Blaming the southern victim: Cancer and the Italian ‘Southern Question’ in Terra dei fuochi and Taranto

In this article, the author addresses two critical environmental situations in southern Italy: the Terra dei fuochi (Land of fires) near Naples, characterized by a history of illegal disposal of toxic waste, and Taranto, where the Ilva steel plants have a record of exceeding the legal emission limits for several pollutants. Despite a recognition of these situations, public political discourse in Italy still tends to link the higher than average incidence of cancer in the two areas to lifestyles rather than to environmental factors. The author locates this phenomenon within the larger context of the ‘Southern Question’ – the historical stigmatization of southern Italy as backwards and uncivilized. She argues that this same stereotype not only stigmatizes a geographical region, but also facilitates the stigmatization of the people who become ill in Taranto and Terra dei fuochi as the result of lifestyle rather than environmental factors. Furthermore, this same stereotype also stigmatizes social movements against the pollution as irrational and uncivilized. Previous studies have linked situations of environmental injustice to the Global South or to specific areas with racialized stereotypes; here it is argued that the whole southern half of Italy can be considered a new geographic scale in which phenomena of environmental injustice, denial of environmental causes of disease, and geographic stigmas, intersect.     

Following a ‘standstill’: An ethnographic approach to financialization

This article addresses Dubai's recent financial crisis, bringing an ethnographic approach to ‘financialization’. It does so by repurposing the financial concept of ‘standstill’. Focusing on the consequences of the Dubai government's infamous ‘standstill announcement’, in late 2009, it argues that unpacking the literal and figurative registers of this concept offers insights into the political economy and lived experiences of financial crises.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 28, Number 6. December 2012

Front and back cover caption, volume 28 issue 6 Front cover LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE Most French towns have at least one street, avenue or square named after the Republic, in a tradition that dates back to the late 19th century. The Place de la République with its monumental statue is a familiar Parisian landmark, yet smaller towns would also adorn their squares, city halls and law courts with symbolic representations of the Republic, such as in this picture. A female allegory is taken to embody the values of the Republic: liberty, equality and fraternity. Once brandished in the revolutionary struggle against the monarchy, against aristocratic and clerical privileges, these principles have retained their universal appeal. Liberté, égalité, fraternité are the common denominator that French politicians of all hues can agree on, apart from the far‐right Front National which is seen as standing outside this Republican consensus, as its policies would for instance openly deny equal treatment to residents with non‐European backgrounds. EU border policing practices show that the moral and political dilemmata epitomized in French politics have begun to affect the entire continent: How much freedom of movement are Europeans prepared to grant to those who want to partake in our relative wealth and freedom? What are the limits of liberty? How far do our feelings of fraternity extend in times of austerity? In this new Europe, with countries straining under unsustainable debt burdens, and seemingly less willing to share their remaining riches, discursive markers are shifting almost imperceptibly. Claims to freedom and equality may come from unexpected quarters, as Anne Friederike Delouis writes in her article on the French far‐right fringe. Back cover FORTRESS EUROPE Protesting asylum seekers and irregular migrants face police in Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta, August 2010. The protest erupted amid migrants’ uncertainty over the length of time they were kept in the enclave before transfer to mainland Spain, enacted here in the protesters’‘shackling’ of each other in front of the cameras. Ceuta and its sister enclave Melilla have been key outposts in the EU's swiftly evolving border regime since 2005, when sub‐Saharan migrants launched what the media called a ‘massive assault’ on the territories’ perimeter fences. The ensuing crackdowns led to a displacement of routes towards the Canary Islands and an unprecedented naval operation in response. Still, migrants kept coming – across the Greek‐Turkish border in 2010 and to Italy in 2011. As a result, the EU is fast‐tracking a ‘European external border surveillance system’ involving further investments. For the border guards and defence contractors involved, clandestine migration has become big business. The high stakes in controlling migration stoke increasing tensions, however – as seen in Ceuta's 2010 protest and the desperate mass entry attempts across Melilla's high‐tech fence in 2012. As Ruben Andersson argues in this issue, such tensions highlight larger contradictions in the EU's border regime, which conceptualizes migrants as a source of risk to the external border – while feeding on this very risk. An anthropological lens on this ‘game of risk’ reveals how the business of bordering Europe is a fraught enterprise in which border guards, defence contractors, migrants and smugglers are stuck in a feedback loop, generating ever stranger and more distressing sights at the southern frontiers of Europe.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 28, Number 1. February 2012

