Sport as politics and history: the 25th SEA Games in Laos (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Like the recent World Cup in South Africa and the Beijing 2008 Olympics, December 2009's Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in Laos were embraced by the state as evidence of national achievement and progress. Yet, just like these much larger global sporting events, a range of controversies threatened to turn the pride of the Games into embarrassment. Of particular concern was the fact that, despite significantly reducing the size of the Games, Laos — one of the smallest and poorest countries in Southeast Asia — depended greatly on foreign help to conduct them, especially from China. The ultimate success of the SEA Games in Laos reinforced the power of sport to consolidate nationalism, despite the paradox in Laos of nationalism emerging from a complex mix of autonomy and dependence.     

From revolutionary heroism to cultural heritage: museums,memory and representation in Laos

ABSTRACT. Museum exhibitions in Laos represent two main strands of Lao national identity discourse. First, they glorify the ‘liberation struggle’ of the so‐called ‘Lao multiethnic people’ under the leadership of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, and therefore serve as important ideological tools for the current regime's self‐legitimisation. Second, they display the history and cultural heritage of the Lao nation, providing the postcolonial state with a narrative of historical continuity and civilisation that is focused mostly on the dominant ethnic Lao culture. This article explores the contradictions within official images of the Lao nation‐state and how these opposing strands of national identity compete or interact. Museums as key arenas of ideological tensions constitute illuminating fields of research on discourses of national identity in Laos.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 30, Number 1. February 2014

Front and back cover caption, volume 30 issue 1 Front cover POO WARS Mandisa Feni of Site C, Khayelitsha sits on a portable toilet on the steps the provincial legislature. She is one of the many poo protesters who, in June 2013, dragged containers of human waste from the shanty towns on the urban margins to the provincial legislature in Cape Town's city centre. By collecting this shit from the urban periphery and dumping it at the centre of provincial political power, the protesters powerfully enacted their refusal to accept the portable toilets that the authorities had provided for people living in these informal settlements. Rather than accepting what they regarded as second‐class ‘portaloos’ for second‐class citizens, they demanded modern, permanent, porcelain toilets, just like those in middle class homes in Cape Town. Similar to the case of the Great Stink of London of 1858, the politically powerful could not ignore the stench aroound Parliament. In his editorial in this issue, Steven Robins argues that a lack of in‐house, ‘modern’ toilets in shanty towns continues to plague its inhabitants, who have taken to imaginative protest in various ways. His study on the politics of shit in Cape Town represents a form of public anthropology on a largely private activity. This politics of human waste is not popular in the mainstream media and is considered to be irrational and unruly by the wider public. But, as developments in Cape Town show, when human waste becomes matter out of place, it can also become a potent substance when deployed in popular protest. Back cover FACE VALUES Villagers in Kanga, northern Mafia Island, Tanzania, watch a screening of part of the BBC/RAI series Face values (1978) in 1985. The film (at that time on a reel‐to‐reel system) was projected onto the white‐washed wall of the village dispensary. Prince Charles, shown here on screen, was Patron of the RAI at the time and had studied anthropology at Cambridge. He encouraged the making of this series and acted as the interviewer of the five anthropologists involved. It was argued by the RAI that the presence of royalty would ensure a large TV audience for the series in the UK, and indeed, this seemed to be the case judging by the BBC's audience figures. However, the series was much criticized both by the newsprint media critics and by anthropologists. In this issue, in the second part of her article, Pat Caplan considers why the making of ‘educational’ material for a mass audience about people and societies in other parts of the world is problematic and probably rather unlikely to achieve the aims set out by the Prince: ‘If more people could have the advantage of information and knowledge about other people's behaviour, customs, religion and so forth, then perhaps some of the prejudice against immigrants in UK could be slowly reduced’. It also considers how local people have viewed this film material and how and why their reactions have changed over time.     

