Traversing and Translating High Finance

Symposium/workshop held on 25 April 2015 at the Royal Anthropological Institute. This workshop, held at the Royal Anthropological Institute, went beyond charting the frontiers of corporate investments by forming bridges between disparate terrains that might otherwise seem unconnected, and proposing new methodologies for exploring and communicating such links. Anthropologists, artists, accountants, hacktivists, economists, journalists, former brokers and educators traced their ideas and methods as they imaginatively and rigorously made links geared toward making visible the frequently invisible workings of finance. Presentations informed by conceptual and performative art and exhibits focused on themes of financial secrecy and transparency that arose throughout the workshop, entreating participants to focus on current global predicaments such as the economic crisis – not solely on its effects, but also importantly, its causes

Steven Lee Rubinstein (1962-2012)

The sad news of Dr. Steve Lee Rubenstein’s sudden and unexpected death at the age of 49 took us all by surprise. In fact, as I write this, months after Steve’s passing, I am still grappling with the notion that he is gone from this world, as we know it. In some ways, Steve was only at the beginning of his career with many large ideas still unleashed and yet he had already achieved more than most do in one lifetime. As friends and colleagues of Steve’s we have spent the last few months exchanging stories about his extraordinary mind, wit and generosity. Students have come forth to talk about how much he changed their way of reading texts and seeing the world, identifying him as the one person from their experience in higher education who actually made a difference to them, teaching them not only about anthropology but about life. Colleagues, young and old, have benefitted from his intense and heartfelt academic exchanges, and enjoyed his constructively critical and magnanimous manner. Steve was an interlocutor par excellence. As South Americanists we experienced first-hand his commitment to community building by bringing people and ideas together, never simply promoting himself. We have all watched him hold court in the lobbies of all the various conferences we attended. Wherever Steve sat became a magnetic hub, an intellectual watering hole across and beyond our discipline

Starting-up during COVID-19

The global impact of COVID-19 has rippled into all areas of social, economic, political and business lives no matter what one’s line of work or livelihood. Considerable focus has been directed at understanding some of the challenges presented by the current pandemic on primary research, including the negative impacts of a technology-dependent or technology-mediated field site, the lack of material shared spaces during covid-19 times, interrupted fieldwork, transformed field sites, mental wellbeing, the weakness of online communications in comparison to face-to face contact and other concrete and adverse repercussions of the current pandemic on primary research. While the negative disruptive effects on organizations have been addressed elsewhere (Bartik et al. 2020, Meyer et al. 2020), here I wish to reflect upon my positive experiences of meeting and working with a small start-up. From my home office, I was able to meet and connect to new colleagues, build a research team, and design and conduct a research project at a new field site– all transpiring withouthaving previously worked with the team. These circumstances led me to make decisions that I would not have made sans pandemic but which contributed toward positive project decisions. Feeling encouraged about what we accomplished together without ever having met my research team colleagues in person, I focus on how covid-19 has created new possibilities for connection and for conducting research within and across borders. Rather than to focus on disruption, one might also consider the emergence of new businesses during covid and the ensuing nascent forms and conditions for conducting business at such times

Global Ayahuasca: An Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

This chapter examines issues surrounding the viability and desirability of recent entrepreneurs and entrepreneurships aiming to create effective measures of 'transparency' 'efficacy' and 'safety' with regards to the increasing participation in the ayahuasca sessions that take place in local and global settings. It raises critical questions about the methods through which such initiatives seek to identify those legitimate authorities, actors, voices and criteria or can in turn deem certain practices and actors legitimate and others not. This takes place in environments where there are marked disjunctures between what transpires in the spoken, visible and unspoken, invisible worlds particularly amidst great inequality. Whereas such enterprises may make sense from a market perspective, they make little sense within the broader social, political and cultural contexts in which ayahuasca practitioners live and operate

Indigenous Reciprocity Initiative (IRI) of the Americas: A Respectful Path Forward for the Psychedelic Movement - What Does it Mean to Embody Reciprocity?

