Stop, Look, and Listen #52
A round-up of what I have been reading and listening to this past month, on the Horn of Africa; Eastern Orthodoxy; the Balkans; and football, ideology, and politics.
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This post is part of the newsletter’s ‘Stop, Look, and Listen’ series, a digest of articles and podcasts that I’ve found engaging and insightful over the past month.
The Horn of Africa
On International Crisis Group’s The Horn podcast, Murithi Mutiga joined host Alan Boswell to discuss the inauguration of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the tensions the project has provoked with Egypt, and the question of whether the dam can really bolster the country’s economic prospects.
Zecharias Zelalem wrote for The Continent about a Djiboutian air strike in January of this year against what the country’s government alleged were Afar rebels within its borders but turned out to be against civilians on the Ethiopian side of the border, and the reasons for the complicity of silence around this attack.
Irina Costache wrote for New Lines Magazine about the band of Armenian orphans brought to Addis Ababa by Haile Selassie in 1924, their place in the history of the city’s longstanding but now much dwindled Armenian diasporic community, and their important continuing legacy for Ethiopian music and culture.
For his Socialist Somalia newsletter, Faisal Ali reflected on how rival authoritarian regimes across Northeast Africa helped bring about each other’s demise between 1989 and 1991 through supporting rebel ethnic and religious movements across each others’ borders, contributing to ongoing state weakness in the region.
Isaac Samuel examined the history of the Geledi sultanate in southern Somalia, in this post for his African History Extra newsletter, from its emergence as an alliance between local tribes in the 18th century, through its consolidation as a powerful state in the 19th, to its eventual colonial subjugation by Italy in the early 20th.
Eastern Orthodoxy
On the The Greek Current podcast, Thanos Davelis spoke to Elizabeth Prodromou and Aristotle Papanikolaou about Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew’s September visit to the US, within the context of his role in advocating for religious minorities and interfaith dialogue as a basis for peace.
Roberto Mazza interviewed Georgios Tsourous on The New Books Network podcast about his book Orthodox Choreographies: Boundaries, Borders and Materiality in Jerusalem’s Old City, and how relationships within the multi-ethnic Rum Orthodox community are negotiated in the space of the Holy Sepulchre Church.
On the BBC World Service’s Heart and Soul programme, Nikos Papanikolaou encountered the monks of the Esphigmenou monastery, whose fundamentalist interpretation of the faith – encapsulated by the slogan ‘Orthodoxy or Death’ – led to their excommunication, and now to efforts to evict them from Mount Athos.
Eli Karetny welcomed Marlene Laruelle onto the International Horizons podcast to discuss Russia’s illiberal turn since the 1990s, Vladmir Putin’s effective blend of nationalism, Eurasianism, and conservatism, and the growing political role of Russian Orthodoxy, including eschatological discourse around the war in Ukraine.
Jenna Pitman spoke to Aram G. Sarkisian on The New Books Network podcast about his book Orthodoxy on the Line: Russian Orthodox Christians and Labor Migration in the Progressive Era, and the Russian Orthodox Church’s transnational role in the lives of Eastern European migrants to the US before 1917.
The Balkans
On the New Books Network podcast, Papas Papamichos Chronakis joined Roberto Mazza to talk about his book The Business of Transition: Jewish and Greek Merchants of Salonica from Ottoman to Greek Rule, and how the city’s merchants negotiated ethnic and class tensions amid the political transitions of the early 20th century.
On the The Eurasian Knot podcast, Sean Guillory spoke to Elana Resnick, author of Refusing Sustainability: Race and Environmentalism in a Changing Europe, about how Romani women’s role as waste workers in Bulgaria contributes to their racialisation, and enables ethnic Bulgarians to claim the mantle of whiteness.
Host Thomas Ntinas and recipe book author and guest Irina Janakievska explored the Balkans’ historical foodways and local variations on common dishes, shaped by differing culinary preferences and climate conditions across the peninsula, on parts one and two of this episode of the The Delicious Legacy podcast.
On the East of Ethnia podcast, Eric Gordy analysed the US government’s decision to lift sanctions against former Republika Srpska president Milorad Dodik, and the roles of Republika Srpska’s lobbying in the US and of Islamophobia in the Trump administration in driving this deviation from its previous Bosnian policy.
Vladislav Lilic interviewed George Giannakopoulos about his book The Interpreters: British Internationalism and Empire in Southeastern Europe, 1870-1930 on the The New Books Network podcast, and the role of British intellectuals in shaping international understandings of nationalist movements within the region.
Football, ideology, and politics
On the Libero podcast, Jack Pitt-Brooke, John Brewin, and Rory Smith reflected on Margaret Thatcher’s legacy for football, and the way the Premier League’s commercialisation and apolitical consumerism bears out the dominant logics of Thatcherism for a sport and fanbase whom she infamously considered anathema.
Miguel Delaney wrote for The Independent about the eclipse of Pep Guardiola’s possession-based football philosophy by an increasingly wide and pragmatic range of approaches pioneered by younger coaches, and the parallels with the eclipse of liberal democracy’s post-Cold War global hegemony from the late 2000s.
Leslie Mabon joined Guy Burton on the The FootPol Podcast to explore the historical role of local heavy industries in supporting football clubs from Scotland to Germany to Japan, and how the relationship between fan identities and this heritage is shifting amid the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
On the It Was What It Was podcast, Jonathan Wilson and Rob Draper welcomed Rory Smith onto the show to discuss how the evolution of data collection and analytics has transformed English football since the 1990s, and the tensions between its advocates and traditionalists that accompanied its ascent.
Eoghan Gilmartin spoke to Alejandro Quiroga on The Sobremesa Podcast about the installation of regime-approved administrations at Real Madrid and Barcelona after the Spanish Civil War, and their respective instrumentations by Francisco Franco’s regime to promote acceptable forms of regional and national identity.
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