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 30, Number 4. August 2014

Front and back cover caption, volume 30 issue 4 Front cover WORLD CUP 2014 AND THE MILITARIZATION OF FAVELAS On the day of the World Cup final, Pamela, a member of the Occupy Alemão (Ocupa Alemão) collective, paints banners for a protest in Saens Peña square, less than a mile from where Argentina lost to Germany in Maracanã Stadium. In the run‐up to the two mega‐events – the World Cup 2014 and the Olympic Games 2016 – the Brazilian government has taken unprecedented security measures that effectively militarized and locked down the favelas. Widespread protest movements erupted that drew media attention to the disproportionate government expenditures on these spectacles, the corruption and their undesirable impact on the poor and the marginalized. ‘The party in the stadium isn't worth the tears in the favela’: mega‐events such as these do not have the same impact in every host society. In this issue, Charlotte Livingstone narrates the ups and downs during her fieldwork in the favelas. Back cover ROTATING CREDIT ASSOCIATIONS: DO WE NEED BANKS? The back cover photo shows women in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, engaged in an arisan, a rotating credit association, in 1983. When Ann Dunham, Barack Obama's mother, arrived in Jakarta in 1967 with the aim of researching microfinance in Indonesia, it was one of the local arisan she immediately joined. One woman is paying in while another keeps the records. Based on a lottery, each member receives a payout in turn. Arisan enable cash flow control and perform the savings and loan functions we tend to associate with banks and building societies, facilitating the purchase of almost anything ranging from a house, a motorbike to small items. The system is based on trust, where its members need to commit themselves to paying in until the last members have drawn their capital. Arisan serve many other roles too, and may be held purely for social reasons, facilitating regular meeting among family members, neighbours, housemates or workmates. Children participate in arisan early, learning how to collaborate harmoniously (gotong rojong) for small necessities such as pens and stationery. Anthropologists have long understood banks as institutions embedded within social relations. In this issue, Shirley Ardener addresses Archbishop Welby's call for the Anglican Church to outcompete payday loan companies charging excessive rates of interest at this time of austere family finances. She reminds us that anthropologists have long studied vernacular small‐scale banking systems embedded in the communities they study. Based on mutual trust, rates of interest here, if charged at all, are never as excessive as today's payday loan companies, which may exceed 5,000 per cent per annum.     

Feigning the market: Funding anthropology in England (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Impending changes to the funding of tertiary education in England (and, less directly, throughout the United Kingdom) pose particular challenges to small disciplines, like anthropology. From the perspective of students, potentially facing thirty years repaying educational debt, the new dispensation looks like ‘marketization’, with degrees conceived as private goods to be paid for at a rate that covers the costs of their provision. From the perspective of the universities, however, the same changes come with new layers of obligation, audit, assessment and regulation. The mismatch between students’ expectations and universities’ capacities is only likely to widen. These changes in undergraduate funding will take place concurrently with a reduction in all the other streams of government funding on which anthropology departments rely for the research of their staff and research students. Career paths in anthropology, involving progression through undergraduate and taught postgraduate studies, to postgraduate research and eventually a position in the academy, will become prohibitively expensive for all but a very few students. Departments of anthropology will be forced (by the logic of the new system and by their own universities) into exploiting their sources of comparative advantage; but the UK discipline as a whole will be the likely casualty of such behaviour if an already slender institutional presence is eroded further.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 32, Number 1. February 2016