Front and back cover caption, volume 28 issue 1 Front and back cover MEAT STILL ON THE MENU? Communities around the world are experiencing changes in the price and availability of animal products. In many places, meat, which was once eaten rarely, if ever, is now more readily accessible. In the top picture, a recently built international supermarket in the Guatemalan highlands stocks its shelves with packaged sandwich meat. The bottom image shows a meal served to mark a momentous occasion in the same community. Both of these images illustrate a change in dietary patterns that is manifesting in many regions of the world. Several international organizations, concerned about balancing the environmental costs of meat with human nutritional needs, have begun to address what they typically describe as ‘the increasing worldwide demand’ for meat. But how might we understand this narrative? What assumptions underpin these representations of demand? What are the implications of this kind of economic framing? In this issue, Emily Yates‐Doerr takes up the question of how anthropologists, with their attention to local contexts and realities, might add to discussions of global transitions. How might ethnographers engage with and respond to the representations of global trends employed by international institutions? What might these questions say about the discipline of anthropology's own engagement with questions of material needs and demands? The front cover shows how entomologists in Wageningen, The Netherlands, are responding to concerns about the ‘growing demand’ for livestock by working to cultivate edible insects, in this case mealworms, as ‘the next white meat’.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 3. June 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 3 Front cover COVID-19 IN ITALY An elderly man steps outside, a bag in his hand and a mask covering his face. He stares at the wet pavement as he goes. He is wondering whether to take that onward step. His shadow on the wall magnifies his uncertainty. He is alone. It has been raining. The sun spells help. Maybe. Uncertainty and loneliness are among the emotions that we now associate with Covid-19. By 9 May, the death toll among those who had tested positive for the virus in Italy surpassed 30,000, the highest in Europe. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the paramount need has been to protect those in the most ‘vulnerable categories’, the aged and those with pre-existing conditions. Italy, as the country with the highest percentage of elderly people in Europe, has failed them. At the outbreak of the pandemic, the rushed and short-sighted resolution to transfer Covid-19 patients to nursing homes resulted in a massacre, whose scar will get deeper with time. Yet, how vital ‘the elderly’ are to society cannot be stressed enough, particularly when state family support policies are insufficient, a gap that grandparents have long been filling by taking care of their grandchildren. If uncertainty is ahead of us, so is the void left by all those ‘elderly’ men and women who will be deeply missed. In this issue, Manuela Pellegrino provides a narrative of her experience as an Italian doing fieldwork in Greece while the epidemic was in full swing. Back cover Covid-19 Rear Admiral Timothy Weber, commander of US Naval Medical Forces Pacific, speaks to members of the press moments before the hospital ship USNS Mercy departs from its base near San Diego, California, 23 March 2020. The vessel, which can host up to 1,200 medical personnel, is being deployed in support of US Covid-19 response efforts. It will serve as a referral hospital for up to a 1,000 non-Covid-19 patients should shore-based hospitals prove unable to adequately serve them. The Mercy's deployment illustrates how grave the situation has become in the US. It also reveals something about how, after decades of neglect, the country's public health infrastructures have come to rely heavily on support from military and corporate institutions. The pandemic brings to light a host of global issues, ranging from food scarcity and insecurity, mass unemployment and economic crisis, the crucial roles played by elderly people, the fate of education and schooling, the unplanned release of prisoners, the long-term consequences of ‘distancing’ directives and much more. Underlying all of these topics is a sobering observation made by medical anthropologists more than two decades ago: locally and globally, it is the poor who are most likely to contract – and die from – infectious diseases. In Salento and Silicon Valley, in Rio de Janeiro and Wuhan, the pattern has been strikingly similar – the most economically vulnerable members of society suffer disproportionately. Anthropology contributes to a fuller understanding of Covid-19 and its aftermath. Recent research has developed a more complete cross-cultural picture of recent epidemics like AIDS, SARS, Ebola and Zika. When combined with archaeological and biological knowledge of pandemics stretching back to the Black Death and earlier, the discipline adds critical historical and cross-cultural perspectives. Anthropologists have much to say about how and why communicable diseases emerge, the underlying social and environmental conditions that fuel them, and potential strategies for their effective mitigation.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 35, Number 5. October 2019

Front and back cover caption, volume 35 issue 5 Front cover This installation was part of the ‘Hurray Menstruation’ protest organized by gender activists during the Sabarimala pilgrimage of 2018–19. This protest was supported by the Kerala government as part of its ‘Renaissance’ campaign against the BJP’ s (Bharatiya Janata Party) provocative assertion of traditional Hindu values. The installation is a condensed symbol in Victor Turner's sense, with many layers of meaning. The major elements are a vulva, alongside an image of the Constitution of India, centrally mediated by a woman blowing a trumpet - an expression of freedom from repressive and oppressive moral values espoused by the dominant middle class. The installation draws attention to oppressive rules in Hindu religiosity and ritual practice that target women as polluting due to biological processes particular to them. By contrast, the installation attributes positive values to these ‘polluting’ processes instead. Back cover THE PARABLE OF THE FOOTBRIDGE A footbridge in the wetlands. Where will it lead? ‘The between’ is a powerful theme in ritual and mythical traditions the world over. However, different traditions will express ‘the between’ in different ways. As described by Paul Stoller in this issue, Sufi traditions hold the bridge as a major symbol for barzakh, a space that links two distinct domains - a place that is between things, a space that separates the known from the unknown, the comprehensible from the incomprehensible, a nebulous space that compels the imagination. The footbridge is the epitome of ‘the between’, of being neither here nor there, of being liminal. On the footbridge, you may not know your front from your back or your past from your present. In this neither space, uncertainty seeps into your being. Where will your steps take you? If you make it to the other side, will things be different? Will you be the same person? The existential crisis of ‘the between’ that one finds on the footbridge can bring disruption, turbulence and stress. Amid this risky and unstable state of ‘negative capability’, the mind is sometimes cleared of clutter as one enters a space of imagination, creativity, innovation and invention. Are contemporary anthropologists ready to risk disruption and invention so we can follow the sinuous path to the anthropological future? If we move forward, what will we find on the other side of the footbridge?     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 28, Number 4. August 2012

