German law on circumcision and its debate: How an ethical and legal issue turned political

The article aims to illuminate the recent debate in Germany about the legitimacy of circumcision for religious reasons. The aim is both to evaluate the new German law allowing religious circumcision, and to outline the resulting conflict between the surrounding ethical and legal issues. We first elucidate the diversity of legal and medical views on religious circumcision in Germany. Next we examine to what extent invasive and irreversible physical interventions on infant boys unable to given their consent should be carried out for non‐medical reasons. To this end, the potential benefits and harms of circumcision for non‐medical reasons are compared. We argue that circumcision does not provide any benefits for the ‘child as a child’ and poses only risks to boys. We then set out to clarify and analyse political (rather than ethical) justifications of the new circumcision law. We demonstrate through this analysis how the circumcision debate in Germany has been transformed from a legal and ethical problem into a political issue, due at least in part to Germany's unique historical context. Although such a particular political sensibility is entirely comprehensible, it raises particular problems when it comes to framing and responding to medical ethical issues – as in the case of religious circumcision.     

Perpetration,impunity, and irreconciliation in Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools

The influence of institutional mandates on knowledge can be seen particularly clearly in the preferences and absences of truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) proceedings. A recent trend in TRCs involves a shift away from the exercise of judicial powers and the quest for justice and towards more concern with affirming the experience of victims or ‘Survivors’. Canada's TRC on Indian Residential Schools illustrates the consequences of the shift towards victim-centrism, which left gaps in knowledge – particularly about perpetrators – that was conveyed to the commission and produced conditions of impunity for those responsible for mass harm. This impunity coalesced into irreconciliation as the commission gave voice to people who had been forgotten, marginalized, and given little chance in life, while leaving out of the picture those who had actually stolen their lives and dignity.     

Anti-Semitism in Britain: continuity and the absence of a resurgence?

Abstract

It has become the orthodoxy in recent years to assume that anti-Semitism globally is not only rising but also taking a new form – it is a ‘new anti-Semitism’ or even a new phenomenon: Judeophobia. This article takes a different perspective. It initially covers approaches to anti-Semitism and how, especially in the light of the Holocaust, it has been viewed academically as no longer the fault of the Jews but as a natural and constant feature of history since antiquity. A critique is provided of the idea of a continuous history of anti-Semitism and of the metaphors used to describe it. There then follows a case study of anti-Semitism in Britain. The British case is valuable as it is seen as a key example of the ‘new anti-Semitism’, and one that is more striking given the alleged absence of previous hostility towards Jews in that country. By employing a comparative approach – both temporal and in relation to responses to other groups – change and continuity are charted through a study of racial violence. Such comparisons, it is argued, allow a more nuanced and balanced analysis of this issue, which has created much alarm and little sober reflection.     

John W. Burgess,the racial state and the making of the American science of politics

This article examines the place of racial ideas in the constitution of political science as an academic discipline in the USA. For the Gilded Age generation that built the first PhD-granting departments in political science in the country, ‘race’ was the source of sovereignty, the basis of democratic legitimacy and a tool for delineating democracy's borders. It was also an important element of that cohort's aspiration to a ‘science’ of politics, distinct from what they viewed as the ‘abstract and formal’ theorizing of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Moreover, while the brand of racialism that characterized this founding moment came to seem outmoded within a few decades, in the 1920s political scientists seeking once again to claim an empirical, scientific basis for their discipline – and for American democracy – turned to new accounts and sciences of race.     

How can we meet ‘the demands of the day’? Producing an affective,reflexive, interpretive,public sociology of ‘race’

This article argues for a public sociology of ‘race’ that can respond to Weber's injunction that sociology should ‘meet the demands of the day’. While the author's version of these demands – for a society of autonomous individuals and groups, living as equals – is utopian, the main argument offered here is that a sociology of ‘race’ should be a modified version of Burawoy's ‘public sociology’. Adopting Bauman's notion of a sociology of interpreters, a further suggestion is that this type of sociology needs to be reflexive and affective. Based on an analysis of his own sociological education in the late 1960s, his participation in social and political movements in which ‘race’ was key, and with brief reference to the sociology of ‘race’, the author argues that the emotions that circulated in each arena need to be examined, acknowledged and incorporated if theoretical and practical progress is to be made.     

