Counter-lineages within the history of anthropology: On disciplinary ancestors’ activism

Anthropologists frequently conceive of their disciplinary history in terms of intellectual lineages linked to ‘schools’ of anthropological theory. This article considers the importance of what might be called ‘counter-lineages’ – intellectual lineages which have tended to be eclipsed from our intellectual history due to interference by the secret state. One such significant counter-lineage is found in the lives and works of American anti-fascist anthropologists during the mid-20th century. During World War II, anthropologists’ findings had tended to support racial equality and anti-fascism. This motivated many to contribute to the war effort. During the post-war period, however, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and loyalty committees actively targeted anthropologists speaking out against racism in America. The history of how these counter-lineages of public anthropologists eventually ended up marginalized within the discipline is easily forgotten. However, their study can help to inform anthropologists as we face our current crises.     

WHALE BONES AND SHELL PURPLE-DYE AT MOTYA (WESTERN SICILY, ITALY)

Summary. Excavations 30 years ago at sixth–fifth century BC Motya in western Sicily produced a unique assemblage of four Sperm whale vertebrae, crushed purple-dye shells, and stone tools. The whale vertebrae were the platforms for breaking the shells. Here I discuss recent sightings of Sperm whales in the Mediterranean, the archaeological evidence for whaling in the Mediterranean, and possible whale products available, as well as Italian shell purple-dye evidence.     

Supreme Court Advocacy in the Early Nineteenth Century

The early nineteenth century was transformative of the Supreme Court's practices. Yet understanding those fundamental changes requires some appreciation of practice before the Court in the late eighteenth century, and the developments in the early nineteenth century produced changes in the Court's practices that are still felt today. In this first half-century or so of the Court's existence, more dramatic developments and changes occurred in oral argument practice than in any other period of the Court's history. ¹     

Greetings from the cybercaliphate: some notes on homeland insecurity

One of the paradoxical effects of the 7 July bombings in London was to expose the ambivalence in the British government's attempt to wage war on terror by forcefully prosecuting war against those who resort to jihad abroad, actively participating in coalitions of the willing whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, while affording some of Islamism's key ideologists and strategists a high degree of latitude in the United Kingdom itself. This indicates a number of contradictions in official policy that simultaneously recognizes the globalized threat from violent Islamic militancy while, under the rubric of multiculturalism, tolerating those very strains of Islamist radicalism, some of which draw upon the interdependent and transnational character of conflict, to render the UK vulnerable to those very same violent forces. Consequently, the British authorities displayed a studied indifference towards this developing transnational phenomenon both during the 1990s and in some respects even after the London bombings. To explore the curious character of the government's response to the Islamist threat requires the examination of the emergence of this radical ideological understanding and what it entails as a reaction to modernization and secularism in both thought and practice. The analysis explores how government policies often facilitated the non-negotiable identity politics of those promoting a pure, authentic and regenerated Islamic order both in the UK and abroad. This reflected a profound misunderstanding of the growing source and appeal of radical Islam that can be interpreted as a consequence of the slow-motion collision between modernity in its recent globalized form and an Islamic social character, which renders standard western modernization theory, and indeed, the notion of a 'social science' itself, deeply questionable.     

EUROPEAN BRIEFING

Much has been made of completing the Single European Market in Europe. Despite movements towards more advanced levels of integration such as currency union, there remains several grey areas in specific industries that are not allowing for open access to the market. These areas include government activities such as electricity and gas along with other industries such as telecommunications. This article sets out to examine whether there is likely to be a free market in these sectors and assesses the progress being made since the introduction of a number of procurement directives post-1998. This will therefore have an influence on land use planning. The article draws on the literature of regulation and industrial organization as well as European integration in order to demonstrate the complexities of these industries and the problems of full compliance with the single market.