‘Undesirable relationships’ between Jewish Women and Arab Men: representation and discourse in contemporary Israel

Demography has been broadly considered as a key aspect of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. On the Jewish side, State intervention to encourage Jewish immigration and Jewish births is well known. Much less known are the efforts to discourage inter-faith relations. These ‘problematic relationships’ between Arab men and Jewish women from low socio-economic backgrounds have become a high priority item in public discussions over the last decade. In this article I will explore the main discursive practices used in this heated debate by those opposing these relationships. ‘Moral panic’ as a theoretical framework will help me analyse the ways in which Jewish women and Arab men who engage in such relations are presented. As I will show, attempts to criminalize and vilify Arab men meet with strong opposition. Presenting Jewish women as weak and passive victims seems as a more successful strategy, especially when done by professionals from the psych-professions.     

Flamingo ‘rescue’ in Etosha National Park, 1994: technical,conservation and economic considerations

Fox, V.E., Lindeque, P.M., Simmons, R.E., Berry, H.H., Brain, C. & Braby, R. 1997. Flamingo ‘rescue’ in Etosha National Park, 1994: technical, conservation and economic considerations. Ostrich 68 (2–4): 72–76.

During April 1994,144 Greater Flamingo Phoenicopterus ruber chicks were taken from Etosha Pan, Namibia, following drying of the shallow water and the death of hundreds of chicks. The captured chicks ranged from approximately 2 weeks to 2 months of age and were hand-reared at Okaukuejo until being released (7 weeks later) or sold (12 weeks later). Fourteen birds died within 8 days; only two died later. Of 77 chicks released at Walvis Bay, their traditional wintering grounds, 76 were fitted with yellow plastic rings and 73 with numbered metal rings. These grey juveniles were highly visible in the lagoon among the pink adults, and were resighted regularly. Most of the 20 birds recovered dead within two months of release were birds with wing chord measurements less than 315 mm, and black-backed jackal Canis mesomelas predation was the most likely cause of death. Bird counts 11 and 14 months later at Walvis Bay and surrounding wetlands revealed no juveniles at all, suggesting high mortality. However, four ringed flamingos were sighted in Jan. 1997, and one debilitated ringed flamingo was recovered at the Namibia-Botswana border in Feb. 1997. A lack of predator avoidance was thought to be the main factor responsible for the high mortalities.     

Assembling a visa requirement against the Mexican ‘wave’: migrant illegalization,policy and affective ‘crises’ in Canada

Using the example of a 2009 visa requirement imposed onto Mexican nationals travelling to Canada, this paper frames migrant illegalization as an assemblage that brings together transnational connections, discursive and affective productions, modes of racialization and migrant negotiations. More specifically, the paper maps the events leading to the crafting of the visa requirement and the ensemble of stakeholders – Canadian immigration officials, politicians and business representatives, the Mexican and American governments and Mexican migrants –who responded to it. Through that analysis, the paper argues that migrant illegalization is not always a consistent or predictable set of practices, processes and actors, but instead an often contradictory assemblage of actions and reactions dependent on the social and political context.     

The roots of contemporary attitudes toward immigration in Australia: contextual and individual-level influencesÞ

This paper examines the roots of attitudes toward immigration among Australians of English-speaking background using the 1998, 2001, 2004, and 2007 Australian Election Studies. The paper demonstrates that attitudes toward immigration in Australia have their roots in multiple sources, some of them relating to the local context in which individuals reside, others in the socio-economic and financial situation experienced by individuals. Attitudes toward immigration in Australia are also related to attitudinal factors and historical legacies that manifest themselves in mistrust and suspicion toward Asian neighbours. Finally, the paper demonstrates that the presence of immigrants and ethnic minorities influences Australians' attitudes toward immigration but that this effect must be understood in conjunction with the educational context of the areas of residence. While in high education areas Australians tend to react positively to the presence of immigrants, in low education areas they tend to react negatively to the presence of immigrants.     

