Political tourism in the Israeli‐Palestinian space (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

With the violent clashes that took place in May 2010 during the attempt by the Free Gaza movement flotilla to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the remarkable strength of pro‐Palestinian networks became globally apparent. Drawing on an ethnography of political activism in the Israeli‐Palestinian space, we suggest that the striking visibility of these networks does not exclusively derive from the prominence of the Israeli‐Palestinian conflicts, but is also a consequence of the activists’ ability to produce innovative forms of sociality. However, some of the approaches taken can exist in problematic relation to the experiences of people who live with the conflict. In this context, the issue is not so much the precise relationships between indigenous ‘truths’ in Palestine and their foreign representations, but the way in which encounters redefine the conflicts that activist networks seek to represent.     

Talking to strangers (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The language used by politicians and its social effects have been of long‐standing interest to social anthropology. Opinion‐formers on both sides of the North Atlantic have recently argued that this language can inflame tensions and reinforce divisions. In the UK, the discussion has centred on relations between a white majority and a Muslim minority, while in the US, in the aftermath of the attempted assassination of a Democratic Congresswoman in Arizona, it has focused on the risk of political language provoking violence. The antidote to inflammatory language is often assumed to be moderation, defined as a (self‐) disciplined engagement with divided publics. Drawing on the insights of Danielle Allen's Talking to strangers, here I suggest that moderation might be re‐imagined, not as a vague commitment to centrism and the ‘middle ground’, but as a powerful resource for citizens and communities to challenge the ideological excesses of politics, religion and the market in the twenty‐first century.     

American digger and archaeology (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This editorial reflects on the nature of public archaeology. It looks at the relationship archaeologists have with popular TV, focusing in particular on the new series American digger by Spike TV, and Diggers by National Geographic, and reflects on the relationship archaeologists have with amateurs using metal detectors to uncover treasures.     

#spanishrevolution (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The article reports on the street protests that took over Spanish cities earlier in May and June. The protests have been explained as a response on the part of new media democratic networks to the governance of the economic crises by corrupt political and financial classes. We offer here a tentative chronology of the events, and essay instead an argument about a revitalised municipalist tradition, that sees in the plaza the centrepiece of new forms of do‐it‐yourself political action.     

Social exchange and vegetative propagation: An untold story of British potted plants (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Using data collected in Kent as part of the ‘British Homegardens Project’, we show how mode of reproduction in houseplants serves to increase biological fitness through selection and distribution through informal human social networks, and how those same modes lend themselves to the articulation and maintenance of social networks, instantiating memories and meanings, and providing opportunities for plant‐based narratives     

Anthropology in the news? (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

It is part of our informal culture of anthropology to complain about the way the media portray us, and yet there has been little systematic analysis of media representations of anthropology. I look at stories about anthropologists, stories that quote anthropologists and opinion pieces by anthropologists over a six‐month period in The New York Times. I conclude that biological anthropology and archaeology are over‐represented in these stories, and that the media portrays anthropologists primarily as authorities on exotic others abroad, or ritual behaviour at home. Anthropologists who write about neoliberalism and militarism have had difficulty getting into the high‐end mainstream media, where it is economists rather than anthropologists who are seen as experts on general human nature.     

Foregrounding the Muslim periphery (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This guest editorial considers the implications of Akbar Ahmed's latest book –The Thistle and the Drone: How America's war on terror became a global war on tribal Islam, which was the centrepiece of several panel discussions in London.     

A thousand Nagdis (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

A tributary of the Banas, the Nagdi River flows through the old market town of Jahazpur in Bhilwara District, Rajasthan. Unlike India's major sacred waterways such as the Ganga and the Yamuna which have the status of goddesses, the Nagdi was never deified. However, it figures in Jahazpur's origin legend, reaching back to the epic Mahabharata. Due to a complex convergence of conditions unique to this place but resonant with ecological tragedies the world over, the Nagdi's flow has dwindled and its waters are badly polluted. Everyone in Jahazpur with whom the authors spoke during fieldwork in 2010–11 mourned the end of their river. Once proud of the Nagdi's beauty and miraculous properties, Jahazpur residents were aware of having lost an important part of their environmental and cultural heritage. This article explores the complex causalities of the Nagdi's deterioration and emergent possibilities for its restoration.     

