The desire for relevance (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

In this editorial, the authors ask how anthropology constitutes its public compared to publics in other disciplines.     

Some Observations upon the “Danse Macabre,” or Dance of Death

(1) Some of the dating hitherto accepted for Raglan Castle is inaccurate. The earliest work was erected between 1432 and 1445, but the majority of the present structure, including the keep, was built between 1461 and 1469.

(2) The keep at Raglan was not built to protect the owner from attack by members of his own retinue as claimed by W. Douglas Simpson, A. J. Taylor and others, but for political reasons associated with the accession of Edward IV.

(3) The view that ‘bastard feudalism’ was responsible for the development of tower-houses and keeps in late medieval England is erroneous. Furthermore, it is suggested that most keeps built in the fifteenth century were erected in response to a particular political situation confined to the second half of the century.

Considerable use is made of historical as well as architectural material, for the integration of these two disciplines leads to conclusions quite different from those of previous writers who have tended to limit their field to the study of the structural evidence only.     

Uncommon Ground: Holism and the Future of Anthropology

Anthropology has long been a contested field with roots in both scientific and humanistic discourse. The “four-field” approach in American anthropology has been used by some as a means of suppressing conflict and enforcing a false sense of unity. While critiques of the four-field approach are warranted, in fact holism represents anthropology's greatest strength. Anthropology gains a competitive advantage over other disciplines in its ability to combine biological and cultural approaches. Moreover, the four-field model, while historically contingent, is well suited to the institutional and political realities of the American academy, especially the public research university.     

Anthropology in the world: Limits and unity (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This editorial anticipates the conference Anthropology in the World by reflecting upon the influence of anthropology, and its limits, arguing that it is only by knowing where these limits are that we can be sure where and how it can best be judged. It is too, a call for unity, suggesting that in seeking to influence the external world, anthropology should unite across its sub‐disciplines, and in doing so a mutually‐beneficial exchange of practice, ideas and methodology will emerge.     

Professional advantage and public health: British veterinarians and State Veterinary Services, 1865-1939

At the beginning of the twentieth century, municipal authorities in England and Wales, and in Scotland, began to develop systems of veterinary public health which encompassed both the welfare of animals and the safety of meat and milk intended for human consumption. This paper examines the motives behind veterinary attempts to extend the integration of human and animal health considerations within the public health framework in the inter-war period. In 1938 the Ministry of Agriculture implemented a national administrative structure for the management of animal diseases which absorbed the veterinary personnel of the municipal authorities, whose own veterinary public health activities largely fell into abeyance. As a result, the ideal of veterinary public health disappeared from British public health practice after 1939, and lost its force as a professional political cause. The mid-century disappearance of animal health from consideration in British public health programmes was one of a complex of historical strands which contributed to the late-twentieth-century emergence of public health crises over such animal-borne diseases as salmonellosis, Escherichia coli infection, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy.     

Futures,intimacies, animisms: Unfinished anthropologies in the twenty-first century

This essay explores recent work in future-oriented anthropology that develops emancipatory, anticipatory, multi-modal, and participatory approaches. Through critiquing hegemonic assumptions in anthropology and in Western modernity, these works evoke both present complexity and future potentiality. Ultimately, the essay explores these works as redemptive strategies for an anthropology besieged by intolerance and authoritarianism while grappling with its colonialist underpinnings.     

Bioarchaeology in the United Arab Emirates*

Physical anthropology and bioarchaeology (one of the newer interdisciplinary sub‐disciplines) are alive and well in the U.A.E. Older analytical approaches that rely on subjective observations and non‐systematic study of human remains are being replaced with more biocultural and processual approaches that integrate biological data from human remains within a broader archaeological and cultural context. With the publication of a major synthetic work based on analysis of the human remains from Jebel al‐Buhais, a new era of skeletal analysis in the U.A.E. has been heralded. This short review examines the ways that skeletal analysis can be integrated within broader archaeological contexts.     

