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 5. October 2013

Front and back cover caption, volume 29 issue 5 Front cover Mud masons in Mali Mason Konamadou Djennepo participating in the annual re‐claying of the Djenné Mosque. Located in the heart of Mali's Inland Niger Delta region, Djenné is an ancient trading town renowned for its monumental mud‐brick architecture. The art of mud building reaches its zenith in the bold compositions and sculpted contours of the Djenné Mosque (1906–07) and in the elegant façades of its historic and modern houses. Masonry has been a specialized trade in Djenné for centuries. Entrants undergo a lengthy apprenticeship and qualified practitioners are due‐paying members of the barey ton association which sets wages, provides social security, and regulates working conditions and disputes. During the past two years, however, the masons – like craftspeople and artisans across Mali – struggled to find work and to survive. Their nation was beset by drought, a heavily‐armed Taureg rebellion, an Islamist insurgency, and a military coup d'état. Tourism vanished, foreign investment dwindled, development aid was frozen, and Mali's frail economy was strained to breaking point. During this period of continuing austerity and uncertainty, it is important to recall Mali's rich cultural heritage and look to its future. As mason Boubacar Kouroumansé remarked: ‘When people talk of Mali today, some automatically think about the war and about the hand‐chopping that goes on now. But there are others who don't see it so narrowly. They still remember Mali for its old tradition of dignity and honour. We need to focus more on that!’ In response, a year‐long exhibition on the Mud Masons of Mali opened at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History on 30 August. Curated by Mary Jo Arnoldi (Smithsonian) and Trevor Marchand (SOAS), and grounded in Marchand's fieldwork, the exhibition includes photographs, displays of tools and building materials, and a series of new documentary films that explore the lives, work, and aspirations of five Djenné masons. For more information visit http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/mud‐masons/index.html Back cover Human‐elephant relations Daytime training: young Paras Gaj is roped to adult training elephants and learns to accept Satya Narayan as his driver, 2004. Since 1986, the Khorsor Elephant Breeding Centre in Nepal has been crucial for maintaining the captive elephant population used to help patrol Nepalese lowland national parks. Elephants assist with anti‐poaching patrolling, biodiversity conservation research, and nature tourism. Khorsor is one of six government stables (hattisar) where humans and elephants live and work together. The Tharu people have been employed by the state for elephant capture and care for several hundred years, and the stable represents a total institution in which elephants are treated variously as animals, persons, and gods. Training practices previously used for adult elephants caught in the wild, have now been adapted for captive‐born elephants, like the three‐year‐old Paras Gaj depicted here. Along with their principal handlers, elephants go through a training process with both practical and ritual elements. Indeed, elephant training represents a multi‐species rite of passage involving sacrificial practices and ritual prohibitions that produce new competencies and status roles for both elephant and handler alike. Sacrifices to the fierce forest goddess Ban Devi, and the benevolent Ganesh mark the commencement and conclusion of the liminal period of training. Training takes just a few weeks, serving to make the elephant receptive to a human rider and human command. The elephant is no longer a baby, and the handler has distinguished himself as an elephant trainer. This issue contains the review of a symposium on Human‐elephant relations in South and South‐East Asia organized by Piers Locke.     