Front and back cover caption, volume 28 issue 4 Front cover: OLYMPIC LEGACY: FOOD Over the last decades, the Olympic Games have increasingly claimed to deliver a social and economic ‘legacy’ to the host city. The 2012 Olympic Games in London have set out to deliver a legacy of better food for east London, an area perceived as ‘deprived’, with higher than average rates of obesity and significant ‘food deserts’ in its midst. Various Olympic organizations have considered the issue, resulting in the publication of a Food vision for the first time ever in Olympic history. However, with companies such as Coca‐Cola and McDonald's having been appointed official suppliers to the Games, and with an extremely limited time frame, will the Games be able to deliver on this promise? Allotments have been demolished and plans are afoot for Queen's Market, Upton Park, to be replaced by a supermarket. In response, Queen's Market traders and customers protest that demolition of their market goes against the Olympic spirit. Indeed, the Games could be used instead to help improve access to London's ethnically diverse markets far beyond the borough limits, as suggested in this postcard distributed by campaigners. As Freek Janssens argues in his guest editorial in this issue, the 2012 Games provide the opportunity to more critically assess how food serves the marginalized in our ethnically diverse inner cities. Also in this issue, Johan Fischer deals with halal, another topic that impacts athletes and spectators at the Games, with sporting events taking place during ramadan. Back cover: POVERTY AND GRASSROOTS COMMERCE Aisha, a door‐to‐door entrepreneur in CARE Bangladesh’ s Rural Sales Programme (RSP), is one of 3,000 previously ‘destitute’ women who now earns an income by selling branded consumer goods across rural villages under a partnership between CARE and global multinationals such as Danone, Bic, and Unilever. Similar female distribution systems are now popping up across the world. From Procter and Gamble's distribution of sanitary pads to ‘poor’ adolescent girls in Kenya and Malawi, to Unilever's Shakti ammas distributing soap village‐to‐village in rural India, companies aim to expand their bottom line by fostering entrepreneurial opportunities among the poor through so‐called ‘bottom of the pyramid’ (BoP) initiatives. Such initiatives reflect the changing nature of international development where new development actors – celebrities, philanthrocapitalists, multinational corporations, social entrepreneurs etc. – spearhead efforts to reduce poverty, replacing the role long occupied by states and aid agencies. Today some of the world's largest corporations have become key players in global development by selling ‘socially beneficial’ products to the ‘poor’, and by drawing them into global commodity chains as entrepreneurs. These efforts are now widely endorsed as part of a pro‐market development agenda that looks to the perceived ‘efficiency’ of the private sector to do what billions of aid dollars have been unable to do. BoP distribution systems can offer ‘poor’ women like Aisha an opportunity to earn an income and contribute to the food security of their family. But these engagements pose risks as well as rewards, and raise pressing questions for anthropologists about how, under what terms, and with what effects, global capital is linking up with informal economies in the name of development.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 34, Number 5. October 2018

