The Indonesian Family Planning Programme: A Success Story for Women?

The Family Planning Programme of Indonesia is constantly being hailed as a success story for its performance in reducing fertility rates in many parts of the country. This paper examines what this apparent success has meant for women, taking women's rights to the control of their fertility as the necessary aim for all family planning programmes, and the safeguarding of their reproductive health as an obligation. In the paper, the aims and methods of the Family Planning Programme are examined separately, in order to assess on the one hand the extent and the manner in which women's interests are acknowledged in its objectives, and, on the other, whether in its implementation the programme takes into account the needs of women, both as recipients and as family planning workers. The main conclusion of the paper is that the priorities, style of implementation and service delivery of the programme do not provide women with the means of regulating their fertility autonomously through access to freely chosen contraceptives and related services. In addition, the paper concludes that the safeguard and improvement of women's reproductive health is not among the concerns of the programme, in principle or in practice.     

Challenges in ‘Translating’ Human Rights: Perceptions and Practices of Civil Society Actors in Western India

Rights‐based approaches have become prevalent in development rhetoric and programmes in countries such as India, yet little is known about their impact on development practice on the ground. There is limited understanding of how rights work is carried out in India, a country that has a long history of indigenous rights discourse and a strong tradition of civil society activism on rights issues. In this article, we examine the multiple ways in which members of civil society organizations (CSOs) working on rights issues in the state of Rajasthan understand and operationalize rights in their development programmes. As a result of diverse ‘translations’ of rights, local development actors are required to bridge the gaps between the rhetoric of policy and the reality of access to healthcare on the ground. This article illustrates that drawing on community‐near traditions of activism and mobilization, such ‘translation work’ is most effective when it responds to local exigencies and needs in ways that the universal language of human rights and state development discourse leave unmet and unacknowledged. In the process, civil society actors use rights‐based development frameworks instrumentally as well as normatively to deepen community awareness and participation on the one hand, and to fix the state in its role as duty bearer of health rights, on the other hand. In their engagement with rights, CSO members work to reinforce but also challenge neoliberal modes of health governance.     

‘Benchmarking’ and Participatory Development: The Case of Fiji’s Sugar Industry Reforms

Since the mid‐1970s, opposition has grown within developing countries to the use of ‘top‐down’ development approaches by foreign consultants. Disenchantment with these development strategies, it is often claimed, has led to the current incorporation of participation in consultants’ development practices. This study is concerned with the practice and methods of participatory development planning. It evaluates the Strategic Plan adopted by the Fiji sugar industry in 1997 in response to challenges that are attributed to the pressures of globalization and international competitiveness. The authors assess the external consultant’s self‐proclaimed ‘participatory methods’ in the articulation of these challenges, in the design of restructuring programmes, and in shaping the discourses of reform more generally. The consultant’s use of the fashionable ‘benchmarking’ methodology is seen to be one of the most problematic features of the ‘participatory’ process.     

Individual experience,collective remembrance and the politics of monastic reform in high medieval Flanders

This paper examines why Simon (d. 1148), the chronicler of the abbey of Saint‐Bertin in Flanders, designated all of the remaining evidence for sixty years of the communal past as ‘unmemorable’. An analysis of the chronicler's sources and context of writing reveals that his rejection of these memories was determined both by personal experience and the desire to advocate the legitimacy of the then current reforms. To these factors he subordinated the need to provide his fellow monks with a sense of historical continuity and the opportunity to present a troubled but significant part of the abbey's history.     

‘Time of Troubles’: Arnold J. Toynbee's twentieth century

Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) has long been neglected or discounted by scholars of international relations and historians of international thought. Yet his contributions to International Affairs, as well as his Surveys of international affairs and his A study of history demonstrate both his capacity for acute interpretation of contemporary events and the depth of his learning about past international societies. This article examines his analysis of mid‐twentieth century international relations, that ‘Time of Troubles’ which he believed would only be escaped through a recovery of ‘creativity’ and profound change in the ways in which world politics were practised. It explores the foundations of his approach to the field, demonstrated both in his Surveys of international affairs and his twelve volume magnum opus, A study of history, as well as his essays in journals. It analyses his diagnosis of the causes of our contemporary ‘Time of Troubles’, in the light of past episodes in world history Toynbee thought analogous to that present condition of international relations. And it traces his retreat from political solutions to the challenges faced in the twentieth century and his movement towards religious responses as a putative alternative. It concludes by arguing that Toynbee deserves recognition, not simply as a pioneering world historian or a controversial interpreter of the politics of the Middle East, but as an acute commentator on the international relations of a troubled age.     

