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 2. April 2012

Front and back cover caption, volume 28 issue 2 Front cover A simple, austere cross hangs on the St. Maria‐Magdalena church in the newly constructed Rieselfeld neighbourhood of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. Completed in 2004, the building contains both a Protestant and a Catholic church, with moveable partition walls also allowing for the creation of a single ecumenical site when desired. Similarly, a diversity of associations, meanings, and histories are attributed to the symbol of the cross itself in different spaces and times. Its appearance on the wall of a multi‐ecumenical space highlights the theological connections between Protestant and Catholic Christianities; its location near the French‐German border calls attention to the doctrinal disputes and historical violence that have occurred between these two faiths. The significance of the cross – while often presumed to be self‐evident – is complex and ever shifting. Its connotations are produced through processes as diverse as the urban renewal project of the church of Maria‐Magdalena and juridical rulings on its display in public spaces. Recently, the European Court of Human Rights rejected a claim that crucifixes hanging in Italian classrooms were an affront to freedom of conscience and a parent's freedom to educate his or her children. As a symbol, the Court declared, the cross does not stand for Christianity alone, but also for ‘European heritage’. While today, signs associated with Islam are treated as a threat to public spaces in countries throughout Europe, anthropologists can explore how claims made about the cross produce it as a flexible sign connoting not only the story of the Passion, but also European history and secular tolerance. Back cover LEGENDARY HOMINOIDS Gregory Forth inspects what villagers in one part of western Flores describe as a burial mound marking the place where their ancestors interred a group of hominoids they killed in a violent confrontation. After receiving details of the mound and its history from Forth, in 2011 several Indonesian and Western palaeoanthropologists began exploring possibilities for excavating the site and hope to gain permission to begin digging in the near future. The 2003 discovery on the eastern Indonesian island of Flores of a small, physically primitive hominin interpreted as a new species, Homo floresiensis, came as a surprise to anthropology. Not only is the find extraordinarily recent in geological terms, but the hypothetical species bears a close resemblance to indigenous images of similarly diminutive, hominoid creatures reputedly encountered by local villagers in an even more recent historical era. The challenge posed by Homo floresiensis to our previous understanding of hominin (or ‘human’) evolution is well documented. But the unexpected find poses challenges for sociocultural anthropology as well. Searches for the physical remains of non‐sapiens hominins are typically motivated by prevailing palaeoanthropological theories and interpretations. However, contextual as well as physical peculiarities of the Flores hominin suggest that future investigations of the new species may be crucially informed by ethnographic evidence, the bulk of which was collected prior to, and independent of, the palaeoanthropological discovery.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 28, Number 3. June 2012

Front and back cover caption, volume 28 issue 3 Front cover Imagine you're walking in the woods and you kick over an artefact – a piece of pottery, perhaps. You don't know what it is, but you know it's old, and it looks precious. Who you gonna call? A university colleague? The British Museum? Or an ex‐army, former professional wrestler, whose trademark call is to arch his chest like a gorilla and shout, ‘Boom, baby, boom!’? American cable viewers have been watching Ric Savage seek out antiquities, dig them up and sell them. Savage, owner of an artefact recovery and sales outfit that specializes in the Civil War era, fronts American Digger, a filmed series broadcast by Spike TV. He's passionate about history, he knows about old things and he digs – the definition, you might think, of an archaeologist. Archaeologists beg to differ. Across the US, high profile archaeological organizations have complained about the series, which, they say, promotes looting and the destruction of national heritage. They seem to have gained support not just from the public, thousands of whom are signing online protests, but also from metal detectorists and collectors – members of the very gang to which Savage belongs. On 28 March American Digger Magazine, which has no connection with the TV series, dropped Savage as a columnist. Metal detectors, it said, are for finding history, not making money. For many archaeologists such a distinction misses the point. Whatever the intention, they argue, inexpert excavation driven by the beep of a machine is destructive. Yet in Britain, where communication between detectorists and professional archaeologists is enshrined in the unique Portable Antiquities Scheme, barriers have been coming down. It was looting that sparked the idea for the scheme 20 years ago. Could an outsize man with a penchant for heavy machinery achieve the same in the States? Back cover RECOVERING MEMORABILIA The front and back covers of this issue portray contrasting ways in which memorabilia may be recovered. If the front cover is about sensationalizing finds for entertainment on popular TV, the back cover shows finds after sifting for valuable possessions in the deposits left by the 3/11 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami. Various volunteer centres were set up to help clean local residents' rescued possessions found in the debris. Photos and family albums were the most frequently rescued objects. In addition to ongoing cleaning sessions in the devastated region, off‐site sessions have also been held in various parts of Japan. Piles of rescued photos are still waiting to be cleaned. The image shows cleaned, rescued photographs being dried at a cleaning session held at 3331 Arts Chiyoda in Tokyo on 11 February 2012. Even though it has been a year since the tragic disaster, not all the images in the uncleaned photographs have faded despite having been covered in seawater and sludge full of bacteria and asbestos. Having survived as traces of memory as well as of personal history, these photos offer the hope of one day being reunited with their owners, or the relatives and friends they portray.     

