International Political Anthropology Association

IPAA Memorandum & Articles of Association

To access the documents on this page as PDF files, click below:

• Articles of Association

• Memorandum of the 2023 IPAA Preliminary Meeting

Journal International Political Anthropology of the International Political Anthropology Association: publishes innovative interdisciplinary publications features articles on such issues as INTERDISCIPLINARY AND COMPARATIVE SCHOLARSHIP, ADDRESSING PROBLEMATICS AND CONCERNS OF THE CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL SCENE THROUGH THE PRISM OF ANTHROPOLOGICALLY BASED APPROACHES.

The journal of the International Political Anthropology Association is published and hosted by:

Department of Political and Social Sciences (DiSPeS),
Università degli Studi di Trieste,
Piazzale Europa 1 - 34127,
Trieste, Italy.

Memorandum of the 2023 IPAA Preliminary Meeting

The aim of the Annual Meeting of the International Political Anthropology Association -- as it was to set up in July 2023 in Casa Merizzano, Sant’Anna Pelago, in the Apennines, at the Preliminary Meeting on Paradigm Change -- is to give voice, by setting up a structure, to our worries about the possibility of continuing decent, common-sense policies, as it was established in the past, mainly after the peace of Westphalia. With the participation of Marius Bentza, Agnes Horvath, Egor Novikov, Giuliana Parotto, Camil F. Roman, Richard Sakwa, Arpad Szakolczai, and Harald Wydra, at the preliminary meeting we discussed some perspectives on paradigm changes in politics and society, in order to prepare the first IPAA Annual Meeting in July 2024.

The principles of sovereignty and the integrity of political and individual bodies are as crucial as that of staying alive in the contemporary world, including the inviolability of borders and the non-interference into individual households. The democratic rights, as they are now called in the public sphere, were classically considered as decent, common-sense policies, implying the defense of fundamental rights, freedoms and equalities, the separation of powers, and the constitution and parliamentary rights, and these were used to be applied all over the world. The related institutional bodies that were established on such classical foundation have recently become parasitized by media consideration and, to be sure, there is something profoundly disturbing about the recent, widespread media-administrative developments, where reason or utility became instruments of discrimination against decency.

We consider that the ethos of Antique humanity stood in the valorization of the concrete, and we understand its legacy as being something concretely given for our well-being. This is what we would like to promote and make it again alive with our IPAA gatherings, for the benefit of all of us against the new, global media instigated trends to barbarize us by administering hate, distancing and suspicion, with the help of the state machinery and propaganda tools, of course using demagogically and propagandistically the discourse of human rights. We encounter contradictory messages that are inundating everyday life, purportedly advocating security, communication, and health and wealth, together with security, but in reality they are only disseminating suspicion, misunderstanding, and misinformation. Instead of security, we have discrimination, and instead of decent normality – after the collapse of Communism in 1989-91 many were hoping for a return to normality – we have awkward, flexible, and bizarre regulations. Our wellbeing is jeopardized, we are scrutinized and persecuted, so we need to clear our directions in the midst of delirious assumptions, hair-raising predictions, even downright lying, and stand a line against the flight of phantasies that leads to quick rundowns and costly failures, together with harsh policy mistakes.

Every form of political government is fragile and needs constant cure for its maintenance. This is also the case with our democratic governments. For this reason, we would like to gather all available information about the unruly activates that are weakening well-being, including administrative attacks that undermining the legal power of the constitution, the hypocrite communication service, the irrevocable harms on rights and on the integrity of the person. But not only, as there is a second, and over the second a third power, each mimetising the previous (most paramount being the media); and even more, these powers are growing upon and behind the first one, producing continuous degradation, abusing the institutional strength of the first power and utilizing it for their own sake. Such escalative multiplication of powers finds a fertile ground in a state of emergency, when normativity is suspended, and obscure powers outside the constitution can assert their own agenda. This is also the case with all-embracing organizations, inside as well as outside Europe, but also with other influential cross-border commissions that can hijack concrete and controlled measures.