Feminist geography,the ‘everyday’, and local–global relations: hidden spaces of place‐making*

An interest in the taken‐for‐granted, mundane routine activities of women's lives has long been central to the production of knowledge in feminist geography. Here, I revisit the ‘everyday’ in relation to changing lines of inquiry as geographers work to capture the complexity of local–global relations in conceptualising an accelerated pace of the stretching of social relations over space. Through a primary focus on feminist work on care in the home, I explore the various ways in which the meanings and organisation of caregiving activity are intricately connected with the intertwining of globalisation, neoliberalism, social conservatism and a ‘greying’ population in the West. Foregrounding gender in my discussion, I review literature and draw on research examples to illustrate ways in which various types of ‘hidden’ caregiving contribute to contemporary place‐making, and open up our understanding of the ‘local’.     

Seeing into hearts and minds: Part 2. ‘Big data’, algorithms,and computational counterinsurgency

In this second of his two‐part article, the author analyzes the rise of ‘predictive policing’ and its Pentagon connections, reviews two programmes, and poses these in the context of scientists' concerns over artificial intelligence and long‐term human survival.     

Seeing into hearts and minds: Part 1. The Pentagon's quest for a ‘social radar’ (Respond to this article at https://www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-today/debate)

In this two‐part article, explored are the many funded programmes by which security agencies and private companies mine ‘big data’ and attempt to measure the sociocultural and psychological states of whole populations. How is failure or success measured? What kinds of new institutions/practices might these give rise to? Part 1 ‘The Pentagon's quest for a “social radar”’, published in this issue, comes to terms with today's many sociocultural modelling and forecasting efforts, looks in detail at one company in particular, and ends up reviewing the role of anthropologists in their development and critique. Part 2 ‘“Big data”, algorithms, and computational counterinsurgency’, to be published in a future issue, will analyze the rise of ‘predictive policing’ and its Pentagon connections, reviews two programmes, and poses these in the context of scientists' concerns over artificial intelligence and long‐term human survival.     

Modern ideology and the creation of ancient town planning

This paper examines the historiography of ancient town planning and the Roman city, with particular attention to its origin in the town planning debate of the early twentieth century. It questions the existing dichotomies, ‘civilised'/'uncivilised’, ‘classical'/'barbarian’, ‘urban'/'proto‐urban’, that have characterised this history. Finally, the paper examines the effect of the separation of the academic disciplines of classics and archaeology in Britain upon the history of ancient urbanism.     

‘Narratives of Survival in the Post-Colonial North’

Scholars have recently paid more attention to narratives of colonial contact in Australia, as elsewhere (cf. Hill 1988). Western elements and characters (such as Captain Cook) have been widely documented in Australian Aboriginal narratives which nevertheless are clearly not close accounts of past events. This has promoted reconsideration of the distinction between ‘myth’ and ‘history‘. If we follow Turner's (1988) suggestion that myth is the formulation of ‘essential’ properties of social experience in terms of ‘generic events‘, while ‘history’ is concerned with the level of ‘particular relations among particular events’, we need not restrict ourselves to seeing myth as charter for a social order distinct from western influence. In the paper I examine two stories of cultural and physical survival from the Katherine area, Northern Territory, and seek to identify in them fundamental themes and enduring narrative precipitates of social experience lived in intense awareness of colonial and post-colonial relationships between Aborigines and whites.     

‘Constructing’ Ethical Mineral Supply Chains in Sub‐Saharan Africa: The Case of Malawian Fair Trade Rubies

Over the past decade, sales of Fair Trade agro‐products have risen sharply, fuelled by innovative marketing campaigns that use imagery to ‘connect’ Western consumers to impoverished farmers in developing countries. The success of Fair Trade has led to speculation over whether its portfolio could be broadened to include non‐agricultural products, a debate which, in recent years, has focused heavily on the precious minerals and stones being extracted by impoverished artisans. A lack of policy oversight, however, has resulted in Fair Trade being interpreted very differently in this context. In the absence of certified, internationally‐recognized guidelines for the implementation of Fair Trade mineral schemes, designers have drawn inspiration from a global mining development agenda that has become preoccupied with anti‐corruption and traceability. This article draws on the case of Malawi's Nyala^TM ruby, described as a ‘Fair Trade Gem’ by its supplier, to illustrate how ethical mineral programmes are potentially being misbranded as Fair Trade. Although the scheme delivering Nyala^TM ruby to markets is supplying a traceable commodity, in the process helping to alleviate consumers’ concerns about conflict minerals, it seems to be providing very little benefit to poor producers — the primary objective of Fair Trade.     