Front and back cover caption, volume 32 issue 1 Front cover Greece‐German relations The Prussian goose‐step survives in Greek official ceremonies as part of the ‘traditional’ display by the famed Evzones, or presidential guards – a relic of the German‐derived monarchy and its militaristic traditions. It is combined here with a male costume popular in the European parts of the Ottoman Empire, especially among Albanians and Greeks, and nowadays associated in popular imagination with the Greek War of Independence (1821–1833). German cultural influence still lingers in Greece, most visibly in the remnants of 19th‐century neoclassical architecture in Athens and other cities. The brutal Nazi occupation of Greece and Germany's role in Greece's current economic turmoil together represent another side of a tormented historical relationship between the two countries and their peoples. In an essay of which Part I appears in this issue, Michael Herzfeld argues that the mutual stereotyping by Greeks and Germans – a habit deeply rooted in these complex interactions – has become a major cause of Greece's difficulties, perpetuating its ‘crypto‐colonial’ status within the European Union. He suggests that the only possibility for escaping this destructive downward spiral is through a determined attempt to stop the stereotyping, and argues that anthropology could play an important role in that reversal of accumulated hurt and mutual distrust. Back cover FOOD POVERTY IN THE UK If, as Lévi‐Strauss suggested, food is bon à penser, how can an anthropologist interpret a lack of food in a highly developed society? Can an anthropological lens illuminate either the recent rise in food insecurity in the UK or the exponential growth of food banks? In this issue, Pat Caplan reflects on her current fieldwork on these topics in north London and west Wales. She focuses particularly on food banks, making use of interviews and participant observation with clients, trustees and volunteers, as well as local and national media reports. The author poses a series of questions: firstly, she considers who needs food aid and why, which involves a consideration of insecure employment and low wages, as well as changes to the benefit regime which have adversely impacted on food bank clients. Secondly, she discusses who provides food aid and how, by considering those giving to and running food banks and other types of organization, including their motivations for getting involved. Thirdly, she asks what kind of solution food aid offers to an apparently growing problem. Does this form of charity merely depoliticize the arguments? Finally and most importantly, she asks what this tells us about the society in which we live, about the state and its policies and the public discourse around such issues. She notes that there are many well‐honed anthropological concepts which can be brought to bear on these issues, including gifting and reciprocity, shame and stigma, entitlements and blame. Finally, a consideration of voluntarism raises important questions about rights and entitlement, including the state's compliance with the international covenants to which it has signed up.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 34, Number 2. April 2018

Cover caption, volume 34 issue 2 Front Cover: School shootings Student lie‐in at the White House to protest gun laws, 19 February 2018. The demonstration was organized by Teens For Gun Reform, an organization created by students in the Washington, DC area in the wake of the 14 February shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Earlier on the day of the shooting, the priest at the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe mused during the Ash Wednesday ritual whether valentine hearts and bouquets of red roses could coexist with ashes on foreheads and reminders of human mortality. Could love and death be partners? As the congregation exited the church, mobiles rang with news of yet another school shooting and the deaths of 14 high school students and three teachers trapped inside an elite high school in suburban Florida. The gunman was a high school reject and white supremacist. It was the 292nd school shooting in America since Sandy Hook, the tiny tot massacre of 2013. Yet America's presidents and political leaders across the political divide remain hostage to the National Rifle Association's mantra: more automatic rifles equals more security, now including in US schools. State laws prevail over executive orders. Currently 14 states in the US arm teachers and 16 states allow local school boards to decide whether to do so. But one thing has changed as the survivors of the school massacres and their young followers have taken the reins. Beginning on 14 March, thousands of students from elementary and high schools have begun to march out of their classrooms. A new and powerful civil rights movement is spreading across the nation. Meanwhile Trump and his education secretary are proposing to target poor, black and Latino students, to undo President Obama's policies that protected male minority students from disproportionately harsh ‘zero tolerance’ school policies. In this issue, Scheper‐Hughes considers school shooting antecedents, beginning with the misfired Clinton campaign against youth violence. Back Cover: ESTHER GOODY (1932–2018) Esther Goody during fieldwork in Ghana, 1957. Esther Goody was a member of one of the most famous husband‐and‐wife teams in anthropology. She devoted her working life to the study of northern Ghana's peoples and to synthesizing social anthropology and social psychology.     

Planned Resettlement,Unexpected Migrations and Cultural Trauma in Laos

Though not officially considered a ‘policy’ by the Lao government, resettlement of ethnic minorities has become a central feature of the rural development strategy in Laos. Over the past ten years, a majority of highland villages have been resettled downhill, and the local administrations are planning to move the remaining villages in the coming years. This article draws on a national survey about resettlement in Laos, commissioned by UNESCO and financed by UNDP, that was undertaken by the authors. It focuses on the consequences of these huge shifts of population and on the social and cultural dynamics that underlie them. It shows that the planned resettlements, which are intended to promote the ‘settling’ of the highland populations by enforcing the ban on slash‐and‐burn agriculture and opium growing, actually cause increased and diversified rural mobility. This in turn complicates the implementation of the rural development policy and the political management of interethnic relationships. In other words, the ‘settling’ process promoted by the State, because of its broad and often tragic social consequences, can paradoxically generate unplanned or unexpected further migrations, which could be called ‘resettlement‐induced forms of mobility’     

