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?     

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 37, Number 1. February 2021

Front and back cover caption, volume 37 issue 1 ALGORITHMS & GOVERNANCE Detail from Myriad (Tulips) (2018), an installation by the artist and researcher Anna Ridler exhibited at AI: More than Human, Barbican Centre, London, UK (16 May-26 August 2019). Each photograph that Ridler took is carefully affixed and hand-labelled, forming a dataset of unique tulips that could also serve as a training set given to an algorithm from which to learn. It evokes, according to the author, the imperfect and arduous human labour behind machine learning ( http://annaridler.com/myriad-tulips ) Governance by algorithms often includes semi-automatized decisions such as which families obtain resources, which neighbours get policed, or if a person can be released on parole or receive state support. In ‘algorithmic governance’, it is not only the often-opaque algorithmic assemblage that informs decision-making and intervention, but, most importantly, the original dataset and model that are used to train machine learning systems. The accuracy and representativity of these data often mirror existing and past forms of structural discrimination and inequality - and create new ones. From these processes depend the prediction, production of knowledge, and ultimately the reality of the intervention. These systems, while undermining basic social rights, make it ever more difficult to legally challenge adverse decisions. In this issue, Maria Sapignoli offers some reflections on the possible effects that the ‘AI-turn’ of global governance has for human rights practices, particularly in the United Nations. She argues that, beyond the policy and crisis-intervention orientations of AI, we are witnessing the creation of new foundations for human belonging and being. Algorithmic interpretation and computational calculation contribute to the definition of the reality of intervention and to the institutional formation, inclusion and exclusion of ‘data-identities’. All this is taking place through the automatization of decision making in the context of the increased interdependence between private and public sectors. Back cover BARBERS AND COVID-19 On 24 March 2020, the Prime Minister of India announced a nationwide lockdown to arrest the coronavirus's spread. The photo shows Abbas, a member of the Barber caste in a village in the Ernad Taluk of South Malabar, for the first time reopening and cleaning his barbershop on 22 May 2020 after lockdown. Before the lockdown, excepting Tuesdays, Abbas would routinely open his barbershop at 9 in the morning and close at 11 at night. He used to earn nearly 1500 rupees a day. During the lockdown, his earnings stopped entirely for two months. All Barbers of South Malabar were required to close their shops and were not allowed on-site to clean or take any of their equipment. Barbershops were subject to severe restrictions even after lifting lockdown when he could no longer earn 500 rupees a day. In the initial months after the lockdown, Abbas found his regular customers reluctant to visit his shop. In this issue, Muhammed Haneefa argues that Barber misfortunes have been disproportionately affected during this epidemic by the systemic caste discrimination in this region. In South Malabar, 97 per cent of Barbers are compelled to follow endogamous marriage, which has weakened their resilience and has severely compounded their sense of doom, as all relatives work in the same barber trade with little or no employment opportunities elsewhere.     

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

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

Front and Back Covers,Volume 37, Number 6. December 2021

Front and back cover caption, volume 37 issue 6 COVID-19 DIVINATION Front cover: Domestic fire makes human life possible in the Siberian Arctic. The fire also communicates warnings and predictions to those who can listen and understand it, like this Nenets woman. Back cover: The UK National Health Service (NHS) designed its Covid-19 (‘track and trace’) app to avoid ambiguities like those of Siberian fire interpretation, but in doing so, it creates a climate of detachment and cynicism. This app serves as a critical public health technology by warning users that they have been near someone who has subsequently turned out to be infected. So why has it encountered so much resistance and non-cooperation? In this issue, Roza Laptander and Piers Vitebsky look for an answer by comparing these on-screen phone alerts with messages from the domestic fire of nomadic Siberian reindeer herders as it crackles alerts about potential illnesses or accidents. Though these prediction technologies may seem radically different, they are both instruments for thinking about possible futures and adjusting behaviour. They are both forms of divination that differ not so much in their logic as in their embeddedness in wider cosmologies of person, fate and society. The Siberian fire generates meaning as a focal point within many narrative strands concerning family, landscape and the movement of animals; its properties contribute to local ideas of normality, and acceptance of its messages is rooted in intimacy and entanglement. This highlights how the Covid-19 app belongs to a state of emergency and exception. Its statistical idiom of risk and its culturally hyper-valued focus on privacy deliberately conceal the identities of people caught in the chain of infection, thereby blocking social and narrative coherence.     

