December 2001

Anthropological Index Online. Users can now register to receive email notification of updates to the Anthropological Index Online. Registration can be undertaken via the URL http://aio.anthropology.org.uk/. From here you can save searches and the titles of journals of interest - when new data is added to AIO you will be notified via email. The Journal Alerting Service has been developed with the help of the Wenner-Gren Foundation. (David Zeitlyn)

Honours and Awards. We are pleased to announce that Dr Jane Goodall, known throughout the world for her pioneering studies of chimpanzees in the wild, has been elected as Huxley Memorial Lecturer and Medallist for 2002. Details to be announced when available. As previously reported, the Henry Myers Lecturer for 2002 will be Professor Marcel Detienne of John Hopkins University.

Firth Fund. We are pleased to inform readers that the Firth Fund, announced in the October 2001 issue of AT, has been augmented by a generous gift from Professor Sir Raymond Firth, to whom thanks are due.

Film Festival 2003. Earlier in the year we announced that the next Film Festival would be hosted by the University of Kent in late 2002. For reasons outside the control of the University or the RAI, the bidding process has been re-opened for a Festival in early 2003, and a Call for Offers has been sent to all Departments of Anthropology in the UK and Ireland. Please see the advertisement on the back cover of this issue.

Ethnic stereotypes in advertising. In the October issue of AT, we published a letter from Dr Peter Boorman recording his complaint to the Independent Television Commission about the disparaging portrayal of an Inuit man in a TV advertising campaign. Following consultation with the RAI Council and ASA Chair, the RAI Director wrote to the ITC on behalf of both organizations broadly supporting the principle of Dr Boorman's complaint. This led to a meeting of the Director and President with a representative of the ITC, at which the RAI's possible contribution to the formulation of guidelines on ethnic disparagement in TV advertising was discussed.

Lucy Mair Medal for Applied Anthropology 2002. The Institute invites nominations for the annual Lucy Mair Medal for Applied Anthropology. The Medal is intended to honour excellence in the application of anthropology to the relief of poverty and distress, and to the active recognition of human dignity. Individuals should not apply on their own behalf, but any Fellow or Member of the Institute is invited to send a nomination for consideration by the Medal Committee, which will make a recommendation to the RAI Council. The medal may be awarded at any stage in a person's career, but is intended to recognize sustained and effective work. While it is not intended to recognize contributions to anthropological theory as such, anthropologists who have made a contribution to theory as well as to applied anthropology are not thereby excluded from consideration. The Medal Committee may consider not only a nominee's publications, but also such work as practical advice to governments and voluntary organizations. Nominees may be of any nationality or residence. Nominations should be sent to the Director, RAI, 50 Fitzroy St, London W1T 5BT by 19 March 2002. They should be rigorously argued and accompanied by appropriate supporting documentation.

Staff. Chris Wright, the RAI's Photo Librarian, has resigned following his return from fieldwork leave in order to concentrate on writing up his research. He is replaced by Arkadiusz Bentkowski, whose temporary appointment has been made permanent. Claire Warrior has resigned as Indexer at the Anthropological Index Online to take up a new post at the National Maritime Museum. She is replaced by Christian Dahm.

Office closure. The RAI office at 50 Fitzroy St will close on 21 December 2001 and reopen on 7 January 2002. We wish all AT readers a peaceful holiday season and a happy and prosperous New Year.

Library Closure. The Library will be closed on 24, 25, 26 December and 1 January

October 2001

The RAI has been shocked and saddened by the events of 11 September in the USA. We extend our sympathies to colleagues and friends throughout the world who may be personally bereaved or whose lives may be otherwise disrupted.

Honours and prizes.  The Huxley Memorial Lecturer for 2001 is Professor John Middleton of Yale University. His lecture, entitled 'Merchants', will be given on Wednesday 14 November at 6.00 pm in the Main Lecture Theatre of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London WC1. All are welcome; refreshments will be served afterwards.

