Faith, Hope, Neoliberalism: Mapping Economies of Violence on the Margins of Europe

This paper explores the manner in which the east of Europe has been theorized in the post cold war environment, and the implications for our understanding of the relationship between east and west. It argues that hegemonic discourses of neoliberalism lend a quality of inevitability to the integration of east into west, which in turn leads to a singular conception of Europe at the end of a trajectory of development. The paper argues that the relationship of western Europe to eastern Europe is more fruitfully explored through the conceptual framework of a center to its margins, which allows for a broader range of analysis on the issues — conceptual and implementational — at stake in transition processes, and which will allow for a theoretical exploration of where power is located and exercised. Because eastern Europe is understood in scholarly and policy communities as politically and geographically European, the study of postcommunist transition in Europe falls outside the purview of a development studies community that is increasingly focused on the emerging north/south divide. In a scholarly environment where the East/West divide no longer constitutes a salient focus of study, there is a need for the development of a framework that will provide a richer understanding of the reconstituted relationships being formed in Europe in the post-cold war environment. This paper argues that the social, economic, and political impact of disciplinary neoliberalism in eastern Europe can benefit from an analysis that takes into consideration the Eurocentric, disciplinary power that lies at the core of the transition process. Toward this end, it is necessary to query the discursive foundations of what constitutes the ‘properly European’ in order to develop a framework for a more fruitful course of analysis with respect to the relationship between Europe and its fluctuating eastern margins.     

Return migration and economic turmoil: experiences of repatriated Chinese professionals in Shanghai, China

From 2007, the economic turmoil in the USA has had a dramatic impact on immigrant populations living within the nation’s borders. One such group is Chinese migrants who came to the USA as students in the 1980s and 1990s. This paper focuses on a segment of this population—medical professionals—who obtained graduate degrees in the USA and subsequently stayed on to work in pharmaceutical or health industries in Philadelphia’s metropolitan area. As a result of the economic crises in the USA and also the burgeoning market in China, pharmaceutical companies have begun to repatriate some of these Chinese professionals. This paper will examine reflections on the return experience to Shanghai, which has developed rapidly to become the most commercialized modern city in China as a result of the market reform initiated in 1979. I argue that neoliberal ideology in the USA not only forces these Chinese immigrants back to China, but also challenges their concepts of identity and citizenship, including cultural citizenship. This paper also examines the ways in which processes of change are affected by global capitalism and neoliberalism.     

Neoliberalism reified: suzhi discourse and tropes of neoliberalism in the People's Republic of China

Since the mid-1990s, 'neoliberalism' has grown in importance as an explanatory trope for socio-cultural anthropologists. This article seeks to unravel the various strands of neoliberalism's anthropological meaning and demonstrate the blind spots of using neoliberalism as an overarching trope. I begin by analysing the contradictions between two common forms of theorizing neoliberalism. The remainder of the article then focuses the initial discussion by examining a particular case: suzhi discourse in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Suzhi may be glossed as human quality, and suzhi discourse refers to the myriad ways in which this notion of human quality is used in processes of governing contemporary China. I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments of those who explain suzhi discourse in terms of neoliberalism and suggest ways in which this discourse might be contextualized more fruitfully than as a form of neoliberalism.     

Whatever happened to economic anthropology?1

In the 1970s, economic anthropology, along with kinship and ecological anthropology, was regarded as a core discipline in the teaching of anthropology. The centrality of all these subjects was reflected in the debates of the time. For economic anthropology, understanding the articulation of modes of production was the problem; the holy trinity—tribe, peasant, capitalist—provided the key terms of the debate. These terms, and this problem, are history. The discipline of anthropology has been de‐cored over the past 30 years: economic anthropology, kinship and ecological anthropology are not even on the agenda in many universities today (ANU included). This presents us with a paradox because these academic trends are in inverse proportion to the importance of contemporary developments in the economy, the family and ecology as global problems facing humanity. This paradox must be addressed not by arguing for a rehabilitation of the core subjects of the 1970s—those days are long gone—but by taking a critical look at the implicit theories of value that inform anthropological thinking about the economy, the family and ecology today. I shall argue that, along with neoliberalism, ‘agency’ has been the key term of the new paradigm that emerged in the 1970s, that this paradigm is about to become history and that new ways of thinking about the economy will have to emerge as we all become victims of the ‘financialisation’ of Europe, the industrialisation of Asia and the desiccation of Australia.     

