Cartoon epic heroes in indigenous Siberian revival: The meaning of ethnicity in Putin's Russia (Respond to this article at https://www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-today/debate)

This article outlines a motivation for the Russian Federation's incursion into the Crimea, which concerns the Putin administration's relationship with Russia's citizens, rather than the outside world. I use a case study from Siberia – the Sakha people's revival of their national epic, the Olongkho – to explore the possibility that Putin's behaviour during the Ukrainian crisis serves to legitimate his authority within Russia, by appealing to conceptions of ethnicity that have their roots in Soviet‐era social engineering. Rather than deducing the Putin administration's motives from the events and relationships they immediately concern, I explore motivations emerging from the configuration of values, perceptions, and conventions that shapes and reproduces social difference in Russia. The Sakha Olongkho revival shows how the perceptions of ethnicity fostered during the Soviet era have become powerful indexes of morality and authority. Individual Sakha citizens now demonstrate their identities and values through adopting a stance towards a reified conception of Sakha ethnicity expressed in their choices of recreation, fashion and consumption. Sakha ethnicity has become integrated into the process whereby hierarchical social groupings emerge within Sakha society according to their avowal of specific tastes and norms. The relatively small size of the Sakha population – which is nevertheless the dominant ethnic group in their republic, Sakha (Yakutia) – enables us to see trends affecting the rest of Russia in microcosm. Thus, I suggest that former Soviet ethnicity has become so closely woven into Russia's morality that Putin's invasions of foreign states, in the name of the ethnic Russian community, bolster his claim to be a moral person and a legitimate and authoritative national leader.     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Front and Back Covers,Volume 35, Number 1. February 2019

Front and back cover caption, volume 35 issue 1 Front cover FASCISM ON THE RISE? This picture features activists of the Polish National Radical Camp (ONR) who are about to start a celebratory march commemorating the anniversary of the movement's establishment back in 1934. The march's point of departure was the premises of the Gdansk shipyard – a place that became well known in 1980s due to a series of anti-regime protests by ‘Solidarity’ movement activists. The slogan above the gate reads: ‘Thank you for good work!’ (employees would see this slogan when leaving the premises, after their shift). The choice of place was far from coincidental. Polish mass media were quick to describe the anniversary as an attack on the memory of the Solidarity movement which, they emphasized, was the antithesis of fascism and which fought for liberalism. They also claimed that the march was a ‘reminiscence’ of September 1939 when Nazi Germany took over the Free City of Danzig (Gdansk). It is clear that the event was meant as a provocation and the organizers did not shy away from admitting it. Yet in his commemorative speech, the ONR leader referred explicitly to the events of 1980, reminding the gathered crowd that Solidarity fought for better work conditions, dignity and basic rights, and linked those arguments to a depiction of work conditions in the (present-day) neo-liberal system. He also emphasized that Solidarity brought about a revolution and that such a revolution is needed again today. His speech exemplifies well, a growing tendency for far-right movements to draw explicitly on socialist ideas and return to the idea of ‘the third way’, observable in Poland and beyond. The event was attended by activists from abroad, among them Forza Nuova activists and Polish economic migrants living in the UK and Ireland. In this issue, Agnieszka Pasieka considers what it is like to study the ‘unlikeable’ other. Several other contributions also discuss how anthropology might position itself in relation to the trend towards extreme right-wing politics worldwide. Back cover FIRE AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, BRAZIL Oil painting, undated and without the artist's signature, which used to belong to the National Museum, Brazil, until the recent fire destroyed it. Depicted is a Bororo boy, baptized as Guido, who was adopted at approximately seven years of age by D. Maria do Carmo de Mello Rego, a lady of fine education, wife of the governor of Mato Grosso. Without children and of relatively advanced age, the couple treated Guido as if he were their own son. D. Maria do Carmo made great efforts to win his affection, teaching him to read and introducing him to the arts. For four years, from 1888 to 1892, Guido lived with her and her husband, first in Mato Grosso, then in the city of Rio de Janeiro until he died on a nearby farm due to natural causes, possibly pneumonia. Donated by D. Maria do Carmo before his death, this painting became part of one of the oldest National Museum collections composed of about 400 Indian artefacts she had gathered from Mato Grosso (the majority of these of Bororo origin), including an album with drawings and watercolours made by Guido and carefully arranged by her. Not only this painting, but the entire collection of ethnographic pieces and the album of drawings and watercolours were unfortunately destroyed by the fire. In this issue, Gemma Aellah and Jessica Turner interview João Pacheco de Oliveira, professor of anthropology and curator of ethnographic collections at the National Museum, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 35, Number 6. December 2019

