Anthropology Today最新文献

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.

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.

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.

This article revisits Samora Machel's famous slogan ‘A luta continua’ (‘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.

This guest editorial examines the critical but often overlooked relationship between terrestrial activities and ocean health. Swanson argues that while marine environments face numerous ecological challenges, most originate from land-based practices, including agricultural runoff, industrial pollution, and carbon emissions. Using the Baltic Sea as a case study, she demonstrates how industrial agriculture has transformed marine ecosystems, creating dead zones and threatening hundreds of species. The author critiques approaches that maintain land-sea dichotomies and calls for more integrated research across disciplinary boundaries. Drawing on anthropological methods, Swanson advocates for holistic approaches that recognize the interconnectedness of terrestrial and marine systems, incorporate Indigenous knowledge practices, and address the systemic transformations needed in political economy and ecology to effectively care for ocean environments.

Sea turtles play a significant role in the ecosystem in Akumal Bay, Mexico. Often seen as charismatic, they play an integral part in balancing the preservation of the local ecology and maintaining the town's tourism economy. Tensions between conservation and commercialization are prevalent in Akumal. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the region, this article argues that the emotional appeal of turtles serves as a powerful tool for both biologists and the tourism industry, emphasizing that caring for these creatures is not simply an altruistic endeavour but an approach that helps to promote ecological integrity and stabilize economic interests. One example highlights how marine biologists leverage sea turtles' popularity to advocate for turtle and seagrass protection. The second example focuses on the tension between maintaining clean, algae-free beaches for tourists and preserving the natural environment for turtles. Here, hoteliers conveniently use ‘caring for turtles’ as an explanation for why their beaches are not pristine.