Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 4. August 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 4 Front cover BUSHFIRES IN AUSTRALIA The exhausted firefighter emerged as a powerful symbolic figure in the bushfire crisis which brought widespread and unprecedented devastation to vast areas of land on the Australian continent in late 2019 and early 2020. In the front cover picture to this edition of AT, taken by the photojournalist Alex Ellinghausen, a sole firefighter stands as an iconic testament to the fortitude and commitment displayed by members of the volunteer forces who laboured in several states to save their rural communities from destruction. For their sterling efforts ‘in the line of fire’, the firefighters were celebrated as local heroes in the small towns and hamlets from which they were drawn. On a couple of occasions, fortuitously captured by itinerant television crews, this heroic status was magnified when firefighters forthrightly told visiting politicians, including the prime minister, that they were unwelcome and would be much better off elsewhere. In this issue, Adrian Peace argues that these firefighters were giving vent to a widespread sense of alienation from Australia's political elite, a feeling which was substantially compounded as notable cultural differences between local people and leading politicians came to the fore over the significance of the bushfires and the meaning to be attached to them. This cultural divide was expressed in a number of ways, but especially when addressing the extent to which climate change might have contributed to the exceptional duration, intensity and destructive capacity of the 2019–2020 megafires. Whilst leading figures within the federal government repeatedly minimized, or denied outright, the contribution that global warming might have made to these catastrophic developments, the likely part played by climate change remained uppermost in the minds of many local residents, including the firefighters who were their relatives, neighbours and friends. Back cover COVID-19 AMONG REINDEER HERDERS Kira Khudi, during the nomadic migration of her herd through the gas deposit in Bovanenkovo, Yamal Peninsula. Yamal-Nenets reindeer nomads in the Arctic tundra value their mobility. That is how they adapt to changing conditions in their natural and social environment. With large reindeer herds, it is only through the flexible use of their lands and regular adjustments to seasonal migration routes that the herders survive ‘bad years’ (veuvako po). However, the number of ‘bad years’ recently has posed a major challenge to their continued survival as nomads. Swift movement from endangered sites to safe pastures once helped to preserve the health and condition of animals and households. Sudden rain-on-snow events make grazing impossible and need to be avoided. Distancing from epidemic centres, including Covid-19, anthrax and hoof-rot disease has served to limit their impact. The intrusion of the gas industry into the herders’ domain is now curtailing their nomadic freedoms even more. The cumulative impact of disasters, epidemics and climate change, together with changing state resource governance is forcing herders to increasingly sedentarize, as their mitigation strategies are no longer a match for all these forces combined. In this issue, Stammler and Ivanova show how the Soviet persecution of shamans has led to a loss of spiritual confidence, which has proved fertile ground for conspiracy theories among herders. Shamans used to be consulted to diagnose disasters and how to respond to them, but local perceptions of disasters are now changing. Dialogue with the spirits used to be a source of Nenets self-confidence, but in the absence of shamans, severe misfortunes are increasingly believed to be the work of superior, unknown and uncontrollable forces.     