‘Mental’ in ‘southie’: Individual,family, and community responses to psychosis in South Boston

The deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients is a deeply cultural as well as political task. It entails the sharing of responsibility for human distress with family and community. Consequently, the locus of social control has also shifted from psychiatric and medical expertise to community and legal institutions. Diagnosis and treatment models must be more compatible with lay explanatory models. This paper explores the various meanings of going mental and being mental in the white, working class, ethnic neighborhood of South Boston. The data are extracted from a study of the impact of deinstitutionalization on a cohort of middle-aged, psychiatric patients discharged from Boston State Hospital in the attempt to return them to community living. Individual, family, and community responses to, and interpretations of, the symptoms of mental distress are discussed. The study indicates that even seriously disturbed individuals are sensitive to cultural meanings and social cues regarding the perception, expression, and content of psychiatric episodes. While madness invariably disenfranchises, it does not necessarily deculturate the individual.     

Building on Iceland's ‘Good Reputation’: Icesave,Crisis and Affective National Identities

The paper claims that crisis is a fruitful way to analyse the interrelationship of local and global, neoliberalism and the nation-state, which scholars have explored for the past few years. During the Icelandic financial crash of 2008, the failed Internet bank Icesave became a source of intense disputes between the British and Icelandic governments. My paper uses Icelandic discussions of the bankrupt bank to explore how individuals negotiate their imagination of the global and the national and how national identity can be reaffirmed in the context of crisis. The discussion shows that the Icesave debate is based on reification of national communities as well as critical reflection on increased power of transnational institutions and global elites. The paper, furthermore, emphasises how crisis itself can be seen as constituting a field within which to exercise power, as well as a prism to investigate and understand national identities in a globalised world.     

‘This is a gathering of lovers’: Islamic self-help and affective pedagogies in contemporary Singapore

In Singapore, the proliferation of Islamic classes drawing from self-help rhetoric, popular culture, the Qur'an, and Hadith allude to the increased appeal of affective pedagogies to Muslim youth. Taught by Singaporean Al-Azhar University graduates, the classes predominantly attracted university-educated, minoritized Malay Muslim women. Through the use of affective pedagogies, the teachers reframed Islamic piety to foreground three forms of love: self, divine, and romantic. Extending scholarship on racialized affect, this article interrogates the ways in which the teachers’ affective pedagogies mediated young women's anxieties within a neoliberalizing context, and the latter's negotiations of their newly acquired religious knowledge as they contended with quotidian precarities. While anthropology's foregrounding of lived materialities complicates some of the theoretical presuppositions of affect theory, the latter expands our understanding of piety projects as not merely concerned with ethical self-discipline, but entangled with broader racialization processes – especially for minoritized subjects whose capacity to transform becomes constitutive of a will to improve. By placing anthropological theory on Islamic piety in a dialogical tension with affect theory, I highlight the forms of affective religious sentiments that circulate through difference and negation, and are integral to particular sites of minoritized Muslim subject formation.     

Local Environmental Knowledge,Talk, and Skepticism: Using ‘LES’ to Distinguish ‘LEK’ from ‘LET’ in Newfoundland

The actual evidence observed in studies of LEK (local environmental knowledge) is nearly always talk about the environment, or what we refer to as LET (local environmental talk), with the claim of studying LEK usually being built upon the implicit assumption that talk about the environment is the expression of knowledge about the environment. We suggest that it is critically important for researchers to question this assumption, especially when the distinction between LET and LEK is also emphasized by local people themselves. In the case we present here, residents of small fishing villages on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland are routinely skeptical about what other local residents say about the environment; that is, they engage in LES (local environmental skepticism). We suggest that paying explicit attention to LES can help distinguish LEK from LET.     

Genetic and biochemical studies on perchloroethylene ‘in vitro’ and ‘in vivo’

Perchloroethylene (PCE) was tested in a diploid strain (D7) of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae in suspension tests with and without a mammalian microsomal activation system (S9) and ‘in vivo’ by the intrasanguineous host-mediated assay. In addition, enzyme alteration studies were performed in mice non-pretreated or pretreated with phenobarbital + β-naphthoflavone. PCE did not induce any genetic effect either ‘in vitro’ or ‘in vivo’. In the suspension test, PCE was more toxic without metabolic activation and less toxic with mammalian microsomal activation. The enzymatic determinations showed an increase of the aminopyrine demethylase activity and of the level of cytochrome P-450.     