The African bill: Chinese struggles with development assistance (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Chinese diplomats and politicians have sought to underline the mutually beneficial and cordial nature of Chinese engagement with Africa through the use of phrases such as ‘win‐win cooperation’ (huying huli hezuo) and ‘friendly collaboration’ (youhao hezuo). Avoiding the use of concepts such as ‘aid’, which suggest a hierarchical relationship between giver and receiver, they have argued that Chinese initiatives on the African continent are fundamentally different from Western development assistance. An anthropological glance at the situation on the ground however, shows that these statements are not only a part of political rhetoric, but that they also mask the similarities between Chinese and Western involvement with development in Africa.     

Advancing anthropology in schools: The accreditation of the Anthropology A‐level (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The development of an Anthropology A Level represents a major forward movement for the discipline in this country. Now that the RAI has at last succeeded in having the course accredited for teaching in schools, from this September, it is timely to try to put this achievement into a longer historical context. I here briefly review the discipline's attempts over four decades to address the role of Anthropology in educational contexts outside of the university. This process can be seen both as part of a wider public engagement (cf Eriksen, 2006) and as evidence that colleagues in this country have indeed been concerned for a long time with both anthropology in and of education (cf see Green and Bloome 1997).     

Armed peace: Militarization of Rio de Janeiro's favelas for the World Cup (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Rio de Janeiro city's policy of Pacifying Police Units (UPP) for strategically located favelas is part of the state's reconfiguration of the city, involving military occupations, evictions and gentrification in the lead‐up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. Yet since the author arrived in Rio to carry out doctoral research on young people's experiences with the UPP, the flaws in the project have become increasingly exposed as the policy appears to be experiencing a crisis. This paper describes this current crisis in the global context of mega‐events and the elitization of urban space.     

Three jihads: Islamic,Christian, and Jewish (Respond to this article at https://www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-today/debate)

In this guest editorial, the author weighs up to what extent Christian and Jewish life practice equivalents to jihad and to what extent this is a feature of our contemporary secular lives.     

The house gun: White writing,white fears and black justice (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

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.     

China and world anthropology: A conversation on the legacy of Fei Xiaotong (1910–2005) (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Fei Xiaotong (Fei Hsiao‐Tung, 1910–2005) obtained his PhD under Bronislaw Malinowski's supervision at the London School of Economics in 1938. Of the 20 volumes of his completed works, two books are well‐known in the West: Peasant life in China, published in English in 1939, and Xiangtu zhingguo (1947), translated as From the soil by Gary Hamilton and Zheng Wang in 1992. As one of China's finest sociologists and anthropologists, Fei was instrumental in laying a solid foundation for the development of sociological and anthropological studies in China, and his work helped to influence China's social and economic development. This is a translated, abridged and revised version of a conversation originally conducted in English, but published in Chinese to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Fei Xiaotong. Wu Zitong, the editor of China Reading Weekly, puts a series of questions to Gary Hamilton and Xiangqun Chang.     

The morality police are coming! Muslims in Norway's media discourses (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

In early 2010, a series of reports appeared in the influential liberal‐conservative Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten drawing attention to what appeared to reporters to be a self‐appointed, de facto Muslim ‘morality police’ attempting to use harassment to exert social control over non‐hijab‐wearing women of immigrant background and gay men in the district of Grønland in the inner city of Oslo. What came to be known in Norway as the ‘morality‐police debate’ demonstrated the extent to which the figure of the Muslim male as an embodied threat to Norway's presumed relative gender equality and lack of homophobia had come to be embedded in the country's media and political discourse. This article suggests that the debate can tell us much about why certain tropes central to Norway's anti‐Muslim discourses have gained such currency across the Norwegian political board in recent years.     

Iraq: The state‐of‐nature effect (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

In the civil strife of ancient Greek cities that was the model for Hobbes' state of nature, the intervention of the larger forces of Athens and Sparta, proclaiming unconditional causes‐to‐die‐for, transformed local social differences into lethal factional enmities. Death then raged from many quarters. The same effect of anarchic violence has followed from imperial conquer‐and‐divide policies in modern colonial and post‐colonial societies. The present paper documents the processes by which the American intervention in Iraq transformed a plural nation into a bellum omnium contra omnes. Historically, the state of nature appears as the effect of the subversion of the social contract rather than its precondition.     

