‘A sense of where you belong in the world’: national belonging,ontological security and the status of the ethnic majority in England

ABSTRACT. The significance of national forms of imagination and organisation has been increasingly questioned in an era of rapid globalisation. While theoretically stimulating, those who stress the importance of global mobility and sociability sometimes overlook what well‐established, “thick” attachments to the nation offer to disparate individuals, notably in terms of anchoring subjectivity. This first part of this paper explores how debates around belonging in England continue to define certain “ethnic” groups as more or less national, because they embody certain traits, practices or norms. It is then suggested that those who claim, and are treated as if, they belong “without question” may be offered a key sense of material and ontological security that is underpinned through routine practices, symbolic forms and institutional arrangements. The second section looks to evidence this argument by exploring how challenges to this ontological order, which focus on the agency of “perceived” others in relation to everyday spaces, practices and material objects, are debated and resisted.     

WOOL AT DANEBURY: A SPECULATION USING EVIDENCE FROM ELSEWHERE

The high proportion of sheep bones and the finding of implements used in cloth manufacture have led to suggestions that this Iron Age hill fort in Hampshire was a centre for wool cloth making. In the absence of textile remains from the site, evidence from other Iron Age sites with such remains is used to suggest that the sheep kept at Danebury are likely to have had mainly primitive hairy and primitive woolly fleeces with an annual moult and a range of colours. the absence of shears suggests a more primitive method of harvesting the wool. White wool and dyed textiles from the other sites indicates the possibility of dyeing. A reassessment of the textile implements suggests that the textile activity was no more than domestic production. the weight of the spindle whorls is discussed in relation to the sort of wool spun, but further experimentation is proposed to answer such questions as the true use of the "weaving" combs. the slingshots might have been hurled with a wool sling and not only at a human enemy or at game, but to control sheep flocks.     

The costs and consequences of drone warfare

One of the distinctive elements of President Barack Obama's approach to counterterrorism has been his embrace of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones, to target terrorist operatives abroad. The Obama administration has used drones in active theatres of war, such as Afghanistan, but it has also dramatically increased the number of drone attacks launched by the CIA in other countries, such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The conventional wisdom on drone warfare holds that these weapons are highly effective in killing terrorist operatives and disabling terrorist organizations, while killing fewer civilians than other means of attack. This article argues that much of the existing debate on drones operates with an attenuated notion of effectiveness that discounts the political and strategic dynamics—such as the corrosion of the perceptions of competence and legitimacy of governments where drone strikes take place, growing anti‐Americanism and fresh recruitment of militant networks—that reveal the costs of drone warfare. Focusing particularly on drone use in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the article suggests that the Obama administration's counterterrorism policy operates at cross‐purposes because it provides a steady flow of arms and financial resources to build up governments whose legitimacy it systematically undermines by conducting unilateral strikes on their territory. It concludes that the US embrace of drone technology is a losing proposition over the long term as it will usher in a new arms race and lay the foundations for an international system that is increasingly violent, destabilized and polarized between those who have drones and those who are victims of them.     

Africa Bewitched

Anderson, Robert. Magic, Science, and Health: The Aims and Achievements of Medical Anthropology. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 1996. x + 454 pp. including index. $34.74 paper.

Hahn, Robert A. Sickness and Healing: An Anthropological Perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. viii + 327 pp. including references and index. $30.00 cloth.

Kleinman, Arthur. Writing at the Margin: Discourse between Anthropology and Medicine. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. xiii + 314 pp. including appendix, notes, references, and index. $40.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.     

Re-investing in the Built Environment: A Spatial Network Approach

Before launching ambitious and expensive development programmes to induce new regional technology corridors and clusters, it is critical to appreciate existing spatial economic patterns in a region. Initial economic conditions drive location decisions of firms and a labour force such that any changes must intercede onto an existing landscape built for current economic conditions. This work adopts a simple regional economic model to integrate and review traditional and modern urban location theories in order to illustrate the power of initial conditions to determine a final result. A simple spatial dynamic simulation model captures many of the pertinent effects of real estate pricing patterns to frame both opportunities and constraints to re-shape an urban landscape. Attention to 'ground up' spatially correlated location patterns revealed in price data that suggests close attention to strategic zoning can have profound impacts on the success or failure of economic development. Relatively modest policy interventions that carefully utilize existing preferences for urban amenities and concurrent real property investments involve fewer policy risks with potentially more powerful stimulative economic consequences than promised in more ambitious programmes.