A Sense of Belonging and Exclusion: ‘Touchability’ and ‘Untouchability’ in Tamil Nadu

In India, touch is a prime marker of status and social relations. Those who are impure are ‘untouchable’,1 The terms ‘Untouchable’ and ‘Untouchability’ have been abandoned due to the humiliating meaning these terms confer, therefore I use them in inverted commas. The politically correct and common terms today are Scheduled Castes, in short sc, or Dalits, or sometimes Harijan. I use them here synonymously. but those who are of a relatively higher purity are also, depending on the context, either ‘untouchable’ or ‘touchable’ only under certain fixed rules. In this paper, I will explore the contexts in which body contact and touch can be part of personal relations. I describe how these body contacts signify important social relations and establish community identity. Further, I will analyse how patterns of body contact on the one hand change during childhood, and on the other hand produce changes in the status of a social persona. The last point to be investigated is the meaning of touch as a sign for public representations.     

Ebola separations: trust,crisis, and ‘social distancing’ in West Africa

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa involved the introduction of new forms of social and physical separation that aimed to curtail the spread of the disease. People changed the ways they lived to avoid contact with those who might be sick. A suite of governmental instruments was introduced, ranging from by-laws and public health campaigns to the use of specialist treatment centres and military force. These events transformed social connections and affected possibilities for trust in intimate, governmental, and therapeutic relations. Drawing upon fieldwork in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, this article explores these forms of separation and social distance ethnographically, with a focus on material objects, touch, and spaces of separation. In doing so, we contribute to discussions on the constitution of trust and distance within social relations, and the ways in which separation can enable certain kinds of closeness. Our analysis offers insights for those seeking to understand the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on the ways that people relate to, and care for, others.     

Sexual mores,promiscuity and ‘prostitution’ in Botswana

In Botswana there is a large, and increasing, number of women who do not marry but have one or several lovers simultaneously and have gifts from these menas an importantpart of their income. It is argued that the processual and practical character of traditional marriages, combined with weak social institutions, provides those who wish the basis on which to legitimise such informal sexual relationships. Such practices represent a new sexual morality, whose conditions are further explained by treating the term ‘prostitution’ in a comparative perspective. Tensions arise from the new constellation of sexual mores, generating fundamental social changes — most notably substantial economic transfers from men to women, loss of male power, and changing gendered identities. Lastly, the practices described are discussed in relation to the AIDS epidemic.     

‘Classical’ and ‘non-classical’ reproductive steroids in fish

Summary The nature of the steroids secreted by gonads of fish differs significantly from those of the mammals. The classical teleost steroids, oestradiol, testosterone, 11-ketotestosterone and 17,20P, have been measured in a wide variety of teleosts but do not always reflect biological activities. There is increasing evidence that teleost gonads may produce a number of non-classical steroids which may play an important role in their reproductive biology. Such products include metabolites reduced at C5 to 5 or 5, at C3 to 3 or 3, or hydroxylated at 6-, 7-, or 21. Conjugation, as either glucuronides or sulphates, may contribute either to localization of action within the gonad or to production of pheromones during the immediate pre-spawning period. Although it is often possible only to measure the steroids for which assays are readily available, it is important to recognize that there may be production of steroids that are not detected by such assays, but which nevertheless play a major role in reproductive activity. In evolutionary terms, the teleost hydroxylases probably originated in the very early fishes and show parallels with their analogues in amphibians and mammals. Gene sequencing may reveal a possible common ancestor for all vertebrate 6, 7 and 11-hydroxylases.     

‘Us’ and ‘Them’: The role of religion in mediating and challenging the ‘model minority’ and other civic boundaries

This article examines how Korean Americans use the cultural resources of religious communities to mediate race, ethnic, and socio-economic boundaries that have consequences for civic life. Specifically, I compare involvement of Korean Americans in second-generation Korean congregations to those in multiethnic churches. I find Korean Americans who participate in second-generation Korean churches use religion to largely reproduce images of Korean Americans as model minorities, and implicitly distance themselves from those whom they perceive as less financially successful. In contrast, Korean Americans in multiethnic congregations use religion to emphasize the commonality Korean Americans have with other minorities. By using a cultural framework that allows for the agency of individuals in identity and group boundary construction, this work more generally shows the potential for new Americans to use the cultural resources of local organizations to change existing ethnic and racial boundaries in the United States.