Front and Back Covers,Volume 29, Number 4. August 2013

Front and back cover caption, volume 29 issue 4 Front cover Khat to be banned in the UK Yemeni man chewing khat. Khat is a herbal stimulant that has been chewed recreationally in the Arabian peninsula and in East Africa for centuries, but khat has recently become an object of concern in the UK after ‘khat pubs’, popular with Somali, Yemeni, and Ethiopian immigrants, have sprung up across the country. Against the advice of its own Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), the UK government is following countries such as the USA, Canada, and Germany by banning khat. Later this year, the UK will treat khat as a class C drug, making it illegal to supply or possess. This July, the UK home secretary said ‘The decision to bring khat under control is finely balanced and takes into account the expert scientific advice and these broader concerns’. But in response to the government's announcement, Professor David Nutt (chair of the ACMD) retorted, saying ‘Banning khat shows contempt for reason and evidence, disregard for the sincere efforts of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs’, specifically citing khat's ‘relatively low harms’ in his remonstration. In this issue, Ian McGonigle looks at the broader socio‐cultural background of khat in Africa and the Middle East, and analyzes the global khat controversy as a complex anthropological problem entangling development economics, public health management, domestic fears of terrorism, and khat‐mediated democratic formations. Back cover Scapegoating in Burma A 2013 calendar widely on sale inside Burma in the wake of Aung San Suu Kyi's landmark meeting with Barrack Obama in Rangoon, November 2012. Although the military retain majority control in parliament, media laws have been relaxed and limited reforms include a parliamentary role for Aung San Suu Kyi and her party. Major violence erupted in May 2012 against the Rohingya, which was to spread to Muslims more generally by the time the two leaders met. Yet Aung San Suu Kyi remained mostly silent on the issue. Is this ‘hermit state’, the largest country in mainland Southeast Asia, situated at the intersection between Muslim and Buddhist Asia, and a gateway to India and China, succumbing to irrational fears enflamed by the US‐led war on terror? In this issue, Elliott Prasse‐Freeman argues that the Rohingya have become scapegoats for an ill‐defined sense of national identity. True, the Burmese army has also attacked many of the ethnic minorities wishing to retain autonomy, including major offensives against the Kachin and the Shan. But the kind of violence against Muslims is of a different kind. In anticipation of the last free elections in 1960 the army published Dhamma in danger (dhammantaraya) asserting the communist threat to Buddhism, hoping to win the elections. Today, such dangers are projected as coming from Muslim populations interpreted as not rightfully Burmese (the laws require proof of ancestor residence before wholesale immigration began with British conquest in 1823, yet written reference to ‘Rooinga’ occurred as early as 1799). In a country where fears reign, and with a monastic order not hierarchically controlled, many have fallen for this discourse in a way that the country will come to regret. Whither the saffron revolution and Aung San Suu Kyi's revolution of the spirit?     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 29, Number 3. June 2013

Front and back cover caption, volume 29 issue 3 Front cover Oil palm plantations and surplus labour The photo shows old oil palms injected with roundup to kill them prior to replanting – operations that require very little labour. Indonesia already has ten million hectares of oil palm, most of it planted in massive, mono‐cropped, plantations eerily devoid of people, having obliterated the villages, farms and fruit trees that were there before. Market‐wise, oil palm is resilient. Its price goes up together with the price of oil since it can be used as a biofuel. We eat it (cooking oil, margarine, chocolate), bathe with it (soap), and put it on our lips (cosmetics). As food, the potential market in India and China is immense, and as a ‘biofuel’ it fills European Union mandates to replace fossil fuels with ‘renewable energy’ sources. The crop is rapidly blanketing the major islands of the Indonesian archipelago (Sumatra, Kalimantan, Papua), it is expanding in Latin America, and being re‐imported into Africa – its place of origin – as a large scale plantation crop. Resilience in terms of livelihoods is another matter. Corporate oil palm is a land‐gobbling, people‐dispelling machine. The Indonesian government promotes the crop as an engine of poverty reduction, but its focus is corporate profits. It previously obliged corporations to develop 80 percent of their concession area for smallholders, but the number now is reversed: 80 percent of the land can be used by the corporations. They treat smallholders as irritants to be swept out of the way, rather like mosquitoes. Industry promoters claim that one hectare of oil palm generates five jobs, but the actual number is one job per five hectares. The industry isn't highly mechanized, it just doesn't need many workers once the plantations are established. Oil palm is foreclosing options. It uses a lot of water, making it difficult to grow anything else nearby. We don't know what the land will be good for after oil palm, or how climate change will affect it. Committing massively to one crop under these conditions seems like a bad promise – an IOU no‐one should accept. But the risks aren't equally distributed. Most of us encounter palm oil as consumers. As Tania Murray Li argues in her guest editorial in this issue, its livelihood effects way up a river in Kalimantan are out of sight, out of mind. Back cover UNWANTED CHILDLESSNESS A young mother with her children in Bangladesh. Children are the raison d'être for couples in this densely populated country but women in particular. Involuntary childlessness tends to evoke pity but also condemnation and exclusion. What happens to people when no children are born to them? Sjaak van der Geest and Papreen Nahar sketch the social, emotional, and existential consequences of unwanted childlessness. Drawing on ethnographic work in Ghana and Bangladesh and on a British dystopian novel, they describe how childlessness leads to loneliness, sombreness and a sense of uselessness. Inspired by the work of psychologist John Kotre and philosopher Ernst Bloch they proceed to make sense of these experiences by linking them to the issue of continuity / discontinuity and what it is to be human. Life is future‐oriented. Children constitute and personify continuation, also after death. Without children the future is locked. Life is interrupted and loses its meaning. Through anthropological reflection on women's complaints and a novel about a future childless world, the authors search for a more profound understanding of what renewal of life means to human beings.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 29, Number 2. April 2013