Protest Cycle,Political Violence and Social Movements in the Basque Country

A close look at the groups, organisations and social movements among which a terrorist organisation seeks refuge and support, will provide a fundamental and strategic view of its evolution. By means of the concept of a protest cycle, I analyse the relationship between political violence and social movements in the Basque Country. With the help of Tarrow's fundamental variables in the political structure, to which I have added the degree of consciousness‐raising and mobilisation in civil society, I aim to study the protest cycle of ETA's violence from its social origins at the start of the 1960s, through its consolidation in the 1970s, to its decline from the mid‐1980s onwards. The idea I will defend is that political violence should be seen as a form of collective action directed towards a mobilisation of society, and that its vicissitudes depend on the structure of interactions set up between the armed organisation, social movements and civil society.     

KOSELLECK,ARENDT, AND THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE

This essay is the first attempt to compare Reinhart Koselleck's Historik with Hannah Arendt's political anthropology and her critique of the modern concept of history. Koselleck is well‐known for his work on conceptual history as well as for his theory of historical time(s). It is my contention that these different projects are bound together by Koselleck's Historik, that is, his theory of possible histories. This can be shown through an examination of his writings from Critique and Crisis to his final essays on historical anthropology, most of which have not yet been translated into English. Conversely, Arendt's political theory has in recent years been the subject of numerous interpretations that do not take into account her views about history. By comparing the anthropological categories found in Koselleck's Historik with Arendt's political anthropology, I identify similar intellectual lineages in them (Heidegger, Löwith, Schmitt) as well as shared political sentiments, in particular the anti‐totalitarian impulse of the postwar era. More importantly, Koselleck's theory of the preconditions of possible histories and Arendt's theory of the preconditions of the political, I argue, transcend these lineages and sentiments by providing essential categories for the analysis of historical experience.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 35, Number 3. June 2019

Front and back cover caption, volume 35 issue 3 Front cover THE RITUAL PROCESS Victor Turner developed van Gennep's concept of liminality, the transitional moment in rites of passage, into an innovative approach to the study of ritual dynamics. He also put the concepts of liminality and communitas to work, so as to understand larger processes of sociopolitical and cultural transformation such as those he was living through in the late 1960s. He was particularly interested in the relation between moments of transition, with their communitarian forms of sociality, and how – paradoxically – they failed to endure, giving rise to new forms of hierarchy. The covers of this special issue present two men jumping across thresholds, signalling its focus on transition. The anticipation and dramatization of transition is a key facet of the routinized ritual life of the Enawenê-nawê, portrayed on the front cover, who live in southern Amazonia, Brazil. While most Enawenê-nawê men are away fishing during the ritual season of Yankwa, hosts anticipate their return by performing a daily spectacle, ending with dramatic jumps into the flute house. During this time of mounting expectation, hosts adorn their bodies with particular care and their rousing performances cater to women and children who watch the spectacle from the dwellings that surround the open central arena. While circling the arena to elicit the fishermen's long-awaited return, the hosts play chaotic and ludic flutes – known as ‘pets’ to the civilized melodic flutes – and take on their character. In this issue, Chloe Nahum-Claudel argues that the Enawenê-nawê have achieved permanent communitas – an egalitarian social structure – by living in a permanent state of transition. Back cover THE OLYMPIAN'S THREE BODIES Competitive sporting events have historically been a prime site of ritual. Indeed, many argue that sport itself is ritualistic in nature. The history of the Olympic Games demonstrates the complex way in which ritual relates to society and to the polity. The lighting of the Olympic flame and the Olympic torch relay are rituals that have been central to the Olympic Games since 1928 and 1936 respectively. Chinese gymnast Li Ning after running, suspended by wires, around the upper rim of the Bird's Nest National Stadium and flying up to light the cauldron with the Olympic flame, the apical act of the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony on 8 August 2008. As an individual body, Li won three gold, two silver and one bronze medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, nearly 20 per cent of those attained by the national body of China as it re-entered the Summer Games after a 32-year absence. By 2008, Li was a national icon as well for his economic success under ‘reform and opening up’. Now heroic ritual custodianship of the Olympics' most sacred symbol of common humanity was added to his Olympian's status as a human body. Dramatic demonstration of the potential compatibility of Individuality, Nationality and Humanity is at the heart of Olympic ideology and ritual practice and the global attention paid to them. In this issue, John J. MacAloon analyzes the familiar Olympic victory ceremony and its infrequent alterations, such as the reversal in 2002 from gold-silver-bronze to the bronze-silver-gold medal presentation sequencing we know today.     