Front and back cover caption, volume 35 issue 6 Front cover WAR TRAUMA IN CONTEXT Lost identity (2018), 50×70 cm, acrylic on canvas by Willarekezi. Rwandan Willy Karekezi's painting reflects on how forcibly displaced people imagine themselves in recollections of home and flight. Their memories become fractured, even unrecognizable, over time. This artwork is part of a collection that was shown in an exhibition called ‘When we return’, in Gulu, Uganda, during July and August 2019. It brought together research and visual outputs from Uganda, South Sudan, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The artwork was an output of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Politics of Return Research Programme, curated by Kara Blackmore (an exhibition catalogue is available).¹ Based on the Politics of Return work, as well as long-term research supported by linked Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) grants, in this issue, Torre et al. argue that the literature underlying the recently published World Health Organization's assessment of mental health in conflict settings is inadequate. It sets aside crucial evidence and promotes misleading responses to suffering. (1). https://issuu.com/lseflca/docs/new_por_catalogue_print_final_sept_2019-digital-is Back cover Detail from Three women on the lake (2018), 245×170 cm, collage on canvas by Kusa Kusa Maski Gael. The figure is located in a dream-like vision of the lake and mountain range between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is a complex image, full of nuances and ambiguities, linked to the artist's own memories of flight from the Congo, as well as those of the conflict-affected people he worked with in Uganda. In this issue, Torre et al. warn that conceptualizing war trauma in terms of psychiatric pathologies promotes the symptoms that therapists and aid projects purport to address. Without due consideration for the specificities of lived experiences and cultural contexts, what is actually happening may be largely overlooked, with potentially harmful consequences.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 29, Number 5. October 2013

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

Front and Back Covers,Volume 28, Number 3. June 2012

Front and back cover caption, volume 28 issue 3 Front cover Imagine you're walking in the woods and you kick over an artefact – a piece of pottery, perhaps. You don't know what it is, but you know it's old, and it looks precious. Who you gonna call? A university colleague? The British Museum? Or an ex‐army, former professional wrestler, whose trademark call is to arch his chest like a gorilla and shout, ‘Boom, baby, boom!’? American cable viewers have been watching Ric Savage seek out antiquities, dig them up and sell them. Savage, owner of an artefact recovery and sales outfit that specializes in the Civil War era, fronts American Digger, a filmed series broadcast by Spike TV. He's passionate about history, he knows about old things and he digs – the definition, you might think, of an archaeologist. Archaeologists beg to differ. Across the US, high profile archaeological organizations have complained about the series, which, they say, promotes looting and the destruction of national heritage. They seem to have gained support not just from the public, thousands of whom are signing online protests, but also from metal detectorists and collectors – members of the very gang to which Savage belongs. On 28 March American Digger Magazine, which has no connection with the TV series, dropped Savage as a columnist. Metal detectors, it said, are for finding history, not making money. For many archaeologists such a distinction misses the point. Whatever the intention, they argue, inexpert excavation driven by the beep of a machine is destructive. Yet in Britain, where communication between detectorists and professional archaeologists is enshrined in the unique Portable Antiquities Scheme, barriers have been coming down. It was looting that sparked the idea for the scheme 20 years ago. Could an outsize man with a penchant for heavy machinery achieve the same in the States? Back cover RECOVERING MEMORABILIA The front and back covers of this issue portray contrasting ways in which memorabilia may be recovered. If the front cover is about sensationalizing finds for entertainment on popular TV, the back cover shows finds after sifting for valuable possessions in the deposits left by the 3/11 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami. Various volunteer centres were set up to help clean local residents' rescued possessions found in the debris. Photos and family albums were the most frequently rescued objects. In addition to ongoing cleaning sessions in the devastated region, off‐site sessions have also been held in various parts of Japan. Piles of rescued photos are still waiting to be cleaned. The image shows cleaned, rescued photographs being dried at a cleaning session held at 3331 Arts Chiyoda in Tokyo on 11 February 2012. Even though it has been a year since the tragic disaster, not all the images in the uncleaned photographs have faded despite having been covered in seawater and sludge full of bacteria and asbestos. Having survived as traces of memory as well as of personal history, these photos offer the hope of one day being reunited with their owners, or the relatives and friends they portray.     

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.     

