HomeSearchContact
HistoryJoiningRAI NewsStaff PagesPublicationsJRAIAnthroToday·AnthCal
·AnthCalLink
·VacancyLink
AIndex OnlineEducationEthno Film·Festival
AnthroLibraryArchive & MSPhoto LibraryRAI CollectionPrizes GrantsFellowshipsHonoursFundsFund RaisingWeb NewsWeb Awards For information on the RAI please contact the and about the website contact the .
Anthropology TodayCONTENTS 2008 – vol 24June – vol 24 – no 3
Front cover: In this issue of ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Adrian Peace takes a critical look at the way in which neo-evolutionary theories and anthropological concepts are brought together in an award-winning campaign to sell more meat in Australia (his article is debated by four respondents on pp 23-25). Among others adopting a critical perspective, the animal rights movement was outraged at claims made about red meat as a ‘natural’, ‘healthy’ and ‘essential’ part of the average Australian diet. Just as a prominent film star was recruited to the ‘Red Meat – Feel Good’ campaign, the hugely popular Missy Higgins was deployed to front the response from the animal rights movement. The youthful and fresh-faced Australian singer-songwriter, cuddling the vulnerable white piglet, iconically represents an informed, intelligent and humane vegetarian approach to the future in the relationship between human and non-human animals. Higgins here makes a striking plea for ‘enlightenment’. Enlightenment of a different kind is offered by the poster reprinted on the back cover, where an Indian transvestite celebrates the joy of a minority gender identity. Although the rights of both human minorities and non-human animals may be ‘universal’, they must be rendered in culturally specific terms in order to be politically effective. Back cover: Modern enlightenment in ancient sacred sites. ‘Be enlightened!’ In 2006 ‘Shelly Innocence’ launched a new phone service in Bodhgaya, Bihar, offering customers the opportunity to receive personal text messages of Enlightenment™ on their mobile phones. Large billboards with images of this virtual transgendered guru were erected outside the main temple to advertise the service. Not only is Bodhgaya a site of inspiration for millions of Buddhists around the world, but the seat of enlightenment has also come to mean very different things as this cosmopolitan pilgrimage town goes global. For many decades the state of Bihar, where Bodhgaya is located, has been one of the least attractive destinations for pilgrims, tourists and anthropologists because of its notorious reputation as one of the most impoverished and ‘lawless’ states in the country. However in recent years the Mahabodhi Temple complex in Bodhgaya has become the object of global attention as a UNESCO World Heritage site, setting in motion a series of initiatives to encourage tourism and city development plans. As a result of new conservation policies and demands on the built environment, the World Heritage designation has become invested with a diverse set of claims and meanings by various stakeholders and religious communities. As a site of dense historical, religious and political significance, Bodhgaya today is a unique locus where spiritual and digital worlds collide in the shade of the bodhi tree. CONTENTS Andrew Wilder with Tim Morris 1 Narrative Comment Conferences April – vol 24 – no 2
Front cover: The front cover of this issue illustrates Peter Loizois' article on the work of filmmaker Robert Gardner. The Hamar woman in the photo bears marks of whipping, a subject which raised the first divisions between Gardner and anthropologists Ivo Strecker and Jean Lydall, as Gardner was inclined to see the practice as a facet of female subordination and male cruelty. The Streckers, after many years of research, took a different view, which can be grasped in Jean Lydall’s article ‘Beating around the bush’. Gardner makes clear his feelings in this note, highlighted in his book The impulse to preserve: 'Editing the Rivers of sand imagery made a huge impression on me. I kept being reminded that I especially disliked Hamar man and I don’t think I would have felt differently had there been no Women’s Movement. I don’t see how anyone can escape feeling the same way once they see the film. It was a painful life for both sexes. So why not say so? I don’t think anthropology is doing its job by being value free. I do think it should accept responsibility to look for larger truths.' (Robert Gardner 2006, The impulse to preserve: Reflections of a filmmaker, New York: Other Press, p. 158) Back cover: UN declaration on the rights of indigenous people. The back cover illustrates Paul Oldham and Miriam Anne Frank’s article in this issue on the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Declaration sets the minimum international standards for the promotion and protection of indigenous peoples’ rights. The display boards capture the historic moment on 13 September 2007, when UN member states overwhelmingly supported the adoption of the Declaration at the General Assembly’s 61st session. Votes in favour of the Declaration are shown in green (143 + 1 not shown), abstentions in orange (11) and votes against in red (4). With the exception of Montenegro, whose vote in favour did not register on screen, absent or non-voting states are blank. Since anthropologists work with indigenous peoples worldwide, this historic vote raises the challenge of how they, individually and as a discipline, position themselves in relation to the new Declaration. CONTENTSKeith Hart 1 LETTERS COMMENTS CONFERENCES News 28 Calendar 29 Classified 30 February – vol 24 – no 1
