Special Module: Plenary Debate from the IUAES World Congress 2013: Evolving Humanity, Emerging Worlds, 5–10 August 2013: Involving anthropology: debating anthropology’s assumptions, relevance and future

This module for Involving Anthropology presents an account of one of the plenary debates held at the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) World Congress held at Manchester University, 5-10 August 2013. The module begins with a brief introduction to provide the context for the debate, which included two speakers for (Amita Baviskar and Don Nonini) and two speakers against (Helen Kopnina and Veronica Strang) the motion: ‘Justice for people must come before justice for the environment’. The introduction is followed by an edited transcript of John Gledhill’s welcome and introduction, the texts of the arguments made by each speaker for and against the motion (with the exception of Veronica Strang, whose presentation is being published elsewhere a summary of the comments and questions subsequently invited from the floor of the hall, and then a transcript of the responses of the presenters. https://doi.org/10.1080/00664677.2015.1102229 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina

Buddhist cosmological forms and the situation of total terror in Sri Lanka’s ethnic civil war

In our discussion we conceive terrorism as a phenomenon that defines an overall situation of terror in which all – even those who are deemed to be the terrorists or the instigators of terrorism – become determined or subordinated to the radical life-extinguishing uncertainty that is the situation of terror. This is such that ongoing civilian or social and cultural existence, the routine continuity of life, comes under the constant threat of imminent destruction