Networks Mobilized to Access Key Resources at Early Stages of Biotech Firms: A Comparative Analysis in Two Moderately Innovative Countries

This paper investigates the networking behaviour of biotechnology start-ups in peripheral locations. The aim is to understand whether the conditions found in this type of environment introduce some specificities in the networking process, namely in network building and early mobilization to access key resources. The paper compares biotechnology start-ups in Portugal and in Southern Italy, focusing on relationships with research organizations and on the relevance assumed by international connections, and investigating the role played by entrepreneurs’ personal networks. The research identified some common features that diverge from the typical biotechnology start-up behaviour and can be regarded as firms’ adaptive responses to the conditions faced. Notwithstanding the frequent presence of close connections with local research organizations—that often play functions that go much beyond that of a knowledge source—the local environment is a lesser determinant for a substantial proportion of firms than would be expected in start-ups. A distinctive feature of these firms is an extensive reliance on foreign sources, for different purposes and from the very early stages. Entrepreneurs’ personal networks are found to be instrumental, both to identify and obtain knowledge in the vicinity and to support the establishment of more complex distant relationships.     

Rapid response ethnographies in turbulent times: Researching mass grave exhumations in contemporary Spain (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Sometimes a social process under engaged research can swiftly grow out of control, in scale and complexity. Such was the case in my ten‐year‐long study of mass grave exhumations from the Civil War (1936–1939) in contemporary Spain. In such circumstances, I argue for the deployment of a rapid response ethnography, an extreme modality of both public and/or engaged research. This type of instant engagement forces the ethnographer to constantly refashion research designs; recognize and reabsorb emerging social actors and research scenarios; reinvent ethnographic presence; face unanticipated ethical dilemmas; and reimagine how to transfer our acquired knowledge and reflection in (a) multiple non‐academic formats for a myriad of potential publics and (b), in time frames more attuned to the rhythms of fast‐moving public debates and technological transformations in communications. More importantly, rapid response ethnography takes place whenever there is swift and strong public demand for academic analysis within a broader process of social, political and media controversy. In turn, rapid response research is necessarily committed to the transformation of the social and political conditions under study.     

In the name of the Republic: Untimely meditations on the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack (Respond to this article at https://www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-today/debate)

In the wake of the killings at Charlie Hebdo offices and in a kosher supermarket in January 2015, an unprecedented national mobilization took place in France in defence of the endangered ‘values of the Republic’: liberty, equality, fraternity, to which had been added laïcité, the French version of secularism. However, the unanimity was soon disrupted as some did not join the ‘Je suis Charlie’ movement, questioning the double standard in the implementation of these principles. This essay analyzes the variations and flaws in the application of liberty, in particular free speech, and of laïcité, to the detriment of Islam, and discusses how equality and fraternity are currently undermined by social disparities and racial discriminations, which are in part inherited from the colonial past. Although they might seem untimely in such consensual moments, these meditations invite a critical reflection on the contradictions of contemporary democracies.     

Geometry‐coupled reactive fluid transport at the fracture scale: application to CO2 geologic storage

Water acidification follows CO₂ injection and leads to reactive fluid transport through pores and rock fractures, with potential implications to reservoirs and wells in CO₂ geologic storage and enhanced oil recovery. Kinetic rate laws for dissolution reactions in calcite and anorthite are combined with the Navier‐Stokes law and advection–diffusion transport to perform geometry‐coupled numerical simulations in order to study the evolution of chemical reactions, species concentration, and fracture morphology. Results are summarized as a function of two dimensionless parameters: the Damköhler number Da which is the ratio between advection and reaction times, and the transverse Peclet number Pe defined as the ratio between the time for diffusion across the fracture and the time for advection along the fracture. Reactant species are readily consumed near the inlet in a carbonate reservoir when the flow velocity is low (low transverse Peclet number and Da > 10^?1). At high flow velocities, diffusion fails to homogenize the concentration field across the fracture (high transverse Peclet number Pe > 10^?1). When the reaction rate is low as in anorthite reservoirs (Da < 10^?1), reactant species are more readily transported toward the outlet. At a given Peclet number, a lower Damköhler number causes the flow channel to experience a more uniform aperture enlargement along the length of the fracture. When the length‐to‐aperture ratio is sufficiently large, say l/d > 30, the system response resembles the solution for 1D reactive fluid transport. A decreased length‐to‐aperture ratio slows the diffusive transport of reactant species to the mineral fracture surface, and analyses of fracture networks must take into consideration both the length and slenderness of individual fractures in addition to Pe and Da numbers.