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 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 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 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 39, Number 5. October 2023

Front and back cover caption, volume 39 issue 5 IBN KHALDUN AND RE-TRIBALIZATION A bust of Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), at the entrance of the Kasbah of Bejaia, Algeria. As you gaze upon this scholar, who first delved into the cyclical dynamics of tribes and civilizations, you are not just looking at history — you are looking at a mirror reflecting our modern world. Khaldun's pioneering insights into tribal cohesion (asabiyyah) and its impact on societal rise and fall are not relics of the past; they are prophetic echoes reverberating in today's global landscape. In an increasingly interconnected yet paradoxically fragmented world, the concept of ‘tribalism’ is making a surprising comeback. No longer confined to anthropology textbooks or remote communities, tribalism resurfaces in our political dialogues, social affiliations, and even international relations. But this is not your grandfather's tribalism; it is ‘re-tribalization’, a modern reimagining of ancient affiliations and loyalties shaping nations and rewriting global equations. In this issue, the first of a two-part article by Ahmed et al., ‘Re-tribalization in the 21st century’, peels back the layers of this complex phenomenon. It challenges the conventional wisdom that pits ‘tribalism’ against ‘civilization’, revealing instead a dynamic interplay that influences everything from state governance to globalization. Whether it is the UK Brexit vote, the rise of ethnonationalism in various countries or the enduring conflicts in the Middle East, the fingerprints of tribalism — and its modern avatar, re-tribalization — are unmistakably present. As we navigate the complexities of a world that is both a ‘global village’ and a patchwork of evolving tribal identities, the concept of re-tribalization serves as an analytical lens. This resurgence of tribal affiliations is a complex adaptation to the challenges and opportunities of a globalized world. The ancient codes of tribalism are being reinterpreted in the context of modern geopolitics and digital communication. While the old and the new may seem to be in tension, they are part of a complex dynamic that requires scrutiny. The ancient and the modern coexist in a world as fraught with conflict as it is ripe for cooperation. FOOTBALL AND CLIMATE CHANGE On the dwindling sands of Ariyallur Beach in the coastal hamlet of Ottummal, Malabar, India, children passionately kick a football around, savouring the shrinking space that remains for their cherished sport. Their laughter and shouts echo against a backdrop of rising tides and eroding shores, a poignant reminder of the impermanence of their playground. In this issue, Muhammed Haneefa delves into the heart of this coastal community to explore how the relentless rise in sea levels is not just a geographical alteration but a transformation of a way of life. He uncovers the erosion of subaerial beaches — once the lifeblood of the community's social and cultural fabric — and its devastating impact on leisure activities, most notably the deeply ingrained pastime of football. Haneefa also scrutinizes the local government's ‘managed retreat’ strategy, a well-intentioned but complex proposal that involves relocating these vulnerable communities away from their endangered coastal homes. While the plan may offer a temporary respite from the encroaching waters, it fails to account for the fisherfolk's profound emotional and cultural ties to their land and traditions. This article serves as a lens through which we can view climate change from the ground up. While satellite images and climatological data may provide a bird's-eye view of the planet's changing face, it is through the worm's-eye view of anthropologists and ethnographers like Haneefa that we truly understand the human cost. Here, climate change is not just a statistic or a future projection; it is a lived reality that is reshaping communities, altering identities and challenging the very essence of cultural heritage.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 37, Number 5. October 2021