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 31, Number 4. August 2015

Front and back cover caption, volume 31 issue 4 Front cover India's godly democrats In 2007 a temple priest designed a poster depicting the Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, as the bread‐giving goddess Annapurna. Miss Raje appeared crowned and mounted on a lotus throne, from which she showered an assembly of parliamentarians, legislators and ministers gathered below with rays of light and golden coins. The poster sent ripples of nervy amusement through the Anglophone press, which saw in this a spectacle of all that is ludicrous and embarrassingly backward about India's popular politics today. Speaking to Anastasia Piliavsky, whose narrative is featured in this issue, the priest turned out to be neither a kook nor a serf, but a man strikingly astute, witty, assertive, and conspicuously sane. He explained that he depicted Miss Raje as the bread‐giving Goddess because she expanded the midday meal scheme in primary schools. ‘In India’, he said, ‘we respect seniors and people who have the power to bring good to people. This is an old Indian tradition. Worship is a way to show our respect’. Indeed, the worship of politicians as kings, heroes and gods is widespread in India: Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi; the head of the People's Party Mayawati; Bengal's Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee; and the Tamil Chief Minister Jayalalitha have all attracted colourful forms of mass devotion. External observers and India's cosmopolitan elite see this as a sign of a political malady, a degeneracy of their most cherished political values, most of all the equality and autonomy on which modern democracies ought to rest. But the very citizens who worship their political representatives as gods and goddesses have proven exceptionally good at democracy, both in the scale and the intensity of their involvement, and in their remarkable political choosiness. Their story – full of colour and fun as it is – holds serious political and intellectual lessons whose implications reach far beyond the subcontinent. Back cover LAW IN MYANMAR Open‐air displays of cartoons and caricatures are new to Myanmar since press freedom was introduced in 2012. Recently, Aung San Suu Kyi, the ‘icon of democracy’, has become a favourite target. This cartoon, which was displayed during a cartoon festival in 2013, depicts Suu Kyi staring at the country's constitution while a famous love song plays in the background. With parliamentary elections due later this year and presidential elections next year, the former prisoner of conscience has devoted much of her energy – so far, unsuccessfully – to campaigning for an amendment to the 2008 constitution, which in its current form prevents her from being nominated as presidential candidate. The army, which dominates the legislature, has refused to accommodate her demands. Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of much‐loved General Aung San, who played a crucial role in the country's independence from British colonial rule in 1948. Having spent much of her life under house arrest in her family home in Yangon, she returned to the political sphere in 2010 as the head of her party, the National League for Democracy. Since then, the Nobel Peace Laureate has pushed for legal reforms. Meanwhile, in spite of some hard‐won liberties, human rights violations continue. In this issue, Judith Beyer examines the difficulties citizens experience in locating the specifics of their legal rights amidst a confusing array of legal texts, many of which they do not have access to.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 34, Number 4. August 2018

Cover caption, volume 34 issue 4 Front Cover: INNOVATION IN A MEXICAN VILLAGE When Mexico's largest telecom companies refused to provide mobile phone service to the remote Zapotec mountain village of Talea de Castro, Oaxaca, residents responded with astonishing creativity: in March 2013, they built the world's first autonomous mobile phone network. The community‐owned network uses open‐source software to link mobile phones globally over the Internet using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). It was developed in collaboration with a non‐profit organization, hackers and sympathetic activists committed to the idea of mobile access as a human right. Centuries‐old practices, including tequio (communal work party) and the asamblea (citizens' ‘assembly’ or town hall meeting), played a central role in enabling Zapotec citizens to give life to the network. Today residents of nearly 20 Zapotec, Mixtec and Mixe villages throughout Oaxaca can send and receive calls and texts within their communities for free, while long‐distance and international calls cost a small fraction of what commercial companies charge throughout the country. The network has provided villagers with an affordable and reliable system for maintaining family relationships and cultural continuity across national borders. However, Talea de Castro's community‐owned network is now under threat because Movistar, a giant telecom corporation based in Spain, has aggressively moved into the community. The case of Talea de Castro raises important questions about the roots of innovation, creative problem‐solving and the existential threats facing autonomous technological systems. Image source: DANIELA PARRA/REDES AC Back Cover: NORTH KOREA North Korean students against the backdrop of a statue of Kim Il‐sung (1912–1994) in Mansudae, central Pyongyang, 2007. Kim was the founding leader of North Korea and commanded the country's People's Army during the Korean War (1950–1953). For a decade after the war, his charismatic leadership contributed to turning the war‐torn society into a strong industrial economy. The importance of the last legacy is strongly propagated by the country's current leadership. In his guest editorial in this issue, Heonik Kwon considers the possibilities of a rapprochment between North Korea and the USA. Image source: (STEPHAN) / CC BY‐SA 2.0C     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 35, Number 4. August 2019

Front and back cover caption, volume 35 issue 4 Front cover SELF-EXCLUSION Locked gates, fences and razor wire symbolize the closed borders and exclusionary nature of ethnonationalism. They also raise questions about what it means to be inside those locked gates. In this issue, Joyce Dalsheim considers the dynamics underlying ethnonationalism in the latest Israeli elections. Back cover INDIGENOUS AMERICA AND ENGLISH HERITAGE This ink and watercolour image by the English painter John White from the late 16th century depicts dancing Tupinambá Indians, based on an earlier account by a French traveller to Brazil. White's watercolours, like those he composed when he lived among Algonquians in eastern North America, have been celebrated for their elegant naturalism. At the same time, Europeans widely associated the Tupinambá with cannibalism. White's careful lines therefore capture tensions that were inherent in the English imperial gaze, where the fascination with Native American lifeways, adornment and commodities existed alongside underlying assumptions about violent conflict. More often than not, ethnographic curiosity led to appropriation and dispossession. In 17th-century London, feather headdresses, admired for their lustre, found their way into cabinets of curiosities or into imperial performances like court masques. Torn from their original contexts, such objects were repurposed to endorse an aesthetics of empire that involved both a visibility and erasure of Native American artefacts and peoples. In this issue, Lauren Working considers what English heritage would look like if Native Americans were integrated more fully within it. She explores the opportunities that exist for using history, anthropology and objects to shed light on the complex, often troubling legacies that emerged out of the first moment of empire in England. Acknowledging the entangled nature of Native American and English histories can become a means of conveying multiple but intersecting narratives and perspectives, weaving indigeneity into the story of Englishness and opening up new possibilities for collaboration, museum display and reconciliation.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 33, Number 4. August 2017