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.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 28, Number 5. October 2012

Front and back cover caption, volume 28 issue 5 Front cover THE CRISIS IN MALI. Malian refugees are seen at the Mbera refugee camp in eastern Mauritanian, Mbera, Mauritania, 17 July 2012. At that point, roughly 92,000 refugees had arrived in the camp. Estimates are that nearly half a million Malians have been displaced from their homes this year with many refugees having also fled to Burkina Faso and Niger. Photo taken by award‐winning photographer, Lynsey Addario ( http://www.lynseyaddario.com ). Back cover TOURISM: WORK VS LEISURE A tourist from Hong Kong photographs a young Mursi woman with lip‐plate in her lower lip. Tourists queue up orderly for each to take their turn photographing the wonders of Mursi culture. The image demonstrates the complexity of tourist encounters, and the multifaceted aspects of leisure and work. The Mursi prepare for their visitors well ahead of touring cars arriving at their settlements. They make themselves up and imitate the kinds of working activities (e.g. grinding) they know from experience will fascinate and elicit a response from tourists. Tourists typically ask the Mursi for permission to photograph the process and, occasionally, join in themselves with the Mursi in their ‘work’. In this sense, the Mursi imitate ‘traditional’ sociality as they simulate their own working activities for tourists who supposedly spend their leisure time in Mursiland. As Tamàs Règi argues in this issue, instead of seeing leisure as a fixed human condition within one society, anthropologists might approach it, rather, as a process that evolves at the interface between different societies that meet. In this way, leisure is a constantly developing practice in cross‐cultural encounters.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 35, Number 5. October 2019

Front and back cover caption, volume 35 issue 5 Front cover This installation was part of the ‘Hurray Menstruation’ protest organized by gender activists during the Sabarimala pilgrimage of 2018–19. This protest was supported by the Kerala government as part of its ‘Renaissance’ campaign against the BJP’ s (Bharatiya Janata Party) provocative assertion of traditional Hindu values. The installation is a condensed symbol in Victor Turner's sense, with many layers of meaning. The major elements are a vulva, alongside an image of the Constitution of India, centrally mediated by a woman blowing a trumpet - an expression of freedom from repressive and oppressive moral values espoused by the dominant middle class. The installation draws attention to oppressive rules in Hindu religiosity and ritual practice that target women as polluting due to biological processes particular to them. By contrast, the installation attributes positive values to these ‘polluting’ processes instead. Back cover THE PARABLE OF THE FOOTBRIDGE A footbridge in the wetlands. Where will it lead? ‘The between’ is a powerful theme in ritual and mythical traditions the world over. However, different traditions will express ‘the between’ in different ways. As described by Paul Stoller in this issue, Sufi traditions hold the bridge as a major symbol for barzakh, a space that links two distinct domains - a place that is between things, a space that separates the known from the unknown, the comprehensible from the incomprehensible, a nebulous space that compels the imagination. The footbridge is the epitome of ‘the between’, of being neither here nor there, of being liminal. On the footbridge, you may not know your front from your back or your past from your present. In this neither space, uncertainty seeps into your being. Where will your steps take you? If you make it to the other side, will things be different? Will you be the same person? The existential crisis of ‘the between’ that one finds on the footbridge can bring disruption, turbulence and stress. Amid this risky and unstable state of ‘negative capability’, the mind is sometimes cleared of clutter as one enters a space of imagination, creativity, innovation and invention. Are contemporary anthropologists ready to risk disruption and invention so we can follow the sinuous path to the anthropological future? If we move forward, what will we find on the other side of the footbridge?     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 32, Number 5. October 2016