Front and back cover caption, volume 37 issue 5 Front cover FOOD STALL AT BRICK LANE MARKET Brick Lane is one of London's most iconic streets. Over the centuries, it has served as a refuge for Huguenots and east European Jews fleeing religious persecution, as well as Irish fleeing the famine. More recently, Bengalis, predominantly from the Sylhet area, moved to the UK because of political and economic instability at the time of Bangladesh's independence in 1971. Many settled along Brick Lane and its surrounding streets. Because of the lane's social, cultural, and economic importance to the Bangladeshi diaspora – it played a pivotal role in the renaming of the neighbourhood as Spitalfields and Banglatown in 2001, for example – some first-generation British Bangladeshis still say, ‘There are three Bengals: west Bengal, east Bengal, and Brick Lane’. Nonetheless, this inner-city area's working-class identity and employment patterns are threatened by super-gentrification in the housing, office development, and hotel and catering sectors. The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are amplifying these trends. In this issue, Seán Carey looks at some of the trials and tribulations of the Bangladeshi community in and around Brick Lane. Back cover BANGLADESH IN BRICK LANE Street art on the shutters of a restaurant in Brick Lane.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 29, Number 5. October 2013

Front and back cover caption, volume 29 issue 5 Front cover Mud masons in Mali Mason Konamadou Djennepo participating in the annual re‐claying of the Djenné Mosque. Located in the heart of Mali's Inland Niger Delta region, Djenné is an ancient trading town renowned for its monumental mud‐brick architecture. The art of mud building reaches its zenith in the bold compositions and sculpted contours of the Djenné Mosque (1906–07) and in the elegant façades of its historic and modern houses. Masonry has been a specialized trade in Djenné for centuries. Entrants undergo a lengthy apprenticeship and qualified practitioners are due‐paying members of the barey ton association which sets wages, provides social security, and regulates working conditions and disputes. During the past two years, however, the masons – like craftspeople and artisans across Mali – struggled to find work and to survive. Their nation was beset by drought, a heavily‐armed Taureg rebellion, an Islamist insurgency, and a military coup d'état. Tourism vanished, foreign investment dwindled, development aid was frozen, and Mali's frail economy was strained to breaking point. During this period of continuing austerity and uncertainty, it is important to recall Mali's rich cultural heritage and look to its future. As mason Boubacar Kouroumansé remarked: ‘When people talk of Mali today, some automatically think about the war and about the hand‐chopping that goes on now. But there are others who don't see it so narrowly. They still remember Mali for its old tradition of dignity and honour. We need to focus more on that!’ In response, a year‐long exhibition on the Mud Masons of Mali opened at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History on 30 August. Curated by Mary Jo Arnoldi (Smithsonian) and Trevor Marchand (SOAS), and grounded in Marchand's fieldwork, the exhibition includes photographs, displays of tools and building materials, and a series of new documentary films that explore the lives, work, and aspirations of five Djenné masons. For more information visit http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/mud‐masons/index.html Back cover Human‐elephant relations Daytime training: young Paras Gaj is roped to adult training elephants and learns to accept Satya Narayan as his driver, 2004. Since 1986, the Khorsor Elephant Breeding Centre in Nepal has been crucial for maintaining the captive elephant population used to help patrol Nepalese lowland national parks. Elephants assist with anti‐poaching patrolling, biodiversity conservation research, and nature tourism. Khorsor is one of six government stables (hattisar) where humans and elephants live and work together. The Tharu people have been employed by the state for elephant capture and care for several hundred years, and the stable represents a total institution in which elephants are treated variously as animals, persons, and gods. Training practices previously used for adult elephants caught in the wild, have now been adapted for captive‐born elephants, like the three‐year‐old Paras Gaj depicted here. Along with their principal handlers, elephants go through a training process with both practical and ritual elements. Indeed, elephant training represents a multi‐species rite of passage involving sacrificial practices and ritual prohibitions that produce new competencies and status roles for both elephant and handler alike. Sacrifices to the fierce forest goddess Ban Devi, and the benevolent Ganesh mark the commencement and conclusion of the liminal period of training. Training takes just a few weeks, serving to make the elephant receptive to a human rider and human command. The elephant is no longer a baby, and the handler has distinguished himself as an elephant trainer. This issue contains the review of a symposium on Human‐elephant relations in South and South‐East Asia organized by Piers Locke.     