Images of the natural (and social) universe in Rétif De La Bretonne’s La découverte australe

As many cultural historians of the sciences have recently indicated, eighteenth-century illustrations of natural historical works represent an important source that can be used to explore the ways in which nature and the study of nature were regarded in the period. Naturalistic illustrations, however, are not the only genre of images that may help the historian in this investigation. Another interesting source is represented by images of nature and natural objects connected with fictional literature. Yet, little attention has been devoted so far to this genre of images. In this paper I analyse some of the engravings which illustrate Rétif de la Bretonne’s imaginary voyage La Découverte australe par un homme volant (1781). My aim is to show that these illustrations convey a well-defined image of the natural universe, and that their analysis may contribute to our understanding of the various significances and roles attached to Nature in the period—particularly bringing to the fore its moral and political uses. Further, by analysing the ways in which they connect and integrate a variety of artistic and discursive traditions related to fiction, travel, and natural history, I hope to suggest some of the ways in which this genre of images may be used to shed light on the eighteenth-century interplay between spheres of knowledge later assigned to such distinct disciplines as ‘science’, ‘literature’, or ‘art’.     

Waste Costing as a Catalyst in Pollution Prevention Investment Decisions

This article presents a case study in a Nigerian firm of how waste costing can be applied to pollution prevention (P2) investment decisions. This case is informed by the priority accorded to P2 as a preferred alternative to end‐of‐pipe pollution control. It demonstrates that even in the absence of effective regulations in a developing country, cost accounting can spur P2 decisions by management through the system of waste cost allocation. The case used standard cost data from the Wonder Beauty Care Company and applied the activity‐based costing (ABC) system to waste cost allocation using waste cost drivers, which yielded another genre of waste costs—waste‐induced overhead. Subsequently, the waste‐induced overhead was applied to P2 investment analysis. This analysis indicated that the P2 investment alternative that incorporates the waste‐induced overhead produced a preferred alternative choice. The case further revealed that managers’ knowledge of waste costs in a Nigerian firm may influence their P2 decisions. The case illustrates practically a possible dual advantage of an improved costing system for Nigerian firms—cost reduction and cleaner production.     

A spirit of scientific rigour: Koch's postulates in twentieth-century medicine

This article explores one of a citation classics in medical literature—Koch's postulates. It analyses their creation in the nineteenth century and their popularity in the twentieth century. As a genre of historiography, references to the postulates are anecdotes. In referring to a historical event that never happened, such references serve to remind their audiences of a tradition of experimental medicine that supposedly originated with Robert Koch.     

“You don’t see any violence here but it leads to very ugly things”: forced solidarity and silent violence in Michoacán,Mexico

Mexico has become an ideal laboratory for anthropology interested in studying the transformations of drug trafficking, its economies, and its cultures. Certainly, the challenges are complex and difficult, since criminal violence affects fieldwork and its results. However, when one delves into regions where drug trafficking and organized crime are present, what we can grasp ethnographically are fundamental questions about the relationships that are being generated between the state, neoliberalism, and illegality. In this article, we will analyze the expansion of drug cartels in one of the states most affected by criminal violence: the state of Michoacán, with special reference to the Caballeros Templarios—the Knights Templar. Understanding the origins and structures of this organization can teach us how the transformations of the state and criminal economies are being redrawn in neoliberal spaces.     

Science vs Conspiracy: Collective Narratives in the Age of Misinformation

The large availability of user provided contents on online social media facilitates people aggregation around shared beliefs, interests, worldviews and narratives. In spite of the enthusiastic rhetoric about the so called collective intelligence unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories—e.g., chemtrails, reptilians or the Illuminati—are pervasive in online social networks (OSN). In this work we study, on a sample of 1.2 million of individuals, how information related to very distinct narratives—i.e. main stream scientific and conspiracy news—are consumed and shape communities on Facebook. Our results show that polarized communities emerge around distinct types of contents and usual consumers of conspiracy news result to be more focused and self-contained on their specific contents. To test potential biases induced by the continued exposure to unsubstantiated rumors on users’ content selection, we conclude our analysis measuring how users respond to 4,709 troll information—i.e. parodistic and sarcastic imitation of conspiracy theories. We find that 77.92% of likes and 80.86% of comments are from users usually interacting with conspiracy stories.     

The politics of the social economy: a case study of the Argentinean empresas recuperadas

This paper offers an ethnographically grounded analysis of the transformative possibilities of the Argentinean empresas recuperadas (ERs), which speaks to current debates on the ‘social economy’. The ERs emerged in a context shaped by the crisis of neoliberalism and of the Argentinean political system and a huge upsurge in popular self-organisation. In response to widespread factory closures, thousands of workers occupied abandoned companies, forming cooperatives and often introducing assembly-based decision-making. By 2002, they established a national organisation, which connected workers’ struggles to a wider movement for institutional change. However, by 2006, the organisation had fragmented and many ERs had reinstalled traditional control methods. Much of the literature divides between idealistic and deterministic interpretations, which conceive as a technical material process. The paper proposes an alternative, a concept of labour as a process of creating value—subjective needs and values, and surplus value—which links organisations to society. Conceiving the ‘politics of value creation’ highlights continuities within the financial management and institutional relations of many ERs, but most importantly, it also recognises the different ways in which emerging social identities articulated a new need for control. Through two case studies, the paper explores the social processes through which these actors shaped their cooperatives in very different ways—highlighting innovations in accounting techniques and state-society relations. This reveals why a focus on accounting can enable anthropologists to recognise the general limitations of cooperatives and also their specific cultural diversity. In conclusion, the paper reconciles current discussions on the concept of the social economy by theorising it as the internal socialisation of capitalism and as an institutional expression of new cultural needs.     

