Value and violence in the making of Ukraine's war economy

Anthro Talks Seminars Autumn 2024

Speaker: Taras Fedirko, University of Glasgow

How does a war economy come into being? This talk builds on my on-going research with Ukrainian combatants and military crowdfunding activists along the transnational value chains of the Russo-Ukrainian war. I interrogate how my interlocutors’ experiences of life-destroying violence structure they understandings and calculation of worth and obligation in the orbit of war. I  argue that on Ukraine’s frontlines, militants narrate and contest the war ‘economy’ as both a totality of value relations organised in the service of violence; and a calculative, relational frame for reckoning what people owe each other and their nation at war.