Surgery and national identity in late nineteenth-century Vienna

For historians of medicine, the professor Theodor Billroth of the University of Vienna was the leading European surgeon of the late nineteenth century and the personification of intervention by organ or body part removal. For social and political historians, he was a German nationalist whose book on medical education heralded the rise of anti-Semitism in the Austrian public sphere. This article brings together and critically reassesses these two hitherto separate accounts to show how, in a period of dramatic social and political change, Viennese surgery split into two camps. One, headed by Billroth, was characterized by an alliance with the German educational model, German nationalism leading to racial anti-Semitism and an experimental approach to the construction of surgical procedure, which heavily relied on the methods of pathological physiology. The other, which followed a long Austrian tradition, stood for a clinically oriented and strictly organized medical education that catered to an ethnically and socially diverse population and, simultaneously, for an anatomically oriented surgery, largely of the locomotor apparatus. This study shows how, in a major centre of medical education and capital of a multiethnic empire, surgical and national identities were forged together.     

Anti-Semitism and opposition to Israeli government policies: the roles of prejudice and information

Past research on the link between anti-Semitism and criticism of the Israeli government has revealed a partial correlation between the two. However, among the political arguments that have inspired such research, one has gone unaddressed: that criticism of the Israeli government along with silence about more egregious human rights abuses committed elsewhere can only arise from anti-Semitism. This article investigates the link between knowledge of conflicts around the world, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and criticism of the Israeli and Saudi governments, among US participants. Using a deeper index of anti-Israel opinions than prior research, the results indicate that some criticisms of the Israeli government are more reliable indicators of anti-Semitic sentiment than others. The findings are discussed with regard to how legitimate political criticism can be distinguished from prejudice in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.     

Indicators of hemeroby for the monitoring of landscapes in Germany

The article discusses the concepts of “closeness to nature” and “hemeroby”, and outlines a method to establish two indicators of hemeroby. Until now Germany's national land use monitoring systems have lacked an indicator to capture the naturalness respectively hemeroby of the landscape. Based on digital spatial data on land use (DLM-DE) and the mapping of potential natural vegetation, these indicators have now been estimated for the whole of Germany and illustrated cartographically. The indicators have been integrated into a land use monitoring system (IOER-Monitor). A hemeroby index that considers all hemeroby classes of a reference area (e.g. administrative unit and regular grid cell) is presented as well as an indicator named “Proportion of certain natural areas”. The results on hemeroby of several time-cuts can be used to estimate the cumulative impact of land use changes on the environmental status.     

Sharing residential space in the 1920s: Racial and ethnic patterns in cities in Michigan

Since 1989, France has endured repeated, contentious debates about the ‘Islamic’ headscarf. In February 2004, French legislators approved a new law prohibiting students from wearing conspicuous ‘religious signs’ in public schools. Contrary to some observers’ assumptions, this measure was not caused mainly by new efforts to combat terrorism or by pro-Christian prejudice. Explaining France's decision to pass this surprising new legislation requires attention to both historical continuities of French political thinking and the changing French and international context. French republican understandings of citizenship and secularism have long made the headscarves issue peculiarly sensitive in France. However, the new law marks a clear departure from previous French policy. Explaining that rupture requires attention to more immediate social and political factors, most importantly: dissatisfaction with the previous policy; effective mobilization of public sympathy by new feminist groups; concern about rising anti-Semitism; and, somewhat paradoxically, developments in international human rights law.     

Will hospital closures mean physician unemployment in Ontario?

Dr. Duncan Sinclair, the former dean of medicine who heads the commission charged with restructuring Ontario''s health care system, said something dramatic was needed to revamp the system. He wasn''t kidding. His commission recently called for the closure of 3 hospitals in Ottawa and 10 more in Toronto. In a wideranging interview with Charlotte Gray he talks about the commission''s goals and their potential impact on physicians.     