Front and back cover caption, volume 29 issue 2 Front cover Fracking and anthropology Detail of a coal seam gas field in southeast Queensland, Australia. Well pads, interspersed approximately every 700 metres, are connected by tracks. The environmental impact of unconventional gas extraction is clearly visible in this image, which shows the typical plurality of connected and potentially hydraulically fractured wells in coal seam gas fields. Supported by visions of energy self‐sufficiency and economic development, global unconventional gas production has increased significantly in the last few years to meet our insatiable demand for energy. However, the rapid incursion of unconventional gas fields into rural agricultural areas and human settlements has given rise to heated discussion and protests, not only in Australia but worldwide due to concerns about the perceived environmental impacts, risks to human health, and the industrialization of landscapes. In this issue, Kim de Rijke provides a preliminary overview of what anthropologists might focus on in the study of ‘fracking’. Back cover Writing development A pile of assorted development documents from international organizations active in Georgia. Development writing is a major activity not only among aid professionals, but also among experts within universities, human rights NGOs or think‐tanks. Some NGOs are financed by Western donors to report on issues such as democratic performance, corruption, domestic violence, conflict management and environmental protection. The material they produce need not have any direct link to particular project interventions, but is nevertheless legitimized through and marked by normative frameworks to facilitate such interventions. The bulk of these texts are circulated within the development community, but in some cases organizations might keep them unpublished as a knowledge‐base to capitalize on. The August 2008 war with Russia brought a number of new aid actors to Georgia and subsequently a massive production of texts covering everything from the causes of the war to the fall‐out, and practicalities concerning, for example, the rehabilitation and resettlement of refugees. Some of the documents that are being produced within development are based on empirical research and could almost pass as formal academic publications. But in general, development writing represents a separate genre with specific rules of engagement for specific audiences. The new anthropology of development is interested in knowledge production going on within the world of international aid which, among other things, can be accessed through texts such as these. In this issue Beppe Karlsson looks at the characteristics of writing in this genre.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 35, Number 5. October 2019