Front and back cover caption, volume 33 issue 4 Front cover A depiction of the West African storm goddess Oya at Oyotunji Village in South Carolina, 2011. In parts of the US South where people are confronted by the risk of hurricanes, and where Vodou and hoodoo are practised, this deity has become an important part of religious life and worship. During the yearly hurricane season in New Orleans, rituals are held and sacrifices offered to appease the spirits of the storm. In this issue, Maria Elisabeth Thiele considers the coping strategies and the cultural creativity of the most vulnerable (African American religious or spiritual) communities in New Orleans today and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Back cover: YOGA A student at a yoga school in Mysore (in the southern Indian state of Karnataka) practises the techniques of asana (poses or postures which are combined with focused gaze and patterned breathing). Its practitioners insist that these are not just physical manipulations of the body but rather a form of spiritual exercise through which it is possible to train, to cultivate and ultimately to transform the self. In this issue, Jack Sidnell considers these techniques as a form of ethical practice as conceptualized in the later work of Michel Foucault. Foucault suggested that ethics be understood in terms of the self's relation to itself and the various methods, practices and techniques by which persons attempt to cultivate themselves in relation to a teleological model. At the school, and within the tradition of Ashtanga yoga as developed by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, students begin by learning basic techniques in order to increase flexibility, strengthen the body and purify it of toxins. With diligent practice, they come to experience other dimensions of yoga. Specifically, practitioners report experiences of self‐ effacement and ego dissolution. They believe this is induced through the training involved in performing increasingly difficult forms of asana such as the one pictured here, called Viranchyasana A. Virancha or Viranchi is one of the names of Brahma, the Supreme Being. In this pose, from the third series of asana collectively known as Sthira Bhaga (‘strength and grace’), the practitioner must first place one leg in lotus and then place the other behind the head while breathing calmly. The practitioner pictured here (Renato Libonati, aka Kranti) is an experienced senior student who has achieved the highest level of accreditation possible at the school in Mysore.     

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.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 27, Number 4. August 2011

Front and back cover caption, volume 27 issue 4 Front cover R.I.P. Paul the Octopus During the 2010 football World Cup, Paul the Octopus became a global celebrity on the back of his ability to correctly predict the outcome of upcoming matches eight times in a row. Paul's fans queued in long lines outside the Sea Life Aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany, hoping to catch a glimpse of the brainy cephalopod who knew the World Cup champions ahead of anyone else. Upon his death, they demanded that Paul be immortalized. And indeed, in January 2011, the first‐ever octopus memorial, a larger‐than‐life‐sized octopus sitting on top of a football which doubles as shrine for his ashes, was unveiled at the aquarium. Paul's worldwide fan following transcended the borders of footballing nations. Paul made appearances on devotional altars in cricket‐obsessed India, and in existentialist plays in the United States, a country where football that is actually played with the foot still cannot compete with the local ball‐throwing game of the same name. An American documentary* detailing Paul's meteoric rise to psychic stardom is to be released in the autumn. How do we explain the extraordinary enthusiasm for an octopus vulgaris named Paul? What was it about his uncanny knowledge of the outcome of upcoming matches that enthralled so many, whether they cared about football or not? And what was it that made Germans, proud inheritors of the so‐called Enlightenment, build a memorial to a divining cephalopod? Clearly the answers have to go beyond the love for the game and to the heart of the human condition. In this issue, Lucia Volk asks if a cephalopod really can show us what it is that makes us truly human. * The life and times of Paul the psychic octopus. Cinema Vertige, Merlin Entertainments Group & Smiley World Media. Director Alexandre O. Philippe, Producer/DoP Robert Muratore ( https://www.facebook.com/seerofseers ). Back cover In this issue, Michań, Murawski approaches the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw as a medium through which to track Poland's shifting attitude towards Russia, especially in the wake of the 2010 Smolensk plane crash that took the lives of the Polish president, his wife and top‐ranking state and military officials. The crash took place just a few kilometres from the site of the 1940 Katyń massacre, in which Stalin's NKVD shot dead thousands of Polish army officers. Pointing the finger at Russia, many Poles refer to the crash as ‘Katyń II’. The Palace itself has, as a symbol of Russian dominance in the region, always provoked a mixed reaction in Warsaw. Gifted to Poland by the USSR in 1955, it remains the tallest building in Poland and towers over the Warsaw skyline. Although now largely disassociated from its difficult past in the everyday, the Smolensk crash brought the building's traumatic provenance to the fore again. Poland's tense relations with Russia will figure prominently over the next six months as Poland awaits the outcome of a Polish report into the Smolensk air disaster, takes up the leadership of the EU, and holds its own national elections. How will Warsaw's inhabitants reconcile themselves to this large building so symbolic of a foreign occupation, as long as it is tarnished by its association with Russia and that country's role in Katyń and, by extension, Smolensk?     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 30, Number 4. August 2014

