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 31, Number 1. February 2015

Front and back cover caption, volume 31 issue 1 Front cover CHINESE DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE The front cover shows a Chinese foreman, a migrant worker from Anhui province, and two Ethiopian labourers, working on a ditch along a road under construction in southeastern Tigray, northern Ethiopia, 2 December 2011. China's engagement with Africa is based on ‘win‐win cooperation’, Chinese diplomats claim, and is therefore fundamentally different from Western initiatives on the African continent. However, the situation on the ground tells another story. In this issue, Miriam Driessen offers a glance at daily life on Chinese road building sites in Ethiopia, revealing the striking parallels between Chinese development activities in Ethiopia and Western aid. Central to these parallels is the profound discrepancy between the expectations of Chinese workers prior to migration and the much less rosy realities faced on the construction site. Convinced of the goodwill nature of their activities, Chinese migrants were puzzled by the apparent ingratitude of local Ethiopians, their lack of cooperation, and, worse, repeated attempts to sabotage the building work. In this regard, Chinese struggles with development assistance in Ethiopia strike a familiar chord when we consider the reception of Western aid projects in Africa and elsewhere. Not new is the hiatus between optimistic and sometimes presumptuous development narratives and the frustration that follows in the face of the realities on the ground. Chinese struggles with development assistance in Ethiopia prove, once again, that development aid projects often do not work out as anticipated, because abstract and simplistic development policies may fail to fit complex realities. Back cover UNDOCUMENTED, UNACCOMPANIED MINORS IN US CUSTODY A rescue from the Rio Grande River: US Customs and Border Protection provide assistance to unaccompanied children after they have crossed the border into the United States. Until recently, news stories on immigration have exposed the appalling conditions of adult immigration detention facilities and chronicled the massive enforcement machinery that has resulted in record numbers of deportations since 2008. However, they have largely ignored the plight of unaccompanied Mexican and Central American children who cross the border alone, are apprehended by immigration authorities, and land in federal custody. The frenzied media coverage of desperate young migrants crossing the border in the summer of 2014 has galvanized the public but also created powerful myths about who these children are, why they are coming to ‘El Norte’, and what we need to do with them after their apprehension. In this issue, Susan Terrio tells the story of the Central American and Mexican migrants who are driven from home by violence and deprivation and embark alone, risking their lives on the perilous journey north. They suffer coercive arrests at the US border, land in detention, and wage an uphill battle to obtain legal status. It sheds light on a shadowy juvenile detention system run by the US government that has escaped public scrutiny for years. It shows how the government got into the business of detaining children and what we can learn from this troubled history.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 31, Number 3. June 2015

Front and back cover caption, volume 31 issue 3 Front cover AFRICAN ART This slightly larger than life‐size terracotta head (height 35 cm.) was found face down below some 4 metres of deposit in a tributary of the Nok valley, Rafin Dinya, in Kaduna State, Nigeria. Estimated age is mid first millennium BC. This image was published by Bernard Fagg, archaeologist and museum curator, in Man (old series) vol. 56, July 1956, p.89. Bernard Fagg (1915–1987), William's younger brother, was the first to identify the Nok culture in 1943. He established the Jos Museum in 1952 in Jos, Nigeria. (Collection: National Museum, Lagos, Nigeria). In this issue, Jonathan Benthall assesses Bill Fagg's legacy in the African art scene. Back cover SAKHA CARTOON HEROES In the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), northeast Siberia, activists from the Sakha nationalist intelligentsia are making strenuous efforts to revive their peoples' epic tradition, the Olongkho. Olongkho recitals undergirded this indigenous Siberian community's position within a complex and shifting animist cosmos, incorporating ancestors, demons, area spirits and gods, until they petered out during the second half of the 20th century, under the influence of Soviet modernization. Bards would travel from homestead to homestead, drawing their audiences into improvised recitations that would continue through the night. Most Sakha people now are unable to understand the elaborate language these bards used. Teachers, politicians and academics are investing large amounts of time and money into a cultural form that brings little pleasure to its dutiful audiences. They are displaying much ingenuity in rendering the Olongkho palatable to young people, in particular – such as creating a cartoon version of a famous text. But why are they trying so hard? The answer lies in the reified notion of ethnicity that has become integrated into the reproduction of social differentiation through popular taste, throughout Russia. Specific understandings of ethnic identity and cultural production were promoted throughout the Soviet period, as part of the Soviet state's massive social engineering project. These notions recur in contemporary public spaces and performances: they are implicit in the statue pictured to the right of this text, which incorporates a Sakha epic hero into a monument to those killed in World War Two. They have borne fruit in a capacity to associate a particular moral stance and social standing with a taste for one's own ethnic cultural heritage. As analyzed by Eleanor Peers in this issue, it is this association that accords Putin's actions in the Crimea their power to legitimate and reinforce the current Russian state.     

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

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

Front and Back Covers,Volume 31, Number 6. December 2015

Front and back cover caption, volume 31 issue 6 Front cover AI and humanity A statue by Stephen Kettle of Alan Turing, sitting pensively at one of his code‐breaking machines in Bletchley Park. Made up from half a million pieces of Welsh slate, this statue was a landmark feature for the Life and Works of Alan Turing exhibition in 2012, which was curated following a public campaign to save the Turing‐Newman Collaboration Collection, a rare collection of his mathematical papers. Members of the Turing family additionally contributed some of the mathematician's personal belongings, including a teddy bear he used to practise his lectures on. Bletchley Park is now a huge heritage attraction, more so since The Imitation Game, a film based on the life of the pioneering computer scientist, came out. Previously known as the UK Government Code and Cypher School, this is now a site for the National Museum of Computing, which ncludes the huts and blocks that hosted a group of codebreakers whose work is said to have helped shorten the war by two years. In this issue, Ting Guo looks at Turing's personal trajectory in life and asks to what extent his search for artificial intelligence was inspired by considerations other than purely technical ones. To design artificial intelligence is to reproduce what is the essential ‘us’, what Pamela McCorduck refers to as an ‘odd form of self‐reproduction’. The desire for such machines, she argues, is a desire equally rooted in fear and allure, which reflects not only the drive for knowledge and human progress, but the discovery of the human self, which is itself driven by fundamental problems of being human. Back cover WORLDS IN MINIATURE Miniature worlds fascinate us. Taking familiar objects, scenes and environments and scaling them down to the minute generates a sense of wonder, forming a special connection between object and audience across which information can flow in subtle and unexpected ways. For centuries, people have used miniaturization to create tiny settlements with streets down which traffic doesn't flow and shops where no purchases are made. In doing so, they generate a fantasy, an idealized portrayal of a world they wish to see, not the one they inhabit. One of the most famous of these miniature communities is Madurodam in the Netherlands. Attracting more than 700,000 visitors a year, this park seeks to replicate particular dioramas of Dutch life, employing a dedicated team of professional modellers focusing on specific aspects of Dutch architecture and urban environments to portray a particular, explicitly positive, image of the Netherlands. The choices made at this site, and others like it all over the world, are part of a complex process of representation in miniature, a selection of iconography and design intentionally assembled to create unconscious impressions in visiting tourists, particularly children, about the full‐sized communities they resemble. As such, their representative powers are partial, a carefully curated miniature snapshot of certain aspects of an entire nation designed to act as a cultural and educational ambassador. In this issue, Jack Davy explores how the process of miniaturization, as evidenced by a Lego figurine, can encapsulate and transmit complex and controversial themes in a child‐like, non‐threatening manner. These processes operate subtly and inexplicitly, shaping our understanding of the wider world around us through the affordances of the small.     

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 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 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 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 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 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 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.