Fascism 2

This guest editorial implores anthropologists to take a stance against the strengthening of fascism in Europe.     

Light and Darkness in an Edwardian Institution for the Insane Poor—Illuminating the Material Practices of the Asylum age

Natural light and its provision within asylum and other buildings is a neglected aspect of the historical archaeology of institutions. An Edwardian asylum in the north of Ireland is analysed for the management of natural light through the siting of buildings, window design and placement of interior glazing. A close reading of selected contemporary literature relating to natural light is employed to assess the significance of light provision within institutions of this period and contemporary discourses are in turn illuminated by the material practices recorded in the case study.     

Anthropology in the world: Limits and unity (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This editorial anticipates the conference Anthropology in the World by reflecting upon the influence of anthropology, and its limits, arguing that it is only by knowing where these limits are that we can be sure where and how it can best be judged. It is too, a call for unity, suggesting that in seeking to influence the external world, anthropology should unite across its sub‐disciplines, and in doing so a mutually‐beneficial exchange of practice, ideas and methodology will emerge.     

Three-dimensional cranial shape analyses and gene flow in North Africa during the Middle to Late Holocene

Archaeological evidence shows that populations used to transverse the Sahara Desert throughout the Holocene despite the extreme temperatures and the rough physical terrain. The current paper examines whether the desert inhibited extended gene flow among populations by means of cranial morphology as captured by geometric morphometrics. The examined populations include the Garamantes, a group centered in Southwest Libya and largely controlling trans-Saharan trade, and various Egyptian, Tunisian and Sudanese groups dating to the Middle and Late Holocene. The results showed that most inter-population comparisons were statistically significant and therefore all populations appear more or less distant to each other. The Mahalanobis biodistance measure identified four clusters. The first consists of the Garamantes alone, the second includes the populations from Kerma and Gizeh, the third includes the Badari and Naqada, while the fourth consists of the samples from Algeria, Carthago, Soleb and Alexandria. Moreover, the distance of the Garamantes to their neighbors was significantly high and the population appeared to be an outlier. This is attributed to the location of the Garamantes at the core of the desert, indicating that, despite the archaeological evidence, the Sahara Desert posed important limitations to gene flow between the Garamantes and other North African populations.     

In defence of utopian urbanism: imagining cities after the 'end of utopia'

What is the role of utopian visions of the city today? What is their use at a time when, for many people, the very concept of utopia has come to an end? Taking a wide perspective on contemporary debates, this paper addresses the general retreat from utopian urbanism in recent years. It connects it with the so–called crisis of modernist urbanism in the capitalist West as well as forms of 'utopic degeneration', and assesses some of its implications. Arguing against the abandonment of utopian perspectives, it advocates a rethinking of utopianism through considering its potential function in developing critical approaches to urban questions. The authoritarianism of much utopian urbanism certainly needs acknowledging and criticising, but this need not entail a retreat from imagining alternatives and dreaming of better worlds. Instead, it is necessary to reconceptualise utopia, and to open up the field of utopian urbanism that for too long has been understood in an overly narrow way. The paper suggests the potential value of developing, in particular, modes of critical and transformative utopianism that are open, dynamic and that, far from being compensatory, aim to estrange the taken–for–granted, to interrupt space and time, and to open up perspectives on what might be.