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

Front and Back Covers,Volume 37, Number 4. August 2021

Front and back cover caption, volume 37 issue 4 Front cover TOXIC FLOWS: E-WASTE RECYCLING A worker starts a fire to burn off the insulation from electrical cables to extract copper at an informal e-waste recycling site in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Open fire is one of the methods used here to mine metals from defunct electronics devices and their components. Electronic waste is one of the fastest-growing types of waste worldwide. However, many countries lack the formalized infrastructures necessary to collect and handle e-waste safely. The informal sector has stepped up to fill the gap. E-waste attracts urban dwellers seeking to extract value from these discarded materials while releasing toxic compounds detrimental to health and the environment. In this special issue on toxic flows, Samwel Moses Ntapanta follows Dar es Salaam's informal e-waste recyclers to find out how they understand the toxic nature of their work and what measures they take to minimize exposure. The number of informal e-waste recycling workshops in Dar es Salaam has skyrocketed in recent years. High demand for metals, like copper, offers a stable livelihood for e-waste recycling workers. Scavenging spare parts from the electronic afterlives is primarily driven by a vibrant Tanzanian local market, giving an impetus to repurpose certain materials. During these activities (mining, repurposing, restoring and reusing), workers are exposed to many toxic chemical compounds. With little or no knowledge about these, workers in informal e-waste recycling face unknown risks of exposure as they make a dangerous living in urban environments. Back cover TOXIC FLOWS: GLYPHOSATE Launch of the #StopGlyphosate campaign supported by the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) and 37 European organizations in front of the European Parliament, 8 February 2017. Across the globe, grass-roots movements against glyphosate, the world's most used herbicide, have encouraged regulators to re-examine its safety assessments. In Europe, a drawn-out process is widely expected to conclude that glyphosate is harmful to health and should be banned across all 28 member states. If so, this would likely lead to similar decisions in other markets, representing a blow to the agrochemical industry. More than any other pesticide, efforts to ban glyphosate have become tied up with questions of national sovereignty. From Vietnam and Thailand to Colombia and Mexico, the US government has threatened ‘trade disruption’ should a ban go ahead. The message is clear: chemical regulation is an international, not a domestic, matter. Nevertheless, glyphosate has become a standard for emerging populism. In post-war Sri Lanka, banning glyphosate became a mission of Buddhist nationalist movements seeking to purify the national body. In the UK, Brexit supporters argued an independent UK would have the freedom to stop glyphosate (another ‘Vote Leave’ promise quickly broken). As politics the world over has re-engaged with questions of national identity and autonomy, halting the free flow of glyphosate has become a goal for those on the left and right of the political spectrum.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 39, Number 4. August 2023