PARADES,PUBLIC SPACE,AND PROPAGANDA: THE NAZI CULTURE PARADES IN MUNICH

As the birthplace of the Nazi Party and the official Capital of the Movement, Munich assumed a high profile within the party's propaganda apparatus. While Berlin became the political and foreign policy centre of Hitler's Reich and Nuremberg the site of massive displays of national power during the annual party rallies, national and local party leaders launched a series of cultural initiatives to showcase Munich as the Capital of German Art. Munich hosted numerous festivals proclaiming a rebirth of German art and culture, as well as the regime's supposedly peaceful intentions for domestic and international audiences. To help achieve these goals, Nazi leaders staged a series of extravagant parades in Munich celebrating German cultural achievements. The parades provided an opportunity for the regime to monopolize Munich's public spaces through performances of its particular vision of German history, culture and national belonging. While such mass public spectacles had obvious propaganda potential, several constraints, most prominently Munich's existing spatial layout, limited the parades’ effectiveness.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 35, Number 3. June 2019

Front and back cover caption, volume 35 issue 3 Front cover THE RITUAL PROCESS Victor Turner developed van Gennep's concept of liminality, the transitional moment in rites of passage, into an innovative approach to the study of ritual dynamics. He also put the concepts of liminality and communitas to work, so as to understand larger processes of sociopolitical and cultural transformation such as those he was living through in the late 1960s. He was particularly interested in the relation between moments of transition, with their communitarian forms of sociality, and how – paradoxically – they failed to endure, giving rise to new forms of hierarchy. The covers of this special issue present two men jumping across thresholds, signalling its focus on transition. The anticipation and dramatization of transition is a key facet of the routinized ritual life of the Enawenê-nawê, portrayed on the front cover, who live in southern Amazonia, Brazil. While most Enawenê-nawê men are away fishing during the ritual season of Yankwa, hosts anticipate their return by performing a daily spectacle, ending with dramatic jumps into the flute house. During this time of mounting expectation, hosts adorn their bodies with particular care and their rousing performances cater to women and children who watch the spectacle from the dwellings that surround the open central arena. While circling the arena to elicit the fishermen's long-awaited return, the hosts play chaotic and ludic flutes – known as ‘pets’ to the civilized melodic flutes – and take on their character. In this issue, Chloe Nahum-Claudel argues that the Enawenê-nawê have achieved permanent communitas – an egalitarian social structure – by living in a permanent state of transition. Back cover THE OLYMPIAN'S THREE BODIES Competitive sporting events have historically been a prime site of ritual. Indeed, many argue that sport itself is ritualistic in nature. The history of the Olympic Games demonstrates the complex way in which ritual relates to society and to the polity. The lighting of the Olympic flame and the Olympic torch relay are rituals that have been central to the Olympic Games since 1928 and 1936 respectively. Chinese gymnast Li Ning after running, suspended by wires, around the upper rim of the Bird's Nest National Stadium and flying up to light the cauldron with the Olympic flame, the apical act of the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony on 8 August 2008. As an individual body, Li won three gold, two silver and one bronze medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, nearly 20 per cent of those attained by the national body of China as it re-entered the Summer Games after a 32-year absence. By 2008, Li was a national icon as well for his economic success under ‘reform and opening up’. Now heroic ritual custodianship of the Olympics' most sacred symbol of common humanity was added to his Olympian's status as a human body. Dramatic demonstration of the potential compatibility of Individuality, Nationality and Humanity is at the heart of Olympic ideology and ritual practice and the global attention paid to them. In this issue, John J. MacAloon analyzes the familiar Olympic victory ceremony and its infrequent alterations, such as the reversal in 2002 from gold-silver-bronze to the bronze-silver-gold medal presentation sequencing we know today.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 32, Number 1. February 2016