Front and back cover caption, volume 34 issue 5 Front cover TRUMP'S ‘ZERO TOLERANCE’ CHILDREN From early April to late June 2018, nearly 2,600 immigrant children – mostly refugees fleeing violence and poverty in Central America – were forcibly taken from their parents at the United States’ southern border following implementation of the Trump administration's ‘zero tolerance’ policy. Prior to being sent to detention facilities located throughout the country, children were held in Border Patrol ‘processing centres’ like this one located in a converted warehouse in McAllen, Texas. The US Department of Homeland Security released photos of the facility, some of which revealed small children huddled on mats, wrapped in Mylar blankets. Following a public outcry and growing protests, President Trump issued an executive order declaring an end to family separations on 20 June. Several days later, a federal court mandated that the government reunite immigrant families affected by the ‘zero tolerance’ policy. Even so, in mid‐August, more than 550 children who had been detained following the implementation of the policy remained in federal custody. Thousands more ‘unaccompanied minors’ – typically teenagers who were caught crossing the border without adults – remain in indefinite detention. The Trump administration's ‘zero tolerance’ policy raises broader questions about how refugees are treated – not only in the US, but in Europe, China, Australia and other parts of the world. At a time when many countries are experiencing resurgent forms of racism and the rise of authoritarian right‐wing politicians, how should anthropologists respond? Back Cover GANESHA in THAILAND For increasing numbers of Thais, the ritual worship of the elephant‐headed god Ganesha is providing new ways for attaining prosperity. Although Ganesha devotion is hardly new to practitioners of Theravada Buddhism, in the past five years, the Northern Thai city of Chiang Mai has experienced a boom in the establishment and patronage of dedicated Ganesha institutions. With the new institutions come Ganesha‐related ritual events, merit‐making and the collective effervescence of festival revelry. At this 2017 Ganesha Chaturthi opening day parade at the Ganesha Museum in Chiang Mai province, devotees tow a giant float through the crowds. Here, sacred Ganesha dons distinctly Indian‐style attire as he lounges in a howdah atop an elephant. Other participants in the parade include teachers and students from three local elementary schools, and women from 11 local village housewives' associations. On the back of recent economic downturns, political and existential crises notwithstanding, what makes this Hindu god become the centre of a new Thai prosperity cult? Ganesha has long been worshipped as the god of new beginnings and the remover of obstacles. He is also associated with the creative arts. But today, Thais are increasingly turning to him for their physical and financial health problems, and new media and spirit mediums contribute to exciting new forms of enchantment. In this issue, Ayuttacorn & Ferguson explore how two Ganesha institutions in Chiang Mai facilitate these processes, and create new kinds of sacred, symbolic packages for spiritual assistance.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 2. April 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 2 Front cover CRISIS IN VENEZUELA Shop owner Alejandro Malek shows hundreds of banknotes that he has accepted from customers who buy their daily groceries in his small supermarket near the border between Venezuela and Brazil. He also accepts Brazilian reals, US dollars and gold. Malek is a migrant himself and arrived almost 30 years ago in the country. He poses for the picture with packs of bolivares soberanos to express his love for Venezuela. Big packs of banknotes to purchase basic goods have become normal for many Venezuelans since hyperinflation reached mind-boggling levels. Basic goods, such as toilet paper and cornflour, are unavailable or simply unaffordable for more than 90 per cent of the population. Since 2015, the economy has been in free fall and Venezuelans look for countless means to survive. In times of crisis, people seek to make ends meet by joining the informal economy outside the official structures. The thriving local emergency economy of banknotes, gold, food, petrol and medicine in Venezuela ties into illegal transnational networks which commercialize natural resources, people, drugs and weapons that stretch far beyond the Latin American region. In this issue, Eva van Roekel and Marjo de Theije suggest an anthropology of abundance to study the illicit manifestations and everyday ideals of wealth that accompany social and environmental crises in resource-rich countries like Venezuela. Back cover THE SHAMAN VS PUTIN In spring 2019, Aleksandr Gabyshev, a Sakha (Yakut) shaman, embarked on an 8,000 km trek from Yakutsk to Moscow. His stated goal was to ‘expel demon-Putin’ (izgnat' Putina-demona) from the Kremlin and thus liberate the people of Russia. Drawing a cart with supplies and necessities, he slowly progressed along Siberian highways, camping on roadsides along the way. While initially his journey attracted little attention beyond local cybernauts, by the end of the summer, word of Gabyshev's campaign had spread far and wide. Around a dozen people (his ‘squad’) joined his trek, while many more stopped him along the way to chat, take a picture, express support and offer supplies. On 19 September, Gabyshev's trek came to a halt almost 3,000 km in. He was arrested by the authorities in the Republic of Buryatia, as he and his ‘squad’ were approaching Irkutskaya Oblast. The shaman was flown back to Yakutsk where he underwent a psychiatric examination. He is facing charges on account of ‘calls to extremism’ and was put under travel restrictions for several months. He attempted another short-lived, unsuccessful trek in December 2019, again stopped by the authorities. Recently, Gabyshev announced that he would continue the trek in spring 2020 and reach Moscow in 2021, expressing confidence in the impending success of his undertaking. In this issue, Kristina Jonutyte shows how this shaman's campaign has attracted a lot of attention within Russia, especially on the Internet and social media. Many have expressed their interest in and support for the campaign, while at the same time ‘distancing’ the shaman in time and space, as well as along the lines of ‘rationality’.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 32, Number 2. April 2016

Front and back cover caption, volume 32 issue 2 Front cover NIGERIA'S IGBO JEWS Between images of the Star of David and menorah, Habakkuk Nwafor's front door in Nigeria's capital bears the proud notice, ‘I AM A JEW’. The leader of Abuja's Tikvat Israel Synagogue, Nwafor is an Igbo, a member of Nigeria's third largest ethnic group, numbering over 30 million people. Seated outside his Abuja home, he holds a copy of William Miles's Jews of Nigeria: An Afro‐Judaic odyssey (2013), a book about Nwafor's family and religious community. On its cover is a photograph of his son becoming a bar mitzvah. For at least a decade prior to its publication, Igbo Jews offered their own written religio‐historical narratives, but Miles's was the first book about Igbo Jewry composed by a Western academic. From 2,000 and 5,000 people, most of whom are Igbo, practice Judaism throughout Nigeria, though a much larger number self‐identify as Jews even while practising Christianity. Igbo self‐identification with and as Jews dates back to the 18th century, but concretized during and after the Nigerian civil war (1967–1970), in which at least one million Igbo died in the failed bid for Biafran independence. The civil war and its disastrous consequences initiated a still‐ongoing period of intense questioning among the Igbo concerning their history, present predicaments, and future prospects. Igbo Jewish identity presents a challenge. Igbo Jews consider themselves part of world Jewry, but are not yet integrated with, nor represented in and by, Jewish institutions/associations around the world. Igbo Jewish identity also poses the truth question, as Igbo oral religio‐historical claims are examined and questioned by researchers and scholars using academic lenses. Back cover Lesbos in the frontline An olive branch with one hand outstretched in aid of a fellow human being, as drawn by illustrator Georgie McAusland. In the course of 2015, Skala Sykamnias, a tiny, sleepy fishing village and tourist idyll on the island of Lesbos, Greece, became a gateway to Europe for more than 200,000 refugees. In this issue, Evthymios Papataxiarchis analyzes how the European refugee crisis impacted his fieldwork site. The rescue of refugees involves several theatres of operation, ranging from the frontline centred upon the sea and the beach, to backstage revolving around the reception centres further inland. This attracts a multitude of volunteers, activists and humanitarian organizations from all over the world, becoming a focal point for world media. A swirl of political, ethical, and material elements, both local and transnational, now focuses upon the locality. The massive welcoming of reugees, however, is full of contradictions. With diverse actors enacting what are often dissonant ideals and strategies, what might appear from the outside to be a humanitarian act, is in fact more complex. Humanitarian structures raise several issues, such as local concerns about sovereignty, the authenticity of ‘disinterested’ motives, the nature of ‘solidarity’ and the role of the NGOs. From the local perspective this is a ‘generative moment’: at the centre of huge human and material flows, the local community is falling apart whilst to the incoming it represents freedom. Skala has become a mini theatre of conflicts that echo wider debates on the political future of Europe. In this capacity it captures a decisive moment in 21st‐century European history.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 32, Number 5. October 2016