Making anthropology public

Public Anthropology entails diverse practices. One is 'writing' for the public by making our work more accessible and accountable. A less conventional way of getting anthropological research findings and interpretations to broader publics is through active collaboration with journalists and the media. To make anthropology public is to invite criticism and to face 'erasures' of ownership of our findings once they are shared with journalists. Even so, it is satisfying to see one's work appear on the front pages of the Sunday Times even if uncited. Finally, in the tradition of CW Mills' The Sociological Imagination, the goal of public anthropology is to make public issues, not simply to respond to them. Those who wan to be public anthropologist – just do it! But don't expect to be rewarded for it. Instead, consider it a precious right and a privilege.     

Culture's Impact at the Workplace and Beyond

This article reviews worldwide comparisons of values and attitudes in corporate settings by Geert Hofstede and by Fons Trompenaars, Charles Hampden-Turner, and Peter Woolliams. Particular attention is paid to the five cultural dimensions that have been derived by means of multivariate statistical techniques in Hofstede's research. The applicability of these dimensions beyond organizational settings is explored and further investigation is suggested within the frameworks of multiple social science disciplines. The potential relevance of these quantitative findings is considered for data gathering and conceptualization in anthropology.     

The quality and appropriateness of forensic anthropological education in the UK

Abstract

Recently there has been a noticeable increase in the number of forensic anthropology courses, in a variety of guises, being offered by UK universities. Now is an appropriate time to examine this situation and discuss whether it is appropriate that such courses are available to students. If it is decided that such courses are indeed appropriate, one needs to continue by examining their quality. This paper examines these educational issues and serves to begin a dialogue to discuss them further within the young disciplines.     

Assessing the value of political science in the era of relevance and impact

The political science profession, like other social sciences, is under pressure from many quarters to demonstrate its ‘relevance’. This need arises primarily from requirements for universities to justify public investment in their teaching and research. Competition across the full range of science and humanities disciplines for public and private funding makes this an important challenge for all. This article reflects on how political scientists have seen the public value of their professional work. It concludes by suggesting some alternative ways of thinking about relevance, value and impact.     

The Anthropology of Christianity: Context,Contestation, Rupture,and Continuity

Still in its developmental stages, the anthropological study of Christianity is unsettled. This essay assesses the study of a faith tradition that has been relatively ignored until recently. The books under review offer examples of the emerging anthropology of Christianity. Four themes receive attention: challenges to the anthropology of Christianity, the comparative enterprise, authority and order, and the nexus of continuity and rupture. These themes provide a glimpse into anthropology's ongoing evolution in its own right and within the larger academy.     

‘Child sacrifice’ in Uganda? The BBC, ‘witch doctors’ and anthropologists (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article discusses both several recent BBC broadcasts on allegations of ‘child sacrifice’ in Uganda and criticisms of the programmes by a number of British anthropologists. It pursues the idea that both the broadcasts and the criticisms raise two sets of crucial questions: the first is in regard to the interpretation of alleged ritual killings in contemporary Africa and the effects of their representation on lay audiences, both non‐African and African; the second concerns media representations of Africa and public anthropology. Anthropologists (and indeed scholars from other disciplines such as history) have a lot of expertise to offer in terms of understanding the occult in many societies, including contextualising this realm in terms of historical processes and material concerns and suggesting links between apparently disparate issues. In this way, they can they can sometimes go beyond surface manifestations, offer alternative explanations and show that things are not always the way they first seem. However, in order to play an effective public role in this regard, anthropologists need to be willing to grapple pro‐actively with such matters of public concern, not least by engaging constructively with the media.     