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 31, Number 5. October 2015

Front and back cover caption, volume 31 issue 5 Front cover Shark attack! July 2015 marked the 40th anniversary of Jaws, the blockbuster film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the novel of the same name by Peter Benchley. At the time, the enormous success of the film was attributed to the way it tapped into the primal instincts of the audience, exposing people to primitive fears usually hidden in their collective unconscious. In later years, Benchley became a committed conservationist and announced that he would never again write a story in which an animal was depicted as ‘a conscious villain’. Benchley was by no means repudiating his earlier work. He claimed he was simply acknowledging that society (in his case, the USA) had moved on, that ideas about animals had progressed, and that portraying animals as villainous creatures was no longer socially acceptable. Writing from South Australia where some of the original footage for Jaws was filmed, Adrian Peace argues that great white sharks continue to be construed by many Australians as rational and ruthless killers (‘assassins’). Peace takes as problematic the idea that sharks occupy a particular place in the Australian psyche, especially when commentators draw on evolutionary psychology to explain the response to great whites in terms of an instinctual and hard wired primal fear. By carefully unpacking the current public discourse surrounding shark attacks in Australian waters, Peace provides a cultural interpretation of the relationship between Australians and great white sharks which is firmly focused on current beliefs and contemporary interpretations. Back cover EUROPE'S REFUGEE CRISIS Irish naval personnel from the LÉ Eithne rescuing migrants in the central Mediterranean, June 2015. The Irish vessel took part in Joint Operation Triton, coordinated by the European border agency Frontex and by Italian authorities. Following a series of shipwrecks off the Libyan coast, in late April 2015 European Union (EU) leaders agreed on the need to extend Triton's scope to 138 nautical miles south of Sicily. The EU is expected to finance Operation Triton throughout 2016. Several countries are participating in the operation, with vessels, helicopters, planes, and teams of border agents. Transshipping migrants takes time and is a skilled task that requires specific training. There have been cases of boats in distress capsizing upon sighting a rescue vessel, as passengers suddenly move to one side. Thus, large navy vessels usually dispatch two smaller units, approaching migrant boats from both sides. Everyone is immediately instructed to sit down, and then to don a lifejacket. How do we distinguish between a humanitarian and a border patrolling exercise? In this issue, Maurizio Albahari looks at what is by now the most serious refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 5. October 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 5 Front cover Covid-19 symbolism: Amabie in Japan The Japanese yōkai Amabie (アマビエ) was a forgotten chimeric figure from the Japanese history of disaster and epidemics until the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, when a few manga artists and Kyoto University Library brought her back to public attention and gave her global fame on social media. A drawing contest with the hashtag #AmabieChallenge started in earnest, crossing the borders of Japan to reach and captivate an enthusiastic global audience. Her body is an assemblage of human, fish and bird characteristics, with three fish tails/legs and long, dark hair. The front cover picture on this issue of AT was taken in September 2020 at the annual Scarecrow Competition in Tokyo, which this year elected to have Amabie as its theme. In this issue, Claudia Merli explores how this yōkai's resurgence from pre-modern Japan intersects with some central ecological and political discourses in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially those associated with culinary practices, human rights and relations with other historical epidemics. Reasons for Amabie's sudden celebrity hark back to the culture of representation of historical epidemics via woodblock prints and the special place occupied by ningyo (mermaids and mermen) in Japan. Presented by some commentators as a pandemic mascot, this uncanny yokai from southern Japan addresses our contemporary lives as they are caught in a suspension of our usual temporal and spatial dimensions. We could even say that as we entered the pandemic, Amabie came to reinhabit a world she previously belonged to, one of unfathomable disasters and global intersections. The article follows some of these serendipitous connections to make sense of a phenomenon that should be analyzed in terms of the polysemic capacity of an icon of protection, whose beaky features recall all too well the spectral appearance of a plague doctor in Renaissance Europe. Back cover COVID-19 SYMBOLISM: TEDDY BEARS IN NZ On the day that Aotearoa/New Zealand started its unprecedented nationwide lockdown, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that