Neoliberalism,Mobility and Cook Islands Men in Transit

From the 1990s, neoliberalism has been vigorously promoted by aid agencies operating in the Cook Islands. The solution to the country's economic problems has been sought in the privatisation of government assets and services and the development of free‐market principles. Social Impact Assessment reports of these reforms have included information on their effect on women and children under the heading of ‘gender’; men, however, are notably absent as a category of analysis. Building on recent work about men, masculinities and development, this paper begins to address this imbalance by examining how Cook Islands men have been effected by, and how they react to, neoliberalism in a series of gender specific ways. In particular, it explores the relationship between masculinity, class, status, and migration.     

Intention Seekers: Conspiracist Ideation and Biased Attributions of Intentionality

Conspiracist beliefs are widespread and potentially hazardous. A growing body of research suggests that cognitive biases may play a role in endorsement of conspiracy theories. The current research examines the novel hypothesis that individuals who are biased towards inferring intentional explanations for ambiguous actions are more likely to endorse conspiracy theories, which portray events as the exclusive product of intentional agency. Study 1 replicated a previously observed relationship between conspiracist ideation and individual differences in anthropomorphisation. Studies 2 and 3 report a relationship between conspiracism and inferences of intentionality for imagined ambiguous events. Additionally, Study 3 again found conspiracist ideation to be predicted by individual differences in anthropomorphism. Contrary to expectations, however, the relationship was not mediated by the intentionality bias. The findings are discussed in terms of a domain-general intentionality bias making conspiracy theories appear particularly plausible. Alternative explanations are suggested for the association between conspiracism and anthropomorphism.     

Trend of Narratives in the Age of Misinformation

Social media enabled a direct path from producer to consumer of contents changing the way users get informed, debate, and shape their worldviews. Such a disintermediation might weaken consensus on social relevant issues in favor of rumors, mistrust, or conspiracy thinking—e.g., chem-trails inducing global warming, the link between vaccines and autism, or the New World Order conspiracy. Previous studies pointed out that consumers of conspiracy-like content are likely to aggregate in homophile clusters—i.e., echo-chambers. Along this path we study, by means of a thorough quantitative analysis, how different topics are consumed inside the conspiracy echo-chamber in the Italian Facebook. Through a semi-automatic topic extraction strategy, we show that the most consumed contents semantically refer to four specific categories: environment, diet, health, and geopolitics. We find similar consumption patterns by comparing users activity (likes and comments) on posts belonging to these different semantic categories. Finally, we model users mobility across the distinct topics finding that the more a user is active, the more he is likely to span on all categories. Once inside a conspiracy narrative users tend to embrace the overall corpus.     

Drawing Disability in Japanese Manga: Visual Politics, Embodied Masculinity, and Wheelchair Basketball in Inoue Takehiko’s REAL

This work explores disability in the cultural context of contemporary Japanese comics. In contrast to Western comics, Japanese manga have permeated the social fabric of Japan to the extent that vast numbers of people read manga on a daily basis. It has, in fact, become such a popular medium for visual communication that the Japanese government and education systems utilize manga as a social acculturation and teaching tool. This multibillion dollar industry is incredibly diverse, and one particularly popular genre is sports manga. However, Inoue Takehiko’s award-winning manga series REAL departs from more conventional sports manga, which typically focus on able-bodied characters with sometimes exaggerated superhuman physical abilities, by adopting a more realistic approach to the world of wheelchair basketball and the people who play it. At the same time REAL explores cultural attitudes toward disability in Japanese culture—where disability is at times rendered “invisible” either through accessibility problems or lingering associations of disability and shame. It is therefore extremely significant that manga, a visual medium, is rendering disability visible—the ultimate movement from margin to center. REAL devotes considerable attention to realistically illustrating the lived experiences of its characters both on and off the court. Consequently, the series not only educates readers about wheelchair basketball but also provides compelling insight into Japanese cultural notions about masculinity, family, responsibility, and identity. The basketball players—at first marginalized by their disability—join together in the unity of a sport typically characterized by its “abledness.”     

