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.     

#spanishrevolution (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The article reports on the street protests that took over Spanish cities earlier in May and June. The protests have been explained as a response on the part of new media democratic networks to the governance of the economic crises by corrupt political and financial classes. We offer here a tentative chronology of the events, and essay instead an argument about a revitalised municipalist tradition, that sees in the plaza the centrepiece of new forms of do‐it‐yourself political action.     

Credit unions and money clubs (ROSCAs) (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article responds to the Archbishop of Canterbury's high profile endorsements of credit unions and his strong stance against so‐called payday loan companies charging high rates of interest. His views have received wide press coverage along with responses by payday loan companies. This article looks at research on Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCA) which flourish in communities frequented by anthropologists worldwide to meet the financial needs of participants. Unlike credit unions, most ROSCAs do not charge interest.     

Khat: Chewing on a bitter controversy (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

When the slender green succulent leaves of the khat tree are chewed, a mild natural amphetamine called cathinone is gradually released, and absorbed into the bloodstream through the mouth and cheek tissues. The effects, which last for several hours, include the softening of one's temper, increased gregariousness, and a piqued sexual appetite, while at the same time inhibiting hunger, anxiety, and feelings of fatigue. In the Arabian peninsula and the Horn of Africa, where khat is autochthonous, men have been chewing it recreationally for hundreds of years. Khat chewing has recently burgeoned to a global and pointed controversy, however, featuring in academic ethnopharmacology journals, the official publications of neoliberal development organizations, and worldwide in popular news media outlets. Khat has thus received multitudinous accusations of it being: an obstacle to economic growth; a pernicious narcotic; a positive mediator of political discourse in the public sphere; a public health concern; and a barrier to national development. Of these ambiguous tensions, Klein et al. (2012: 1) say that ‘Khat provides a unique example of a herbal stimulant that is defined as an ordinary vegetable in some countries and a controlled drug in others’, fingering khat as an exemplar of a globally contested object of concern – constituting different political stakes when viewed from distinct situated perspectives – and ready prey for anthropological critique. This essay interrogates some of the divergent formulations that khat has taken across the distinct political arenas that orchestrate the ‘controversy’. Following a Latourian actor‐network approach, I argue against a universal ontology of khat, suggesting instead that khat might be more meaningfully traced and apprehended through the political work it achieves in its various contexts and situated deployments. This critical reading of khat as a ‘thing in movement’ should therefore speak to the anthropology of controversy more broadly.     

Karl Marx: Anthropologist (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Marx was not only a philosopher, but he was very much and anthropologist of his day. Here, the author describes Marx's work in terms of four key concepts, namely, nature, society, history and science, and considers how anthropologists at the time influenced Marx in his thinking.     

Three reflections on public anthropology (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Clarifying the difference between engaged and public anthropology rests on the collaborative, confrontational, and transformative orientation of the former and the messaging concerns of the latter. Both are strengthened by a solid foundation in key theoretical concepts that distinguish the discipline's fundamental ways of knowing from other forms of social inquiry and engagement, like journalism and activism. These concepts include empiricism, translation, incommensurability, obligation, critique, subjectivity, circulation, emergence, rupture, and imagination. I also suggest an exploration of ‘ethnography‐scapes’ that trace the impact of ethnographies on readers, subjects, and most especially the connections among them.     

Gender for the 99 per cent (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article looks at the ways elite actors – men and women – try to reinforce gender inequality in order to justify class inequality. In class societies, elites try to naturalize inequality. They often use race or religion, but they always use gender. Gender buttresses class inequality so well because of the way it is embodied – it brings inequality into the most intimate, treasured and loving parts of our lives.     

Writing development (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Development professionals spend a lot of time writing and the aid industry has a vast production of texts. The author argues here that anthropology of development needs to look anew at how these texts are being produced, circulated and the purposes they serve. I have briefly identified six features of development writing: 1. Institutional ownership, 2. multiple authorship, 3. impersonal style, 4. terminology, 5. Communicable simplifications and 6. temporality. The more general point is to call for a more sophisticated engagement with development texts. There might be more going on in these documents than immediately meets the eye. More than anything else, these texts grant legitimacy and presence to the actors involved in development. Writing development is more about the production process, the language and what it ultimately bring in terms of aid flows, rather than the substance of the text itself.     

Charity plus (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This editorial takes to task a statement on humanitarianism by Valerie Amos, UN Under‐Secretary‐General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, which seems to gloss over issues to do with staff selection and management policies, but especially the work of veteran anthropologists in the field of development and alternative perspectives on humanitarianism.     

Imperative Eurasia (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The end of the Cold War marked the apogee of Western global domination, but this has since come under increasing threat, notably through the rise of China. To preserve the values of European social democracy, it makes more sense to negotiate new rules of political economy with multiple centres of power across Eurasia than to plunge deeper into a free trade zone with North America. Current European institutions are unable to respond to this new challenge; nor are the institutions of sociocultural anthropology in Europe conducive to a balanced, historically informed perspective on the super‐continent, Eurasia.     

Confucius institutes (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Many hundreds Confucius Institutes have mushroomed in higher education centres all over the world. In this comment, Marshall Sahlins continues his analysis of troublesome aspects of these institutions and considers what anthropologists have come up with in terms of research on these so far. He also touches on the Canadian campaign for university teachers to boycott these. James Turk commends Marshall Sahlins for looking into the issue of academic freedom in relation to Confucius Institutes. This is part of a campaign by the Canadian Association of University Teachers to secure academic freedom where universities enter into collaboration with third parties.     

Economic deviance (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Making sense of what went wrong during the recent financial crises requires us to go beyond the conventional view of deviance. We need a more systematic and social view of financial deviance, and have long had the intellectual tools to do so. They include Durkheim and Merton's work, invoked here to pose pertinent questions about the deviant behaviour of corporations and institutions.