Politics and the London 2012 Olympics: the (in)security Games

This article traces the emergence of security at the Olympic Games as a key concern of host governments and of the Olympic movement and analyses the implications of this heightened concern for the delivery of the Games, the local host community and for national security policy. It is argued that the Olympic Games, as a high profile media event, provide an increasingly attractive political opportunity structure for a range of political actors—an attraction that is intensified when the Games are held in a world city such as London. Since the 9/11 attacks in New York there has been a sharp increase in security expenditure for the Olympic Games, arguably significantly out of proportion to the likely risk. The cost of security has risen from approximately $108 million in 1996 (Atlanta) to an estimated $1.99 billion in 2012 (London). It is argued that the period since 2001 has been characterized by hyper‐insecurity and a culture of intense risk aversion based not on probability but on the possibility of attack. Among the consequences of this development is a desensitization of host nations to the increased securitization of their cities. It is also argued that the impact on the local UK host community of Newham will be significant not only as a result of the intense level of policing, but also owing to the redevelopment associated with the Games and the use of the surveillance infrastructure to create a virtual gated community in the post‐Games athletes' village. The article concludes by discussing some of the longer‐term implications of the increased securitization of the Olympic Games, including the normalization of intense surveillance, the further encroachment on civil liberties and the growing tension between the values espoused by the Olympic movement and the reality of a successful delivery of the Games.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 29, Number 6. December 2013

Front and back cover caption, volume 29 issue 6 Front cover PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY A satirical political activist known as ‘Ivy League Legacy’ strides across the Great Lawn of New York City's Central Park carrying a ‘Corporations are people too!’ placard, on her way to a ‘Billionaire Croquet Party’. Spending the day on satirical protests with companions such as Phil T. Rich and Iona Bigga Yacht, she would eventually join up with hundreds of thousands of other protesters in a massive march through Manhattan. Ivy League Legacy and fellow satirical protesters – attired in tuxedos and top hats or elegant gowns, tiaras, and satin gloves – waved signs such as ‘Leave no billionaire behind!’. They are part of a national network of satirical street theater protesters who call themselves Billionaires—Billionaires for Bush in 2004, Billionaires for Bailouts during the 2008 financial meltdown, and so on. These ‘billionaires’ aim to disrupt dominant discursive frames by deploying irony and satire. As they simultaneously mimic and mock the ultra‐rich, they spotlight questions about democracy and economic fairness: they are tricksters who call attention to what is shadowy or hidden, taunting the powerful and exposing power's fault lines and contingencies. In this special issue on public anthropology, Angelique Haugerud and Thomas Hylland Eriksen argue that public anthropologists can learn from the spirit of the trickster. They and the other contributors probe the challenges of reaching wider publics without sacrificing informed critique and ethnographic nuance. Back cover PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY & THE LEGACY OF DICTATORSHIPS Anthropologist Francisco Ferrándiz carries a plastic box with the remains of one of seven peasants executed by one of Franco's military squads in 1941 in the village of Fontanosas, Ciudad Real, Spain, for allegedly cooperating with the maquis anti‐Franco guerrillas. Exhumed in 2006, these were returned to their community that same year. The remains, once analyzed and identified, were taken from a forensic laboratory in the Basque Country to the village's cultural center for a public memorial ceremony before being reinterred in a communal pantheon within the cemetery. Scientists in charge of the exhumation and the ethnographic and historical research had a major role in this ceremony. In the background, three Civil Guards are on duty to protect the authorities at the civic memorial, to which the Church was not invited. During the Civil War up to Franco's death, the Civil Guard had been complicit and were themselves involved in executions at the time. The local lieutenant initially tried to boycott this particular exhumation. Public anthropology has a role to play in addressing the longstanding legacies of cruel dictatorships and to explore avenues for distributing justice. Vigilant and critical academic analysis plays a crucial part in prising open secrecy. In this case, a public anthropologist is involved in all of the following: in news and policy making, writing judicial expert reports, cooperating with NGOs, facilitating a public voice for victims, lending institutional legitimacy to civic memorial acts and physically presenting boxes of the remains of the disappeared to a remote village of 200 citizens. All these activities can be, and often are, the duties of a public anthropologist. In his article in this issue, Francisco Ferrándiz refers to this work as ‘rapid response ethnography’.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 27, Number 6. Decemver 2011