As the “psychedelic renaissance” thrives, the psychedelic community finds itself navigating the merging realms of social, ecological, and political currents that can reflect the interconnectedness of the natural world often illuminated by the psychedelic experience. The dizzying momentum of the psychedelic movement’s rapid trajectory towards an unknown future threatens to hurdle straight past such delicate interconnectedness, without a moment to pause and reflect on our position at this intersection of global capitalism, healthcare and criminal justice reform, environmental conservation, and Indigenous rights. A movement comprised of multiple stakeholders—seekers, practitioners, business leaders, investors—that face the difficult task of orienting themselves amidst the competing and conflicting goals of private enterprise and collective liberation and healing for themselves and the planet. In light of these circumstances, it is important to be properly oriented so as to recognize our distinct positions within this broader system. If we can understand the historical and contemporary context of the issues we’re confronted with, then we can begin to ask how to properly honor the relationships among which we are participants. The myriad tensions of this moment emerge from a situation of inequitable imbalance: a political history of ongoing colonization, global wealth disparities, ecological imbalance manifesting a cascade of environmental catastrophes coinciding with a growing climate crisis, a global pandemic (Bloomfield et al., 2020; Lamber, 2020), an economic imbalance driving “diseases of despair” (substance use disorder, depression, suicidality, etc.) and the disempowerment of local communities

Traversing the margins of corruption amidst informal economies in Amazonia

This article focuses on local idioms of extra-legal economic activity among indigenous Amazonians in eastern Peru, and its overall argument is that these idioms are part of a broader context in which indigenous people are compelled by a variety of factors to act in a seemingly corrupt manner. I further suggest that within such a context these idioms are not confined to the informal economy but are also used to refer to activities that fall within the formal economy, supporting Hart’s (2009) claim that the informal economy is a way of imagining the orthodox economy. I argue that corruption within Amazonian economies is commonly perceived by non-indigenous people as contrasting with the workings of the orthodox economy without proper consideration of the economic conditions and bureaucratic structures that give rise to it. Lastly, I argue that, here, corruption can contravene bureaucracy by restoring the humanity that Herzfeld (1993) claims bureaucracy rejects through its acts of indifference toward individuals

Senses of Self, Society, and Cosmos

The pervasiveness of ayahuasca use in lowland South America, alongside its rising global diaspora spurred by ayahuasca tour-ism, religious movements, and the psychedelic renaissance, makes Gearin and Calavia Sáez’s critical scholarship particularly welcome. The authors’ comparative attention to visualise and individualism across“glocal” contexts of ayahuasca practices, namely, neoshamanic uses in Australia and indigenous practices in Amazonia, is compelling. They invite us to focus on diverging notions of property and personhood to understand ayahuasca visualism as an expression of divergent cultural viewpoints. I concur with their proposal that ayahuasca visions are sites of equivocation whose interpretations are rendered meaningful by particular socialities. They view the Australian neoshamanic individual as a product of the philosophical Enlightenmentwho becomes the center of the ayahuasca experience, interpretation, and outcome, while for“Amazonians,” the centrality of the individual is a product of animistic and perspectival ontologies and is therefore by default fractal and more broadly connected to larger social worlds

Colorectal Cancer Stage at Diagnosis Before vs During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy

IMPORTANCE Delays in screening programs and the reluctance of patients to seek medical attention because of the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 could be associated with the risk of more advanced colorectal cancers at diagnosis. OBJECTIVE To evaluate whether the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was associated with more advanced oncologic stage and change in clinical presentation for patients with colorectal cancer. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS This retrospective, multicenter cohort study included all 17 938 adult patients who underwent surgery for colorectal cancer from March 1, 2020, to December 31, 2021 (pandemic period), and from January 1, 2018, to February 29, 2020 (prepandemic period), in 81 participating centers in Italy, including tertiary centers and community hospitals. Follow-up was 30 days from surgery. EXPOSURES Any type of surgical procedure for colorectal cancer, including explorative surgery, palliative procedures, and atypical or segmental resections. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was advanced stage of colorectal cancer at diagnosis. Secondary outcomes were distant metastasis, T4 stage, aggressive biology (defined as cancer with at least 1 of the following characteristics: signet ring cells, mucinous tumor, budding, lymphovascular invasion, perineural invasion, and lymphangitis), stenotic lesion, emergency surgery, and palliative surgery. The independent association between the pandemic period and the outcomes was assessed using multivariate random-effects logistic regression, with hospital as the cluster variable. RESULTS A total of 17 938 patients (10 007 men [55.8%]; mean [SD] age, 70.6 [12.2] years) underwent surgery for colorectal cancer: 7796 (43.5%) during the pandemic period and 10 142 (56.5%) during the prepandemic period. Logistic regression indicated that the pandemic period was significantly associated with an increased rate of advanced-stage colorectal cancer (odds ratio [OR], 1.07; 95%CI, 1.01-1.13; P = .03), aggressive biology (OR, 1.32; 95%CI, 1.15-1.53; P < .001), and stenotic lesions (OR, 1.15; 95%CI, 1.01-1.31; P = .03). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE This cohort study suggests a significant association between the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and the risk of a more advanced oncologic stage at diagnosis among patients undergoing surgery for colorectal cancer and might indicate a potential reduction of survival for these patients

Identification of genetic variants associated with Huntington's disease progression: a genome-wide association study

Background Huntington's disease is caused by a CAG repeat expansion in the huntingtin gene, HTT. Age at onset has been used as a quantitative phenotype in genetic analysis looking for Huntington's disease modifiers, but is hard to define and not always available. Therefore, we aimed to generate a novel measure of disease progression and to identify genetic markers associated with this progression measure. Methods We generated a progression score on the basis of principal component analysis of prospectively acquired longitudinal changes in motor, cognitive, and imaging measures in the 218 indivduals in the TRACK-HD cohort of Huntington's disease gene mutation carriers (data collected 2008–11). We generated a parallel progression score using data from 1773 previously genotyped participants from the European Huntington's Disease Network REGISTRY study of Huntington's disease mutation carriers (data collected 2003–13). We did a genome-wide association analyses in terms of progression for 216 TRACK-HD participants and 1773 REGISTRY participants, then a meta-analysis of these results was undertaken. Findings Longitudinal motor, cognitive, and imaging scores were correlated with each other in TRACK-HD participants, justifying use of a single, cross-domain measure of disease progression in both studies. The TRACK-HD and REGISTRY progression measures were correlated with each other (r=0·674), and with age at onset (TRACK-HD, r=0·315; REGISTRY, r=0·234). The meta-analysis of progression in TRACK-HD and REGISTRY gave a genome-wide significant signal (p=1·12 × 10−10) on chromosome 5 spanning three genes: MSH3, DHFR, and MTRNR2L2. The genes in this locus were associated with progression in TRACK-HD (MSH3 p=2·94 × 10−8 DHFR p=8·37 × 10−7 MTRNR2L2 p=2·15 × 10−9) and to a lesser extent in REGISTRY (MSH3 p=9·36 × 10−4 DHFR p=8·45 × 10−4 MTRNR2L2 p=1·20 × 10−3). The lead single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in TRACK-HD (rs557874766) was genome-wide significant in the meta-analysis (p=1·58 × 10−8), and encodes an aminoacid change (Pro67Ala) in MSH3. In TRACK-HD, each copy of the minor allele at this SNP was associated with a 0·4 units per year (95% CI 0·16–0·66) reduction in the rate of change of the Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale (UHDRS) Total Motor Score, and a reduction of 0·12 units per year (95% CI 0·06–0·18) in the rate of change of UHDRS Total Functional Capacity score. These associations remained significant after adjusting for age of onset. Interpretation The multidomain progression measure in TRACK-HD was associated with a functional variant that was genome-wide significant in our meta-analysis. The association in only 216 participants implies that the progression measure is a sensitive reflection of disease burden, that the effect size at this locus is large, or both. Knockout of Msh3 reduces somatic expansion in Huntington's disease mouse models, suggesting this mechanism as an area for future therapeutic investigation