Front cover: Sean Weisgerber (www.seanweisgerber.com): 'Redemption', 2007. Oil and acrylic on canvas. The front cover image illustrates Tracey Heatherington's article in this issue on the cloning of the mouflon. She asks whether our growing ability to intervene in non-human systems of reproduction will bring 'redemption' for the role of humans in species extinctions. The upper part of the image shows the mouflon lamb Ombretta, the first successful clone of an endangered mammal species. She stands in front of her surrogate mother, a domestic sheep. Ombretta recalls the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep. The lower part of the image shows a pair of Cordoban leather shoes. Cordoban leather, which originated in Moorish Spain in the 8th century, was initially made from the skin of mouflons, mostly imported from Corsica and Sardinia. The manufacture of such shoes highlights not only the human exploitation of animals that would later become endangered, but also a historical context of turbulent political and economic relationships with external powers that sought to occupy these strategic Mediterranean islands and exploit their abundant natural resources. Today, the island of Sardinia is considered a strategic base for efforts to conserve Mediterranean biodiversity. Our evolving technologies are targeted to protect non-human species from the imminent extinction that we ourselves have precipitated. Yet while the human attitude towards flora and fauna has changed from one of resource exploitation to wildlife conservation, these new environmental values are still wedded to powerful political and economic interests, and rural Sardinians remain marginalized. Redemption eludes us, for even as we invest extraordinary genius in the genetic rescue of mouflons, within the next century as many as half the wild species in the world may be lost, and with them, the overall viability of complex traditional natural-cultural ecosystems in Sardinia and elsewhere. Sean Weisgerber’s painting was commissioned to illustrate the social and cultural contexts of genomic science that are examined in this article. Back cover: Human Terrain. The back cover illustrates the article in this issue by Roberto González on the ethical dilemmas the Human Terrain System (HTS) initiative poses for anthropology, to which Montgomery McFate and Col. Steve Fondacaro respond from the perspective of the US military. The photo shows Sergeant Britt Damon, armed with what appears to be an M4 rifle, interacting with local people during a cordon and search operation in Nani, Afghanistan, 3 June 2007. At the time, Damon was a cultural analyst with the US Army’s Human Terrain Team, 4th Brigade Combat Team. He is currently employed by the defense contractor BAE Systems to recruit and train Human Terrain Team members. Damon is also an undergraduate anthropology student at the University of Kansas. Some military analysts have described HTS as a ‘CORDS for the 21st Century’, in reference to Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support, a Vietnam War-era counterinsurgency programme implemented jointly by the CIA and the US Military Assistance Command. CORDS gave rise to the infamous Phoenix Program, a secret initiative in which CIA agents, US Special Forces, South Vietnamese military and ‘Provincial Reconnaissance Units’ (CIA mercenaries) attempted to root out members of the ‘Viet Cong infrastructure’, namely communist party members and National Liberation Front cadres. In practice, Phoenix led to the incarceration or assassination of tens of thousands of suspected communist cadres – including many civilians. The Phoenix Program relied partly on detailed intelligence collected at the local level, by members of ‘Revolutionary Development’ teams that built rapport with villagers, sometimes by providing them with funds for educational, medical, or agricultural development. This intelligence was collated, computerized and used to create Phoenix blacklists. At least one Pentagon official, Under Secretary of Defense John Wilcox, has recently expressed a ‘need to “Map the Human Terrain” across the kill chain’. The possibility that data collected by HTS members in Iraq and Afghanistan might be used in such a fashion raises serious questions about this scheme. CONTENTSSolomon H. Katz 1 COMMENT CONFERENCES News 28 Calendar 29 Classified 30 |