NRM Regions in Australia: the ‘Haves’ and the ‘Have Nots’

This paper identifies external factors affecting the capacity of Australia's now‐formalised 56 regional natural resource management (NRM) bodies and their community‐based Boards to meet planning and management responsibilities. It demonstrates that little is known about the basic capacity‐related characteristics of NRM regions, despite the lengthy and elaborate process of regionalism that Australia has embarked upon, with its associated and substantial devolution of responsibilities and resources. A suite of indicators is used to develop an ‘exploratory’ capacity typology of NRM regions. The ten regional ‘types’ identified are found to attract varying budget allocations under the Natural Heritage Trust Extension and National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality. There are indications that State and regional interests within and outside NRM can significantly influence the distribution of resources. An examination of resources allocated to capacity‐building activities shows significant differences between regions in the scale of resources allocated (0–96% of total budget). The paper argues the case for intervention to reduce the gap between ‘have’ and ‘have not’ regions, and for further exploration of disparities in the allocation of resources to capacity‐building activities. Clarification is needed of the extent to which capacity‐building activities adequately target regional NRM bodies and their Boards.     

‘Working for’ and ‘Working’ among Western Arrernte in Central Australia1

This article discusses some conflicts between kin‐ and market‐based society as they are reflected in the lives of Western Arrernte in and around Ntaria (Hermannsburg). Both political economy and cultural analysis provide accounts of concomitant ‘problems about work’ and training initiatives in remote communities. Neither brings together, however, the issues of economic marginalisation and a history of cultural difference with its own transformations. This discussion takes its departure from the Arrernte's attempts to reconcile kinship service (‘working for’) and paid employment (‘working’) in everyday practice. It demonstrates that this attempt is part of broader change concerning the ways in which hunter‐gatherer people in Australia have been compelled to adapt to a world of cash and commodities, and waged employment. In this discussion, the focus is on remote indigenous Australians today.     

Thinking ‘differently’ about a feminist critical geography of development

This paper makes a case for grounding the global in feminist, anti‐racist, and post‐colonial scholarship in order to foreground questions of race, colonialism, and history in critical geographies of development. I argue that the process of ‘doing development’ involves the imposition of power; hence, geographers' critical engagements with development need to consider the intersectionality of gender, race, and ethnicity that comprises identities of the subjects of development and of those who ‘do development’. This consideration would entail questioning the homogeneity of ‘Third World women’ as a singular category in need of development and recognising the normativity of women from the global North who, so far, have been the ‘doers’ or the key actors in global interventions.     

The age of the manager is over? Shale gas fracking and the challenge to the post-political regime for English planning

Planning systems developed through the period of ‘normative’, ‘third way’ neoliberalism were critiqued as being ‘post-political’. Planning systems were developed that bypassed political conflicts through technocratic and consensus-seeking approaches following a so-called ‘end of history’ in which left/right ideological conflicts were deemed settled. Following the North Atlantic financial crisis of 2007/8 though, scholars have begun to question whether this is a suitable critique of planning, and state institutions more generally, as political and economic conditions shift. This paper examines a case of an exemplar post-political planning system: England. The paper identifies three key logics of a ‘post-political regime’ for planning: techno-managerialism, consensus and participation. Through an analysis of texts and interviews of contested planning decisions made over shale gas fracking sites, this paper shows a ‘post-political regime’ for planning facing a crisis of legitimacy as it is challenged by an anti-fracking movement and reactionary interventions from central government. The paper provides an institutional level analysis of the crisis of post-political planning, which has lost legitimacy amidst the slow collapse of normative neoliberalism.     

Diapraxis rules OK

Social‐cultural anthropologists' well established tradition of studying conflict resolution has hitherto had only limited application in practical programmes for intercultural ‘mediation’ on a large scale. This guest editorial suggests how the new concept of ‘diapraxis’, a practical replacement for ‘dialogue’, might stimulate a more systematic engagement from anthropologists. Some examples of diapraxis relating to the Islamic world are summarized, as described in a recent issue of Swiss government journal Politorbis.     

