Anthropology Today最新文献

{"title":"Border and bribery: An anthropology of corruption","authors":"Pinkaew Laungaramsri","doi":"10.1111/1467-8322.70011","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8322.70011","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Corruption has been characterized as a disease of failed states and poor statecraft – a deviation from virtuous development that corrupts economic progress. The dominant paradigm, in which international institutions and policy-makers concur, is one of hard binaries between state and society, law and crime. This article resists binary thinking through ethnographic fieldwork in Mae Sot, a Thai-Myanmar border town. Rather than strangling development, border corruption – as varied as patronage-based bribery and ethnic extortion – has been at the heart of state-building on the periphery and a key characteristic of capital accumulation in global value chains. By immobilizing and categorizing migrant workers, corruption regimes create the flexible labour conditions necessary for border capitalism while simultaneously opening spaces for migrant negotiation and resistance. These complex dynamics reveal how corruption functions not as an exception but as a structuring norm, producing overlapping states of inclusion and exclusion that serve state control and capitalist interests while continually contested by those subjected to them.</p>","PeriodicalId":46293,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology Today","volume":"41 4","pages":"11-15"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144832578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bitcoin and the anthropology-economics divide","authors":"Natalie Smolenski","doi":"10.1111/1467-8322.70010","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8322.70010","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This guest editorial argues for renewed intellectual engagement between anthropology and economics, two disciplines that became estranged during 20th-century debates over human motivation and cooperation. With anthropologists largely rejecting economic theories following the formalist-substantivist controversy, this ‘disciplinary divorce’ has impoverished anthropological analysis by limiting available theoretical tools. Contemporary anthropologists often mischaracterize economic arguments – particularly regarding barter theory – while remaining unaware of insights from heterodox economic schools that increasingly draw on anthropological methods and findings. Both disciplines share a fundamental concern with developing a general theory of value, making collaboration essential. The institution of money serves as an especially productive site for such interdisciplinary dialogue, functioning simultaneously as a social institution and technology that addresses the coordination problems inherent in complex societies. Bitcoin's emergence as the first natively digital, nonstate medium of exchange presents an unprecedented opportunity to examine how monetary institutions evolve and impact social relationships. By moving beyond disciplinary boundaries and engaging seriously with economic theory, anthropologists can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of value across human societies while advancing both fields’ shared intellectual project of explaining social organization and cultural change.</p>","PeriodicalId":46293,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology Today","volume":"41 4","pages":"1-2"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144832575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"ANTHROPOLOGY AS HISTORY: Thoughts on the 2025 Malinowski Memorial Lecture","authors":"Nancy Lindisfarne","doi":"10.1111/1467-8322.70004","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8322.70004","url":null,"abstract":"<p>‘When ethnography becomes history’, this year's Malinowski Memorial Lecture by Chihab El Khachab, was a <i>tour de force</i>. It had the uncanny effect of taking many of us on a journey through our own personal histories of anthropology as history and the legacy we as ethnographers leave behind. This article examines how the author is trying to manage an archive – her own ethnographic leavings – from fieldwork among wise and acutely politicized people in the Middle East: – in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey and Syria.</p>","PeriodicalId":46293,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology Today","volume":"41 4","pages":"25-26"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144832666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Front and Back Covers, Volume 41, Number 4. August 2025","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/1467-8322.12886","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8322.12886","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;Front and back cover caption, volume 41 issue 4&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Front cover caption, volume 41 issue 4&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;MORALLY INSCRIBING FRACTURED TIMES&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;President Donald Trump bangs a gavel gifted by Speaker Mike Johnson after signing the ‘big, beautiful bill’ on Friday (AP) This image exemplifies what Nicholas Lackenby calls moral inscription into fractured times. Supporters celebrate Trump's bill as historic progress, critics condemn it as dangerous regression, yet both claim history's ultimate vindication. Lackenby shows how such rhetoric intensifies precisely when people feel that ‘material, political and economic factors are wholly beyond their control’. In an era of deep political division, how do we understand the passionate certainty that characterises all sides? Lackenby's anthropological perspective in this issue reveals why claims to being on the ‘right side of history’ (and denouncing others as being on the wrong side) resonate so powerfully across Euro-America. From Serbian cafés to American politics, people invoke history's moral arc to anchor their positions amid uncertainty. Rather than dismissing claims about history's ‘right side’ as political delusion or a poor understanding of how history works, an anthropological approach reveals ‘sideism’ to be a culturally specific, post-Judeo-Christian form of historical consciousness and conscientiousness. Lackenby's work helps us see our turbulent moment through a broader lens, showing how people navigate chaos by reaching for the fixity of history's sides and inscribing themselves into time's passage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Back cover caption, volume 41 issue 4&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;HOW PAYING BECAME A PRODUCT&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Digital payments have transformed simple transactions into complex performances laden with emotion, meaning, and social significance. In this issue, Camilla Carabini and Joy Malala demonstrate how paying has evolved into a choreographed experience embedded in feelings, rituals, and power relations. The method of payment itself has become commodified—a branded experience engineered to evoke specific responses of trust, desire, efficiency, or anxiety. When a digital wallet opens, it unleashes more than purchasing power; it transmits carefully crafted symbols of belonging and aspiration. This marks what the authors term an ‘affective commodity’: the transformation of emotional and sensory elements of payment into profit-generating mechanisms. Every payment gesture carries cultural weight. The confident