About

Samar Al-Bulushi

Associate Professor of Anthropology, UC Irvine

Research Interests

Feminist geopolitics; imperialism; militarism; policing; race; Kenya, East Africa, Red Sea, elites, diplomacy; transnationalism & South-South solidarities.

Current Research

My first book War-Making as World-Making: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror (Stanford University Press, 2024), explores the entanglement of militarism, imperialism, and liberal-democratic governance in East Africa today. I argue that Kenya’s emergence as a key player in the so-called “war on terror” is closely linked—but not reducible —to the U.S. military’s growing proclivity to outsource the labor of war.  Attending to the cultural politics of security, I illustrate that Kenya’s war against the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab has become a means to assert itself as a leader on questions of security.  Meanwhile, the Kenyan government’s alignment with the U.S. provides cover for the criminalization and policing of Kenyan Muslims. The book weaves together multiple scales of analysis, asking what a view from East Africa can tell us about the shifting configurations and expansive geographies of post 9/11 imperial warfare.

I am currently working on two new projects.  The first one, tentatively titled, The Afterlives of Non-Alignment, wrestles with the tensions and contradictions of South-South solidarities in the twenty-first century. While recent invocations of non-alignment (as seen in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) are not necessarily grounded in a shared commitment to anti-imperialism, we are nonetheless witnessing a more assertive Global South-led geopolitics. With a primary focus on political leaders, intellectuals, and activists across the African continent and beyond, I am interested in how asymmetrical yet shifting global power relations are interpreted and contested, shaped simultaneously by colonial legacies of exploitation and inequality, by affective discourses that invoke memories of these legacies, and by everyday forms of geopolitical knowledge.

A second project focused on the political economy of war-making across the Red Sea suggests that the Red Sea arena offers a vital window into broader debates about US empire and the future of the global order. While recent Houthi-government imposed blockades in the Red Sea have drawn the world’s attention to this waterway as a strategic conduit for global maritime trade, there has been comparatively less focus on the military buildup in the region, despite the fact that the Red Sea arena is now one of the most militarized spaces in the world. Against state-centric frameworks that emphasize geopolitical rivalries, I trace the convergence of interests among heterogeneous state and corporate powers. Specifically, I approach the Horn of Africa and wider Red Sea arena as a lens through which to map the contours of multiple, overlapping imperialisms that unsettle binary frames of East/West, North/South. It is by attending to the ways in which everyday people are entangled in these world-making dynamics that we can more fully explore what is at stake in efforts to make sense of the shifting geopolitical landscape.

I am the PI for the Global South and the World Order (GSWO) initiative at UCI, in partnership with Security in Context, funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY).

Professional Background

I joined the Department of Anthropology in 2019. Between 2017-2019, I was  a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCI.

Prior to pursuing my PhD, I worked for a number of international human rights organizations, including the Center for Economic and Social Rights, Parliamentarians for Global Action, and the International Center for Transitional Justice. I was also a co-producer and co-host of Afrobeat Radio and Global Movements, Urban Struggles at WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York City.

I am a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, a fellow at Transition Security Project, and an affiliated researcher Security in Context; I also  previously served as a contributing editor at Africa is a Country. I have published in a variety of public outlets on topics ranging from the International Criminal Court to the militarization of U.S. policy in Africa.

Education

B.A., Political Science, Columbia University

M.A., International Affairs, Columbia University

Ph.D. Sociocultural Anthropology, Yale University