Comment

Comments by:
Nancy Scheper-Hughes and John Gledhill, Neo-cannibalism: Anthropologists in the Amazon
Francesca Merlan and Ian S. McIntosh, Reconciliation: The People's choice?
J.C.H. King and Laura Peers, 'Native museums'     

Comment

Comments by:
Simon Coleman and Hildi Mitchell, Pilgrimage: Bringing 'Structure' Back In
Amitav Ghosh and H.L. Seneviratne, Buddhist Monks and Ethnic Politics
Simone Abram and David Shankland, Anthropology Versus Science?     

Comment

Abstract

This article examines the attempt to modernize the Italian system of education which is being made by the present government. This policy should be seen in the framework of the general attempt to meet the requirements imposed by the European Union on its members (the Maastricht treaty), and more generally to meet the European need for homogeneity among systems of education, matching the Europe‐wide labour market already in place. In the past, the Italian system of education missed a number of opportunities to keep up with the changing experiments in other European countries (especially at post‐secondary and university levels); therefore the amount of change required is now substantial. The measures taken by the Minister of Education (who is also Minister of Universities and Scientific Research) attempt to decentralize the decision‐making process, give more autonomy to individual institutes, and leave the central public administration (the ministries) the roles of coordination and evaluation. This model has been followed by the majority of European countries. Its impact on the not so dynamic Italian system of education will produce interesting debates and confrontations.     

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Richard Tapper on Anthropology and (The) Crisis in Afghanistan
Comment by:
Glenn Bowman, p.19     

Comment

On 23 July 2018, Saddle Dam D of the Xe Pian Xe Namnoy hydropower plant in Laos collapsed, inundating farmlands and villages downstream. The author was in the capital, Vientiane, at the time. This article provides a first-hand account of some of the early relief efforts as the author joined the flood of everyday citizens in Laos interested in making a gesture of assistance.     

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This comment responds to Hibba Abugadeiri's ‘The Scientisation of Culture: Colonial Medicine's Construction of Egyptian Womanhood, 1893–1929’ and Laura Bier's ‘Modernity and the Other Woman’: Gender and Citizenship in the Egyptian Press, 1952–1970’. Both articles contribute to our understandings of the connections between constructions of gender identity, national identity, and imperial identity. After directing some questions to each author individually, this comment examines the ways in which the two articles combine to raise questions about the power of the press in an emerging public sphere, the importance of claims to modernity in assertions of national independence and the complexity of identity formation in periods of intense political change.     

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This article compares the solar eclipse records in Fan Ye’s Hou Hanshu “Benji” 本紀to those in the Dongguan Hanji (225 CE), Sima Biao’s Xu Hanshu “Wuxing zhi” 五行志, Yuan Hong’s Hou Hanji, as well as Espenak and Meeus’ Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses to comment upon the source, selection, reliability, and function of the eclipse records included in his imperial annals of the Eastern Han (25–220 CE). It finds that while Fan Ye stuck faithfully to the reliable observational record in the Xu Hanshu he at once replaced its interpretative apparatus of omenology with one of politico-ritual action for simple reasons of genre.