Front and back cover caption, volume 27 issue 6 Front cover ANTHROPOLOGY IN CHINA China has its own anthropology ancestors, revered today well beyond the discipline. In this photograph, former Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress Gu Xiulian and former Finance Minister Xiang Huaicheng jointly unveil a statue built to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Fei Xiaotong, China's most celebrated anthropologist. Official sources declared that the statue was intended to highlight the academic achievements of this nationally celebrated anthropologist. The Wujiang Municipal Party Committee and the Wujiang municipal government also dedicated a ‘Cultural Garden’ to ‘further expand the popularity’ and ‘enhance the influence’ of Kaixiangong village, the village in which Fei did most of his fieldwork. The Culture Garden is made up of an Exhibition Hall of the History and Culture of the Village, built in memory of Fei Xiaotong's sister, Fei Dasheng, and the Fei Xiaotong Museum. The museum explores the anthropologist's extraordinary life, highlighting in particular Fei's 26 visits to Kaixiangong. However, many Kaixiangong residents, and some government officials, were not enamoured of the commemorative statue that was erected on 23 October 2010. In his official standing pose, Fei Xiaotong was deemed ‘too distant’, and unlikely to ‘find repose’. Wu Weishan who had carried out the original official commission (and whose 31‐foot statue of Confucius was inexplicably removed from Tiananmen Square earlier this year), then visited Kaixiangong village and consulted its residents, after which he sculpted free of charge what was generally felt to be a more fitting replacement. The new statue depicts Fei relaxed and smiling in an armchair, echoing the Chinese ‘big‐tummy Maitreya Buddha’. Villagers believe this statue to be a more apt tribute to Fei's memory, and have expressed the hope that it will bring happiness to their village. Back cover BACK TO ‘CIVILIZATION’? Civilization is the name of a successful series of computer games (more than nine million units sold globally: see http://www.civilization.com ). Over the past two decades, the games have become increasingly sophisticated, not only in terms of programming, but also with respect to the background history, sociology and economics. For example, irrigation can increase food production, and granaries enable surpluses to be stored and populations to increase. The moods of the citizens matter too: ‘If a city has more happy citizens than content ones, and no unhappy ones, the city will throw a celebration for the ruler called “We Love the King Day”, and economic benefits ensue.’ Featured civilizations range from the Aztecs to the Zulu. It is not known whether Sid Meier (‘the father of computer gaming’) and his fellow game designers have ever studied anthropology. Even if they had, it is unlikely, as Chris Hann points out in his editorial in this issue, that the concept of civilization would have figured prominently in their curriculum. Civilizational analysis is a lively subfield of sociology and has never really gone away in archaeology, but it largely disappeared from anthropology in the second half of the twentieth century. Hann discusses some of the reasons for this, and lends his support to recent efforts to revive anthropologists’ interest in the concept. For all its variation, Sid Meier's addictive gameplay exemplifies the fiercely competitive, often violent ethos of today's capitalist civilization. The aim of each game is to rule the world in the name of just one civilization. Hann sees affinities with recent popular books engaging with world history, which rely heavily on contemporary readers’ familiarity with IT. The big question is whether ‘killer apps’ (Niall Ferguson) and the rise of silicon intelligence at the expense of carbon (Ian Morris) will eventually eliminate civilizational pluralism.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 33, Number 3. June 2017