Front and back cover caption, volume 32 issue 5 Front cover CHÁVEZ'S AFTERLIVES Amid widespread crisis and uncertainty today, political symbols are pivotal in the shaping of political subjectivities. In today's widespread crisis and uncertainty, political symbols, ranging from national flags and monuments to mausoleums and street names, are regaining prominence as objects of public display, debate and contentious activity. Some of these symbols have become strongly associated with the shaping of increasingly polarized political publics across the globe. In this issue, Luis Angosto‐Ferrández examines the intensification of an ongoing struggle over political symbols in contemporary Venezuela, focusing on the figure of Chávez as the epitome of a contested national symbol. At a conjuncture of political readjustments in the country, the fate of Chávez's corpse, currently located in a mausoleum, is at stake, but also the configuration of the institutionally sanctioned symbolic order with which political actors aim to condition political manoeuvring in years to come. The figure of Chávez has been transformed into a ‘master symbol’ with political afterlives. This helps explain the strength of Chávez‐as‐symbol among those who resort to it in support of their political hopes: as Christianity continued without Christ, political Chavismo is said to live on without the flesh and bone Chávez, transubstantiated in his supporters. Does the manipulation of symbols imply a degree of creational (social) power, or do symbols represent and mobilize already existing social groupings? Are symbols exclusively generated and manipulated by elites who use them to control social demands, or are symbolic and material political practices intertwined in a more dialectical way? In exploring these questions we are invited to interrogate the nature, potential and challenges facing contemporary democracies. Back cover Walls, barbed wire, spiked and electric fences as well as CCTV cameras are prominent components of the South African securityscape, especially in middle and upper‐class areas. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in post‐apartheid South Africa, the previous socio‐spatial segregation along racial lines has been replaced by one based on economic inequalities. In this issue, Thomas G. Kirsch discusses the semantics and internal logic of security discourse. The securitization of South Africa has a material, tangible side that endows security concerns with an omnipresence, even if it is not talked about explicitly. Here, the text and photographs combine to illustrate and exemplify why security discourses and practices are proliferating worldwide.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 39, Number 5. October 2023

