Cover caption(s)
The front cover shows Joshua French and Tjostolv Moland, two Norwegian ex-soldiers accused of murdering their Congolese driver, being paraded through the streets of Kisangani in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on the first day of their trial in August 2009. A second photo shows the front page of the Ugandan newspaper Sunday Monitor of 4 October 2009, reporting on the military training camp that French and Moland set up in Uganda. The two images are testimony to the wide interest their case has generated in DRC, Uganda and in Norway.
With the men currently in prison in Kisangani pending an appeal against their death sentences, media coverage of their case provides an opportunity to explore the anthropology of Norwegian imaginaries in which the Congo is cast in terms of radical 'otherness', with mass-mediated discourses in Norway invoking images of Africa as a 'dark continent' that have long historical roots.
Post-Soviet Russian orthodoxy
The last 20 years have seen a striking revitalization of Orthodoxy in Russia. This is remarkable considering that for more than 70 years following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 the Soviet regime imposed ‘scientific atheism’ on its citizens. Russian Orthodoxy, institutionally dominated by the Russian Orthodox Church, has emerged as a crucial source of morality and identity. The personal dimension is intertwined with politics and the co-operation between the Church and the Russian state has strong symbolic implications.
The close association between religion and the army is evident in this religious procession. For millions of Russians of different social backgrounds and ages, the fall of the Soviet state still leaves a bitter taste, stemming from the feeling of loss of territory and of superpower status. The Russian Orthodox Church offers an avenue for retrieving a sense of power and moral righteousness.
However, the prominence of the Church and its symbols does not necessarily mean that young soldiers acquire religious knowledge and observe the rules of the Church in their everyday behaviour. Soldiers are no different from teachers, businessmen, or impoverished urban residents in general who, in the face of post-socialist uncertainties, turn to Orthodoxy for healing, protection and as an insurance against an unclear future. Orthodoxy also contributes to the construction of a harmonious and idealized narrative about the recent past, obscuring the memory of violence of the state against Orthodox believers under the Soviet regime.
An anthropology of the Russian case – and religion in the post-socialist world generally – can shed new light on debates about religion in the public realm, secularization, individual morality and identity in the contemporary world.
Contents
Richard Wassersug 1
On the invisibility of the emasculated
Stephen Gudeman 3
Creative destruction: Efficiency, equity or collapse?
Sindre Bangstad and Bjørn Enge Bertelsen 8
Heart of darkness reinvented? A tale of ex-soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Deborah James and Evan Killick 13
Ethical dilemmas? UK immigration, Legal Aid funding reform and caseworkers
Milena Benovska-Sabkova, Tobias Köllner, Tünde Komáromi, Agata Ladykowska, Detelina Tocheva, and Jarrett Zigon 16
‘Spreading grace’ in post-Soviet Russia
Comment
Robert Albro 22
Anthropology and the military: AFRICOM, ‘culture’ and future of Human Terrain Analysis
Conferences
Daniel Rycroft 25
Celebrations and gaps: The launch of the Fürer-Haimendorf Archive Online
Film
Lia Philcox 26
Celebrating film: 11th RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film
Letters
Mako John Kuwimb, Stuart Kirsch 27
Moral dilemmas and ethical controversies
NEWS 28 CALENDAR 29 CLASSIFIED 30