Front and back cover caption, volume 35 issue 5 Front cover This installation was part of the ‘Hurray Menstruation’ protest organized by gender activists during the Sabarimala pilgrimage of 2018–19. This protest was supported by the Kerala government as part of its ‘Renaissance’ campaign against the BJP’ s (Bharatiya Janata Party) provocative assertion of traditional Hindu values. The installation is a condensed symbol in Victor Turner's sense, with many layers of meaning. The major elements are a vulva, alongside an image of the Constitution of India, centrally mediated by a woman blowing a trumpet - an expression of freedom from repressive and oppressive moral values espoused by the dominant middle class. The installation draws attention to oppressive rules in Hindu religiosity and ritual practice that target women as polluting due to biological processes particular to them. By contrast, the installation attributes positive values to these ‘polluting’ processes instead. Back cover THE PARABLE OF THE FOOTBRIDGE A footbridge in the wetlands. Where will it lead? ‘The between’ is a powerful theme in ritual and mythical traditions the world over. However, different traditions will express ‘the between’ in different ways. As described by Paul Stoller in this issue, Sufi traditions hold the bridge as a major symbol for barzakh, a space that links two distinct domains - a place that is between things, a space that separates the known from the unknown, the comprehensible from the incomprehensible, a nebulous space that compels the imagination. The footbridge is the epitome of ‘the between’, of being neither here nor there, of being liminal. On the footbridge, you may not know your front from your back or your past from your present. In this neither space, uncertainty seeps into your being. Where will your steps take you? If you make it to the other side, will things be different? Will you be the same person? The existential crisis of ‘the between’ that one finds on the footbridge can bring disruption, turbulence and stress. Amid this risky and unstable state of ‘negative capability’, the mind is sometimes cleared of clutter as one enters a space of imagination, creativity, innovation and invention. Are contemporary anthropologists ready to risk disruption and invention so we can follow the sinuous path to the anthropological future? If we move forward, what will we find on the other side of the footbridge?     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 34, Number 5. October 2018

Front and back cover caption, volume 34 issue 5 Front cover TRUMP'S ‘ZERO TOLERANCE’ CHILDREN From early April to late June 2018, nearly 2,600 immigrant children – mostly refugees fleeing violence and poverty in Central America – were forcibly taken from their parents at the United States’ southern border following implementation of the Trump administration's ‘zero tolerance’ policy. Prior to being sent to detention facilities located throughout the country, children were held in Border Patrol ‘processing centres’ like this one located in a converted warehouse in McAllen, Texas. The US Department of Homeland Security released photos of the facility, some of which revealed small children huddled on mats, wrapped in Mylar blankets. Following a public outcry and growing protests, President Trump issued an executive order declaring an end to family separations on 20 June. Several days later, a federal court mandated that the government reunite immigrant families affected by the ‘zero tolerance’ policy. Even so, in mid‐August, more than 550 children who had been detained following the implementation of the policy remained in federal custody. Thousands more ‘unaccompanied minors’ – typically teenagers who were caught crossing the border without adults – remain in indefinite detention. The Trump administration's ‘zero tolerance’ policy raises broader questions about how refugees are treated – not only in the US, but in Europe, China, Australia and other parts of the world. At a time when many countries are experiencing resurgent forms of racism and the rise of authoritarian right‐wing politicians, how should anthropologists respond? Back Cover GANESHA in THAILAND For increasing numbers of Thais, the ritual worship of the elephant‐headed god Ganesha is providing new ways for attaining prosperity. Although Ganesha devotion is hardly new to practitioners of Theravada Buddhism, in the past five years, the Northern Thai city of Chiang Mai has experienced a boom in the establishment and patronage of dedicated Ganesha institutions. With the new institutions come Ganesha‐related ritual events, merit‐making and the collective effervescence of festival revelry. At this 2017 Ganesha Chaturthi opening day parade at the Ganesha Museum in Chiang Mai province, devotees tow a giant float through the crowds. Here, sacred Ganesha dons distinctly Indian‐style attire as he lounges in a howdah atop an elephant. Other participants in the parade include teachers and students from three local elementary schools, and women from 11 local village housewives' associations. On the back of recent economic downturns, political and existential crises notwithstanding, what makes this Hindu god become the centre of a new Thai prosperity cult? Ganesha has long been worshipped as the god of new beginnings and the remover of obstacles. He is also associated with the creative arts. But today, Thais are increasingly turning to him for their physical and financial health problems, and new media and spirit mediums contribute to exciting new forms of enchantment. In this issue, Ayuttacorn & Ferguson explore how two Ganesha institutions in Chiang Mai facilitate these processes, and create new kinds of sacred, symbolic packages for spiritual assistance.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 28, Number 5. October 2012