Professor Marcel Detienne, Basil D. Gildersleeve Professor of Classics at Johns Hopkins University, has been elected by the RAI Council as Henry Myers Lecturer for 2002. The Myers Lecture is given biennially on a subject related to 'the role of religion in society'. Further details to be announced when available.

Fellowships. The Fellowship Committee and University of Durham announce with pleasure the election of Noriko Sato to the seventh Fellowship in Urgent Anthropology funded by the Anthropologists' Fund for Urgent Anthropological Research (whose founding Sponsor is Dr George N. Appell). Dr Sato will conduct research among a group of Orthodox Christians in Syria.

The Trustees of the Esperanza Trust for Anthropological Research, which funds the Leach-RAI Fellowships, announce that no Fellowship award will be made for the academic year 2002-2003. This will be treated as a 'fallow year' to allow the Fellowship programme to be reviewed in the light of the current needs of University departments and potential Fellows. As soon as possible, a procedure will be established for selection of the host institution for the 2003-2004 and subsequent Fellowships. The University of Edinburgh has generously hosted the Fellowship programme for the three academic years to 2001-2002. The Trustees and the RAI wish to convey their thanks to the University, and their regrets for the inevitable disappointment caused to those who have expressed an interest in applying for a Fellowship in 2002-3.

RAI-ASA consultation exercise. As announced in AT in August, the RAI and Association of Social Anthropologists are together embarking on a membership consultation exercise, the first stage of which is a membership services questionnaire. This is now being mailed to all RAI members and fellows, and ASA members. The return deadline is 30 November 2001, and all AT readers affiliated to either or both organizations are urged to contribute their views.

The Anthropology Library. The Library, currently in the former Museum of Mankind building in Burlington Gardens, London W1, is open to readers and borrowers who will find it an excellent source of books and journals. The timing of the Library's move to the proposed new British Museum Study Centre is still uncertain. Meanwhile, in order to inform students and researchers in anthropology of what the Library can offer, posters describing its services are being sent to all UK departments of anthropology for display at the start of the academic year.

August 2001

The Annual General Meeting was held on 27 June at University College London. The President, Dr John Davis, presented the Lucy Mair Medal for Applied Anthropology to Dr Marcus Colchester, founder and director of the Forest Peoples Programme, for outstanding achievements related to the territorial rights of indigenous peoples, policy development and capacity building for indigenous movements. Dr Davis then presented the Patron's Medal for outstanding services to anthropology and to the RAI to Jonathan Benthall, former Director of the Institute.

The new President of the RAI is Professor Wendy James of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Oxford. The newly elected members of the RAI Council are: Dr Susan Bayly (Hon Editor, JRAI), Dr Marion Berghahn, Dr Alan Bilsborough, Prof Robin Dunbar, Dr Jeanette Edwards, Dr Sian Jones, Dr Daniel Nettle, Dr Filippo Osella, Dr Jan Savage, Dr André Singer.

A formal vote of thanks was recorded to Dr Davis for his extended 4-year term as President of the RAI, in which he guided the Institute through the potentially difficult period of management changeover. After the AGM, Dr Davis's Presidential Address, on 'Kinship and corporation', took us into the rarefied but fascinating world of the history of All Souls College, Oxford, and of the winding interconnections down the centuries between elections to Fellowship and claims of kinship to the College Founder.

Honours and prizes

The Huxley Memorial Lecturer and Medallist for 2001 is Professor John Middleton of Yale University. The lecture and presentation will take place at 6.00 pm on Wednesday, 14 November in the Main Lecture Theatre of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London WC1. Professor Middleton's title is 'Merchants'. After the lecture there will be informal refreshments for all present.

The Curl Lecture will be given by Dr Stephen Mithen of the University of Reading at 5.30 pm on Wednesday 5 September, in the Gregory Lecture Theatre, main building, University of Glasgow, as part of the President's Day at the Annual Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Dr Mithen's title is 'The impact of global warming on human society: Evidence from prehistory'. The lecture will be followed by informal refreshments for all present.

