{"id":7031601,"date":"2026-08-07T08:02:38","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T08:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/anthropology\/for-an-anthropology-of-geopolitics\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T08:02:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T08:02:38","slug":"for-an-anthropology-of-geopolitics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7031601","title":{"rendered":"For an Anthropology of Geopolitics"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

There has been an outpouring of grief among Shi\u2018i Muslims across the world at the death of Ayatollah Khamenei. An anthropology of geopolitics that foregrounds relational geographies and granular analyses of ordinary peoples\u2019 interpretations of world events can help better understand this mourning.<\/p>\n

\n

The month of Ramadan is a time for fasting and feasting, for spiritual reflection and community solidarity. This is reflected in images of prayer, of greater charity, and of iftar gatherings. In many parts of the Shi\u2018i world this year, images of Ramadan could be mistaken for those associated with Muharram, when Shi\u2018as commemorate the martyrdom of their spiritual founding figure, Imam Husain, at the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE.The battle took place in present-day Iraq between the army of Yazid (descendant of the Ummayads) and the followers of Husain, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, who Shi\u2018as believe was denied rightful succession to the Caliphate. Historical echoes of this moment reverberated through the recent killing of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and led to an outpouring of grief among Shi\u2018i Muslims across the world, including in South Asia, where I conduct research. Despite the violent repression of civilian dissent in Iran by Khamenei, he has been elevated to the status of a martyr by grieving Shi’i minorities in South Asia who recall Karbala and its meaning: a struggle against injustice and oppression.*<\/p>\n


The sensorium of mourning<\/strong><\/p>\n

I first witnessed the collective effervescence of Muharram processions during my doctoral fieldwork in Kargil, a Twelver Shi\u2018i majority region of Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas. It was an intensely sensory experience, animated by lamentation expressed through the rhythmic coordinated thumping of chests in mourning assemblies and processions, the crescendo of weeping at key points in the narration of the events of the Battle of Karbala, the transmission of nauhas<\/em> (rhythmic dirges) through loudspeakers, and singing of marsiyas <\/em>(elegiac poetry)<\/em>. This week, social and news media are filled with images from Kargil, showing thousands of people \u2013 young and old, men and women \u2013 taking to the streets in processions reminiscent of Muharram. Drone photography shows a sea of people clutching photos of Khamenei, carrying miniature replicas of coffins, raising fists and chanting slogans against imperial oppression in \u2018julus-e-shahadat-e-Khamenei\u2019 (procession to mourn the martyrdom of Khamenei), virtually relaying the affective charge of Muharram processions. A seven-day period of mourning was announced in this \u2018remote\u2019 Himalayan location. Shi\u2018i community leaders in India have taken the analogy of Catholics\u2019 emotional devotion to the Pope to explain their grief at the passing of Khamenei<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Alignment with Ali Khamenei was never unequivocal in the Twelver Shi\u2018i world. It was underlined by differences of opinion on the institution of the Velayat-e-Faqih<\/em> (Guardianship of the Jurist), established by Ayatollah Khomeini after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, wherein the supreme jurist becomes the legitimate inheritor of the religious and political authority of the Prophet and the Imams. These differences were reflected in intra-sectarian factionalism even in a small place like Kargil. Yet mourning for Khamenei has transcended these divides. It has even united Sunnis and Shi\u2018as<\/a> in some places in India. As scholars of Shi\u2018ism have commented, for minorities in South Asia, Khamenei was a symbol of dignity and strength. This is captured by a frequent quote found on Muharram banners: \u201cDeath with dignity is better than a life of humiliation,\u201d a sentiment that has re-circulated during Ramadan 2026. For many, Iran has been revered as \u2018Maktab-e-Husaini\u2019 (School of Husain), and the 1979 Revolution lent Shi\u2019as greater confidence in their religious identity. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Muharram
Muharram, 2022, Leh (Ladakh). Photo by Radhika Gupta.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n


Anthropological enquiry in \u2018small places\u2019 can tell us much about \u2018large issues\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

An ethnography of \u2018peripheral\u2019 Shi\u2018i locales might appear inconsequential for realpolitik international affairs. But, at this moment in history, I have realised with ever more clarity how my research on intra-sectarian politics in Kargil<\/a> helped me to understand the global geopolitical stakes of Shi\u2018i politico-religious identifications. The study of geopolitics, traditionally the terrain of scholars of International Relations, can benefit from an engagement with the anthropology of geopolitics<\/em>. This subfield offers a granular understanding of ordinary peoples\u2019 engagement with and interpretations of world events beyond culturalist and functionalist approaches. The foundation for the crystallisation of this new subfield was arguably laid shortly after the end of the Cold War in the 1990s with the publication of seminal pieces such as \u2018The Song of the Non-Aligned World:<\/a>Transnational Identities and the Re-inscription of Space in Late Capitalism\u2019, which commented on a newly ushered in era marked by capitalist globalization. <\/p>\n

More recently, drawing upon Black feminist scholars, anthropologists have asked \u201cWhat would it mean for anthropology to more explicitly engage with geopolitics<\/a> \u2013 to foreground a phenomenon often relegated to the \u2018context\u2019 of our work \u2013 by grappling with its grounded instantiations across the world\u201d? To respond to this question is to underscore \u201cgeographies of relationality\u201d by revealing how a small place like Kargil \u2013 conventionally trapped by methodological nationalism \u2013 is, in fact, located within wider geopolitical and global imaginaries. The epistemological value of an anthropology of geopolitics also rests in its fundamentally interdisciplinary character, cutting across anthropology, history, and politics. It demonstrates in explicitly legible ways the value of our discipline to an understanding of global social and political transitions so urgently needed in a period of geopolitical turmoil perhaps not seen since the end of the Second World War. <\/p>\n

*This article was updated after publication on 17 March 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There has been an outpouring of grief among Shi\u2018i Muslims across the world at the death of Ayatollah Khamenei. An anthropology of geopolitics that foregrounds relational geographies and granular analyses of ordinary peoples\u2019 interpretations of world events can help better understand this mourning. The month of Ramadan is a time for fasting and feasting, for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7031602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11767],"tags":[3735,6683],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7031601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anthropology","tag-anthropology","tag-geopolitics"],"yoast_head":"\nFor an Anthropology of Geopolitics - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7031601\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"For an Anthropology of Geopolitics - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There has been an outpouring of grief among Shi\u2018i Muslims across the world at the death of Ayatollah Khamenei. 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