Front and back cover caption, volume 28 issue 5 Front cover THE CRISIS IN MALI. Malian refugees are seen at the Mbera refugee camp in eastern Mauritanian, Mbera, Mauritania, 17 July 2012. At that point, roughly 92,000 refugees had arrived in the camp. Estimates are that nearly half a million Malians have been displaced from their homes this year with many refugees having also fled to Burkina Faso and Niger. Photo taken by award‐winning photographer, Lynsey Addario ( http://www.lynseyaddario.com ). Back cover TOURISM: WORK VS LEISURE A tourist from Hong Kong photographs a young Mursi woman with lip‐plate in her lower lip. Tourists queue up orderly for each to take their turn photographing the wonders of Mursi culture. The image demonstrates the complexity of tourist encounters, and the multifaceted aspects of leisure and work. The Mursi prepare for their visitors well ahead of touring cars arriving at their settlements. They make themselves up and imitate the kinds of working activities (e.g. grinding) they know from experience will fascinate and elicit a response from tourists. Tourists typically ask the Mursi for permission to photograph the process and, occasionally, join in themselves with the Mursi in their ‘work’. In this sense, the Mursi imitate ‘traditional’ sociality as they simulate their own working activities for tourists who supposedly spend their leisure time in Mursiland. As Tamàs Règi argues in this issue, instead of seeing leisure as a fixed human condition within one society, anthropologists might approach it, rather, as a process that evolves at the interface between different societies that meet. In this way, leisure is a constantly developing practice in cross‐cultural encounters.     

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 32, Number 5. October 2016

Front and back cover caption, volume 32 issue 5 Front cover CHÁVEZ'S AFTERLIVES Amid widespread crisis and uncertainty today, political symbols are pivotal in the shaping of political subjectivities. In today's widespread crisis and uncertainty, political symbols, ranging from national flags and monuments to mausoleums and street names, are regaining prominence as objects of public display, debate and contentious activity. Some of these symbols have become strongly associated with the shaping of increasingly polarized political publics across the globe. In this issue, Luis Angosto‐Ferrández examines the intensification of an ongoing struggle over political symbols in contemporary Venezuela, focusing on the figure of Chávez as the epitome of a contested national symbol. At a conjuncture of political readjustments in the country, the fate of Chávez's corpse, currently located in a mausoleum, is at stake, but also the configuration of the institutionally sanctioned symbolic order with which political actors aim to condition political manoeuvring in years to come. The figure of Chávez has been transformed into a ‘master symbol’ with political afterlives. This helps explain the strength of Chávez‐as‐symbol among those who resort to it in support of their political hopes: as Christianity continued without Christ, political Chavismo is said to live on without the flesh and bone Chávez, transubstantiated in his supporters. Does the manipulation of symbols imply a degree of creational (social) power, or do symbols represent and mobilize already existing social groupings? Are symbols exclusively generated and manipulated by elites who use them to control social demands, or are symbolic and material political practices intertwined in a more dialectical way? In exploring these questions we are invited to interrogate the nature, potential and challenges facing contemporary democracies. Back cover Walls, barbed wire, spiked and electric fences as well as CCTV cameras are prominent components of the South African securityscape, especially in middle and upper‐class areas. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in post‐apartheid South Africa, the previous socio‐spatial segregation along racial lines has been replaced by one based on economic inequalities. In this issue, Thomas G. Kirsch discusses the semantics and internal logic of security discourse. The securitization of South Africa has a material, tangible side that endows security concerns with an omnipresence, even if it is not talked about explicitly. Here, the text and photographs combine to illustrate and exemplify why security discourses and practices are proliferating worldwide.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 27, Number 5. October 2011