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 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 39, Number 2. April 2022

Front and back cover caption, volume 39 issue 2 POLYCRISIS: FROM DIVINE INTERVENTION TO HUMAN AGENCY The front cover image is of Thanatos (Death), the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, astride a pale steed and followed by Hades (as depicted by Gustave Doré in 1868). It serves as a haunting reminder of crisis understood in religious terms. In Christian theology, the Four Horsemen were given divine authority to kill by sword, famine, plague and through the beast; four original strands of polycrisis (Revelation 6:7-8). Other eschatological traditions speak of entangled immorality, meteorological phenomena, geological violence and the coming of messianic saviours before the End Time. As our world faces an unprecedented era of interrelated and overlapping crises, we increasingly place human agency at the centre of our explanations. Yet we need to understand their underlying power dynamics and complexity better. This collection of articles invites us to examine how certain events trigger deliberation and critique of what constitutes a crisis and whether we can still identify cause and effect in an increasingly interconnected world. From socioeconomic forces to ecological thought and the coexistence of divine intervention, contributors explore how markets, solidarity, faith and future planning shape our responses to unexpected events spiralling out of control. We shift from the ‘crisis-chasing’ evident over the last two decades to a meaningful critique of emergent multiscalar events. We interrogate the usefulness of the developing polycrisis paradigm to understand better the interrelated endless crises afflicting our planet today. BEES IN CRISIS March 2023, northeastern Bosnia. A bee forager seeks out this Pink Pussy Willow, an early spring bloomer whose catkins offer up a generous supply of pollen, fuelling the hive's spring development. For the honeybees, who rely on environmental signs, such as temperature, to ascertain the seasons and sync their nest affairs with the cyclical rhythms of local weather patterns, soils and plants, willow catkin blossoms signal the beginning of a new foraging year. Yet, in the changing climate, local weather is unhinged from the seasons, and ambient cues are increasingly ambiguous and untimely. Plants, whose life cycles are likewise synced with environmental cues, interpret the changing atmosphere and respond with vigorous physiological changes. Warming temperatures and changing precipitation regimes in the Northern Hemisphere induce shorter and milder winters, earlier dates of greening in the spring and later browning in the autumn. Such changes are recorded by satellite imaging and are readily evident to lay observers. How exactly the plants and their companion insects will respond is unknown. Biologists know that responses to the changing climate and extreme weather will be idiosyncratic because ‘biodiversity’, the world of living difference, entails a vigorous differentiation of signage and meaning in an emergency. The thing to do now is to attend to these ontologically plural, interspecies signs of the times with methods and theories that are open to the unexpected and unintimidated by either the ominous or the meaningful quality of the world we share. This volume presents a joint endeavour in thinking about crisis as an ethnographic concept and an embodied, existential experience of discomfort from which to begin an earnest response.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 28, Number 2. April 2012

Front and back cover caption, volume 28 issue 2 Front cover A simple, austere cross hangs on the St. Maria‐Magdalena church in the newly constructed Rieselfeld neighbourhood of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. Completed in 2004, the building contains both a Protestant and a Catholic church, with moveable partition walls also allowing for the creation of a single ecumenical site when desired. Similarly, a diversity of associations, meanings, and histories are attributed to the symbol of the cross itself in different spaces and times. Its appearance on the wall of a multi‐ecumenical space highlights the theological connections between Protestant and Catholic Christianities; its location near the French‐German border calls attention to the doctrinal disputes and historical violence that have occurred between these two faiths. The significance of the cross – while often presumed to be self‐evident – is complex and ever shifting. Its connotations are produced through processes as diverse as the urban renewal project of the church of Maria‐Magdalena and juridical rulings on its display in public spaces. Recently, the European Court of Human Rights rejected a claim that crucifixes hanging in Italian classrooms were an affront to freedom of conscience and a parent's freedom to educate his or her children. As a symbol, the Court declared, the cross does not stand for Christianity alone, but also for ‘European heritage’. While today, signs associated with Islam are treated as a threat to public spaces in countries throughout Europe, anthropologists