Front and back cover caption, volume 32 issue 1 Front cover Greece‐German relations The Prussian goose‐step survives in Greek official ceremonies as part of the ‘traditional’ display by the famed Evzones, or presidential guards – a relic of the German‐derived monarchy and its militaristic traditions. It is combined here with a male costume popular in the European parts of the Ottoman Empire, especially among Albanians and Greeks, and nowadays associated in popular imagination with the Greek War of Independence (1821–1833). German cultural influence still lingers in Greece, most visibly in the remnants of 19th‐century neoclassical architecture in Athens and other cities. The brutal Nazi occupation of Greece and Germany's role in Greece's current economic turmoil together represent another side of a tormented historical relationship between the two countries and their peoples. In an essay of which Part I appears in this issue, Michael Herzfeld argues that the mutual stereotyping by Greeks and Germans – a habit deeply rooted in these complex interactions – has become a major cause of Greece's difficulties, perpetuating its ‘crypto‐colonial’ status within the European Union. He suggests that the only possibility for escaping this destructive downward spiral is through a determined attempt to stop the stereotyping, and argues that anthropology could play an important role in that reversal of accumulated hurt and mutual distrust. Back cover FOOD POVERTY IN THE UK If, as Lévi‐Strauss suggested, food is bon à penser, how can an anthropologist interpret a lack of food in a highly developed society? Can an anthropological lens illuminate either the recent rise in food insecurity in the UK or the exponential growth of food banks? In this issue, Pat Caplan reflects on her current fieldwork on these topics in north London and west Wales. She focuses particularly on food banks, making use of interviews and participant observation with clients, trustees and volunteers, as well as local and national media reports. The author poses a series of questions: firstly, she considers who needs food aid and why, which involves a consideration of insecure employment and low wages, as well as changes to the benefit regime which have adversely impacted on food bank clients. Secondly, she discusses who provides food aid and how, by considering those giving to and running food banks and other types of organization, including their motivations for getting involved. Thirdly, she asks what kind of solution food aid offers to an apparently growing problem. Does this form of charity merely depoliticize the arguments? Finally and most importantly, she asks what this tells us about the society in which we live, about the state and its policies and the public discourse around such issues. She notes that there are many well‐honed anthropological concepts which can be brought to bear on these issues, including gifting and reciprocity, shame and stigma, entitlements and blame. Finally, a consideration of voluntarism raises important questions about rights and entitlement, including the state's compliance with the international covenants to which it has signed up.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 37, Number 3. June 2021

Front and back cover caption, volume 37 issue 3 Front cover PLASTIC POSSIBILITIES The front cover depicts an art installation by South Korean artist Choi Jeong Hwa, also known as ‘the plastic alchemist’, at the ‘Your Bright Future’ exhibition in Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), 2009. For Hwa, plastic is the most artificial material that is at the same time the most common element in today's landscape. Hailed as the quintessential material for design, invention and relentless production, plastic is often associated with post-WWII industrial growth in the Western world. And yet, wading through the ‘plastic islands’ of our oceans, standing knee-deep in landfills, choking on incinerated plastic fumes, the spectacular ‘utopia’ of plastic is beginning to register differently. In this issue, Tridibesh Dey and Mike Michael present the everyday ‘alchemies’, the lived realities assembled with plastic and plastic waste in India. They take us into the household of Dey's parents in Kolkata and familiarize us with the creative repurposing techniques performed on everyday plastic items like bottles, containers, carrier bags, etc., which are supposed to be thrown away after ‘single use’. Like the recycled baskets in Hwa's art installation, the inventive deployment of used plastics here point to the emerging socio-materialities of plastics, which might, in turn, inform and inspire different futures, leading us into collaborative kinship and more-than-human living with plastics. These emergent plastic relations are embedded within more extensive socio-economic, political and ecological relations configured in contemporary India around plastic's production, consumption and waste management. The delicate plastic economies of the poorer urban households are at risk under the recent government reforms in waste management, the neo-liberalization of waste work and the ‘toxic’ externalities produced by large-scale extractive infrastructures. Back cover CONTAINER SHIPPING Above: satellite image of the containership Ever Given from the Evergreen Marine shipping line stuck in the Suez Canal, Egypt, 24 March 2021. Below: the same ship safely moored in the port of Rotterdam, 9 March 2020. The Ever Given, an ultra-large containership, obstructed the Suez Canal for six days in March 2021, thereby accruing an estimated loss to the world economy of US $400 million per hour. Getting stuck in the canal on its way from Asia to Rotterdam, the ship not only brought the seemingly smooth flow of maritime transportation via this central waterway to a hold, but also sparked great public interest in the role of the maritime industry – and its ever-growing container vessels – in the functioning of global capitalism today. In ‘Politics of scale’ in this issue, Hege H⊘yer Leivestad and Elisabeth Schober remind us that the Ever Given is only one of many ultra-large ‘box ships’ sailing the world's oceans today. These vessels have, over recent years, undergone a spectacular growth in size. The reasons for this expansion are no longer primarily located in economies of scale, the authors argue, but rather, are enmeshed with complex political processes in far-flung places across the world. Featuring the story of the HMM Algeciras, currently the largest containership in the world in terms of container-carrying capacity, the article takes us from a ship christening at a South Korean shipyard, past the Suez Canal, to the Spanish port town that the ship is named after. Tracing the complex public-private partnership that brought the HMM Algeciras into being, attention is also paid to the mounting social costs of ultra-large container vessels like these, which require massive (and often public) investments in infrastructures at the land-sea interface. Bigger is not always better. In the containership industry, have we arrived at a point where unsustainable false economies of scale are setting in?     