Front and back cover caption, volume 32 issue 5 Front cover CHÁVEZ'S AFTERLIVES Amid widespread crisis and uncertainty today, political symbols are pivotal in the shaping of political subjectivities. In today's widespread crisis and uncertainty, political symbols, ranging from national flags and monuments to mausoleums and street names, are regaining prominence as objects of public display, debate and contentious activity. Some of these symbols have become strongly associated with the shaping of increasingly polarized political publics across the globe. In this issue, Luis Angosto‐Ferrández examines the intensification of an ongoing struggle over political symbols in contemporary Venezuela, focusing on the figure of Chávez as the epitome of a contested national symbol. At a conjuncture of political readjustments in the country, the fate of Chávez's corpse, currently located in a mausoleum, is at stake, but also the configuration of the institutionally sanctioned symbolic order with which political actors aim to condition political manoeuvring in years to come. The figure of Chávez has been transformed into a ‘master symbol’ with political afterlives. This helps explain the strength of Chávez‐as‐symbol among those who resort to it in support of their political hopes: as Christianity continued without Christ, political Chavismo is said to live on without the flesh and bone Chávez, transubstantiated in his supporters. Does the manipulation of symbols imply a degree of creational (social) power, or do symbols represent and mobilize already existing social groupings? Are symbols exclusively generated and manipulated by elites who use them to control social demands, or are symbolic and material political practices intertwined in a more dialectical way? In exploring these questions we are invited to interrogate the nature, potential and challenges facing contemporary democracies. Back cover Walls, barbed wire, spiked and electric fences as well as CCTV cameras are prominent components of the South African securityscape, especially in middle and upper‐class areas. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in post‐apartheid South Africa, the previous socio‐spatial segregation along racial lines has been replaced by one based on economic inequalities. In this issue, Thomas G. Kirsch discusses the semantics and internal logic of security discourse. The securitization of South Africa has a material, tangible side that endows security concerns with an omnipresence, even if it is not talked about explicitly. Here, the text and photographs combine to illustrate and exemplify why security discourses and practices are proliferating worldwide.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 27, Number 5. October 2011

Front and back cover caption, volume 27 issue 5 Front cover TERRORISM IN NORWAY At the Blue Stone Monument in the centre of Bergen, Norway's second city, a young couple mourns the 77 Norwegians killed by a right‐wing extremist in Oslo and Utøya on 22 July 2011. A cut‐and‐paste manifesto published on the internet and sent to his contacts all over Europe revealed that mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik targeted government buildings in Oslo and the Labour Party youth camp at Utøya in an attempt to instigate a civil war in Europe, aimed at effacing the presence of Muslims in Norway and Europe. As Thomas Hylland Eriksen argues in his editorial in this issue, Norwegian social democrats were a target of Breivik's violent ire because he believed them to have paved the way for a Muslim ‘conquest’ of Europe. Also in this issue, Sindre Bangstad's account of media representations of Muslims in Norway points to a widespread sense among mainstream Norwegian media of a radical incompatibility between so‐called ‘Norwegian values’ and ‘Islamic values’, especially in the field of women's and gay rights. As Norwegians struggle with the aftermath of the terrible events of 22 July, these profoundly problematic exclusionary religious and ethnic categories may face a challenge from the other Norway, a place of compassion and solidarity in suffering. Back cover THE GREEK CRISIS Right, a poster satirically depicts Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou as the IMF's favourite employee. Under increasing pressure from international institutions – especially the IMF and the European Union (of which it is a member) – Greece has been experiencing an upsurge in street clashes between protesters and police, as well as acts of petty crime. At least since 2008, already rampant stereotypes about the Greeks have greedily fed on the images of unbridled violence. Greece was once so crime‐free that the national newspapers reported acts of pickpocketing in Athens; today, such a scenario seems the very stuff of nostalgic dreams. But does the current situation really mean, as the media repeatedly suggest, that Greece has become a violent country? In this issue, Michael Herzfeld – who was first tear gassed and then mugged in Athens in July – argues that such claims are a gross misrepresentation and indeed are part of the problem. Greece – which certainly has acted with financial insouciance in the past – has now become the punchbag for the more generic frustrations of its European partners and of international finance. In the resulting vicious circle, its financial woes threaten to drag the whole European Union into final collapse. Meanwhile, severe austerity measures and rising unemployment have provoked simmering unrest, while competition for jobs feeds anti‐immigrant resentment (especially as Greece has agreed not restrict the onward travel of undocumented migrants, thereby increasing their numbers). In the resultant stereotyping, Greece is treated as a naughty child. Its young people, many of them well‐educated and painfully aware of the corruption that has hitherto protected a privileged few, face a precarious employment environment. Under that pressure, Herzfeld argues, traditional forms of violence and ideas about reciprocal moral obligation now shape the debates that are agitating the country and the world. Anthropologists, he suggests, can help correct the often misleading media representations of what is happening and why.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 27, Number 6. Decemver 2011