can explore how claims made about the cross produce it as a flexible sign connoting not only the story of the Passion, but also European history and secular tolerance. Back cover LEGENDARY HOMINOIDS Gregory Forth inspects what villagers in one part of western Flores describe as a burial mound marking the place where their ancestors interred a group of hominoids they killed in a violent confrontation. After receiving details of the mound and its history from Forth, in 2011 several Indonesian and Western palaeoanthropologists began exploring possibilities for excavating the site and hope to gain permission to begin digging in the near future. The 2003 discovery on the eastern Indonesian island of Flores of a small, physically primitive hominin interpreted as a new species, Homo floresiensis, came as a surprise to anthropology. Not only is the find extraordinarily recent in geological terms, but the hypothetical species bears a close resemblance to indigenous images of similarly diminutive, hominoid creatures reputedly encountered by local villagers in an even more recent historical era. The challenge posed by Homo floresiensis to our previous understanding of hominin (or ‘human’) evolution is well documented. But the unexpected find poses challenges for sociocultural anthropology as well. Searches for the physical remains of non‐sapiens hominins are typically motivated by prevailing palaeoanthropological theories and interpretations. However, contextual as well as physical peculiarities of the Flores hominin suggest that future investigations of the new species may be crucially informed by ethnographic evidence, the bulk of which was collected prior to, and independent of, the palaeoanthropological discovery.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 2. April 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 2 Front cover CRISIS IN VENEZUELA Shop owner Alejandro Malek shows hundreds of banknotes that he has accepted from customers who buy their daily groceries in his small supermarket near the border between Venezuela and Brazil. He also accepts Brazilian reals, US dollars and gold. Malek is a migrant himself and arrived almost 30 years ago in the country. He poses for the picture with packs of bolivares soberanos to express his love for Venezuela. Big packs of banknotes to purchase basic goods have become normal for many Venezuelans since hyperinflation reached mind-boggling levels. Basic goods, such as toilet paper and cornflour, are unavailable or simply unaffordable for more than 90 per cent of the population. Since 2015, the economy has been in free fall and Venezuelans look for countless means to survive. In times of crisis, people seek to make ends meet by joining the informal economy outside the official structures. The thriving local emergency economy of banknotes, gold, food, petrol and medicine in Venezuela ties into illegal transnational networks which commercialize natural resources, people, drugs and weapons that stretch far beyond the Latin American region. In this issue, Eva van Roekel and Marjo de Theije suggest an anthropology of abundance to study the illicit manifestations and everyday ideals of wealth that accompany social and environmental crises in resource-rich countries like Venezuela. Back cover THE SHAMAN VS PUTIN In spring 2019, Aleksandr Gabyshev, a Sakha (Yakut) shaman, embarked on an 8,000 km trek from Yakutsk to Moscow. His stated goal was to ‘expel demon-Putin’ (izgnat' Putina-demona) from the Kremlin and thus liberate the people of Russia. Drawing a cart with supplies and necessities, he slowly progressed along Siberian highways, camping on roadsides along the way. While initially his journey attracted little attention beyond local cybernauts, by the end of the summer, word of Gabyshev's campaign had spread far and wide. Around a dozen people (his ‘squad’) joined his trek, while many more stopped him along the way to chat, take a picture, express support and offer supplies. On 19 September, Gabyshev's trek came to a halt almost 3,000 km in. He was arrested by the authorities in the Republic of Buryatia, as he and his ‘squad’ were approaching Irkutskaya Oblast. The shaman was flown back to Yakutsk where he underwent a psychiatric examination. He is facing charges on account of ‘calls to extremism’ and was put under travel restrictions for several months. He attempted another short-lived, unsuccessful trek in December 2019, again stopped by the authorities. Recently, Gabyshev announced that he would continue the trek in spring 2020 and reach Moscow in 2021, expressing confidence in the impending success of his undertaking. In this issue, Kristina Jonutyte shows how this shaman's campaign has attracted a lot of attention within Russia, especially on the Internet and social media. Many have expressed their interest in and support for the campaign, while at the same time ‘distancing’ the shaman in time and space, as well as along the lines of ‘rationality’.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 27, Number 2. April 2011