Emotional Dynamics in the Age of Misinformation

According to the World Economic Forum, the diffusion of unsubstantiated rumors on online social media is one of the main threats for our society. The disintermediated paradigm of content production and consumption on online social media might foster the formation of homogeneous communities (echo-chambers) around specific worldviews. Such a scenario has been shown to be a vivid environment for the diffusion of false claim. Not rarely, viral phenomena trigger naive (and funny) social responses—e.g., the recent case of Jade Helm 15 where a simple military exercise turned out to be perceived as the beginning of the civil war in the US. In this work, we address the emotional dynamics of collective debates around distinct kinds of information—i.e., science and conspiracy news—and inside and across their respective polarized communities. We find that for both kinds of content the longer the discussion the more the negativity of the sentiment. We show that comments on conspiracy posts tend to be more negative than on science posts. However, the more the engagement of users, the more they tend to negative commenting (both on science and conspiracy). Finally, zooming in at the interaction among polarized communities, we find a general negative pattern. As the number of comments increases—i.e., the discussion becomes longer—the sentiment of the post is more and more negative.     

Disability and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Depression</Emphasis>

Here, Ann Cvetkovich, interviewed by Abby Wilkerson, brings Cvetkovich’s influential cultural studies analysis of depression explicitly into conversation with disability studies. Cvetkovich understands “feeling bad” (a term she prefers to “depression”) as a defining affective state under neoliberalism. Drawing on a distinctive historical/cultural archive, she challenges the atomism of the neoliberal medical model that frames depression and affective distress more generally as the result of faulty brain chemistry—individual organisms gone awry. Instead, she traces these common experiences to sociopolitical phenomena ranging from current neoliberal demands for productivity as exemplified in university life, to histories of colonization, slavery, and displacement. The conversation considers the value of disability frameworks for understanding mental health diagnoses and the intersections of social institutions, bodily practices, and everyday affective life.     

God is in the Data: Epistemologies of Knowledge at the Creation Museum

In contemporary American public culture, interest groups increasingly mobilise social constructionist arguments in order to discredit strains of scientific knowledge. According to Latour [2004. Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. Critical Inquiry, 30:225–48], the field of science studies has contributed to this trend by exposing the ways that scientific facts are socially mediated. In this article, I examine how a narrative of social construction is articulated in the Creation Museum, a young earth creationist museum in Northern Kentucky, USA. I compare the epistemology of science in the Creation Museum with that of conspiracy theory and of social constructionist science studies. I examine how, in the Creation Museum, social constructionist critique is combined with a framing of the Bible as a source of factual data. It is argued that science studies, conspiracy theory and creationism overlap in their critiques of the transparency and objectivity of science. However, they diverge in terms of the degree of recursivity they allow.     

‘Shit Happens’: The Selling of Risk in Extreme Sport

This article details the particular commodification of those high‐risk, highadrenalin activities known collectively as ‘extreme sports’. A variety of commercial operators now offer relative sporting neophytes the chance to take part in mountaineering, snow boarding or canyonning adventures that are billed as being ‘high thrill, low risk’. It is the way in which the risk and danger involved in these activities is discursively managed that is of particular interest for this article. The argument developed is that in selling extremity through a range of primarily tourist‐oriented commercial avenues, the very real prospect of death and injury has been stripped from the activity itself. To elaborate this position, this article draws on several sporting disasters, including the much publicised, ill‐fated ascent of Mount Everest in 1996, and the Interlaken canyonning disaster of 1999, as well as the burgeoning literary and media genre—the made‐for‐Hollywood ‘adventure saga’.     

Melanoma development and progression: a conspiracy between tumor and host

While a genome-centric paradigm in human cancer development was useful for the understanding of some malignancies such as leukemias, causative molecular defects intrinsic to melanocytes have not been defined in the majority of human melanomas. Recent work, however, has shown that regulatory signals governing melanocytic cell growth and differentiation may originate from the surrounding host cells either directly through physical contact or indirectly through soluble factors and extracellular matrix molecules. In this review, we present experimental systems useful for dissecting melanoma-host interactions and highlight evidence that the tumor microenvironment contributes to the oncogenic process. Thus, melanomagenesis is not merely an act of a single outlaw but a conspiracy orchestrated by multiple partners in the neighborhood who come into play in a precise spatiotemporal order. Defining intercellular molecular dialogues in human skin promises to provide key information for the development of novel treatment strategies that target the functional unit of stroma and tumor.     

The Politics of Tradition: Toward a Generic Culture in Vanuatu

The paper examines the role of the elite in generating constructions of tradition in present-day Vanuatu. While stopping short of postulating a ‘conspiracy theory’ interpretation, the paper does argue that the proto-bureaucratic 'class' is attempting to gain control over a symbolic code derived from traditional practices (kastom) so as to promote social cohesion and establish a civil polity. The negative case of kava, a symbol of traditional culture which was significantly not included in this corpus is discussed at length.