Front and back cover caption, volume 39 issue 5 IBN KHALDUN AND RE-TRIBALIZATION A bust of Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), at the entrance of the Kasbah of Bejaia, Algeria. As you gaze upon this scholar, who first delved into the cyclical dynamics of tribes and civilizations, you are not just looking at history — you are looking at a mirror reflecting our modern world. Khaldun's pioneering insights into tribal cohesion (asabiyyah) and its impact on societal rise and fall are not relics of the past; they are prophetic echoes reverberating in today's global landscape. In an increasingly interconnected yet paradoxically fragmented world, the concept of ‘tribalism’ is making a surprising comeback. No longer confined to anthropology textbooks or remote communities, tribalism resurfaces in our political dialogues, social affiliations, and even international relations. But this is not your grandfather's tribalism; it is ‘re-tribalization’, a modern reimagining of ancient affiliations and loyalties shaping nations and rewriting global equations. In this issue, the first of a two-part article by Ahmed et al., ‘Re-tribalization in the 21st century’, peels back the layers of this complex phenomenon. It challenges the conventional wisdom that pits ‘tribalism’ against ‘civilization’, revealing instead a dynamic interplay that influences everything from state governance to globalization. Whether it is the UK Brexit vote, the rise of ethnonationalism in various countries or the enduring conflicts in the Middle East, the fingerprints of tribalism — and its modern avatar, re-tribalization — are unmistakably present. As we navigate the complexities of a world that is both a ‘global village’ and a patchwork of evolving tribal identities, the concept of re-tribalization serves as an analytical lens. This resurgence of tribal affiliations is a complex adaptation to the challenges and opportunities of a globalized world. The ancient codes of tribalism are being reinterpreted in the context of modern geopolitics and digital communication. While the old and the new may seem to be in tension, they are part of a complex dynamic that requires scrutiny. The ancient and the modern coexist in a world as fraught with conflict as it is ripe for cooperation. FOOTBALL AND CLIMATE CHANGE On the dwindling sands of Ariyallur Beach in the coastal hamlet of Ottummal, Malabar, India, children passionately kick a football around, savouring the shrinking space that remains for their cherished sport. Their laughter and shouts echo against a backdrop of rising tides and eroding shores, a poignant reminder of the impermanence of their playground. In this issue, Muhammed Haneefa delves into the heart of this coastal community to explore how the relentless rise in sea levels is not just a geographical alteration but a transformation of a way of life. He uncovers the erosion of subaerial beaches — once the lifeblood of the community's social and cultural fabric — and its devastating impact on leisure activities, most notably the deeply ingrained pastime of football. Haneefa also scrutinizes the local government's ‘managed retreat’ strategy, a well-intentioned but complex proposal that involves relocating these vulnerable communities away from their endangered coastal homes. While the plan may offer a temporary respite from the encroaching waters, it fails to account for the fisherfolk's profound emotional and cultural ties to their land and traditions. This article serves as a lens through which we can view climate change from the ground up. While satellite images and climatological data may provide a bird's-eye view of the planet's changing face, it is through the worm's-eye view of anthropologists and ethnographers like Haneefa that we truly understand the human cost. Here, climate change is not just a statistic or a future projection; it is a lived reality that is reshaping communities, altering identities and challenging the very essence of cultural heritage.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 27, Number 5. October 2011

Front and back cover caption, volume 27 issue 5 Front cover TERRORISM IN NORWAY At the Blue Stone Monument in the centre of Bergen, Norway's second city, a young couple mourns the 77 Norwegians killed by a right‐wing extremist in Oslo and Utøya on 22 July 2011. A cut‐and‐paste manifesto published on the internet and sent to his contacts all over Europe revealed that mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik targeted government buildings in Oslo and the Labour Party youth camp at Utøya in an attempt to instigate a civil war in Europe, aimed at effacing the presence of Muslims in Norway and Europe. As Thomas Hylland Eriksen argues in his editorial in this issue, Norwegian social democrats were a target of Breivik's violent ire because he believed them to have paved the way for a Muslim ‘conquest’ of Europe. Also in this issue, Sindre Bangstad's account of media representations of Muslims in Norway points to a widespread sense among mainstream Norwegian media of a radical incompatibility between so‐called ‘Norwegian values’ and ‘Islamic values’, especially in the field of women's and gay rights. As Norwegians struggle with the aftermath of the terrible events of 22 July, these profoundly problematic exclusionary religious and ethnic categories may face a challenge from the other Norway, a place of compassion and solidarity in suffering. Back cover THE GREEK CRISIS Right, a poster satirically depicts Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou as the IMF's favourite employee. Under increasing pressure from international institutions – especially the IMF and the European Union (of which it is a member) – Greece has been experiencing an upsurge in street clashes between protesters and police, as well as acts of petty crime. At least since 2008, already rampant stereotypes about the Greeks have greedily fed on the images of unbridled violence. Greece was once so crime‐free that the national newspapers reported acts of pickpocketing in Athens; today, such a scenario seems the very stuff of nostalgic dreams. But does the current situation really mean, as the media repeatedly suggest, that Greece has become a violent country? In this issue, Michael Herzfeld – who was first tear gassed and then mugged in Athens in July – argues that such claims are a gross misrepresentation and indeed are part of the problem. Greece – which certainly has acted with financial insouciance in the past – has now become the punchbag for the more generic frustrations of its European partners and of international finance. In the resulting vicious circle, its financial woes threaten to drag the whole European Union into final collapse. Meanwhile, severe austerity measures and rising unemployment have provoked simmering unrest, while competition for jobs feeds anti‐immigrant resentment (especially as Greece has agreed not restrict the onward travel of undocumented migrants, thereby increasing their numbers). In the resultant stereotyping, Greece is treated as a naughty child. Its young people, many of them well‐educated and painfully aware of the corruption that has hitherto protected a privileged few, face a precarious employment environment. Under that pressure, Herzfeld argues, traditional forms of violence and ideas about reciprocal moral obligation now shape the debates that are agitating the country and the world. Anthropologists, he suggests, can help correct the often misleading media representations of what is happening and why.     