If we look at this through an anthropological perspective, where we consider our share of the planet with milliards of other beings, who would like to find their proper place and fulfill their destiny, then we learn that we should give up our arrogance of occupying every post that remained empty and to learn instead how to share life again with others. Having and keeping consideration and obligation in our affairs means that we not only should learn again how to live with illnesses and accept our destiny in decent death in a society of love and mutual help, without the assistance of techno-medical despotism, where proper health care exists, without the divisive vulgarities of the recent restrictions in sanitation, but enjoying the beauty of every opening new day after the night. The pure delight of living here and now is a mindful process. We should restore proper news and access to fitting information, that give balanced information in order to digest the presence of a threat, which neither appears in reports on fatalities, nor in a focus on intensive cares, and which instead are presented as a collective punishment against citizens, demonstrating a hatred of humanity – just as algorithms, AI and the like. We would like to keep intact the integrity of beings, saved from mind control or any similar type of interference, arriving from technologized biopolitics bodies. It seems to us that the World Wars have not yet been finished, with their intrusive practices of biopolitical experiments on the presumed ignorant, as the information is missing about the risk factor of their undertaking, on human subjects, of governments which definitely are up to no good. Since then, not only the contamination of entire populations became technically possible, but also the limitless experimentation that is conducted in trying to change our customs, habitat, and character.

Confronting with such technological threats we are alone, but everybody should be able to claim the best possible life that is given for us, given our natural and anthropological limitations, in agreeable dignity and silent cooperation, without any kind of media-technological tyranny over our well-being. This is what we mean by political anthropology, or the application of anthropological concerns in politics, to avoid the striping of life from its heartful graces.

The IPAA Members,
21^st July, 2023

Casa Merizzano,
Sant’Anna Pelago, Apennines

International Political Anthropology Association Officers

Elected Officers

To contact IPAA officers, please email: IPAA (at) politicalanthropology (dot) org and include the relevant officer you’re seeking to reach in the subject line.

Honorary President:
Richard Sakwa

President:
Agnes Horvath (2023-25, 2-y term)

Vice Presidents:
Harald Wydra (2023-25, 2 year term)
Camil F. Roman (2023-25, 2-year term)

Treasurer:
Arpad Szakolczai (2023-25, 2-year term)

Board Members at Large:

Paul O’Connor (2023-25, 2-year term)
Giulianna Parotto (2023-25, 2-year term)
Gonzalo Fernandez De Cordoba Martos (2023-25, 2-year term)
Richard Sakwa (2023-25, 2-year term
Bjorn Thomassen (2023-25, 2-year term)
Marius Ion Benţa (2023-25, 2-year term)
Camil F. Roman (2023-25, 2-year term)
Egor Novikov (2023-25, 2-year term)
Harald Wydra (2023-25, 2-year term)
Arpad Szakolczai (2023-25, 2-year term)

Appointed Officers

Editors of International Political Anthropology:

Bjorn Thomassen (years: 2008 until 2012)
Harald Wydra (years: 2008 until 2012)
Agnes Horvath (years: 2012-2022)
Marius I. Benţa (years: 2022 - --)
Paul O’Connor (years: 2022 - --)

IPA Online Editor:
Marius Ion Benţa

Book Review Editors:
Egor Novikov (2022 - 2025)

Directions Section Editors:
Bjorn Thomassen (2023- 2025)
Harald Wydra (2023- 2025)

Contributing Editor:
Richard Sakwa (2023-2025)

Youth Representatives:
Federica Montagni  (2023-2025)
Camil F. Roman (2023-2025)

Communications Liaison and Program Coordinator:
Giulianna Parotto (2023-2025)
Paul O’Connor (2023-2025)

Committees

Events Committee 2023-2025:

Arpad Szakolczai
Richard Sakwa
Harald Wydra
Bjorn Thomassen

Graduate Student Paper Prize Committee 2023-2025:
Giulianna Parotto
Janos Szakolczai

Early Career Mentoring Committee 2023-2025:
Egor Novikov
Camil F. Roman

Nominations Committee 2023-2025:
Arpad Szakolczai
Agnes Horvath

Book Prize in Political Anthropology Committee 2023-2025:
Richard Sakwa (chair)
Bjorn Thomassen