Elections to the Huxley Memorial Lecture and Henry Myers Lecture for 2002 have not yet been finalized; these will be announced as soon as possible. The Wellcome Medal and Rivers Memorial Medal have not been awarded in 2001.

The Curl Essay Prize for 2000 has been awarded to Dr Dena Freeman of Cambridge University, for an essay entitled 'From warrior to wife: Cultural transformation in the Gamo Highlands, south-west Ethiopia'.

The Leach-RAI Fellowship for 2001-2002, to be held at the University of Edinburgh, has been awarded to Dr Robert Gibb, who has carried out ethnographic research in Paris into the interrelationships among party politics, anti-racism movements and republicanism. Dr Gibb intends to complete a book on 'The politics of anti-racism in contemporary France' and a contribution to an edited volume on 'The anthropology of the new racism in Europe'.

The Eighth RAI Festival of Ethnographic Film will take place at the University of Kent, Canterbury, from 30 November to 2 December 2002. A joint Festival Planning Committee, with representatives from the RAI Film Committee and the organisers at Kent, has begun work. It is proposed that the Festival be run together with a Conference, the provisional theme of which is 'Visual anthropological futures'.

Subscriptions

Council has determined that the subscriptions for 2002 will be as follows:

Individuals
Fellows: UK £70, Overseas £61
Junior Fellows: £35
Retired Fellows: UK £55,  Overseas £49
Joint Fellows co-resident: UK £105, Overseas £92
Life Fellows: £1400
Members: £20

Institutions
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society
UK/Europe/Rest of World: £137
NSSR rate*: $36

Anthropology Today
UK/Europe/Rest of World: £44
NSSR rate*: $36

(*New School for Social Research subsidized subscriptions to Eastern Europe)

RAI-ASA questionnaire

Jointly with the Association of Social Anthro­pologists, the RAI has designed a mem­bership services questionnaire which is being sent to Fellows and members of both organizations. It is the first step in a consultation exercise in which the two organizations seek the views of their own membership on directions and priorities for the future. Readers of AT will receive the questionnaire either in the mailing of this issue, or shortly afterwards by separate mail.

Office closure

The RAI office will be closed from Monday 13 August and will re-open on Tuesday 28 August. The Anthropology Library at Burlington Gardens will be closed from Monday 17 September to Friday 28 September inclusive (reopening on Monday 1 October).

June 2001

RAI VOICE (in progress).

April 2001

Annual General Meeting

The AGM will be held at 5 pm on Wednesday 27 June 2001, in the Chadwick Room, University College London, Gower St, London WC1. This will be followed by refreshments at 5.30. At 6.00 pm Dr John Davis, Warden of All Souls College, Oxford, and RAI President 1997-2001, will deliver a Presidential Address (title t.b.a.).

The detailed programme of the AGM and title of the Presidential Address will be announced in the formal Notice to be sent to all Fellows and Junior Fellows at the beginning of June; and will be advertised on college noticeboards in the London area and on the RAI website. All are welcome but only Fellows are entitled to vote. We urge all who are able to do so to attend the AGM and participate in the affairs of the Institute.

Special Lectures

The Huxley Memorial lecturer and medallist for 2001 is Professor John Middleton, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Religious Studies, Yale. The lecture and presentation of the medal will take place on Wednesday 14 November; venue and title to be announced.

The Curl Lecture for 2001 will be given by Dr Steven Mithen of the Department of Archaeology, University of Reading. It will take place at Glasgow University on Wednesday 5 September, in conjunction with the 2001 meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Further details will be announced as soon as they are available. More information on the activities planned by the Anthropology/Archaeology Section of the BAAS for the September meetings will be included in the June issue of Anthropology Today.

Staff

Our Film Officer, Gail Thakur, is on leave of absence for one year. Arkadiusz Bentkowski has been appointed to the post on a temporary basis, assisted by Alicia MacLean who joins us as temporary Film Assistant. Arkadiusz will combine this post with that of temporary Photo Librarian, replacing Chris Wright who is on fieldwork leave until September 2001.