Restoring Berlin's Unter den Linden: ideology,world view,place and space

Berlin's Unter den Linden, a primary thoroughfare and ensemble of historic architecture and nationally significant cultural institutions, lay in ruins at the close of the Second World War. The buildings, public spaces, and public art forming this street bore testimony to diverse facets of German history, presenting a range of semantic issues to those interested in their future. Differences in key groups' world view resulted in different interpretations of these spaces, thus different approaches to policy development with regard to their future. Initially, the German cultural elite was determined to restore significant architecture, asserting architectural value while avoiding mention of ‘Prussian’ or ‘German’ identity. However, the German communist leadership viewed these same structures as testimony to ‘Prussian–German militarism’ and sought their effacement. The Soviet Military Administration remained largely indifferent to all but spatial value until 1947, when they began to use architecture to represent the Soviet Union. Finally, with the founding of the German Democratic Republic and import of Soviet ‘socialist-realist’ urban theory, architecture considered progressive was restored as national cultural heritage, although sites with considerable ‘militaristic’ content prompted more debate over their future.     

Do the Banaro Really Exist? Going Back After Richard Thurnwald

Between 1913 and 1915, the Austro‐German anthropologist Richard Thurnwald explored the Sepik area with the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde expedition. In the last months of his stay, he worked with two Banaro informants and later on published his famous study on that society. Eighty five years after, the only anthropological reference on the Banaro is still his own articles. Bernard Juillerat spent four months among the Banaro in 1989, discussing with the people Thurnwald's analyses on the social structure and the mundu partnership. A book was published in French in 1993. This article is a short abstract of the book, where the author discusses Thurnwald's interpretations and gives ethnographic material on men's house ritual and initiation. Some more anthropological information is given on the transformations of Banaro society in the meantime.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 33, Number 1. February 2017

Front and back cover caption, volume 33 issue 1 Front cover COOPERATION & COMPETITION In May 2010, we paid a visit to our friend Aurora';s grandparents in Valea Mic? (Moldova). They greeted us and agreed to pose for this photo at the family house. Aurora presented them with a small gift and we were served sweet bread and pálinka (the traditional homemade spirit based on plums). They spoke with us in Romanian, but they also speak Csango, a Hungarian dialect used by most of the Catholic minority in this part of Moldova. They had lived through dramatic changes: having grown up in a peasant community, they were forced to become ‘agricultural workers’; during the Socialist regime, after which they became peasants again, harvesting part of their former lands. This vignette illustrates how, behind the cultural diversity that can be found in every corner of the world, some basic principles are pervasive: the norms of etiquette to welcome guests accompanied by the exchange of food and gifts. Such token exchanges are a common characteristic of humanity: the tendency to cooperate and initiate and maintain relations through reciprocity. In this issue, J.L. Molina et al. review how different disciplines respond to the question of why humans cooperate. While contributions from sister disciplines tend to explain cooperation as an adaptive response to competition, social anthropology studies cooperation and competition simultaneously through the basic mechanism of reciprocity, or deferred mutual exchanges. This mechanism is present in hunter‐gatherer societies, where generalized reciprocity dominates; in prestige economies, where valuables are exchanged in specific spheres or given away in agonistic institutions; and also in peasant communities, where cooperation and competition coexist but never at the cost of putting at risk the reproduction of the community itself. Back cover ZOMIA Daily scene of agricultural life in the highlands of the Sino‐Vietnamese borderlands. The village, San Sa Ho, is located in Sa Pa District, Lao Cai Province, Vietnam. In May 2010, adults and children – in this case belonging to Hmong Leng ethnicity (Miao‐Yao language family) – transplant rice shoots from nurseries into recently flooded paddy fields. The extended family joins forces for such periods of intensive farming, bartering labour along a balanced reciprocity model involving all levels of economic and ritual life. Rice is the staple crop, supplemented by maize, cassava, and a few vegetables. The limestone geology and rough landscape of western Sa Pa district is unforgiving and farmers have to work extremely hard for modest results. Cash crops are uncommon in this region, even if opium had been a mainstay until the state forbade its production and sale in the early 1990s. This important loss in cash income has hit local farmers very hard and is only partially compensated today by the cultivation and sale of black cardamom, illegal logging, and poachng of wildlife. Vietnam is still under a communist regime but the agrarian transition and the economic turn towards a market economy are now decades old and nearing completion in the crowded lowlands. However, in these remote mountains – which are part of James C. Scott's Zomia – its reach is slowed down by the cultural resistance of egalitarian societies and world views not entirely compatible with the capitalist model. In this issue, Jean Michaud looks at certain limitations in Scott's model.     

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

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