Front and back cover caption, volume 27 issue 2 Front cover THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION OF 2011 Over a million Egyptians in Tahrir Square praying in remembrance of the 25 January revolution's ‘martyrs’. More than 300 people were killed in the popular uprising that forced President Hosni Mubarak to step down on 11 February. A memorial, seen in the centre of the image, displays the photographs of some of those who lost their lives. Motivated by a pressing need for political and social reform and inspired by the recent success of the Tunisian revolution, Egyptians took to the streets on 25 January in unprecedented numbers. For 18 days, major protests erupted in several Egyptian cities calling for the removal of the regime. In Cairo protesters converged upon and occupied Tahrir Liberation Square, which became both the symbolic and physical centre of the revolution. With the tide of revolt sweeping across the Arab world fears were raised, both internally and internationally, about a possible Islamist hijack. Yet in Tahrir Square the main ideology was liberal; hundreds of thousands of Egyptians from diverse social backgrounds and radically different ideological inclinations united on the fundamental demands of freedom, equality, justice and dignity. In this issue, Selim Shahine reflects on the political consciousness of the young activists who led the uprising, and on the discourse on generations that surrounded these events. Mohammed Rashed presents a participant's account from Tahrir Square and reflects on some of the factors that might have contributed to the success of its continued occupation: the formation of an embryonic form of community, and the receding of the usual identities based on class and religion in favour of a simple yet powerful identity as people of the revolution. Back cover CLIMATE CHANGE AND ANTHROPOLOGY A man watches the ocean waves on Jaluit Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Few societies have a more intimate relationship with the sea. The country's average elevation is a mere seven feet, and the highest point is 32 feet. No point in the archipelago is more than half a mile inland, and most locals live within 100 feet of the shore. The islands have always been vulnerable to the ocean; an early 19th‐century account of Marshallese life refers to a local fear of inundation, and magical formulae to prevent it. In the present century, such dangers may increase past the point of adaptability and resilience, as sea‐level rise and other consequences of global climate change are likely to render the country uninhabitable. Marshall Islanders are familiar with these threats via local observation as well as media coverage, forcing them to come to terms, both conceptually and emotionally, with the possibility that their homeland is doomed. We usually conceive of climate change as an ‘environmental’ issue, but this framing may say more about Western conceptions of nature‐culture than about climate change itself. Global warming could as easily be termed a social issue: it is caused by socioeconomic behaviour, experienced by local actors, interpreted according to culturally specific ideologies, and communicated by human agents. In this issue, Peter Rudiak‐Gould draws on his ethnographic investigation of Marshallese climate‐change attitudes to argue that anthropology has only scratched the surface in its contribution to our understanding of global warming. A question of theoretical and practical importance remains largely uninvestigated: how is the foreign scientific prophecy of devastating climate change received, interpreted, understood, adopted, rejected and utilized by local communities? It is a question of particular relevance in an island society for whom that prophecy amounts to no less than nationwide destruction.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 32, Number 2. April 2016

Front and back cover caption, volume 32 issue 2 Front cover NIGERIA'S IGBO JEWS Between images of the Star of David and menorah, Habakkuk Nwafor's front door in Nigeria's capital bears the proud notice, ‘I AM A JEW’. The leader of Abuja's Tikvat Israel Synagogue, Nwafor is an Igbo, a member of Nigeria's third largest ethnic group, numbering over 30 million people. Seated outside his Abuja home, he holds a copy of William Miles's Jews of Nigeria: An Afro‐Judaic odyssey (2013), a book about Nwafor's family and religious community. On its cover is a photograph of his son becoming a bar mitzvah. For at least a decade prior to its publication, Igbo Jews offered their own written religio‐historical narratives, but Miles's was the first book about Igbo Jewry composed by a Western academic. From 2,000 and 5,000 people, most of whom are Igbo, practice Judaism throughout Nigeria, though a much larger number self‐identify as Jews even while practising Christianity. Igbo self‐identification with and as Jews dates back to the 18th century, but concretized during and after the Nigerian civil war (1967–1970), in which at least one million Igbo died in the failed bid for Biafran independence. The civil war and its disastrous consequences initiated a still‐ongoing period of intense questioning among the Igbo concerning their history, present predicaments, and future prospects. Igbo Jewish identity presents a challenge. Igbo Jews consider themselves part of world Jewry, but are not