White folks: race and identity in rural America

Abstract

Since the breakdown of the Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David in 2000 and the start of the second Palestinian Intifada there has been a voluminous literature that asserts that hostility to Israel and Zionism is a new form of anti-Semitism. This essay critiques the ‘new anti-Semitism’ view. Reversing the method that Plato uses in the Republic, the analysis moves from microcosm (an imaginary ride on a London bus) to macrocosm (the Middle East). In the process, the author argues that anti-Semitism is best defined not by an attitude to Jews but by the figure of ‘the Jew’. In the light of the analysis, and bearing in mind the variety of possible reasons for hostility to Israel or Zionism, it is difficult to see how the ‘new anti-Semitism’ view can be sustained.     

Brazilian alcohol: Food versus fuel?

The creation of the ProAlcool (National Alcohol Programme) late in 1975 for the production of fuel alcohol has raised varied criticisms as to the possible consequences for food production in Brazil. This food ‘problem’ in Brazil is embedded in its socio-economic and political system. Agricultural production has kept ahead of population growth, but the main beneficiaries have been commodity export crops; the issue can be identified as ‘commodity export crop production versus crop production for the domestic market’ rather than ‘food versus fuel’. The possible effects of the ProAlcool on food production have been exaggerated and the real implications largely overlooked. The sugar and alcohol sector is today among Brazil's largest industries and, with all its faults, the ProAlcool remains the world's most successful biomass energy programme and as such its importance extends beyond Brazil's national boundaries. Biomass has been demonstrated by a Third World country to be a viable alternative or complement to oil on a national scale. Despite the current (1986) low oil prices an interministerial commission has recently recommended that the ProAlcool programme should be maintained.     

Managing alterity from within: the ontological turn in anthropology and indigenous efforts to shape shamanism

The ontological turn is gaining momentum among many anthropologists today, evidenced by multiple debates and symposia in recent years addressing the role of ontological approaches within the discipline. Equal to the force of the ontological turn are the growing number of passionate critiques that question everything from the ethnographic and historical integrity of this body of work to its intellectual motivations and political effects. This article commends ontologists for bringing greater attention to the crucial role of spirits in many people's lives and for their efforts to gain deeper understandings of different realities. Yet we also agree with critics in their identification of various troubling tendencies in prominent ontologists’ analyses. We highlight how many of these disturbing inclinations emerge through ontologists’ attempts to connect their ethnographic analyses to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's theory of multinaturalist perspectivism. Finally, we analyse one of the favourite research topics of those associated with the ontological turn – shamanism – in one of the regions most often heralded as an oasis of radical alterity – the Amazon – in a way that specifically aims to avoid the problematic orientations we identify. Specifically, we describe a series of historical changes in the relationships between shamans and indigenous leaders to draw attention to how relationships to shamanic power/knowledge are unevenly distributed, actively debated, and co‐constructed through changing historical and political contexts.     

Arab sounds in a contested space: life quality,cultural hierarchies and national silencing

Sounds and sonic norms and regimes characterize both spaces/territories and individual bodies. This article explores the meanings of and reactions to Arab sounds in Israel – political struggles over muezzins, stereotypical representations of Israeli Palestinians as loud, and so on – in order to offer general insights into the role of the sonic (both actual sounds and their discursive representations) in the new ‘cultural’ racism, in the everyday ethnicized experience of one's body, and in shaping relations between ethnic and national groups.     

‘[Not] talking like a Motorola’: mobile phone practices and politics of masking and unmasking in postcolonial Kinshasa

The expression ‘talking like a Motorola’ (koloba lokola Motorola) was long used during the reign of President Mobutu in the Democratic Republic of Congo/Zaïre to indicate the undesired disclosure of information. It manifests the perception of many Kinois (inhabitants of Kinshasa) that the Motorola handset was only deployed by Mobutu's secret service agents in order to detect and report critics of the regime. Today, mobile phones are no longer the preserve of political agents. Nearly everybody can have one. The idiom is thus outdated. Yet other lines between ‘what can be said [over the phone]’ and ‘what cannot be said’ are being drawn in Kinshasa's political society. Indeed, transformations in practices of secrecy, concealment, and, their counterpart, the divulging of information – all three significant axes of the production of power and contestation of authority – are key, both in state actions and in strategies of civil society. In this article, I attempt to locate the mobile phone within Kinshasa's political society, and analyse how relations to the Congolese state are articulated through the politics of cell phone technology and uses of the handset.     

