Anthropology in Action

Although this issue of the journal is not a themed issue, the articles included here provide an encouragement and opportunity to think and reflect on the nature of ethnographic fieldwork, how it has or has not changed over the years, and about the ethical implications of anthropological research. The studies they describe prompt questions for me about how anthropologists (or other researchers) should be engaged with their ‘subjects’ and in what manner. How far have ‘subjects’ been transformed into participants, and what does the researcher give to and gain from this transformation? Is the anthropologist’s engagement with the field an obligation that anthropologists have shied away from, or something which is too easily assumed to be a good thing?

Inspired by the examples of Stewart (1996) and Weston (2009), this article is an experiment in narrative form. It portrays the 'cultural poetics' (Stewart 1996) of lives lived in and through experiences of poverty in contemporary London and considers the potential of long-term participant-observation fieldwork, and the development of relations of mutual obligation in the field, to create a collaborative anthropology de fined by a politics of mutually transformative action. The article enters into debate about the effects of changing structural inequalities, which differentially impact on the post-industrial urban neighbourhoods of the U.S.A., the U.K. and Europe (Waquant 2008; 2012). Waquant's work is taken to be a rallying cry for Europe and the U.K. to wake up from the American Dream of neo-liberalism. The 'utter desolation' (Waquant 2012: 66) of life in the worst of the U.S.A.'s post-industrial urban housing projects and, to an extent, in France, demands a reaction from and suggests (especially post-August 2011 riots), that the time is now to debate how to prevent further deterioration in British cities. The article should be read as two parts in conversation with each other. The first section is an experiment in narrative form and hence the reader is asked to bear with and consider the fruitfulness of the departure from conventional scholarly form. In the second part of the article academic insight is drawn out in more standardized form, with a more usual engagement with literature, highlighting of relevant points and movement towards the formation of argument.

In the north-east of Brazil, the last decades have seen an unfamiliar phenomenon: the rise of 'new' indigenous groups in areas that were long considered as 'acculturated' by both the state and public opinion. In their pursuit to be recognized by the authorities and by fellow non-Indian citizens, these 're-emerging' Indians have continually carried out a peculiar re-construction of their 'image' as Indians, torn between romantic ideas of Indianness and the demand to integrate fully within national society. Drawing on recent fieldwork experience with a group of Pataxó Indians in the state of Bahia, the article discusses how the visual-anthropological method of participatory video can be used as a means of reflecting on the importance of images within identity-formation processes of minority groups. By producing a video about the tourists who visit their Indian village and nature reserve, the Pataxó came to question the stereotypic use of images and the relation between the Other's notion and their own representation of 'Indianness'.

The ratio of maternal morbidity and mortality in developing countries is high. The World Health Organization (WHO) and public health specialists promote case review audits as a means of improving quality of obstetric care. This reflects the need for high reactivity in health personnel's management of obstetric complications. Within an action-research programme in Burkina Faso, a trial of case review audits was implemented in a maternity ward. This was designed to help health personnel better align their practice with clinical standards and to enable more consideration of pregnant women's needs. Social anthropologists were involved in these case review audits in order to collect data about pregnant women's lifestyles and circumstances. They also worked to train health personnel to conduct interviews. Although it is important to take account of women's circumstances within audit sessions, conducting interviews in 'anthropological ways' (at women's homes, with observations) is time consuming and may sometimes be better replaced with interviews in hospital contexts. Anthropologically informed interviews may pinpoint socio-economic situations as key reasons for problems in healthcare, but health personnel are usually powerless to address these. However, anthropology contributes an awareness of the relevance of these issues for broader healthcare planning.

Editor’s Note: In March of 2012, President Obama announced his choice of Dr Jim Yong Kim for Presidency of the World Bank. Dr Kim is the first PhD anthropologist (and medical doctor) to be named to head the World Bank and one of the few anthropologists to work for the Bank, whose leaders and ranks are largely economists. Dr Kim, a medical anthropologist, earned his PhD at Harvard in 1993.

Unsafe Motherhood: Mayan Maternal Morality and Subjectivity in Post-war Guatemala. Nicole S. Berry, 2010, New York and London: Berghahn Books (Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality series), ISBN: 9781845457525, 250 pp., Hb. £50.00.

Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture. Emily Martin, 2009, Princeton: Princeton University Press, ISBN: 9780691141060, 370 pp., Pb. £16.95.

Caste, Occupation and Politics on the Ganges: Passages of Resistance. Assa Doron, 2008, Farnham: Ashgate (Anthropology and Cultural History in Asia and the Indo-Pacific) ISBN: 978-0-7546-7550-1, 198 pp., Hb. £55.

Rainforest Warriors: Human Rights on Trial. Richard Price, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011, ISBN: 9780812243000, 288 pp., Hb. £36.00.

Adventures in Aidland: The Anthropology of Professionals in International Development. David Mosse (ed.), 2011, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books (Studies in Public and Applied Anthropology: Volume 6), ISBN: 978-0-85745-110-1, 238 pp., Hb. £55.00

Collateral Knowledge: Legal Reasoning in the Global Financial Markets. Annelise Riles, 2011, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press (The Chicago Series in Law and Society), ISBN: 978-0-22671-933-7, 310 pp., Pb. £18.00

The current list of books for review includes some of the most exciting new books in applied anthropology to be published this year. Please take a close look and if there is anything that you particularly want to review, let us know!