Front and back cover caption, volume 39 issue 4 CBDC'S BOTANICAL IMAGERY In the ever-evolving landscape of global finance, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has cultivated a botanical metaphor to illustrate the concept of central bank digital currency (CBDC). In this issue, Swartz & Westermeier explore this metaphor (illustrated here by Matthew Kurina), presenting a fascinating anthropological perspective on the intersection of technology, economy and imagination. The BIS's metaphorical ‘money tree’ positions the central bank as the sturdy trunk, providing stability and support to the financial ecosystem. The branches, representing various financial institutions, extend from this trunk, while the leaves, symbolizing the diverse forms of money, flourish at the periphery. This metaphor not only encapsulates the hierarchical structure of the financial system but also naturalizes the concept of CBDC, subtly implying its inevitability and organic integration into the existing monetary ecosystem. The BIS uses the ‘money flower’, another botanical metaphor, to classify the past, present and future forms of money. The petals of this flower represent different characteristics of money, such as whether it is digital or physical, centralized or decentralized. This metaphorical taxonomy provides a framework for understanding the evolution of money and the potential role of CBDCs in the future financial landscape. However, while visually appealing and conceptually insightful, these botanical metaphors also raise anthropological questions. They mask the sociopolitical implications of CBDCs, presenting them as natural phenomena rather than human-made constructs. This portrayal glosses over the potential power dynamics, control mechanisms and geopolitical tensions inherent in adopting CBDCs. As we stand at the precipice of a new era in digital currency, these metaphors serve as a reminder of the need for critical engagement with the narratives that shape our understanding of complex financial technologies. The ‘money tree’ and ‘money flower’ are not just symbols of financial evolution, but also tools of persuasion, framing our perception of the future of money. CULTURAL EVOLUTION IN THE AGE OF NFTs The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), an intriguing collection of algorithmically generated cartoon ape NFTs etched into the Ethereum blockchain, has not only sparked a cultural phenomenon but also inspired the first ever NFT-themed restaurant, Bored & Hungry, in Long Beach, California, USA. Why apes? A BAYC founder suggests it is a response to the existential ennui that follows the attainment of vast wealth through crypto investments. ‘Once you've achieved unimaginable wealth, what's next? You join a swamp club with a bunch of apes and embrace the unusual’. Or, you could always enjoy a burger. Yet, these seemingly whimsical endeavours are more than just a pastime for the crypto rich. NFTs signify a profound shift in the political discourse surrounding blockchain technology. They challenge the financialization of blockchain, aligning with a contemporary wave of anti-finance far-right populism and potentially offering an alternative to the prevailing capitalist democratic order. In this issue, Bill Maurer delves into the uneasy relationship between the concept of non-fungibility and anthropological theories of embedded or social economies. This tension, he suggests, could pave the way for a post-neoliberal future, one that is not rooted in finance but in regenerative models for future social worlds. From an anthropological perspective, the rise of NFTs and blockchain technology represents a fascinating evolution of societal norms and values. It challenges our traditional understanding of ownership, value and community, creating a new form of ‘digital tribalism’ where belonging is tied to shared digital assets. Furthermore, the boredom expressed by the crypto wealthy and their subsequent retreat into a virtual ‘swamp club’ can be seen as a form of digital ‘potlatch’, a ceremonial feast of the Kwakiutl, where status is asserted not through wealth accumulation, but through its ostentatious disposal. As blockchain technology continues infiltrating all aspects of life, anthropology grapples to understand its impact. The cultural shift it brings is as significant as it is complex, and its full implications are yet to be unravelled.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 28, Number 4. August 2012

