JRAI Special Issue Launch Event
Monday 19th October 2026, 4.00 – 6.00 pm BST
This is an online event. Please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_PgmgVIjjRc-j66rcuSeLug
Nightmare Egalitarianism –
Commensuration, Autonomy and Imagination
List of speakers
Editors:
Dr Natalia Buitron (University of Cambridge)
Prof Florian Mühlfried (Ilia State University, Tbilisi)
Prof Hans Steinmüller (London School of Economics)
Contributors:
Dr Matthew Carey (EHESS and University of Copenhagen)
Dr Grégory Deshoullière (Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale, Paris)
Dr Sam Farrell (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine)
Dr Rémi Hadad (EHESS)
Prof Dame Marilyn Strathern (University of Cambridge)
Dr Sam Wilby (University of East Anglia)
Discussants:
Prof Eric Gable (University of Mary Washington)
Dr Chloe Nahum-Claudel (University of Manchester)
Dr Judith Scheele (EHESS)
The event will be chaired by Associate Editor: Prof Simon Coleman (University of Toronto)
Egalitarianism – creating equality among people – always requires levelling and measurement. Levelling, however, is often violent, and potentially in tension with local autonomy. Based on case studies from Amazonia, Burma, Georgia, India, Malawi, Morocco, and the Ancient Near East, this special issue probes into the dark sides of egalitarianism. Contributors show how the very forces that level differences also generate new exclusions.
The collection offers a solid framework to distinguish different modes of egalitarianism; the main variable being the strength of commensuration: universal levelling in ‘general egalitarianism’, partial commensurability in ‘segmentary egalitarianism’, and the refusal of equivalence in ‘non-egalitarianism’. By tracing the social dynamics of autonomy, imagination, and containment, the issue invites readers to rethink one of anthropology’s most cherished concepts.
You can read the Special issue here: https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14679655/2026/32/S1