Law, and Victims’ Rights in Iran (Princeton University Press, 2020), which won the Law and Society Association’s Herbert Jacob Book Prize for new, outstanding work in law and society scholarship as well as the Mossavar-Rahmani Book Prize for best scholarly monograph in Iranian and Persian Studies. She is also the author of The Politics of Women’s Rights in Iran (Princeton University Press, 2009), which analyzes the politicization of Iranian women’s “rights talk.” Her co-edited volume, Care in a Time of Humanitarianism, is due out in 2024, and finally, she is working on a monograph that explores the everyday lives of Iranians living under sanctions. You can find most of her articles on her website: https://arzooosanloo.com
SCHEDULE
SEPTEMBER 14
Panel 1: Sanctions: Security, Infrastructure, and International Law
Joy Gordon
Loyola University of Chicago
“Life Under Sanctions: Thinking About a Physical, Political, and Economic Anthropology of Sanctions”
Grégoire Mallard
The Graduate Institute, Geneva
“International Law, Security and Sanctions”
Panel 2: Sanctions Over Time: The Interruption and Reimagination of Everyday Life
Ehsan Lor Afshar
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
“Displacement of Value: Revealing the Displacement Effects of Economic Sanctions”
Ilana Feldman
George Washington University
“Targeting Palestinian People and Politics: Collective Punishment and the Violence of Israeli Occupation”
Panel 3: Sanctions and Geopolitics: Reflections on the ‘Silent, Deadly Weapon’
Narges Bajoghli
Johns Hopkins University
“Uprisings, Power, and Resistance: The Geopolitical Tangle of Sanctions”
Yousef K. Baker,
California State University, Long Beach
“Waging War Through Sanctions; Reflecting on the 13-year Siege of Iraq”
Panel 4: Sanctions as Politics: Power, Pain, and Blockade
Joao Goncalves
University of Sao Paulo
“‘Turn Setbacks into Victories’: The ‘Blockade’ as a Killer Weapon”
Matthew Wilde
The Graduate Institute, Geneva
“Refracting Grievance: The Everyday Geopolitics of Sanctions and Populism in Urban Venezuela”
David Cooper,
Bristol University
“Do sanctions undermine support for incumbents? ‘Economic pain’ and revolutionary identities in rural Nicaragua”
SEPTEMBER 15
Panel 5: Sanctions as Neoliberal “Shocks”
Arzoo Osanloo
University of Washington, Seattle
“The Patient Stone: The Neoliberal Life of Sanctions”
Pavel Vidal Alejandro
Department of Economics, Universidad Javeriana Cali, Colombia
“Impact of Sanctions Policy Shifts: A Case Study of U.S. and Cuba, 1994-2020”
Joshua Mayer
University of Connecticut
“Picking Targets: The Sanctions-Industrial Complex and the Social Worlds of Liberal Imperialism”
Panel 6: Rethinking Economic Flows: Labor and Capital Under Sanctions
Asma Abdi
University of Warwick
“Women’s (under)paid Labor and the Feminization of Survival Under the Sanctions Regime in Iran”
[virtual]
Emrah Yildiz
Northwestern University
“The Regional Life of “Smart” Sanctions: The Traffic in Money, Land and Passports between Iran and Turkey”
Panel 7: Sanctions as Disenchantment in Rural and Urban Livelihoods
Grasian Mkodzongi
Executive Director at Tropical Africa- Land and Natural Resources Research Institute (Tropical Africa LNRRI) Harare Zimbabwe
“Imperialism, Sanctions and Coercive Economic Measures in post-land reform Zimbabwe”
Paul Ryer
School for Advanced Research Santa Fe, NM
“Whistling for a Boat from Japan”
new venue
This conference will take place in the new Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) building at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. This state-of-the-art facility—located minutes from the United States Capitol, White House, Treasury Department, Department of Justice, Department of Energy, and National Mall—boasts 420,000 square feet of space.