yet integrated with, nor represented in and by, Jewish institutions/associations around the world. Igbo Jewish identity also poses the truth question, as Igbo oral religio‐historical claims are examined and questioned by researchers and scholars using academic lenses. Back cover Lesbos in the frontline An olive branch with one hand outstretched in aid of a fellow human being, as drawn by illustrator Georgie McAusland. In the course of 2015, Skala Sykamnias, a tiny, sleepy fishing village and tourist idyll on the island of Lesbos, Greece, became a gateway to Europe for more than 200,000 refugees. In this issue, Evthymios Papataxiarchis analyzes how the European refugee crisis impacted his fieldwork site. The rescue of refugees involves several theatres of operation, ranging from the frontline centred upon the sea and the beach, to backstage revolving around the reception centres further inland. This attracts a multitude of volunteers, activists and humanitarian organizations from all over the world, becoming a focal point for world media. A swirl of political, ethical, and material elements, both local and transnational, now focuses upon the locality. The massive welcoming of reugees, however, is full of contradictions. With diverse actors enacting what are often dissonant ideals and strategies, what might appear from the outside to be a humanitarian act, is in fact more complex. Humanitarian structures raise several issues, such as local concerns about sovereignty, the authenticity of ‘disinterested’ motives, the nature of ‘solidarity’ and the role of the NGOs. From the local perspective this is a ‘generative moment’: at the centre of huge human and material flows, the local community is falling apart whilst to the incoming it represents freedom. Skala has become a mini theatre of conflicts that echo wider debates on the political future of Europe. In this capacity it captures a decisive moment in 21st‐century European history.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 31, Number 2. April 2015

Front and back cover caption, volume 31 issue 2 Front cover CHARLIE HEBDO SHOOTING On 11 January 2015, in the wake of the killings at Charlie Hebdo's offices and in a kosher supermarket, 4 million people took to the streets in France, including an estimated 1.5 million in Paris, many of them carrying the sign ‘Je suis Charlie’. The heart of the march in the capital was the Place de la République, where demonstrators climbed on the monument erected to Marianne, the national symbol of the Republic. In this issue, Didier Fassin discusses this unprecedented mobilization in defence of the ‘values of the Republic’: liberty, equality, fraternity – as inscribed in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen – and more recently, laïcité, the French version of secularism inherited from the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State. He shows that this unanimity was, however, soon disrupted, as some, particularly those from low‐income neighbourhoods, questioned the double standard in the implementation of these principles – a contestation that was harshly repressed within the education and justice systems. To account for such dissonance, the article analyzes the discrepancy between the principles of the Republic and their applications in France. Laïcité, long implemented in a flexible and pragmatic manner, only became more strictly enforced in relation to Islam. Liberty, notably free speech, has recently been subjected to various legal and practical limitations. Equality, which exists under the law, is seriously undermined by social disparities and racial discrimination. Fraternity, which translates into solidarity and welfare, is increasingly weakened by discourses which stigmatize minorities. These discrepancies affect with particular intensity, immigrants from North and sub‐Saharan Africa and their descendants, most of them Muslims – a legacy of France's colonial past. Although they might seem untimely in such moments of unity, these meditations call for a critical reflection on the contradictions of contemporary democracies. Back cover AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL MANIFESTO Ratu Tanoa Visawaqa, the dominant ruling chief of the Fijian island of Bau 1829–1832 and 1837–1852, prior to the commencement of British colonial rule in 1874. Drawing by Alfred Thomas Agate. This is one of the earliest depictions of the rare black‐lipped pearl‐shell breast plates, civa. On Ratu Tanoa's head is the turban‐like bark cloth (masi) head scarf, i‐vauvau. It is said to have concealed the scar from a wound inflicted by a brother who was a rival for the title of Vunivalu, the war king of Bau: the active ruler in a diarchy whose counterpart was the sacerdotal king, the Roko Tui Bau. With Adi Savusavu, one of his nine wives, Ratu Tanoa was the father of Ratu Seru Cakobau, who succeeded in unifying most of Fiji into a single kingdom. In his anthropological manifesto in this issue, Marshall Sahlins argues that our main theories of ‘economic determinism’ represent a self‐consciousness of modern capitalist societies masquerading as the science of others. In the great majority of societies known to anthropology and history, power