British Muslims,multiculturalism and UK foreign policy: ‘integration’ and ‘cohesion’ in and beyond the state

After the 7 July and 21 July 2005 attacks on London the government‐sponsored effort to ‘prevent extremism together’ has repeatedly acknowledged the central role of anger at UK foreign policy in the radicalization of some British Muslims. This acknowledgement has been incorporated into a ‘comprehensive framework for action’ centring upon the need for increased ‘integration’ and an effort, critically, to re‐work British multiculturalism as a means to combat terrorism. Examining the history of multiculturalism in Britain and the tradition of living and acting ‘together’ that it suggests, however, raises a set of questions about the society into which integration is supposed to occur, what integration might involve and its real efficacy for combating terrorists. In addressing these issues, this article suggests that the debate over contemporary multiculturalism should be situated within a much wider social and political crisis over the meaning of ‘community’ in the UK, to which questions of global order and foreign policy are central. Comparing the ‘ethical’ basis of Al‐Qaeda's attacks with Tony Blair's invocation of ‘values’ as the foundation for military intervention reveals that both seek to realize models of community through violence and a shared process of ‘radicalization’ which in both cases precedes 9/11 and which might be traced back to the Gulf War of 1991. The article concludes that debate over the future of multiculturalism in the UK is being conducted alongside and is implicated within a second, violent global conflict over community: one which is central to, but essentially unarticulated within the domestic context.     

‘If You Can't Pronounce My Name,You Can Just Call Me Pride’: Afro‐German Activism,Gender and Hip Hop

The history of the black German minority, now estimated at around 500,000, goes back several centuries. It is only since the twentieth century, however, that Germans of African descent have been perceived as a group. This did not lead to their recognition as a national minority, but rather, from the 1910s to the 1960s, they were defined as a collective threat to Germany's racial and cultural ‘purity’. When a sense of identity emerged among Afro‐Germans themselves in the 1980s, the majority population continued to deny the existence of ethnic diversity within German society. At the turn of the twenty‐first century, Afro‐Germans seemingly suddenly appeared as a new, ‘hip’ minority. This appearance was largely focused on the immense public success of the Hip Hop collective ‘Brothers Keepers’, conceived as an anti‐racist, explicitly Afro‐German intervention into German debates around national identity and racist violence. This article explains the success of ‘Brothers Keepers’ by contextualising it within the tradition of two decades of Afro‐ German feminist activism and the transnational Hip Hop movement of European youth of colour.     

‘Proportioning violence’: Ethnographic notes on the contingencies of police reform in Turkey

In spite of years of efforts in Turkey to reform the police, including an increase in budget allocations for ‘democratic policing training’, ‘capacity building programmes’ and ‘non‐lethal technologies and tools’, police violence persists. How might we conceptualize the relationship between the upsurge of police violence and such investments? In this article, the author suggests that instead of taking ‘reform’ or ‘transformation’ discourses at face value, we look at some of the ways in which police violence is reformatted through the very tools, discourses and idioms of police reform itself. The article draws on 18 months of fieldwork research on police and security in Turkey, where the author observed the on‐site implementation of police reforms in several venues: police academy classes, practical training programmes that also involved ‘international’ security experts, and local police stations and neighbourhoods. The article examines how the processes of reforming expand the contours of not only policing practice but also the boundaries of police violence – ostensibly what these reforms were supposed to restrain.     

A Political History of Nagriamel on Santo,Vanuatu

ABSTRACT This article relates the political history of the Nagriamel movement on Santo, Vanuatu, and tries to account for its traditionalist excesses by reference to biographical aspects of its charismatic leader Jimmy Stevens. Stevens was the main architect in the unification of the ‘dak bus pipol’ (communities living in the island's remote interior) under a form of custom (kastom) he himself partially devised. This review of the life of this unusual character, who started as a ‘boy’ serving his colonial masters and became an ‘island king’, a self‐proclaimed ‘Prince’ of ‘Santo Custom’, and of the way he exploited the nativist assertions of his indigenous supporters, will also provide an opportunity to take a fresh look at the troubled period surrounding Independence in the Republic of Vanuatu.