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 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 36, Number 5. October 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 5 Front cover Covid-19 symbolism: Amabie in Japan The Japanese yōkai Amabie (アマビエ) was a forgotten chimeric figure from the Japanese history of disaster and epidemics until the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, when a few manga artists and Kyoto University Library brought her back to public attention and gave her global fame on social media. A drawing contest with the hashtag #AmabieChallenge started in earnest, crossing the borders of Japan to reach and captivate an enthusiastic global audience. Her body is an assemblage of human, fish and bird characteristics, with three fish tails/legs and long, dark hair. The front cover picture on this issue of AT was taken in September 2020 at the annual Scarecrow Competition in Tokyo, which this year elected to have Amabie as its theme. In this issue, Claudia Merli explores how this yōkai's resurgence from pre-modern Japan intersects with some central ecological and political discourses in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially those associated with culinary practices, human rights and relations with other historical epidemics. Reasons for Amabie's sudden celebrity hark back to the culture of representation of historical epidemics via woodblock prints and the special place occupied by ningyo (mermaids and mermen) in Japan. Presented by some commentators as a pandemic mascot, this uncanny yokai from southern Japan addresses our contemporary lives as they are caught in a suspension of our usual temporal and spatial dimensions. We could even say that as we entered the pandemic, Amabie came to reinhabit a world she previously belonged to, one of unfathomable disasters and global intersections. The article follows some of these serendipitous connections to make sense of a phenomenon that should be analyzed in terms of the polysemic capacity of an icon of protection, whose beaky features recall all too well the spectral appearance of a plague doctor in Renaissance Europe. Back cover COVID-19 SYMBOLISM: TEDDY BEARS IN NZ On the day that Aotearoa/New Zealand started its unprecedented nationwide lockdown, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that despite the order to ‘stay home’, walking locally was not prohibited and that children, in particular, were welcome to stroll through their neighbourhoods in search of teddy bears in windows. She then added, ‘And if you're in Wellington and you're walking in a local neighbourhood, you might see one in my window’. Within days, across the country a multitude of teddy bears, as well as other stuffed animals and plastic toys, appeared in residential windows, tied on top of letterboxes or, like this one, affixed onto lamp posts. Inspired by the popular children's book, We're going on a bear hunt, wellknown for its refrain, ‘we're not scared’, the bears were widely understood to inspire ‘hope’ and ‘care’ and were just one of the ways that New Zealanders affectively invested in the Covid-19 lockdown. While scholarly work on national crises has frequently focused on the misuse of emergency measures to expand state power, much less has been said of the ways that citizens help constitute states of emergency. During the first Covid-19 lockdown (March-May 2020), New Zealanders set up community roadblocks to seal off neighbourhoods deemed to be under threat, ‘dobbed in’ perceived rule breakers or engaged in acts of vigilante justice against them, and called on the nation to recast the lockdown as a rahui or Maori protective prohibition. They also displayed a seemingly endless array of teddy bears, including the occasional bear engaged in acts that contravened lockdown regulations. Examining these and similar acts of collective responsibility, care and blame is a vital step in widening our understanding of the variety of dynamics that create and sustain states of emergency in democratic nations as well as their potential long-term implications.