The Politics of Knowledge: Julian Steward,Leslie White,Melville Herskovits,and L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza

Biographies of four important figures in the history of anthropology—Julian Steward, Leslie White, Melville Herskovits, and L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza—illustrate that current “public anthropology” has deep historic roots and that anthropology, even subfields that involve the basic sciences, like genetics, are shaped by personal and political experience as much as by intellect. All the biographical subjects discussed here had first-hand experience with racism, fascism, and bigotry, whether in their home or public lives, and resisted those forms of hegemony by fashioning anthropological theories to explain and appreciate human diversity.     

Pars Pro Toto Observation: Historical Anthropology in the Textual Field of Rasulid Yemen

This essay addresses the suggestion made over a century ago by F. W. Maitland that anthropology must choose between being history and being nothing. At the time Maitland was correct in criticizing the simplistic unilinear evolutionary schemes of Edward Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan. My own career combines ethnography among Yemeni farmers in the late 1970s with ongoing analysis of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Yemeni agricultural texts, demonstrating the value of drawing on both kinds of research to better understand the history of agriculture in Yemen. Details from the textual corpus are provided to supplement observations made in the field. My approach to agricultural and tax record texts from Yemen's Rasulid period is described as an example of what anthropology and history can contribute to each other. I argue that the choice is not between specific disciplines but rather the application of sound methods that seek to approximate reality rather than dogmatically recreate it. Anthropology and history have much to gain, as Evans-Pritchard once noted, in learning from each other. Anthropology is approached as a research field that has no preconceived borders, but one that necessitates learning from past methodological and theoretical trends, whether from within the formal discipline or from without.     

Merchant identities,trading nodes,and globalization: Introduction to the Special Issue

ABSTRACT

The contributors to this Special Issue are concerned by the nature of transregional Asian interactions taking place in the field of commerce. They explore this concern through an examination of the experiences, activities, and histories of commodity traders whose life trajectories criss-cross Asia. The articles share a common geographic point of reference: Yiwu – an officially designated ‘international trade city’ located in China’s eastern Zhejiang province. The introduction to the Special Issue analytically locates the individual papers in relationship to a long-standing body of work in anthropology and history on port cities and trading nodes. In so doing it suggests the importance of considering multiple historical processes to understanding Yiwu and its position in China and the world today, as well as, more generally, for the anthropology of ‘globalization from below’.     

Searching for the Intercultural,Searching for the Culture

This paper questions a dominant view of culture as being relatively bounded and hermetic by questioning the concept of an intercultural domain that is brought into existence as a necessary consequence of this view. The paper suggests that recognition of cultural processes does not lead to the need to posit ‘a culture’ which is constituted by them. The view that ‘a culture’ is a relatively autonomous, relatively hermetic and relatively homeostatic entity arises, this paper argues, in the birth of nationalism and the founding years of anthropology, which are intimately linked. This approach, characterised here as modernist, is criticised for failing to deal well with complex cultural relationships. It results in the need to theorise an intercultural space, or a realm of cultural change, between cultures theorised as entities. Here the later work of Malinowski is used as an exemplar. The paper argues for alternative conceptualisations, such as Gluckman's suggestion that intercultural relations occur within social fields which are the proper subject of anthropology, and Strathern's contention that ‘society’ is a redundant concept, yet not denying ‘sociality‘. The case of the Aboriginal people of Broome in their struggle with the state over the terms in which their prior rights to land will be recognised is used to illustrate this.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 27, Number 1. February 2011

