Creative destruction: Efficiency,equity or collapse? (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Around the globe, unemployment and sub employment have risen, salaries are frozen, homes are being repossessed, economic inequality continues, and many are experiencing heightened emotional distress. We have heard many explanations for this economic and social mess. But the current crisis should make us question the standard narratives, which failed to predict it and now offer ambiguous solutions. I argue that the crisis represents a tectonic shift in material life that calls for rethinking our image of economy. Because the normal discourse of economics does not explain this world of contradictions, ironies, and unpredictability, perhaps anthropology's moment has arrived. I offer a sketch of the contemporary situation based on a vision of economy as a combination of value domains and the impact of growing specialization, beginning in the workplace and reaching to new financial instruments. If the idea of the growing division of tasks in markets has been a central thread in economics since Adam Smith, its counterpart in anthropology has been the assumption of value diversity within and between cultures.     

Precarial grants: approaches of the clergy and lay aristocracy to landholding and time

Throughout the middle ages, the possession and ownership of land was not only the primary source of wealth and power, but of disputes and violence as well. In this regard, one of the least obvious but nonetheless fundamental elements was the attitude that the two dominant groups in society — the clergy and the aristocracy — had about time. The different ways that these two classes regarded time helps to account both for their approach to acquiring land and, in the event of a dispute, whether it would be settled by compromise or violence.     

Palynological evidence for the age of the synorogenic Brewer Conglomerate,Amadeus Basin,central Australia

An assemblage of spores recovered from the Undandita Member of the Brewer Conglomerate, the uppermost unit of the Pertnjara Group in the Amadeus Basin of central Australia, establishes the age of that formation as Late Devonian. Comparison with spore assemblages from sedimentary basins in Western Australia indicates that the central Australian assemblage is dateable within the post-early Frasnian to pre-late Famennian interval. Fish remains and spores previously described from the Parke Siltstone at the base of the Pertnjara Group are of probable early Frasnian age, so it now appears that the entire group was deposited during the Late Devonian. The Brewer Conglomerate is of synorogenic origin, and was deposited during uplift associated with the Alice Springs Orogeny; the spore data thus indicate that this tectonic event began in the Late Devonian. Isotopic age determinations in the Arltunga Nappe Complex and the Strangways Range of the Arunta Block have yielded Early Carboniferous dates. These possibly reflect a later stage of deformation than that which was responsible for the deformation and folding of the Brewer Conglomerate.