Watching Wall Street: A global earthquake

When the liquidity crisis in the United States reached fever pitch in early October 2008, I began to keep a weekly journal to see if I could make sense of the event. I continued the diary for three weeks but sent it every seven days to Anthropology Today. In the journal, I used local or US expressions for the events and inserted some of my reactions as a participant - observer. I did not survey the effects of the crisis on other countries or compare their experiences to those in the US. Little did I expect that anthropology would help clarify what happened in those 21 days, but it did. I found themes from postmodernism to spheres of value, and some anthropological ideas for other ways to manage the mess.     

Overturning the alms bowl: the price of survival and the consequences for political legitimacy in Burma

The 2007 demonstrations in Burma posed the greatest threat to military rule there in almost twenty years. The involvement of thousands of monks across the country was of particular concern to the authorities as well as their threat of performing a religious boycott against them. This article traces the importance of Buddhism to the political legitimacy of rulers in Burma and examines how the authorities’ relationship with the Sangha has undergone significant changes under military rule. It compares the 2007 demonstrations with earlier protests and examines how the regime's legitimacy has suffered as a result of yet another crackdown, significantly this time against demonstrations led by the largest institution outside of the tatmadaw.     

Perilous shipwreck, misery and unhappiness: the British military at Tristan da Cunha, 1816–1817

After losing the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, Napoleon was exiled to St Helena. As part of the arrangements to keep him secure, the British annexed the island of Tristan da Cunha to deny its possible use to French rescue forces. The military remained on the island for fifteen months, an unpleasant experience, especially given the loss of 55 people in the wreck of H.M.S. Julia in 1817. Using evidence from holdings in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, this paper studies the experiences of the British on the island during 1816 and 1817, illuminating the chaotic military operation and also the difficulties of habitation on Tristan da Cunha. However, the present population of the island traces its origin back to one of the garrison who remained there after 1817.     

The historical geography of islands Introduction: rethinking islands

The introduction to this special issue of five essays on the historical geography of islands considers the growing interdisciplinary interest in the material and metaphorical condition of islands. It explores how the physical and literal attributes of islands have a range of understandings such as the catalytic role of islands in shaping the modern disciplines of social anthropology and evolutionary biology. Thereafter, the Falkland Islands are used to illustrate how the complex interplay of physical and metaphorical meanings have profound implications for territorial nationalism in this case the South West Atlantic. Long viewed as an abstract territorial space, the history and geography of the Falklands reveals how islands should never be seen as simple or straightforward. The final section of this introduction details the five contributions and highlights how each author not only explores the geographical and cultural diversity of islands but also traces some of the implications for human understandings of these remarkable environments.     

Cinema and the Rescue of Historicity

Book reviewed in this article:
Philip Rosen, Change Mummified: Cinema, Historicity, Theory