Is civilizational primordialism any better than nationalist primordialism?

Abstract

The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war seems to have prompted a return to anthropology's origins: the armchair. Claiming authority based on status and knowledge accumulated elsewhere and extrapolated to Ukraine, public scholars have proffered takes, op-eds, and geopolitical phantasies. Slow research in the full ethnographic mode, studying actors and subjectivities in fast shifting contexts, would have been preferable. In a context of war, complex and dynamic political phenomena easily become tokens in political debates that do not go much beyond statements of political identity.