consists in the direct control of people, from which comes the ability to accumulate wealth, rather than control of their means of livelihood, of capital wealth, from which comes the control of people. Indeed in many cases the notion of ‘production’ itself would be inappropriate insofar as the ancestors or the gods are the creative agents, the fundamental sources of human subsistence – which people thus receive rather than make simply by their own labour. It follows that the principal political beneficiaries of economic prosperity are shamans, priests, garden magicians, chiefs, divine kings, and the like by virtue of their mediation of the spiritual origins of people's livelihoods. All this is not mere ‘false consciousness’ but the way these societies are organized: their own constituted anthropology, from which we must develop ours.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 35, Number 2. April 2019

Front and back cover caption, volume 35 issue 2 Front cover You overlook them every day — sentient vegetative life forms in the cracks and crevices of urban worlds. Perhaps on a spring day you passingly notice ‘trees’ or ‘flowers’ as they bloom, but see nothing of their specificity, their agency, their sociality. Yet plants provide a basis for how we think — ‘roots’ and ‘branches’ structure our language and computational forms; as our thoughts ramify, they ‘sprout’ ideas that ‘stem’ in various directions. And they are the foundation upon which mammals have thrived on earth, so far. You should know more about them than you do. Stop for a moment now and give them your attention. Consider: indigenous communities, whose medicinal plants and knowledge circulate in global marketplaces; roots' and the capacity of roots and seeds to remake, regrow and re-establish themselves in new contexts; or the roles, statuses, channels, spatial-temporal scales and ontological frames required for engaging a plant's point of view. Ponder: taking position alongside botanists and indigenous sages to remake ethnobotanical knowledge; seed conservation as a generative experimental space from which new forms of human-plant relations might flourish; or how communicative phytochemicals differ from the signs and symbols anthropologists typically study. In this special issue we will learn how it is that we think with and through plants. Svalbard Global Seed Vault ( http://www.seedvault.no ) in Longyearbyen, February 2008. The vault provides a safe backup of seeds from food crops conserved by seed banks worldwide. This picture is from the day of the official opening. The entrance to the vault is well guarded from visiting polar bears. During the opening, the vault was guarded by an armed guard and an ice sculpture of a polar bear. Back cover ETHNOGRAPHY OF PLANTS Plants congregate and socialize, and they have long formed part of our publics. They are more than representations in human knowledge systems or world views. But knowing them is difficult and sometimes takes a lifetime. Ethnographers have long gathered and mulled over plant lore, often while partaking of them in various herbal or culinary renderings. This special issue on plant ethnography marks a shift in this contemplative listening stance, by bending closer, leaning over and studying their ways. The questions posed here are important: how do we address them? Can they thrive in the wake of habitat destruction? What can we learn from them before it's too late? Botanists identify and assess rare plant species in the Sonoran Desert in southern California in order to plan the collection of their seeds for long-term seed conservation at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden, a partner of the global Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP). The Sonoran Desert has more plant diversity than any other desert in the world, with over 2,000 native plant species which have developed fine balances and beautiful adaptations to life there. These species, however, are caught between two key pressures of the Anthropocene: the prospect of a changing climate, and the encroachment on their habitat by human development, in this case — ironically — by the earmarking of vast areas of the desert as prospective solar energy facility sites. MSBP partners, like Rancho Santa Ana BG, have conserved 13 per cent of the world's wild plant species. The banking of plant seeds insures against their extinction and provides resources for research and reintroduction which can support their conservation, but ultimately, the deserts cannot be conserved through seeds in freezers alone.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 37, Number 2. April 2021