Front and back cover caption, volume 27 issue 6 Front cover ANTHROPOLOGY IN CHINA China has its own anthropology ancestors, revered today well beyond the discipline. In this photograph, former Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress Gu Xiulian and former Finance Minister Xiang Huaicheng jointly unveil a statue built to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Fei Xiaotong, China's most celebrated anthropologist. Official sources declared that the statue was intended to highlight the academic achievements of this nationally celebrated anthropologist. The Wujiang Municipal Party Committee and the Wujiang municipal government also dedicated a ‘Cultural Garden’ to ‘further expand the popularity’ and ‘enhance the influence’ of Kaixiangong village, the village in which Fei did most of his fieldwork. The Culture Garden is made up of an Exhibition Hall of the History and Culture of the Village, built in memory of Fei Xiaotong's sister, Fei Dasheng, and the Fei Xiaotong Museum. The museum explores the anthropologist's extraordinary life, highlighting in particular Fei's 26 visits to Kaixiangong. However, many Kaixiangong residents, and some government officials, were not enamoured of the commemorative statue that was erected on 23 October 2010. In his official standing pose, Fei Xiaotong was deemed ‘too distant’, and unlikely to ‘find repose’. Wu Weishan who had carried out the original official commission (and whose 31‐foot statue of Confucius was inexplicably removed from Tiananmen Square earlier this year), then visited Kaixiangong village and consulted its residents, after which he sculpted free of charge what was generally felt to be a more fitting replacement. The new statue depicts Fei relaxed and smiling in an armchair, echoing the Chinese ‘big‐tummy Maitreya Buddha’. Villagers believe this statue to be a more apt tribute to Fei's memory, and have expressed the hope that it will bring happiness to their village. Back cover BACK TO ‘CIVILIZATION’? Civilization is the name of a successful series of computer games (more than nine million units sold globally: see http://www.civilization.com ). Over the past two decades, the games have become increasingly sophisticated, not only in terms of programming, but also with respect to the background history, sociology and economics. For example, irrigation can increase food production, and granaries enable surpluses to be stored and populations to increase. The moods of the citizens matter too: ‘If a city has more happy citizens than content ones, and no unhappy ones, the city will throw a celebration for the ruler called “We Love the King Day”, and economic benefits ensue.’ Featured civilizations range from the Aztecs to the Zulu. It is not known whether Sid Meier (‘the father of computer gaming’) and his fellow game designers have ever studied anthropology. Even if they had, it is unlikely, as Chris Hann points out in his editorial in this issue, that the concept of civilization would have figured prominently in their curriculum. Civilizational analysis is a lively subfield of sociology and has never really gone away in archaeology, but it largely disappeared from anthropology in the second half of the twentieth century. Hann discusses some of the reasons for this, and lends his support to recent efforts to revive anthropologists’ interest in the concept. For all its variation, Sid Meier's addictive gameplay exemplifies the fiercely competitive, often violent ethos of today's capitalist civilization. The aim of each game is to rule the world in the name of just one civilization. Hann sees affinities with recent popular books engaging with world history, which rely heavily on contemporary readers’ familiarity with IT. The big question is whether ‘killer apps’ (Niall Ferguson) and the rise of silicon intelligence at the expense of carbon (Ian Morris) will eventually eliminate civilizational pluralism.     

Evaluating strategic metropolitan planning in Bari and Taranto

Following the Italian Government’s decision to fund strategic planning in order to promote a sustainable and competitive development in city-regions in southern Italy, the regional governments were asked to steer proactively strategic planning initiatives within their respective territory. In the cases of Bari and Taranto, it was the first time that 31 municipalities constituting Metropolitan Bari and 28 municipalities constituting sub-region Taranto attempted to think collectively in order to prepare the strategic plan. This paper evaluates strategic planning in Bari and Taranto sub-regions and discusses lessons learnt for future efforts in strategic planning. We examine why were the strategic plans made and how was the planning process organized and what, if any, impact these attempts had on development strategies and governance models at the urban-regional level.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 30, Number 6. December 2014