Modelling the impact of climate and land use change on the geographical distribution of leaf anatomy in a temperate flora

Variation in plant functional traits has been related to variation in environmental conditions. In particular, the relationship between leaf traits and climate has received much attention. This paper presents a functional‐trait‐centred approach to identify potential impacts of climate and land use change on plant species assemblages. Using species atlas data, we modelled the relative frequencies of species with different leaf anatomies (LARF) as a function of observed climate and land use data on a regular spatial grid across Germany. Subsequently, we projected the geographical distribution of LARF with simulated climate and land use data for the late 21st century under two future scenarios. We used a conditional autoregressive regression model to account for spatially structured variation in LARF that remained unexplained by the environmental factors considered. We found a clear relationship between the climatic gradient of water availability and shifts in LARF: increasing water deficit was associated with a decreasing proportion of species with hygromorphic leaves in the composition and increasing proportions of species with scleromorphic and mesomorphic leaves. The variation in LARF due to land use was only small. Under future environmental scenarios the proportion of species with hygromorphic leaves was projected to decrease in all parts of Germany, whereas the proportions of species with sclero‐ and mesomorphic leaves were projected to increase on average. In particular, Germany's south‐western and north‐eastern areas were projected to experience functional change in LARF. Our study highlights the relationship between functional traits and plant species vulnerability to climate change. Our results suggest that the functional‐trait‐centred approach can provide a powerful additional modelling tool to estimate potential impacts of climate change on plant species assemblages.     

Moral failure: a jeremiad of the war on drugs in Guatemala

The current consensus among social scientists and political pundits is that the war on drugs failed, with a raft of failed programmes, failed interventions, failed policies, and even failed states. But these critics have tended to overlook a more existential form of failure that plays a key role in the ongoing effects of the war on drugs. This failure, which anthropologists of Christianity are well positioned to understand, is the perceived failure of Pentecostal Christians to make right with the Lord. Based on extensive fieldwork in Guatemala, a country profoundly transformed by the illicit movement of cocaine from the Andes to the United States, this article assesses how and to what effect a sense of moral failure among the country's Christian communities sustains a now expansive network of Pentecostal drug rehabilitation centres. Reading one such centre's archive of intake forms as a jeremiad – a Christian lament that bemoans the failures of society to keep its covenant with God – this article concludes that a sense of moral failure sustains the fading edges of today's war on drugs.     

Nationalism,nation and territory: Jacint Verdaguer and the Catalan Renaixença

This paper seeks to explain the historic importance to Catalan nationalism of the nineteenth-century poet and priest, Jacint Verdaguer. In order to do so, rather than focus on his contribution – and that of the wider cultural revival, the Renaixença – to the development of the Catalan language as the basis for national political mobilization, this paper argues that we cannot fully understand Verdaguer's importance without reference to his role in constructing a geographical narrative linking nation and territory. At the same time, given that national meanings are always contested, the paper proposes a dialectical approach to nationalism that situates the work of writers within the context of power struggles between social groups. Consequently, Veradguer's centrality to Catalan nationalism is ultimately explained by his role in producing a geographical narrative capable of attracting important sectors of rural Catalonia to the hegemonic project of the industrial bourgeoisie.     

The limits of post-national citizenship: European Muslims,human rights and the hijab

Innovative approaches to citizenship emerged in the 1990s. Post-national theory suggested that European minorities no longer needed national citizenship because supra-national political structures such as the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) offered them protections. Denationalized citizenship held that universal human rights were now available at the national level too as the Council of Europe's member countries had to incorporate human rights principles within their own jurisdictions. New forms of claims-making among European Muslims were cited as evidence of this trend as religious claims, especially relating to the hijab, began to be made through human rights litigation. This paper demonstrates the limits of post-nationalism through a discussion of the outcomes of such claims. While European Muslims are indeed mobilizing around human rights, there is no evidence – at the level of litigation – that this has helped them to win recognition of their religious or cultural rights. This paper explores the reasons for this.