Front and back cover caption, volume 27 issue 5 Front cover TERRORISM IN NORWAY At the Blue Stone Monument in the centre of Bergen, Norway's second city, a young couple mourns the 77 Norwegians killed by a right‐wing extremist in Oslo and Utøya on 22 July 2011. A cut‐and‐paste manifesto published on the internet and sent to his contacts all over Europe revealed that mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik targeted government buildings in Oslo and the Labour Party youth camp at Utøya in an attempt to instigate a civil war in Europe, aimed at effacing the presence of Muslims in Norway and Europe. As Thomas Hylland Eriksen argues in his editorial in this issue, Norwegian social democrats were a target of Breivik's violent ire because he believed them to have paved the way for a Muslim ‘conquest’ of Europe. Also in this issue, Sindre Bangstad's account of media representations of Muslims in Norway points to a widespread sense among mainstream Norwegian media of a radical incompatibility between so‐called ‘Norwegian values’ and ‘Islamic values’, especially in the field of women's and gay rights. As Norwegians struggle with the aftermath of the terrible events of 22 July, these profoundly problematic exclusionary religious and ethnic categories may face a challenge from the other Norway, a place of compassion and solidarity in suffering. Back cover THE GREEK CRISIS Right, a poster satirically depicts Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou as the IMF's favourite employee. Under increasing pressure from international institutions – especially the IMF and the European Union (of which it is a member) – Greece has been experiencing an upsurge in street clashes between protesters and police, as well as acts of petty crime. At least since 2008, already rampant stereotypes about the Greeks have greedily fed on the images of unbridled violence. Greece was once so crime‐free that the national newspapers reported acts of pickpocketing in Athens; today, such a scenario seems the very stuff of nostalgic dreams. But does the current situation really mean, as the media repeatedly suggest, that Greece has become a violent country? In this issue, Michael Herzfeld – who was first tear gassed and then mugged in Athens in July – argues that such claims are a gross misrepresentation and indeed are part of the problem. Greece – which certainly has acted with financial insouciance in the past – has now become the punchbag for the more generic frustrations of its European partners and of international finance. In the resulting vicious circle, its financial woes threaten to drag the whole European Union into final collapse. Meanwhile, severe austerity measures and rising unemployment have provoked simmering unrest, while competition for jobs feeds anti‐immigrant resentment (especially as Greece has agreed not restrict the onward travel of undocumented migrants, thereby increasing their numbers). In the resultant stereotyping, Greece is treated as a naughty child. Its young people, many of them well‐educated and painfully aware of the corruption that has hitherto protected a privileged few, face a precarious employment environment. Under that pressure, Herzfeld argues, traditional forms of violence and ideas about reciprocal moral obligation now shape the debates that are agitating the country and the world. Anthropologists, he suggests, can help correct the often misleading media representations of what is happening and why.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 39, Number 5. October 2023

Front and back cover caption, volume 39 issue 5 IBN KHALDUN AND RE-TRIBALIZATION A bust of Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), at the entrance of the Kasbah of Bejaia, Algeria. As you gaze upon this scholar, who first delved into the cyclical dynamics of tribes and civilizations, you are not just looking at history — you are looking at a mirror reflecting our modern world. Khaldun's pioneering insights into tribal cohesion (asabiyyah) and its impact on societal rise and fall are not relics of the past; they are prophetic echoes reverberating in today's global landscape. In an increasingly interconnected yet paradoxically fragmented world, the concept of ‘tribalism’ is making a surprising comeback. No longer confined to anthropology textbooks or remote communities, tribalism resurfaces in our political dialogues, social affiliations, and even international relations. But this is not your grandfather's tribalism; it is ‘re-tribalization’, a modern reimagining of ancient affiliations and loyalties shaping nations and rewriting global equations. In this issue, the first of a two-part article by Ahmed et al., ‘Re-tribalization in the 21st century’, peels back the layers of this complex phenomenon. It challenges the conventional wisdom that pits ‘tribalism’ against ‘civilization’, revealing instead a dynamic interplay that influences everything from state governance to globalization. Whether it is the UK Brexit vote, the rise of ethnonationalism in various countries or the enduring conflicts in the Middle East, the fingerprints of tribalism — and its modern avatar, re-tribalization — are unmistakably present. As we navigate the complexities of a world that is both a ‘global village’ and a patchwork of evolving tribal identities, the concept of re-tribalization serves as an analytical lens. This resurgence of tribal affiliations is a complex adaptation to the challenges and opportunities of a globalized world. The ancient codes of tribalism are being reinterpreted in the context of modern geopolitics and digital communication. While the old and the new may seem to be in tension, they are part of a complex dynamic that requires scrutiny. The ancient and the modern coexist in a world as fraught with conflict as it is ripe for cooperation. FOOTBALL AND CLIMATE CHANGE On the dwindling sands of Ariyallur Beach in the coastal hamlet of Ottummal, Malabar, India, children passionately kick a football around, savouring the shrinking space that remains for their cherished sport. Their laughter and shouts echo against a backdrop of rising tides and eroding shores, a poignant reminder of the impermanence of their playground. In this issue, Muhammed Haneefa delves into the heart of this coastal community to explore how the relentless rise in sea levels is not just a geographical alteration but a transformation of a way of life. He uncovers the erosion of subaerial beaches — once the lifeblood of the community's social and cultural fabric — and its devastating impact on leisure activities, most notably the deeply ingrained pastime of football. Haneefa also scrutinizes the local government's ‘managed retreat’ strategy, a well-intentioned but complex proposal that involves relocating these vulnerable communities away from their endangered coastal homes. While the plan may offer a temporary respite from the encroaching waters, it fails to account for the fisherfolk's profound emotional and cultural ties to their land and traditions. This article serves as a lens through which we can view climate change from the ground up. While satellite images and climatological data may provide a bird's-eye view of the planet's changing face, it is through the worm's-eye view of anthropologists and ethnographers like Haneefa that we truly understand the human cost. Here, climate change is not just a statistic or a future projection; it is a lived reality that is reshaping communities, altering identities and challenging the very essence of cultural heritage.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 37, Number 5. October 2021