Front and back cover caption, volume 30 issue 6 Front cover THE HOUSE GUN The world was watching when Paralympic gold medallist Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp's parents stepped into the magisterial Palace of Justice in Pretoria. At that moment they entered alien territory beyond the ken of the insular white upper class Afrikaner community, many of whom live as if poor blacks were not the very foundation and backbone of the nation. Little had changed for them except their increased fears of criminal assault by black ‘intruders’ washed up from the surrounding townships. The only defence for their beleaguered class was a latter‐day version of the Afrikaaner laager: the gated community, motion sensors, armed guards, and a private arsenal of guns – from high powered rifles to the trusty little ‘weekend special’, the house gun. Face to face with a stern and stoical Zulu judge, Thokozile Masipa, the defendant sobbed, retched, and begged for mercy from ‘My Lady’. He admitted killing his live‐in girlfriend by shooting wildly through the door of a tiny toilet cubicle, arguing that it was a mistake. As Nancy Scheper‐Hughes argues in this issue, one way of understanding the Pistorius case is through the powerful writings of white South African authors such as Nobel Prize laureate Nadine Gordimer's anticipatory post‐apartheid novel, The house gun, in which she imagined a scenario similar to the one played out in the Pistorius trial where white fears and black justice met in the courtroom. South Africa is not unique. The mobilization of white peoples' fear of black or brown ‘intruders’ has infected other divided nations, like the United States and Israel. Here the social and architectural construction of ‘white’ settler or settler‐like special enclosures fortified by the legal right to self‐defence with private weapons has reproduced a colonial ‘paranoid ethos’ and a dangerous denial of the violence that is nested like a coiled rattlesnake from within their own segregated and hypervigilant enclosures. Back cover EATING PETS? An eating place offering dog meat for sale at a market; a common sight in South Korea. Seoul's largest cat and dog meat market opens on calendar days ending with 4 and 9 of each month. Here, on these days, ready‐cooked dog meat is also widely served all year round. One row of market stalls is entirely dedicated to shops selling mainly live dogs and chickens, animals consumed as part of a belief system that maintains that their consumption helps to regulate body temperature especially during the summer. As evidenced in the recent horsemeat controversy, British food anxieties revolve especially around maintaining a clear separation between companion animals and livestock. The Korean case, however, shows vernacular sensibilities running along different lines, principally based on local ideas about medicine and cosmology. Korean activists are presently taking a moral stance against dog meat consumers capable of tenderizing live animals for their meat. Yet even these activists voice their stance largely through emic interpretations of trans‐species relations rooted in Korean cosmology and ontology. In this issue, Julien Dugnoille looks at how Korean activists bring the issue of animal welfare to the attention of Korean society. He explores the ways in which activists deploy rescue narratives in order to attract families willing to adopt rescued animals, thus transforming people's perception of livestock animals into that of potential lifetime companions. Combined here are the Confucian virtue of impartial benevolence and 18th‐century Western moral philosophy.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 30, Number 1. February 2014

Front and back cover caption, volume 30 issue 1 Front cover POO WARS Mandisa Feni of Site C, Khayelitsha sits on a portable toilet on the steps the provincial legislature. She is one of the many poo protesters who, in June 2013, dragged containers of human waste from the shanty towns on the urban margins to the provincial legislature in Cape Town's city centre. By collecting this shit from the urban periphery and dumping it at the centre of provincial political power, the protesters powerfully enacted their refusal to accept the portable toilets that the authorities had provided for people living in these informal settlements. Rather than accepting what they regarded as second‐class ‘portaloos’ for second‐class citizens, they demanded modern, permanent, porcelain toilets, just like those in middle class homes in Cape Town. Similar to the case of the Great Stink of London of 1858, the politically powerful could not ignore the stench aroound Parliament. In his editorial in this issue, Steven Robins argues that a lack of in‐house, ‘modern’ toilets in shanty towns continues to plague its inhabitants, who have taken to imaginative protest in various ways. His study on the politics of shit in Cape Town represents a form of public anthropology on a largely private activity. This politics of human waste is not popular in the mainstream media and is considered to be irrational and unruly by the wider public. But, as developments in Cape Town show, when human waste becomes matter out of place, it can also become a potent substance when deployed in popular protest. Back cover FACE VALUES Villagers in Kanga, northern Mafia Island, Tanzania, watch a screening of part of the BBC/RAI series Face values (1978) in 1985. The film (at that time on a reel‐to‐reel system) was projected onto the white‐washed wall of the village dispensary. Prince Charles, shown here on screen, was Patron of the RAI at the time and had studied anthropology at Cambridge. He encouraged the making of this series and acted as the interviewer of the five anthropologists involved. It was argued by the RAI that the presence of royalty would ensure a large TV audience for the series in the UK, and indeed, this seemed to be the case judging by the BBC's audience figures. However, the series was much criticized both by the newsprint media critics and by anthropologists. In this issue, in the second part of her article, Pat Caplan considers why the making of ‘educational’ material for a mass audience about people and societies in other parts of the world is problematic and probably rather unlikely to achieve the aims set out by the Prince: ‘If more people could have the advantage of information and knowledge about other people's behaviour, customs, religion and so forth, then perhaps some of the prejudice against immigrants in UK could be slowly reduced’. It also considers how local people have viewed this film material and how and why their reactions have changed over time.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 28, Number 5. October 2012

Front and back cover caption, volume 28 issue 5 Front cover THE CRISIS IN MALI. Malian refugees are seen at the Mbera refugee camp in eastern Mauritanian, Mbera, Mauritania, 17 July 2012. At that point, roughly 92,000 refugees had arrived in the camp. Estimates are that nearly half a million Malians have been displaced from their homes this year with many refugees having also fled to Burkina Faso and Niger. Photo taken by award‐winning photographer, Lynsey Addario ( http://www.lynseyaddario.com ). Back cover TOURISM: WORK VS LEISURE A tourist from Hong Kong photographs a young Mursi woman with lip‐plate in her lower lip. Tourists queue up orderly for each to take their turn photographing the wonders of Mursi culture. The image demonstrates the complexity of tourist encounters, and the multifaceted aspects of leisure and work. The Mursi prepare for their visitors well ahead of touring cars arriving at their settlements. They make themselves up and imitate the kinds of working activities (e.g. grinding) they know from experience will fascinate and elicit a response from tourists. Tourists typically ask the Mursi for permission to photograph the process and, occasionally, join in themselves with the Mursi in their ‘work’. In this sense, the Mursi imitate ‘traditional’ sociality as they simulate their own working activities for tourists who supposedly spend their leisure time in Mursiland. As Tamàs Règi argues in this issue, instead of seeing leisure as a fixed human condition within one society, anthropologists might approach it, rather, as a process that evolves at the interface between different societies that meet. In this way, leisure is a constantly developing practice in cross‐cultural encounters.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 29, Number 4. August 2013

