We now have a super-rich transnational capitalist class.  Capitalism has transformed from the old Fordist-Keynesian epoch of national capitalism to a new and more exploitative condition wherein capitalists are freer to move capital and information around the globe in order to maximize profits.  This breaking free of national politico-legal constraints has undercut the efforts of popular and working class movements.

Transnational…

This book is about how aggressive men in history, especially those who operated in chiefdoms, kingdoms and empires, acted to create systems of inequality.  This fabrication of oppressive structures began in earnest in the early Neolithic chiefdoms.  According to Tim Earle (2002:51) chiefdoms “precede and presage” the evolution of state societies.  I want to focus on the extractive processes that were put in place in the early chiefdoms, and were expanded in kingdoms and empires and,…

 Writing last week about 'Periodic flowering and circumcision cycles', I was reminded of a trip to the slopes of Mount Elgon in July 1992, to belatedly negotiate bridewealth payments. One day we saw a group of boys singing and dancing in the open, and I was told that they were novices preparing for…

Let me forward this by saying that I am not working in an anthropological institution. These reflections were generated from a dual native and academic stand point. I share them with you in my capacity as a traveler and a scholar - and do of course, welcome comments.

Cross-posted from the Identity & Tourism…

Cosmopolitan Memory in

Europe’s ‘Backwaters’ reconsiders the definitional relationships of ‘national character’ and ‘national heritage’ in the context of Western industrial modernity. Taking as a case study the Greek islands of Skiathos and Skopelos which served as cinematic locations for the blockbuster Mamma Mia! (2008), the book explores how national identity - once shaped by political, cultural and religious practices - can now be reduced to little more than an ideal, created and…

http://fhs1973.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/modern-and-contemporary-art-of-the-middle-east-and-north-africa/…

The recent announcement of HAU, a journal, "which aims to situate ethnography as the prime heuristic of anthropology, and return it to the forefront of conceptual developments in the discipline" has led me to reflect on how ethnography became so central to the practice of, in particular, social and cultural anthropology. My starting point is a framework proposed by world…

(Found poem on the Adventures of Osa & Martin Johnson)

The Turkana were unaffected

by the giraffe-spotted flying…

Outline

In order to escape the realism of the structure


which hypostatizes systems of objective relations
…

 [Found Poem*]

The impure or unchaste

cannot touch me

without gloves;

only those who’ve known

no adultery,

or lost their chastity

after marriage;…

       [Found poem]

Abdisalem Hadthi and his son cowered

in the quiet of their living room,

at each torrent of bullets

that rained on the limestone brick

and mortar walls outside.

A unit of Gaddafi's gunmen burst…

'The Archetype of the Undergraduate'

 …

ENCOUNTERS WITH THE OTHER (ENCUENTROS CON EL OTRO)

Visual construction and deconstruction of otherness (Construcción y deconstrucción visual de la otredad)…

With a tip of the hat to Savage Minds, Andrew Galley and his philosopher friend, I direct your attention to

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7669.html

Muthu, Sankar. Enlightenment Against Empire. 2003.

Given the title and topic, I thought it might be of particular interest to Keith Hart and to others interested in Hart's Enlightenment-based critique of the current state of the…

"Tory anarchist" is a phrase that George Orwell used to describe himself. I just discovered it in a New York Review of Books piece by Simon Leys that discusses Orwell's diaries. I read the following paragraphs and something in me responds, "Yes, my God, yes."

Orwell’s revulsion toward all “the smelly little orthodoxies that compete for our souls” also…

A long time ago I wrote a paper titled "The Parting of the Ways" about the transmission of Daoist magic. I wrote it because, trained in theory that assumes that ritual is, as the dictionaries put it, the repetition of set forms, I was startled to discover that a brother in the art performed a ritual that differed in many details from the model provided by our master. Today, I am translating an article for a new magazine, whose title Samurai.jp signals its intention to revive…

Often, I ask what anthropologists can do to eradicate or curb corruption.  I seldom encounter an impressive ethnography about corruption.   What  I  usually get  hold of is an ethnography that details the after effect or end result of  corruption.  We  need more anthropological studies that show corruption as a sociocultural process.  It is easier to come up with a conclusion that corruption causes poverty, but tough to ascertain how corruption takes root socially and culturally.  I do think…