February 2001

RAI-ASA working group

The RAI Council met on 29 November. Inter alia, the decision was taken, together with the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth, to establish a Joint Working Group to explore specific ways in which the two organizations can work more closely together to support the interests of anthropology and anthropologists. The group held a successful first meeting on 12 January and will report back to the ASA Committee and RAI Council.

ANTHROPOLOGICAL INDEX ONLINE

Usage of the Index has been rising dramatically, with some 130,000 individual 'hits' in November 2000 alone. This underlines the importance of the Index as a scholarly instrument in the service of the discipline worldwide. The costs of the Index have been heavily supported by the generosity of the W.B. Fagg Trust. In order to preserve and develop this service, while covering its considerable running costs, the RAI has appealed to heavy institutional users to pay a voluntary subscription of £250 or US$400 per year. Light users and institutions in developing countries are not asked to contribute. Details can be found on the RAI website; and an appeal letter is being sent to the 100 heaviest institutional users of the Index throughout the world in 2000.

FILM PRIZES

During the 7th International Festival of Ethnographic Film, organized by the RAI and SOAS in December 2000 (it is anticipated that a report will be published in the April issue), the following awards were made:

RAI Film Prize: to Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini for Divorce Iranian style

Basil Wright Film Prize: to M. Trinh Nguyen for Tiger's apprentice (Commendation: Quand les hommes pleurent, by Yasmine Kassari)

JVC Professional Student Video Prize: to Aya Domenig for Oyakata (The Master) (Commendation: Domov, by Rosie Read)

Material Culture and Archaeology Prize: to Sophie Audier for Tell me, My charcoal burner (Commendation: Building season in Tiebele - A royal compound, by Beate Engelbrecht)

Audience Award: 1st place, tied: Divorce Iranian style and Domov; 2nd place: Nuba conversations, by Arthur Howes; 3rd place: Paradise bent: Boys will be girls in Samoa, by Heather Croall

The Harry Watt Bursary for 2000 was awarded to Aryo Danushiri.

EIGHTH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

The eighth International Festival of Ethnographic Film will be held in 2003. The School of Oriental and African Studies has generously offered to host the event once again. Any alternative offers of a venue for 2003 should be sent to the RAI Director as soon as possible. At a later stage, we will be seeking offers of a venue for the following Festival in 2005.

AMAURY TALBOT PRIZE 1999

The Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology is awarded annually to the author or authors of the work which, in the opinion of the judges, is the most valuable work of African anthropology submitted. The RAI, which administers the prize, has pleasure in announcing the joint winners of the award for works published during the calendar year 1999.

The Prize of £500 is shared equally between Charles Piot and Don Donham for their respective books Remotely global: Village modernity in West Africa (University of Chicago Press) and Marxist modern: An ethnographic history of the Ethiopian revolution (University of California Press/James Currey).

The judges were Professors Wendy James and John Middleton. Their report reads as follows:

Among the publications submitted for consideration for the Amaury Talbot Prize this year were several drawing on fields of art, literature, and history, a reminder of the fertile cross-connections between anthropology and neighbouring disciplines of scholarship and writing. More 'traditional' field-based ethnographic studies were also represented, and a few of these illustrated excellently how such original investigative research can transcend its local base and be used to explore global themes. The judges decided this year to award the Prize jointly to two outstanding monographs, one dealing with West Africa and one with Ethiopia. Each in its own way throws vivid light on the way in which modernity can have unexpected impacts in the most rural regions.

Charles Piot's book Remotely global: Village modernity in West Africa (University of Chicago Press) represents a lively new generation of West African anthropology. It is an accessible and beautifully written ethnography of Kabre villages in northern Togo. Piot draws on the latest French, British and American theorists (and ideas stemming from work in places like Melanesia and South America as well as Africa) in questioning the simple equation of 'modernity' with recent one-way change. He traces the historical relation of Kabre practices about gifts and persons to the days of the slave trade and the colonial encounter, and shows their inner connection with the practices and attitudes of the present. He offers a very convincing treatment of witchcraft in today's context, and the flourishing of 'traditional' rituals in the face of the modernizing state and external economic power. Moreover, he brings the Kabre people to life; and given that they also dominate the Togo political scene, this portrayal has great significance for an understanding of African politics more widely.