despite the order to ‘stay home’, walking locally was not prohibited and that children, in particular, were welcome to stroll through their neighbourhoods in search of teddy bears in windows. She then added, ‘And if you're in Wellington and you're walking in a local neighbourhood, you might see one in my window’. Within days, across the country a multitude of teddy bears, as well as other stuffed animals and plastic toys, appeared in residential windows, tied on top of letterboxes or, like this one, affixed onto lamp posts. Inspired by the popular children's book, We're going on a bear hunt, wellknown for its refrain, ‘we're not scared’, the bears were widely understood to inspire ‘hope’ and ‘care’ and were just one of the ways that New Zealanders affectively invested in the Covid-19 lockdown. While scholarly work on national crises has frequently focused on the misuse of emergency measures to expand state power, much less has been said of the ways that citizens help constitute states of emergency. During the first Covid-19 lockdown (March-May 2020), New Zealanders set up community roadblocks to seal off neighbourhoods deemed to be under threat, ‘dobbed in’ perceived rule breakers or engaged in acts of vigilante justice against them, and called on the nation to recast the lockdown as a rahui or Maori protective prohibition. They also displayed a seemingly endless array of teddy bears, including the occasional bear engaged in acts that contravened lockdown regulations. Examining these and similar acts of collective responsibility, care and blame is a vital step in widening our understanding of the variety of dynamics that create and sustain states of emergency in democratic nations as well as their potential long-term implications.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 1. February 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 1 Front cover ALTERNATIVE FACTS In response to discourses of alternative facts, denials of climate science and the undermining of science in the public sphere, on 22 April 2017, protestors marched for science in cities across the United States. In this image of the San Francisco march, a protestor holds a sign proclaiming ‘science is universal’. While some protestors' slogans assumed the objectivity of science and facts, others asserted the importance of diversity, equality and inclusion in science. Scholars of science and technology studies have long deconstructed claims of universality, but recently some have argued that the authority of science and facts must be reclaimed. Bruno Latour emphasizes that it is untenable to talk about scientific facts as though their rightness alone will be persuasive. Analyses of human rights and political violence disclose how narratives and propaganda shape not just individual attitudes but also the functioning of institutions. Contexts of gaslighting, repetition, distraction and undermining facts require different strategies for understanding how institutions and societies are perpetrating and perpetuating injustices. In this issue, Drexler's article develops a framework of multidimensional and intersectional justice for analyzing the layered, compounded, dynamic forms of power and inequality that contribute to particular injustices. Understanding justice as multidimensional and intersectional is part of a struggle from which new forms of knowledge and truth can emerge. Back cover ‘NEW SCHISM’ IN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY? A supplicatory prayer service (Moleben) to Saint Emperor Nikolay II in an Orthodox church in the Russian Federation. On the commemoration day of his death, believers line up to venerate large icons of the tsar installed in the church, as in many other churches of the ‘Russian world’. When kissing the holy icons and listening to the words of prayer, they participate in a theopolitical performance of belonging to a community of co-believers and compatriots, of people who share the same faith and the same nation, an enactment of the model ‘one state, one church’ prevalent in Eastern Orthodoxy. What happens, however, when state borders change, when new sovereign states emerge or become stronger? Is it possible for Orthodox Christians to practise their faith outside the national-territorial logic? Since the summer of 2018, Jeanne Kormina and Vlad Naumescu have been observing a rapidly developing cold war within Orthodox Christianity. This war between different claims for sovereignty and jurisdiction over ‘canonical territories’ has followed clear logics of religious nationalism and imperialism. In this conflict, the less privileged — ordinary believers and local religious communities — have suffered most. In this issue, Kormina and Naumescu analyze the recent ‘schism’ in Eastern Orthodoxy to show how religion and politics are strongly intertwined in disputes over territory and sovereignty. Drawing a parallel between the post-socialist revival of religion in Ukraine and the current mobilization on the ground, they show how the theopolitics of ‘communion’ and ‘canonical territory’ shape the fate of people, churches and states.