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.     

Applied anthropology anyone? (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

As a boundary‐straddling branch of knowledge, anthropology is a classically dangerous academic domain. But it is only “anti‐science” if one conceptualizes “science” perversely.     

The gross domestic person? (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

On the cusp of what is widely perceived to be seismic economic change, Fioramonti's analysis of the history and power of the GDP is a provocation to anthropologists to unpack its underlying assumptions about the human dimensions of economic life, and to imagine a different set of assumptions for the future. He depicts the presumed most basic unit for GDP analyses, the household, as a “cage”, where all the relevant economic processes go through monetization and formulaic relationships and aspirations. This paper examines the history of the “person” who is necessarily in a “household”: from the household being tax unit, to a domestic unit, to its currently expanding position as a node for the temporary meeting of varied trajectories of life and flows of varied kinds of value. The paper concludes with the challenge to create new metrics as being a challenge to comparison and analytical acuity, drawing on the anthropological archive.     

Creative destruction: Efficiency,equity or collapse? (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Around the globe, unemployment and sub employment have risen, salaries are frozen, homes are being repossessed, economic inequality continues, and many are experiencing heightened emotional distress. We have heard many explanations for this economic and social mess. But the current crisis should make us question the standard narratives, which failed to predict it and now offer ambiguous solutions. I argue that the crisis represents a tectonic shift in material life that calls for rethinking our image of economy. Because the normal discourse of economics does not explain this world of contradictions, ironies, and unpredictability, perhaps anthropology's moment has arrived. I offer a sketch of the contemporary situation based on a vision of economy as a combination of value domains and the impact of growing specialization, beginning in the workplace and reaching to new financial instruments. If the idea of the growing division of tasks in markets has been a central thread in economics since Adam Smith, its counterpart in anthropology has been the assumption of value diversity within and between cultures.     

Flexibility or exploitation? Corporate social responsibility and the perils of universalization (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

As anthropologists and other critics of capitalism turn their attention to the controversial and burgeoning corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement, most focus on conflicts in community relations and environmental degradation. Few scholars have examined equally pertinent questions of labor restructuring, even though these transformations emerged at about the same time as the rise of CSR. In this article, we draw on research in two Peruvian mining communities to explore the potential contradiction between the simultaneous mandate for corporations to present themselves as responsible employers, on the one hand, and the drive to rationalize labor and reduce financial responsibility for the workforce, on the other. We suggest that for both corporate officials and some scholars, this tension remains a latent one because CSR discourses and documents generalize corporate interests as the interests of mines as a whole.     

Something for posterity or hostage to fortune? Archiving anthropological field material (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

What do anthropologists do with all the data (both primary and secondary) they accumulate while doing fieldwork? Most continue to draw on it for many years, but there is increasing pressure (e.g. from the ESRC) to place much of it in archives, usually in electronic form. What kind of material could be deposited? What use may be made of such material by others? What are the ethical dilemmas which face anthropologists in depositing confidential data? Are there differences between paper and electronic archives and between textual and other forms of material, such as photos and sound recordings? How can anthropologists best protect their sources? Does anthropology become a form of historiography when its raw data are archived? What forms of ‘knowledge’ are created by archiving?     

FGM or FGMo? Cross‐cultural dialogue in an Italian minefield (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

On 20 December 2012 the United General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution banning the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). In this article, Mara Mabilia aims to draw attention to the lives of immigrant women in Europe, and more specifically Italy, from some of the 30 or so chiefly Islamic countries of Africa, where what she prefers to call ‘female genital modification’ (FGMo) is practised. Her aim is neither to advocate the practice, nor to challenge the bans instituted in the West. Rather, her aim is, more broadly, to probe how women, having undergone these practices, live in host societies that interpret these chiefly as human rights violations through the prism of unacceptable violence. To condemn FGM should not imply condemnation also of the 100–140 million women that the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates have undergone this practice.     