Front and back cover caption, volume 37 issue 5 Front cover FOOD STALL AT BRICK LANE MARKET Brick Lane is one of London's most iconic streets. Over the centuries, it has served as a refuge for Huguenots and east European Jews fleeing religious persecution, as well as Irish fleeing the famine. More recently, Bengalis, predominantly from the Sylhet area, moved to the UK because of political and economic instability at the time of Bangladesh's independence in 1971. Many settled along Brick Lane and its surrounding streets. Because of the lane's social, cultural, and economic importance to the Bangladeshi diaspora – it played a pivotal role in the renaming of the neighbourhood as Spitalfields and Banglatown in 2001, for example – some first-generation British Bangladeshis still say, ‘There are three Bengals: west Bengal, east Bengal, and Brick Lane’. Nonetheless, this inner-city area's working-class identity and employment patterns are threatened by super-gentrification in the housing, office development, and hotel and catering sectors. The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are amplifying these trends. In this issue, Seán Carey looks at some of the trials and tribulations of the Bangladeshi community in and around Brick Lane. Back cover BANGLADESH IN BRICK LANE Street art on the shutters of a restaurant in Brick Lane.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 5. October 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 5 Front cover Covid-19 symbolism: Amabie in Japan The Japanese yōkai Amabie (アマビエ) was a forgotten chimeric figure from the Japanese history of disaster and epidemics until the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, when a few manga artists and Kyoto University Library brought her back to public attention and gave her global fame on social media. A drawing contest with the hashtag #AmabieChallenge started in earnest, crossing the borders of Japan to reach and captivate an enthusiastic global audience. Her body is an assemblage of human, fish and bird characteristics, with three fish tails/legs and long, dark hair. The front cover picture on this issue of AT was taken in September 2020 at the annual Scarecrow Competition in Tokyo, which this year elected to have Amabie as its theme. In this issue, Claudia Merli explores how this yōkai's resurgence from pre-modern Japan intersects with some central ecological and political discourses in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially those associated with culinary practices, human rights and relations with other historical epidemics. Reasons for Amabie's sudden celebrity hark back to the culture of representation of historical epidemics via woodblock prints and the special place occupied by ningyo (mermaids and mermen) in Japan. Presented by some commentators as a pandemic mascot, this uncanny yokai from southern Japan addresses our contemporary lives as they are caught in a suspension of our usual temporal and spatial dimensions. We could even say that as we entered the pandemic, Amabie came to reinhabit a world she previously belonged to, one of unfathomable disasters and global intersections. The article follows some of these serendipitous connections to make sense of a phenomenon that should be analyzed in terms of the polysemic capacity of an icon of protection, whose beaky features recall all too well the spectral appearance of a plague doctor in Renaissance Europe. Back cover COVID-19 SYMBOLISM: TEDDY BEARS IN NZ On the day that Aotearoa/New Zealand started its unprecedented nationwide lockdown, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that despite the order to ‘stay home’, walking locally was not prohibited and that children, in particular, were welcome to stroll through their neighbourhoods in search of teddy bears in windows. She then added, ‘And if you're in Wellington and you're walking in a local neighbourhood, you might see one in my window’. Within days, across the country a multitude of teddy bears, as well as other stuffed animals and plastic toys, appeared in residential windows, tied on top of letterboxes or, like this one, affixed onto lamp posts. Inspired by the popular children's book, We're going on a bear hunt, wellknown for its refrain, ‘we're not scared’, the bears were widely understood to inspire ‘hope’ and ‘care’ and were just one of the ways that New Zealanders affectively invested in the Covid-19 lockdown. While scholarly work on national crises has frequently focused on the misuse of emergency measures to expand state power, much less has been said of the ways that citizens help constitute states of emergency. During the first Covid-19 lockdown (March-May 2020), New Zealanders set up community roadblocks to seal off neighbourhoods deemed to be under threat, ‘dobbed in’ perceived rule breakers or engaged in acts of vigilante justice against them, and called on the nation to recast the lockdown as a rahui or Maori protective prohibition. They also displayed a seemingly endless array of teddy bears, including the occasional bear engaged in acts that contravened lockdown regulations. Examining these and similar acts of collective responsibility, care and blame is a vital step in widening our understanding of the variety of dynamics that create and sustain states of emergency in democratic nations as well as their potential long-term implications.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 31, Number 5. October 2015