tap of a phone, the satisfying beep of a card reader, the furtive glance at an ATM—these seemingly mundane acts embed broader histories of surveillance, inequality, and resistance. Drawing on ethnographic work in Kenya and Jamaica, Carabini and Malala reveal how payment infrastructures mediate not merely economic exchange, but emotional and political life itself. Their research uncovers nationalist symbolism woven into M-Pesa's corporate identity and eschatological anxieties surrounding Jamaica's Central Bank Digital Curr","PeriodicalId":46293,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology Today","volume":"41 4","pages":"i-ii"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8322.12886","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144832574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Classified","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/1467-8322.70012","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8322.70012","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46293,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology Today","volume":"41 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144832658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"MERRILL SINGER (1950–2025)","authors":"Elyse Singer,&nbsp;Hans A. Baer","doi":"10.1111/1467-8322.70005","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8322.70005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46293,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology Today","volume":"41 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144832667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"History's sides: How people morally inscribe themselves into fractured times","authors":"Nicholas Lackenby","doi":"10.1111/1467-8322.70009","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8322.70009","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article considers how people think about history in terms of its ‘sides’. When people claim to be on the ‘right side’ – or denounce others as being on the ‘wrong side’ – of history, they simultaneously evoke a (culturally specific) concept of ‘history’ and morally evaluate its passage. This article thinks about this process with reference to the interplay between what Michael Lambek identifies as ‘historical consciousness’ and ‘historical conscience’. In a global sociopolitical context which is increasingly fragmenting and where the old order is challenged, the evocation of history's sides is a means by which people find fixity and morally inscribe themselves into time.</p>","PeriodicalId":46293,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology Today","volume":"41 4","pages":"3-5"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8322.70009","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144832576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Payments as performances: The affective turn in the commodification of value transfer","authors":"Camilla Carabini,&nbsp;Joy Malala","doi":"10.1111/1467-8322.70008","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8322.70008","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article argues that payments and payment infrastructures extend beyond economic and legal frameworks. The act of paying involves more than fulfilling financial transactions by transferring monetary value. This view obscures the moral, relational, technological, and political aspects of payments. This article employs the legal definition of payments as performances, broadening it through an anthropological lens. This approach reveals payments as processes rich in cultural and social implications rather than just financial transactions. The article demonstrates that new forms of capitalist expansion emerge through the performance of value transfer. This represents the ‘affective turn’ in the commodification of payments, where the sensorial, emotional, and relational dimensions of value transfer maximize profit extraction. The commodification of payments as performances raises new multidisciplinary research questions that help us understand payments as consumable products.</p>","PeriodicalId":46293,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology Today","volume":"41 4","pages":"6-10"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8322.70008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144832577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Blue crabs and grey gold: How markets make aliens native in Northern Italy","authors":"Claudia Campisano","doi":"10.1111/1467-8322.70007","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8322.70007","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article examines multispecies encounters with ‘alien’ and ‘invasive’ species through ethnographic research on human-Manila clam-blue crab relationships within the feral multispecies arrangement of the Goro Lagoon in Northern Italy's Po River Delta. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2024, the analysis reveals how the Manila clam became successfully autochthonized and integrated into local economic life, transforming the region from a state of extreme poverty one of prosperity through aquaculture. The sudden expansion of blue crab populations in the region in 2023, however, disrupted this arrangement, as the species proved resistant to domestication and commodification, provoking intense feelings of hatred and resentment among local fishers. The study demonstrates that categories such as ‘alien’ and ‘autochthonous’ – along with associated notions and practices of domestication? are flexible constructs, deeply intertwined with market logics, political ideologies and ideas of technical controllability. This article contributes to multispecies studies by exploring how encounters with other-than-human actors shape both the practices and affective dimensions of feral arrangements under neo-liberal capitalism.</p>","PeriodicalId":46293,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology Today","volume":"41 4","pages":"16-20"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144832581","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mozambique, 50 years (1975–2025): Does the struggle continue?","authors":"Lorenzo Macagno","doi":"10.1111/1467-8322.70006","DOIUrl":"10.1111/1467-8322.70006","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article revisits Samora Machel's famous slogan ‘<i>A luta continua</i>’ (‘The struggle continues’) to analyse the 50 years of Mozambican independence (1975-2025). It argues that the initial anticolonial struggle has transformed into a series of protracted internal conflicts. Drawing on historical analysis and long-term ethnographic insight, the article traces a sequence of challenges: from FRELIMO's postindependence turn to Marxism-Leninism and the devastating civil war with RENAMO, to the contemporary pressures of extractive capitalism and the recent jihadist insurgency in Cabo Delgado. The article analyses this latest conflict as a complex manifestation of local grievances articulated through a religious idiom. It concludes that in the face of these persistent crises and a flawed 2024 election, Machel's revolutionary slogan now functions as a poignant interrogation of Mozambique's unresolved contemporary dilemmas.</p>","PeriodicalId":46293,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology Today","volume":"41 4","pages":"21-24"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8322.70006","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144832582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}