Britannia rules the waves? (Respond to this article at https://www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-today/debate)

An international arbitration tribunal recently found the United Kingdom to have breached its obligations under international law in declaring a Marine Protected Area in the Chagos Islands (British Indian Ocean Territory). The ruling has potential implications for the indigenous people of the islands, the Chagossians, who continue to wage a political campaign for the restoration of their right of abode in Chagos. In this comment, I update readers on the tribunal's ruling and other related current events.     

Indochine chic: Why is Vietnamese food so classy in Singapore? (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

To someone from Sydney, Los Angeles, Paris or Vancouver there is something quite peculiar about the experience of eating Indochinese food in Singapore. In these former locations, it is largely present as an inexpensive ethnic cuisine whose high perceived authenticity and low cost are underwritten by communities of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Lao refugees and migrants. In Singapore, by contrast, Indochinese food is a chic, expensive, romantic, Frenchy, artsy, edgy haute‐cuisine. Given that the nation is Vietnam's second largest foreign investor, and that Ho Chi Minh City is a mere eighty minute budget flight away, why should it be that Vietnamese food is so rare and exotic a commodity in Singapore's multicultural culinary market? On the basis of participant observation, interviews conducted with restaurateurs and patrons, and electronic materials such as restaurant reviews and blogs, this paper will attempt to answer the question of just why Indochinese food signifies the way it does in Singapore.     

W(h)ither anthropology? Opening up or closing down (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This editorial provides a brief overview of the place of anthropology in the work of International Financial Institutions (IFI) and argues for a more central role for the subject in building a more sustainable and equitable future. Anthropologists have always wanted to open things up, rather than close them down ‐ to explore ambiguities and possibilities rather than impose externally conceived solutions. The editorial argues for the development of a science of morality based on anthropological perspectives that reach back to enlightenment thinkers and that reconfigure premises developed and informed by a linear perspective on the meaning of development. This is particularly important at this time because of the recent failures of financial institutions and a growing recognition that the millennium development goals are unattainable in the terms in which they have been conceived.     

Anthropological theory and engagement: A zero‐sum game? (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Engagement with pressing social and political issues is often presented as a threat to the elaboration of sophisticated anthropological theory that needs to be protected from such concerns in order to flourish. However the history of anthropological theory demonstrates that some of the discipline's most important contributions have tended to arise as a result of its proponents' desire to engage in such debates. Although we cannot reproduce the cultural models of a previous generation of anthropologists, the future elaboration of ground‐breaking anthropological theory depends upon a rediscovery of such engaged work that does not posit engagement versus theoretical development as a zero‐sum game.     

Are legendary hominoids worth looking for? Views from ethnobiology and palaeoanthropology (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

It has been suggested that the newly discovered hominin species Homo floresiensis may have survived on the Indonesian island of Flores so recently as to inform local images of small‐bodied hominoids. Taking an ethnobiological approach, the article discusses how this matter could be resolved empirically, and concludes that this will ultimately require physical evidence chronologically overlapping substantially with modern human populations. Further discussed are recent investigations affirming the resemblance of putative hominoids and what is known of Homo floresiensis, and a new initiative to excavate a Florenese site identified ethnographically as a mass hominoid burial. Whatever the outcome of these investigations, the case presents a challenge to sociocultural anthropologists inclined to interpret images of creatures undocumented by scientific zoology as purely social or cultural constructs.     

Ethical dilemmas? UK immigration,Legal Aid funding reform and caseworkers (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The article considers the kinds of responsibilities anthropologists might have when working on immigration and asylum matters, particularly in the light of recent ‘reforms’ to the funding of legal aid in the UK. The article focuses on a single case study in its context, exploring an interaction between an immigrant applicant and a lawyer/case worker in a not‐for‐profit Law Centre. The paper shows how case workers find themselves caught in the middle, squeezed between increasing financial pressures and their ethical obligation to their clients. In their everyday work they are faced with the contradictory imperatives of giving sympathy and advice to genuinely deserving cases on the one hand while being required to check up on opportunist and possibly deceitful clients on the other. In the context of ‘reform’, they are increasingly encouraged to prejudge the probable outcomes of cases by reference to ‘value for money’. These effects, we argue, have severe consequences given the adversarial nature of the UK's system of law. As anthropologists, our aim was to investigate the day‐to‐day realities of case worker/client interactions, to enable both ourselves and legal practitioners, in conversation, to reflect on our own and each others' interpretations of the situation, and to place these in the public domain.     