Front and back cover caption, volume 33 issue 3 Front cover Donald J. Trump being sworn in as the 45th president of the United States, 20 January 2017. The wealthiest and the oldest US president, Trump has also proved to be the most divisive, picking controversial cabinet members, many of whom, like him, are millionaires or billionaires with no experience of working in the public sector. During early 2017, white nationalists became emboldened by his xenophobic rhetoric. In this issue, four authors pick up on select dimensions marking the Trump presidency, including: post‐truth, the trickster phenomenon, the role of big data in the US elections and Trump's pet project, namely the border wall between Mexico and the US. To what extent is Trump's rise to power indicative of global trends? In what ways have the shortcomings of neoliberalism accelerated these processes? How can anthropologists best position themselves within national environments where authoritarian, misogynistic and xenophobic tendencies are on the rise? Back cover: FOOD WASTE There are increasing levels of food poverty in the UK and ever‐growing numbers of food banks which have become symbolic of the state of the nation. At the same time, there is also rising public concern about food waste or surplus. Although the largest proportion is produced in the home, consumers tend to blame supermarkets, often utilizing a discourse of environmentalism. Such concern has resulted in a number of high‐profile campaigns like the one shown here ‘Love Food, Hate Waste’ by WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) – which is only one of a number targeting both the food industry and consumers. Recently, it has also been suggested that such surplus food should be given to the growing numbers of people in food poverty through charities which supply food to their clients, including (but not only) food banks. The recent introduction of the Food Cloud app in a partnership between FareShare and Tesco has facilitated such a process. Indeed, it is often contended that this is a win‐win situation which neatly solves both problems – too much food being produced and left unsold, and too many people who cannot afford to buy food. In this issue, Pat Caplan points to some of the problems in this apparently tidy solution, drawing on two case studies from her recent research. While those in food poverty receive donated food from the public via food banks or surplus food from companies, they recognize that the acceptance of such food, no matter how good its quality, is stigmatizing – left‐over food for left‐over people. On the other hand, the food industry benefits not only from the additional food purchased by consumers to donate to food banks, but also from the PR which accrues from donating its own surplus to charity. So the win‐win situation does not in the long term solve either the problem of production of surplus or the problem of poverty.     

Haunting the State: Rumours,Spectral Apparitions and the Longing for Buddhist Charisma in Laos

Buddhist ascetic monks and hermits that move largely outside of the institutional structures of the monastic order (sangha) have a long history in mainland Southeast Asia. In Lao Buddhism these figures seem to have largely disappeared, but due to their charismatic qualities they still occupy a crucial position in the social imaginary. This article explores rumours and narratives about the existence of ascetic monks and hermits in contemporary Laos. I argue that rumours about, and narratives of, spectral apparitions of these figures express a longing for Buddhist charisma that is partially rooted in Laos’ revolutionary past, and in recent social and economic changes. As Buddhist charisma can point to alternative, personalised sources of power, I argue that rumours and spectral apparitions can be interpreted as haunting, and therefore afflicting and challenging the current politics of religion of the Lao state.     

“包一头”:1960年代初党对工商业者统战政策的历史考察——以江苏省为例

"包一头"政策是对资改造基本完成后,党对工商业者各项统战政策的通称,是对民族工商业和平改造政策的重要组成部分。三年困难时期,为了调整统战关系,稳定工商界情绪,党宣布"五不变",并提出了"包一头"政策,对缓和同工商业者的紧张关系起了重大作用。在精简中,针对工商界的特殊情况制定一系列照顾政策,采取"不精简,不下放"方针,收到良好效果,发挥了工商业者积极性,为经济调整的顺利完成提供了重要条件。     

Violent memories/memory violence

This review takes up three works that represent recent approaches to the anthropology of memory and affect. Echoing themes in Holocaust literature, a central issue here is the role of violent memory in forging collective identifications and sentiments. Taken together, these volumes suggest a continuing evolution of efforts to theorize the remembrance of violence and the social and bodily practices that mediate its reproduction. In particular, these studies demonstrate the value of ethnography in tracing the social career of violent memory as it is variously projected, suppressed, and transformed in moral communities and across generations.     

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.