Front and back cover caption, volume 31 issue 5 Front cover Shark attack! July 2015 marked the 40th anniversary of Jaws, the blockbuster film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the novel of the same name by Peter Benchley. At the time, the enormous success of the film was attributed to the way it tapped into the primal instincts of the audience, exposing people to primitive fears usually hidden in their collective unconscious. In later years, Benchley became a committed conservationist and announced that he would never again write a story in which an animal was depicted as ‘a conscious villain’. Benchley was by no means repudiating his earlier work. He claimed he was simply acknowledging that society (in his case, the USA) had moved on, that ideas about animals had progressed, and that portraying animals as villainous creatures was no longer socially acceptable. Writing from South Australia where some of the original footage for Jaws was filmed, Adrian Peace argues that great white sharks continue to be construed by many Australians as rational and ruthless killers (‘assassins’). Peace takes as problematic the idea that sharks occupy a particular place in the Australian psyche, especially when commentators draw on evolutionary psychology to explain the response to great whites in terms of an instinctual and hard wired primal fear. By carefully unpacking the current public discourse surrounding shark attacks in Australian waters, Peace provides a cultural interpretation of the relationship between Australians and great white sharks which is firmly focused on current beliefs and contemporary interpretations. Back cover EUROPE'S REFUGEE CRISIS Irish naval personnel from the LÉ Eithne rescuing migrants in the central Mediterranean, June 2015. The Irish vessel took part in Joint Operation Triton, coordinated by the European border agency Frontex and by Italian authorities. Following a series of shipwrecks off the Libyan coast, in late April 2015 European Union (EU) leaders agreed on the need to extend Triton's scope to 138 nautical miles south of Sicily. The EU is expected to finance Operation Triton throughout 2016. Several countries are participating in the operation, with vessels, helicopters, planes, and teams of border agents. Transshipping migrants takes time and is a skilled task that requires specific training. There have been cases of boats in distress capsizing upon sighting a rescue vessel, as passengers suddenly move to one side. Thus, large navy vessels usually dispatch two smaller units, approaching migrant boats from both sides. Everyone is immediately instructed to sit down, and then to don a lifejacket. How do we distinguish between a humanitarian and a border patrolling exercise? In this issue, Maurizio Albahari looks at what is by now the most serious refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.     

Front and Back Covers. Volume 20, Number 4. August 2004

Front and back cover caption, volume 20 issue 4
Second-hand clothing.
A master tailor, his son (on the right) and two relatives, all making women's office wear and chitenge (printed cloth) outfits, Kamwala shopping centre, Lusaka, Zambia. This photo illustrates Karen Tranberg Hansen's article on second-hand clothing in this issue (pp. 3-9).
Zambians from all walks of life like to dress well, and this results in a thriving clothing industry in all sectors, from imported new and second-hand clothing and locally manufactured items to bespoke garments made by small-scale tailors. Such tailors play an important role in fulfilling clothing needs and desires that are not met by new and second-hand ready-made clothing. Male and female tailors ply their trade in public markets, shop corridors, and from private homes in cities and small towns across the country. Many of them have engaged actively with the challenge posed by the import of second-hand clothing, 'beating' it, in the words of one master tailor, through speciality production.
Diversifying his production into popular styles of women's wear, the master tailor in this photo trained his son and two younger relatives. They are kept busy with the changes each season in fashions in women's two-piece 'office wear' and chitenge wear (which has become very popular in recent years thanks to the ready availablity, in an open economy, of good-quality and attractive printed cloth imported from South and Southeast Asia and from the Far East). 'Office wear' sees changes in the length and style of shirts and tops, and in the detailing of decorative trim, while fashions in chitenge wear show varying skirt styles and lengths, fitted or loose tops, elaborate trim, and highly constructed sleeves. Zambia's example demonstrates that the much maligned second-hand clothing import trade can coexist comfortably with local initiatives in clothing production.