Front and back cover caption, volume 28 issue 4 Front cover: OLYMPIC LEGACY: FOOD Over the last decades, the Olympic Games have increasingly claimed to deliver a social and economic ‘legacy’ to the host city. The 2012 Olympic Games in London have set out to deliver a legacy of better food for east London, an area perceived as ‘deprived’, with higher than average rates of obesity and significant ‘food deserts’ in its midst. Various Olympic organizations have considered the issue, resulting in the publication of a Food vision for the first time ever in Olympic history. However, with companies such as Coca‐Cola and McDonald's having been appointed official suppliers to the Games, and with an extremely limited time frame, will the Games be able to deliver on this promise? Allotments have been demolished and plans are afoot for Queen's Market, Upton Park, to be replaced by a supermarket. In response, Queen's Market traders and customers protest that demolition of their market goes against the Olympic spirit. Indeed, the Games could be used instead to help improve access to London's ethnically diverse markets far beyond the borough limits, as suggested in this postcard distributed by campaigners. As Freek Janssens argues in his guest editorial in this issue, the 2012 Games provide the opportunity to more critically assess how food serves the marginalized in our ethnically diverse inner cities. Also in this issue, Johan Fischer deals with halal, another topic that impacts athletes and spectators at the Games, with sporting events taking place during ramadan. Back cover: POVERTY AND GRASSROOTS COMMERCE Aisha, a door‐to‐door entrepreneur in CARE Bangladesh’ s Rural Sales Programme (RSP), is one of 3,000 previously ‘destitute’ women who now earns an income by selling branded consumer goods across rural villages under a partnership between CARE and global multinationals such as Danone, Bic, and Unilever. Similar female distribution systems are now popping up across the world. From Procter and Gamble's distribution of sanitary pads to ‘poor’ adolescent girls in Kenya and Malawi, to Unilever's Shakti ammas distributing soap village‐to‐village in rural India, companies aim to expand their bottom line by fostering entrepreneurial opportunities among the poor through so‐called ‘bottom of the pyramid’ (BoP) initiatives. Such initiatives reflect the changing nature of international development where new development actors – celebrities, philanthrocapitalists, multinational corporations, social entrepreneurs etc. – spearhead efforts to reduce poverty, replacing the role long occupied by states and aid agencies. Today some of the world's largest corporations have become key players in global development by selling ‘socially beneficial’ products to the ‘poor’, and by drawing them into global commodity chains as entrepreneurs. These efforts are now widely endorsed as part of a pro‐market development agenda that looks to the perceived ‘efficiency’ of the private sector to do what billions of aid dollars have been unable to do. BoP distribution systems can offer ‘poor’ women like Aisha an opportunity to earn an income and contribute to the food security of their family. But these engagements pose risks as well as rewards, and raise pressing questions for anthropologists about how, under what terms, and with what effects, global capital is linking up with informal economies in the name of development.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 1. February 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 1 Front cover ALTERNATIVE FACTS In response to discourses of alternative facts, denials of climate science and the undermining of science in the public sphere, on 22 April 2017, protestors marched for science in cities across the United States. In this image of the San Francisco march, a protestor holds a sign proclaiming ‘science is universal’. While some protestors' slogans assumed the objectivity of science and facts, others asserted the importance of diversity, equality and inclusion in science. Scholars of science and technology studies have long deconstructed claims of universality, but recently some have argued that the authority of science and facts must be reclaimed. Bruno Latour emphasizes that it is untenable to talk about scientific facts as though their rightness alone will be persuasive. Analyses of human rights and political violence disclose how narratives and propaganda shape not just individual attitudes but also the functioning of institutions. Contexts of gaslighting, repetition, distraction and undermining facts require different strategies for understanding how institutions and societies are perpetrating and perpetuating injustices. In this issue, Drexler's article develops a framework of multidimensional and intersectional justice for analyzing the layered, compounded, dynamic forms of power and inequality that contribute to particular injustices. Understanding justice as multidimensional and intersectional is part of a struggle from which new forms of knowledge and truth can emerge. Back cover ‘NEW SCHISM’ IN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY? A supplicatory prayer service (Moleben) to Saint Emperor Nikolay II in an Orthodox church in the Russian Federation. On the commemoration day of his death, believers line up to venerate large icons of the tsar installed in the church, as in many other churches of the ‘Russian world’. When kissing the holy icons and listening to the words of prayer, they participate in a theopolitical performance of belonging to a community of co-believers and compatriots, of people who share the same faith and the same nation, an enactment of the model ‘one state, one church’ prevalent in Eastern Orthodoxy. What happens, however, when state borders change, when new sovereign states emerge or become stronger? Is it possible for Orthodox Christians to practise their faith outside the national-territorial logic? Since the summer of 2018, Jeanne Kormina and Vlad Naumescu have been observing a rapidly developing cold war within Orthodox Christianity. This war between different claims for sovereignty and jurisdiction over ‘canonical territories’ has followed clear logics of religious nationalism and imperialism. In this conflict, the less privileged — ordinary believers and local religious communities — have suffered most. In this issue, Kormina and Naumescu analyze the recent ‘schism’ in Eastern Orthodoxy to show how religion and politics are strongly intertwined in disputes over territory and sovereignty. Drawing a parallel between the post-socialist revival of religion in Ukraine and the current mobilization on the ground, they show how the theopolitics of ‘communion’ and ‘canonical territory’ shape the fate of people, churches and states.