Front and back cover caption, volume 29 issue 4 Front cover Khat to be banned in the UK Yemeni man chewing khat. Khat is a herbal stimulant that has been chewed recreationally in the Arabian peninsula and in East Africa for centuries, but khat has recently become an object of concern in the UK after ‘khat pubs’, popular with Somali, Yemeni, and Ethiopian immigrants, have sprung up across the country. Against the advice of its own Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), the UK government is following countries such as the USA, Canada, and Germany by banning khat. Later this year, the UK will treat khat as a class C drug, making it illegal to supply or possess. This July, the UK home secretary said ‘The decision to bring khat under control is finely balanced and takes into account the expert scientific advice and these broader concerns’. But in response to the government's announcement, Professor David Nutt (chair of the ACMD) retorted, saying ‘Banning khat shows contempt for reason and evidence, disregard for the sincere efforts of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs’, specifically citing khat's ‘relatively low harms’ in his remonstration. In this issue, Ian McGonigle looks at the broader socio‐cultural background of khat in Africa and the Middle East, and analyzes the global khat controversy as a complex anthropological problem entangling development economics, public health management, domestic fears of terrorism, and khat‐mediated democratic formations. Back cover Scapegoating in Burma A 2013 calendar widely on sale inside Burma in the wake of Aung San Suu Kyi's landmark meeting with Barrack Obama in Rangoon, November 2012. Although the military retain majority control in parliament, media laws have been relaxed and limited reforms include a parliamentary role for Aung San Suu Kyi and her party. Major violence erupted in May 2012 against the Rohingya, which was to spread to Muslims more generally by the time the two leaders met. Yet Aung San Suu Kyi remained mostly silent on the issue. Is this ‘hermit state’, the largest country in mainland Southeast Asia, situated at the intersection between Muslim and Buddhist Asia, and a gateway to India and China, succumbing to irrational fears enflamed by the US‐led war on terror? In this issue, Elliott Prasse‐Freeman argues that the Rohingya have become scapegoats for an ill‐defined sense of national identity. True, the Burmese army has also attacked many of the ethnic minorities wishing to retain autonomy, including major offensives against the Kachin and the Shan. But the kind of violence against Muslims is of a different kind. In anticipation of the last free elections in 1960 the army published Dhamma in danger (dhammantaraya) asserting the communist threat to Buddhism, hoping to win the elections. Today, such dangers are projected as coming from Muslim populations interpreted as not rightfully Burmese (the laws require proof of ancestor residence before wholesale immigration began with British conquest in 1823, yet written reference to ‘Rooinga’ occurred as early as 1799). In a country where fears reign, and with a monastic order not hierarchically controlled, many have fallen for this discourse in a way that the country will come to regret. Whither the saffron revolution and Aung San Suu Kyi's revolution of the spirit?     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 29, Number 2. April 2013

Front and back cover caption, volume 29 issue 2 Front cover Fracking and anthropology Detail of a coal seam gas field in southeast Queensland, Australia. Well pads, interspersed approximately every 700 metres, are connected by tracks. The environmental impact of unconventional gas extraction is clearly visible in this image, which shows the typical plurality of connected and potentially hydraulically fractured wells in coal seam gas fields. Supported by visions of energy self‐sufficiency and economic development, global unconventional gas production has increased significantly in the last few years to meet our insatiable demand for energy. However, the rapid incursion of unconventional gas fields into rural agricultural areas and human settlements has given rise to heated discussion and protests, not only in Australia but worldwide due to concerns about the perceived environmental impacts, risks to human health, and the industrialization of landscapes. In this issue, Kim de Rijke provides a preliminary overview of what anthropologists might focus on in the study of ‘fracking’. Back cover Writing development A pile of assorted development documents from international organizations active in Georgia. Development writing is a major activity not only among aid professionals, but also among experts within universities, human rights NGOs or think‐tanks. Some NGOs are financed by Western donors to report on issues such as democratic performance, corruption, domestic violence, conflict management and environmental protection. The material they produce need not have any direct link to particular project interventions, but is nevertheless legitimized through and marked by normative frameworks to facilitate such interventions. The bulk of these texts are circulated within the development community, but in some cases organizations might keep them unpublished as a knowledge‐base to capitalize on. The August 2008 war with Russia brought a number of new aid actors to Georgia and subsequently a massive production of texts covering everything from the causes of the war to the fall‐out, and practicalities concerning, for example, the rehabilitation and resettlement of refugees. Some of the documents that are being produced within development are based on empirical research and could almost pass as formal academic publications. But in general, development writing represents a separate genre with specific rules of engagement for specific audiences. The new anthropology of development is interested in knowledge production going on within the world of international aid which, among other things, can be accessed through texts such as these. In this issue Beppe Karlsson looks at the characteristics of writing in this genre.