Front and back cover caption, volume 27 issue 1 Front cover 25th South East Asian Games The 2009 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Vientiane, the first to be hosted by Laos in the event's 50‐year history, was widely experienced by Laotians as an unprecedented moment of national success, reinforcing national symbols and materializing national memory and ideology. In this picture two fans play giant khene, a bamboo free‐reed musical instrument distinctive to Laos and the ethnically Lao areas of northeast Thailand. Traditionally played to accompany courtship and folk songs, the khene is today considered the national instrument, and at the Games it complemented an array of other national symbols on display. Scenes such as these typify the ways in which the SEA Games engendered collective sentiments that were popular, participatory and joyous, particularly among Lao youth. The Games had also bolstered power and authority of the regime. The shared joy of the Games that momentarily united Lao people from across the country soon faded into the everyday realities of one‐party authoritarian politics in Laos, where the state's resource‐extraction policies often set ‘national interests’ against those of existing resource users. These two sides of the SEA Games reflect the contested nature of collective sentiments and, in particular, emphasize how these are aroused through public symbols and assembly. In a rather different display of collective feeling on the back cover, students in London protest government policies that threaten to turn tertiary education into an elite activity affordable mainly by the rich. Back cover UNIVERSITY FUNDING CUTS: AUSTERITY FOR ANTHROPOLOGY The UK faces austerity in public spending to a degree not seen in a generation. The back‐cover image shows students in London demonstrating in October 2007 against the top‐up fees introduced in September 2006, which allowed universities to charge variable fees. Demonstrations intensified in the closing months of 2010, when it was announced that fees would increase by up to three times because of the government's withdrawal of the teaching block grant from the arts, humanities and social sciences in England. In protest, students occupied dozens of universities. What are the implications for higher education and, in particular, for anthropology? In this issue, Hugh Gusterson casts a withering eye over the American precedent, arguing that high fees degrade the educational experience, cause grade inflation, and force indebted students to seek the highest paying rather than the most worthwhile careers. Similar policies applied in England may result in a brain drain of both staff and students. Richard Fardon argues that the proposed changes combine the worst of American and British models: indebted students and over‐regulated, under‐funded universities. It is not even clear that this policy will save money. Like other small disciplines, anthropology will struggle to retain a critical mass of departments, and it will be vulnerable to rises in fees as postgraduate study costs come into line with those for undergraduate study. What might tertiary‐level anthropology look like a decade from now? The number of departments is likely to have been reduced, and with it, academic job opportunities. Student populations will tend to represent the extremes of wealth and poverty, for whom fee remission is being touted as a gesture to fairness. Up to 30 years of debt will act as a deterrent to students between these extremes. As budgets are squeezed, and working conditions deteriorate, the best staff may choose to work elsewhere. Rather than putting UK higher education on a firmer footing, current policy may be a nail in the coffin of one of the few remaining areas of UK excellence internationally.     

The Soul of the Luba: W.F.P. Burton,Missionary Ethnography and Belgian Colonial Science

This article examines the motivations, institutions and processes involved in colonial knowledge formation through a study of the missionary William Burton. It considers Burton’s work on the Luba of Katanga in relation to the practices of Belgian colonial science and Anglo‐Saxon social anthropology. The essay discusses why missionaries engaged in ethnographic research when they were so intent on changing the customs and beliefs they described and why Burton in particular did not get the recognition he deserved as an authority on his subject. The article charts Burton’s shifting attitude toward the Luba, showing how he moved from an aggressive intrusive mode of research to a position of greater sympathy as he came to consider their cultural riches through study of language, proverb and folklore. Consideration of the second phase of Burton’s research opens up discussion of the missionary origins of the disciplines of African theology and African religious studies.     

Counterinsurgency and the M‐VICO System: Human Relations Area Files and anthropology's dual‐use legacy

Over the past decade, ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY has published a number of features covering the relationship between anthropology and the security state. Here, David Price draws attention to an aborted counterinsurgency project, known as the M‐VICO project. Building on the categories and structures employed in the Human Relation Area Files (HRAF), this project relied on anthropologists to encode data cross‐culturally on all forms of behaviour in as many strategic localities as possible, which the security services subsequently scrutinize and probe for possible weaknesses that could be exploited. In this article, David Price shows that, in the secrecy that often surrounds the financing and precise purposes of its projects, anthropology is not all that different from many other disciplines, with some projects serving what he calls ‘dual‐use’ ends. Since civilian researchers are not supposed to have full knowledge of these ends, research into these semi‐covert purposes is particularly challenging.