Anthropology and public service

Introductio

Transcending the academic/public divide in the transmission of theory: Raglan, diffusionism, and mid-century anthropology

Diffusionism has had a bad press, for dark reasons: time for a revaluation. Via an analysis of the productive yet neglected career of that incisive hyperdiffusionist, Lord Raglan, I investigate why would-be hegemons in postwar British anthropology misrepresented or dismissed the power of this paradigm. In fact diffusionism, though declared moribund, did not die but remained a potent explanatory mode for decades, especially in anthropological circles outside Academe. I conclude questioning the life of theory in our discipline, and the conventional historiography of British anthropology

Political agency, electioneering, municipalities

With the introduction of EU citizenship in 1992, intra-EU migrants were enfranchised at the local level: to vote and stand for election as councillors in municipal elections within their country of residence. In this chapter, the consequences are examined for Britons residing in Alicante, Spain, and South West France. The chapter examines who became municipal councillors, why, and to what effect. The two British migrant groups are compared: what was common, what different, and for what reasons. Across the two locations, morality and social belonging are consequences of migrants’ political agency. It is argued that their habitus remains largely unchanged

Clubes y selecciones nacionales de fútbol : La dimensión etnoterritorial del fútbol español

La primera parte de este trabajo muestra, desde una perspectiva general, la simultaneidad histórica en el surgimiento y desarrollo del fútbol y la construcción de los modernos Estados-nación, así como su posterior diferenciación en el contexto socioeconómico de la globalización. Esa diferenciación o separación institucional implica una alteración y reajuste de las dinámicas identitarias asociadas a este deporte. Sobre ese trasfondo histórico y conceptual se plantea una investigación de la dimensión etnoterritorial del fútbol español actual. Tras dedicar la segunda parte del artículo a revisar los aspectos etnoterritoriales de su evolución histórica, en la tercera parte se presenta el análisis del caso español. El estudio se realiza en cuatro apartados. En primer lugar, se presentan diversos datos que muestran el interés por el fútbol en la sociedad española. En segundo lugar, se analiza la capacidad de adscripción identitaria de los clubes de fútbol de Primera División, en general, y del F.C. Barcelona, en particular. En tercer lugar, se examina la ambivalencia simbólica de la selección española de fútbol. En cuarto lugar, se presentan datos sobre el apoyo a la creación de selecciones deportivas regionales y la valoración de su participación internacional cuando se trata de selecciones catalanas.The first part of this paper shows, from a general viewpoint, the historical simultaneity in the emergence and development of football and the building of modern Nation-States, as well as their next differentiation in the socio-economical context of globalization. This differentiation or institutional separation implies an alteration and readjustment of the identity dynamic associated to this sport. Above this historical and conceptual background we consider a research on the ethnoterritorial dimension of the Spanish football. After dedicating the second part of the article to study some ethnoterritorial keys of his historic development, in the third part we present the analysis of the Spanish case. The study is carried out in four ways. First, we present some data about the interest in football in the Spanish society. Second, we analyze the capacity of identity adscription of the Spanish First Division football clubs, in general, and we analyze in more detail the case of F.C. Barcelona. Third, we examine the symbolic ambivalence of the Spanish national football team. Fourth, we present some data about support to the creation of regional sportive teams, as well as assessment of international participation in the case of Catalan national [email protected]

Changing spaces of political encounter and the rise of anti-politics: evidence from Mass Observation's General Election diaries

Negativity towards the institutions of formal politics is currently a concern across much of the democratic world. It is generally agreed that such negativity increased among British citizens during the second half of the twentieth century. In this paper, we analyse a novel dataset not previously used to study this topic: Mass Observation's General Election diaries. Since diarists wrote mostly about politicians, political campaigns, and associated media coverage, we ask specifically what the diaries can tell us about increased negativity towards politicians and its relationship to developments in political communication. We take a postholing approach to sampling of the diaries, enabling comparative-static analysis between the middle and end of the twentieth century. We view the diaries in a geographical framework derived from contextual theories of social action. This gives us a focus on spaces of political encounter, modes of political interaction, performances by politicians, and judgements by citizens. We argue that prominent spaces of political encounter changed over the period from long radio speeches and rowdy political meetings to televised debates and associated expert commentary. We demonstrate how these latter settings for political interaction afforded less opportunity for politicians to perform virtues to citizens, and for citizens to calibrate judgements of politicians

Characterizing Genetic Diversity of Contemporary Pacific Chickens Using Mitochondrial DNA Analyses

Background\ud Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) hypervariable region (HVR) sequences of prehistoric Polynesian chicken samples reflect dispersal of two haplogroups—D and E—by the settlers of the Pacific. The distribution of these chicken haplogroups has been used as an indicator of human movement. Recent analyses suggested similarities between prehistoric Pacific and South American chicken samples, perhaps reflecting prehistoric Polynesian introduction of the chicken into South America. These analyses have been heavily debated. The current distribution of the D and E lineages among contemporary chicken populations in the Western Pacific is unclear, but might ultimately help to inform debates about the movements of humans that carried them.\ud \ud Objectives\ud We sought to characterize contemporary mtDNA diversity among chickens in two of the earliest settled archipelagoes of Remote Oceania, the Marianas and Vanuatu.\ud \ud Methods\ud We generated HVR sequences for 43 chickens from four islands in Vanuatu, and for 5 chickens from Guam in the Marianas.\ud \ud Results\ud Forty samples from Vanuatu and three from Guam were assigned to haplogroup D, supporting this as a Pacific chicken haplogroup that persists in the Western Pacific. Two haplogroup E lineages were observed in Guam and two in Vanuatu. Of the E lineages in Vanuatu, one was identical to prehistoric Vanuatu and Polynesian samples and the other differed by one polymorphism. Contrary to our expectations, we observed few globally distributed domesticate lineages not associated with Pacific chicken dispersal. This might suggest less European introgression of chickens into Vanuatu than expected. If so, the E lineages might represent lineages maintained from ancient Pacific chicken introductions. The Vanuatu sample might thus provide an opportunity to distinguish between maintained ancestral Pacific chicken lineages and replacement by global domesticates through genomic analyses, which could resolve questions of contemporary haplogroup E chicken relationships and inform interpretations of debated sequences from archaeological samples

Bigger than ourselves: the Southgate narrative and the search for a sense of common purpose

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. The paper examines two ‘turns’ in English national sporting culture, ‘Beckhamisation’ and ‘Southgatism’, and their contribution to an ‘imagined community’ through processes of ‘banal nationalism’. It examines the critiques of various academic and media commentators to demonstrate the link between the trappings of sport (in this case football), and people’s understanding of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Music/songs, flags, language, multi-cultural representation, team ethos and espoused values, are not just signifiers, but have a pivotal part to play in representing, repressing and resisting particular forms of Englishness. The focus here is on those national sporting occasions that all too often have been associated with virulent forms of nationalism. We conclude that Southgatism holds out more hope for a progressive sporting patriotism than did its Beckhamite predecessor, but that this has yet to be tested in the febrile cauldron (the ‘hostile environment’ for immigrants and Brexit) currently forging English national identity

Sport and Society

Despite its economic and cultural centrality, sport is a relatively neglected and undertheorized area of sociological research. In this review, we examine sports\u27 articulation with stratification issues, especially race, class, and gender. In addition, we look at how the media and processes of globalization have affected sports.We suggest that sports and cultural sociologists need to attend more closely to how leisure products and practices are produced and distributed and how they intersect with educational, political, and cultural institutions. We propose the work of Bourdieu andthe new institutionalism to undergird future research