Between Access and Critique

Response to Beeman & Appel:Between Access and Critiqu

Conflicting Interpretations: On Analyzing An Agribusiness’ Concerns About Critique

This article explores different ways to interpret the extent to which (capitalist) critique influences corporate practice. Starting from (self-) reflection upon negotiations between the author and a European company involved in land-based investment in Zambia, this contribution shows that corporate actors may be more responsive to their critics, such as NGOs, journalists, local communities, and (activist) scholars, than often assumed. It may be argued that anthropology partly misses this dynamic, due to its limited interest in ethnographic engagement with the powerful and its critical interpretations of capitalism. At the same time, with persistent unequal corporate advantages and wrongdoing, critical interpretations remain of significant relevance to understanding the limits of corporate responses. Reflecting on the balance between these different interpretations, the article aims to discuss the intricacies of analyzing and critiquing corporate practices.     

Introduction : anxiety at the top

There is no abstract available for this article.http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/15691330hb2016Sociolog

Garments in exchange - changing clothes around the world

Clothing and dress are among the most central and common aspects of social and cultural life around the world. Dress may be used to represent a person’s or a group’s identity, and to create similarity or difference. Clothes are deeply social as they are commonly handed on in families, among friends and in transnational communities. They may be changed over the course of a day and their styles change over time in response to global and local fashion trends. To explore the significance of clothing in identity formations, we have invited authors from around the world to reflect on this topic

Exploring Music in a Globalized World

Beyond the simple fact that many people enjoy music, as a social act music is also related to a wide range of emotions, associations, politics, and identifications that draw people to making, playing, and listening to music. To explore the interactions between music and various social phenomena, we have invited a number authors and musicians to share their thoughts on music for this issue. They present us a variety of perspectives on and of music practices, how music is lived and experienced in a range of settings, and why music has such an important role in the lives of people and societies around the world

Concepts of the Global South

Where and what is the Global South? If you ask people on the street, many would probably not have the faintest idea. In everyday parlance and mass media, Global South has hardly become a household term. In academic and (global) policy circles, though, the term is used with much more gusto. Politicians refer to it. The United Nations organize their statistical data in accordance with the term. Academics write books about it - or, as in our case, explicitly include the term in the name of a research center: Global South Studies Center (GSSC). But what does the term entail? Who uses it and why? And what are the implications of marking distinctions between the Global South and the Global North? We thought it relevant to address these questions in more detail – after all, we work for a recently established research institute featuring the term in its name. Accordingly, we asked a number of academics, journals and academic institutions to reflect on the term. In this online issue, we share their various perspectives and critical reflections on the notion of the Global South – see also a short discussion on a number of YouTube videos we have included

Social Water

We encounter water every day. It is a vital substance biologically as much as socially. We may notice this in art exhibitions and university courses communicating submersed and subversive facts about water; the rhythms of floods and tides resonating with fishing techniques and conflict patterns; inundations carrying moral and political weight as much as water and pollution; and particular mixtures of water and land generating wealth, anxieties and memories. In short, wherever people deal with water, they are involved not only with a physical element, but also with social relations. In fact, whenever we pretend that water is foremost the molecule H2O, we ignore all the political, economic, infrastructural, emotional and legal aspects of this element without which water would not be what it is for us today. This issue explores some of the ways in which water is profoundly social, both in the sense of being co-produced by social life, and by being a core constituent of it. Some contributions to this issue do this through the examples listed above. Others illustrate the way water positions people and their perspectives. A few show how large water infrastructures reshuffle social lives. And some suggest that water may sometimes be better imagined as a word in the plural, rather than a singular, universal substance

Reflections on migration in the global south

How can we achieve a better understanding of the variations in international migration to, from, and within the Global South? To facilitate a dia-logue about this topic, we asked a number of contributors to write or to provide a video statement about their region of expertise. To some we explicitly posed the following question: Is it possible to distinguish current or historical experiences or patterns of migration in the Global South that differ from patterns in the Global North