Front and back cover caption, volume 37 issue 2 Front cover THE CAPITOL INSURRECTION Thousands of people marched toward the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021. The rally that day was part of an attempt to overturn the outcome of the presidential election. The attempted coup was carried out by multiple means. While the violent attack on the Capitol building that day has captured the world's attention, attempts to undermine democratic processes in the United States have a longer, more insidious history, including multiple forms of voter suppression, some of which are built into the system. The US has never been a direct democracy. In fact, in 2000 and 2016, candidates who lost the popular vote ‘won’ the election. The 2020 presidential election was perhaps outstanding because the unabashed attempts to disenfranchise voters – primarily minority voters – were suddenly on full display. The losing candidate tried to strong-arm state election officials into fraudulently changing the vote count and pressured the vice president to overturn the lawful outcome of the elections – all of which happened in full view of the public. When it became clear that the vice president would not undermine the election result, the losing candidate called on his supporters to come to Washington, DC to demonstrate their belief that the election had been stolen from him and from them. The ensuing violent attack on the Capitol building was a spectacular display of a larger failed attempt at a coup. In this issue, Gregory Starrett and Joyce Dalsheim narrate their eye witness fieldwork accounts of the ‘March to save America’ rally earlier on that fateful day. Back cover THE MYANMAR COUP On 2 March 2021, police shot Kyal Sin, a 19-year-old protester, in the head from behind with live ammunition while she was engaged in peaceful civil disobedience in Mandalay against the Myanmar military, which seized control through a violent coup on 1 February. The artwork depicts Kyal Sin, whose name means ‘pure star’, as one of the martyrs of the democracy movement. Prior to attending the rally, Kyal Sin had posted on Facebook her wish for her organs to be donated should she die during the protest. Since the coup, millions of civilians across Myanmar have taken to the streets in protest. Civil servants, along with the general public, have participated in a nationwide strike. In response, the military have fired weapons into crowds of peaceful protesters, engaged in extrajudicial killings, raided civilian homes and businesses, kidnapped and illegally detained protesters, strikers, political and civil society leaders, tortured detainees and terrorized countless other civilians. In this issue, Seinenu M. Thein-Lemelson reviews the history of violence and persecution perpetrated by the Myanmar military against participants in the Burmese democracy movement. The persecution of activists has included repression of their cultural and ritual life. The democracy movement possesses its own list of saints, martyrs (azarni) and heroes (thuyegaung). Between 1988 and 2012, keeping photographs or artistic depictions of these martyrs and heroes constituted an illegal act. During that time, owning or publishing this artwork of Kyal Sin could have resulted in imprisonment and torture. Indeed, even now the Myanmar military is so concerned about her martyrdom that they exhumed her body and filled her grave with cement. When Kyal Sin was shot, she was wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with the words: ‘Everything will be OK’, revealing a youthful hope and innocence. This sense of child-like purity has deepened the poignancy and loss felt by all those who mourn her death. Kyal Sin's nickname was ‘Angel’ and a halo hovers above her head. She holds the Myanmar flag, shredded with bullet holes, in her left hand. Behind her are the outlines of other protesters or perhaps past martyrs of the movement, giving the three-fingered salute, in approval and solidarity.     

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.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 24, Number 2. April 2008

Front cover and back cover caption, volume 24 issue 2 Front cover Front cover: Front cover The front cover of this issue illustrates Peter Loizois' article on the work of filmmaker Robert Gardner. The Hamar woman in the photo bears marks of whipping, a subject which raised the first divisions between Gardner and anthropologists Ivo Strecker and Jean Lydall, as Gardner was inclined to see the practice as a facet of female subordination and male cruelty. The Streckers, after many years of research, took a different view, which can be grasped in Jean Lydall's article ‘Beating around the bush’ (see http://www.uni-mainz.de/organisationen/SORC/fileadmin/texte/lydall/Beating ) Gardner makes clear his feelings in this note, highlighted in his book The impulse to preserve: ‘Editing the Rivers of sand imagery made a huge impression on me. I kept being reminded that I especially disliked Hamar man and I don't think I would have felt differently had there been no Women's Movement. I don't see how anyone can escape feeling the same way once they see the film. It was a painful life for both sexes. So why not say so? I don't think anthropology is doing its job by being value free. I do think it should accept responsibility to look for larger truths.’ (Robert Gardner 2006, The impulse to preserve: Reflections of a filmmaker, New York: Other Press, p. 158) Back cover Back cover: UN DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES The back cover illustrates Paul Oldham and Miriam Anne Frank's article in this issue on the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Declaration sets the minimum international standards for the promotion and protection of indigenous peoples' rights. The display boards capture the historic moment on 13 September 2007, when UN member states overwhelmingly supported the adoption of the Declaration at the General Assembly's 61st session. Votes in favour of the Declaration are shown in green (143 + 1 not shown), abstentions in orange (11) and votes against in red (4). With the exception of Montenegro, whose vote in favour did not register on screen, absent or non-voting states are blank. Such overwhelming support within the General Assembly was by no means guaranteed — it was the outcome of lengthy and delicate behind-the-scenes negotiations. Expectations that the Declaration would be adopted in December 2006 were dashed when the African Group of countries blocked it, claiming that, despite 23 years of negotiations, more time was needed for consultation. In the ensuing period, Mexico, Peru and Guatemala, as co-sponsors of the Declaration, took the lead in negotiating an agreement with the African Group that they would support a Declaration with three main amendments, and would block other amendments or delays put forward by Australia, Canada, the US and New Zealand. The co-sponsors then sought agreement to this amended Declaration from the Global Indigenous Peoples' Caucus, who engaged in their own worldwide consultation process with indigenous peoples' organizations. The outcome remained uncertain, however, until these giant screens in the UN General Assembly Hall finally flashed green, to spontaneous applause from the delegates and their supporters. Since anthropologists work with indigenous peoples worldwide, this historic vote raises the challenge of how they, individually and as a discipline, position themselves in relation to the new Declaration.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 38, Number 1. February 2022

Front and back cover caption, volume 38 issue 1 QANON This QAnon supporter was part of the crowd of demonstrators at the Washington DC ‘Million MAGA March’ shortly after Trump's 2020 electoral defeat. This woman's sign alludes to ‘The Storm’, a millenarian denouement that, in the QAnon imagination, will see Trump and his supporters rounding up and arresting top Democrats so as to retake power. In this issue, McIntosh describes the verbal art with which the mysterious and oracular figure of ‘Q’ managed to enlist millions of enthusiasts through the Internet. Q specialized in cryptic messages and urged online followers to decode and interpret them. These exercises fostered the notion that supporters themselves were engaging in high-stakes interpretive work, and that a digital army of Q followers could see through fraudulent politicians and experts, ultimately garnering their own knowledge and expertise. At the same time, Q used the power of secrecy to impart the conviction that Q was connected to a new alt-right state waiting in the wings. McIntosh also argues that the alt-right — including but not limited to Q — have increasingly encouraged the idea that reality or truth may lie somewhere behind or beneath the unreliable sign vehicle. Communications from political enemies should be read with suspicion, while communications from Q and Trump alike should be decrypted for their underlying encoded meanings, particularly dark portents. This oracular semiotic ideology now thrives alongside conventional liberal understandings of rational political processes. MAGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS Pagan shaman Gordon MacLellan, also known as Creeping Toad, is an environmental educator who helps people find their own stories in nature. Here, he is storytelling in Plas Power Woods, Wales, UK. Gordon's stories are inclusive to anyone who wants to listen without discrimination. In this issue, Susan Greenwood characterizes magical consciousness as a pan-human participatory and analogical mode of thought that underpins mythopoetic expressions ranging from the ancient narratives of the Australian Aboriginal Rainbow Snake and the life-enhancing ecological stories of Gordon MacLellan to the alt-right conspiracy theories fostering racial hatred embraced by ‘shaman’ and QAnon supporter Jake Angeli, a central figure in the storming of the US Capitol in 2021. Stories and storytelling are the modus operandi of magical consciousness. Essentially amoral, magical consciousness engages the emotions and helps create meaningful patterns that encompass varieties of human expression cross-culturally. Magical consciousness manifests itself along a spectrum. It can sometimes lead to divisive actions fuelled by conspiracy theories such as QAnon. Analysis of magical consciousness may add a further dimension to the investigation of Western post-truth societies whereby the Enlightenment notion of reason and scientific facts — as the only locus of ‘truth’ — contrasts with ways of engaging with reality primarily through emotions and beliefs. A better understanding of magical consciousness may help build bridges between Western cultures and the world views of indigenous peoples. In replacing machine metaphors with metaphors drawn from nature, such understandings may help shape our future responses to our planet's ecological, economic and social crises.