Is native anthropology really possible? (Respond to this article at https://www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-today/debate)

Although native anthropologists are often understood to be quite different from non‐native anthropologists, this paper argues that the distinction is not as clear as is often presumed. Both types of anthropologists are partial outsiders who are positioned at a relative distance from those they study in the field. This is illustrated with a discussion of the author's own fieldwork with Japanese Americans as a ‘native anthropologist’. Ultimately, the cultural differences we experience with the ‘natives’ are productive for fieldwork and essential for anthropological knowledge.     

Saving nature or performing sovereignty? Ecuador's initiative to ‘keep oil in the ground’ (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The Yasuní‐ITT proposal by the government of Ecuador to “keep the oil in the ground” in the untouched, highly biodiverse Ishpingo‐Tambococha‐Tiputini sector of Yasuni National Park in exchange for compensatory 3.6 billion dollars from the international community, has been interpreted and analyzed by academics and the media alike as a radical environmental intervention. In this article I argue that the ITT initiative it less of a radical environmental plan, and more of a performative articulation of post‐IMF nationalism. I problematize the notion that the ITT initiative heralds a shift to a radical new environmental paradigm, and argue that it should be understood primarily as a critique of Ecuador's experience with foreign debt and neoliberal restructuring.     

The Khat ban in the UK: What about the ‘scientific’ evidence? (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Since the 1920s certain psychoactive substances have been controlled by specially created international agencies. More recently, governments have committed themselves to using evidence in policy‐making. Yet, as the ban on khat in the UK and other countries shows, the assessment process is a perfunctory rather than a decisive component. The Home Secretary set aside scientific advice and bases the decision to ban on considerations outside the health risk ratio, including crime control and counter‐terrorism. However, experience shows that prohibiting substances when demand remains strong is inherently criminogenic. Indeed, the khat ban would appear to play into the hands of radical Islamist organizations. In this article, Axel Klein discusses how political calculations overrule evidence and how this is facilitated by international drug control agencies. Using the term ‘social system’ to explain the relentless extension of bureaucratic remit, he argues that control would now appear inevitable for any substance defined as a drug, regardless of evidence and consequence. As this has implications for other culture‐bound peculiar substances or ‘genussmittel’ he suggests ditching the term ‘drug’ altogether.     

An epidemic on wheels? Road safety,public health and injury politics in Africa (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Anthropologists have showed only marginal interest in road safety, despite the loss of some 1.3 million people killed in road crashes every year, the bulk of which occurs in ‘developing’ countries. 2011 marks the beginning of a UN Decade of Action for Road Safety. Its scope is ambitious: to save five million lives and fifty million injuries by the end of the ‘decade’ in 2020. In this article, the author examines the way public health professionals and educators have appropriated the language of epidemiology to argue that road death and injury can be viewed as an ‘epidemic on wheels’ or a ‘disease of development’, to mention two often cited epithets among participants in the global road safety lobby. One major consideration of interest to anthropologists and policy makers is to what extent this effectively essentializes road death in Africa and depoliticises its injury politics. Bearing in mind the historical context of medical interventions in Africa, the article examines the global road safety lobby and its affinity with public health as a form of transnational governance, arguing alternatively that if the UN Decade of Action on Road Safety is to have any significant impact, it must recognize more clearly the political stakes being raised in claims to reduce deaths and injuries caused by automobility.     

Like a virgin? Hymen restoration operations in contemporary China (Respond to this article at https://www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-today/debate)

In this article, the authors use the example of hymen repair surgeries to discuss the reconfigurations of patriarchal practices in the People's Republic of China. Following a brief overview of concepts of virginity and the importance of the hymen in China, they describe the spread of hymen restorations in the reform era. These surgeries link up traditionalist and ‘patriarchal’ practices and relationships with particular expressions of sexual liberalism in contemporary China.