Don Donham's Marxist modern: An ethnographic history of the Ethiopian revolution (University of California Press/James Currey) is a remarkable 'interdisciplinary' analysis. It examines the story of events and human responses in the far south of Ethiopia through the period of socialist revolution which gripped the country from the early 1970s. Donham links several descriptive and analytical levels in his presentation. His central story-line is provided by unfolding events at the centre, in the capital city of Addis Ababa; but he places this account itself in counterpoint with narratives of other revolutions, the French, the Chinese, the Russian, and the impact they had on the consciousness of ordinary people, both town-dwellers and peasants. He then moves between the streets of Addis Ababa and the people of the traditional kingdom of Maale - as did the vanguards of the new socialism, at first coercing, and then infecting the locals with revolutionary fervour. Young men who had already striven for 'modernity' in the shape of evangelical mission Christianity now grasped the new horizon. The book follows through the succession of violent events, failing ideals, and personal reminiscence among the Maale people in the wake of state history.

It is a pleasure for the judges to award the Amaury Talbot Prize equally to these two works, each an inspiring example of what anthropological analysis can contribute from its local fields of study to wider understanding in the social sciences and humanities.

John Middleton and Wendy James

December 2000

For details of the 2000 Amaury Talbot Prize, please see the separate announcement in this issue and that of December 2000. Correction, please note: to qualify for the 2000 Prize, works must have been published in the calendar year 2000, not 1999 as mistakenly stated in the December issue of AT.

LUCY MAIR MEDAL FOR APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY 2001

The Institute invites nominations for the annual Lucy Mair Medal for Applied Anthropology. The Medal is intended to honour excellence in the application of anthropology to the relief of poverty and distress, and to the active recognition of human dignity. Individuals should not apply on their own behalf, but any Fellow or Member of the Institute is invited to send a nomination for consideration by the Medal Committee, which will make a recommendation to the RAI Council. The medal may be awarded at any stage in a person's career, but is intended to recognize sustained and effective work. While it is not intended to recognize contributions to anthropological theory as such, anthropologists who have made a contribution to theory as well as to applied anthropology are not thereby excluded from consideration. The Medal Committee may consider not only a nominee's publications, but also such work as practical advice to governments and voluntary organizations. Nominees may be of any nationality or residence. Nominations should be sent to the Director, RAI, 50 Fitzroy St, London W1T 5BT by 19 March 2001. They should be rigorously argued and accompanied by appropriate supporting documentation.

LIBRARY

As reported in previous issues, the Anthropology Library at 6, Burlington Gardens, London W1X 2EX, remains fully open to RAI Fellows and researchers. We will keep Anthropology Today readers informed on the plans for the eventual move of the Library to the British Museum Study Centre.

MEMBER/FELLOWSHIP SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR 2001

These are unchanged from 2000, and are as follows:

Fellows: UK £68, Overseas £59/US$94

Junior Fellows (under 30 on 1 Jan 2001): UK £34, Overseas £34/US$54

Members: UK £18, Overseas £18/US$28

Retired Fellows (25% discount): UK £51, Overseas £44.25/US$70.5

Joint Fellows (co-resident): UK £102, Overseas £88.50/US$141

Life Fellows: UK £1360, Overseas £1180

INSTITUTIONAL AND LIBRARY SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR 2001

JRAI: UK/international £122 (except North America), North America US$189

AT: UK/international £39 (except North America)

North America US$60

E.S. Frostick is interested in locating RAI Members and Fellows in the Gloucestershire area to meet and organize events together. Address: 27 King George Close, Cheltenham GL53 7RW, Tel 01242-515844, e.frostick@talk21.com •