Are postcolonies haunted more by criminal violence than are other nation‐states? In this paper, Jean and John Comaroff argue that the question is misplaced: the predicament of postcolonies arises from their place in a world order dominated by new modes of governance, new sorts of empire, new species of wealth; an order that criminalises poverty and race, and entraps the ‘south’ in relations of corruption. But there is another side to all this. Postcolonies may display endemic disorder, but they also often fetishise the law, its ways and means. In probing the coincidence of disorder and legality, this essay suggests that postcolonies foreshadow a global future under construction.

A cosmopolitan turn – or return?

NIGEL RAPPORTRONALD STADE

Moral vectors, transitional time and a ‘utopian object of impossible fullness’*

Tod Hartman

Drawing on recent research in a Transylvanian community characterised by outward labour migration, this article posits a particular situated of normality, a ‘utopian object of impossible fullness’ defined subjectively by different social actors, which provides a sharp contrast to the delineated, singular accomplishments that characterised the collective teleological nature of socialist time. Unlike a discourse of progress, the expectation of utopia in the sense of ‘normality’, always deferred, always equally imminent, means that the present comes to be expressed as a void where seemingly contradictory moral vectors concerning practices such as working abroad can exist side by side.

Feeding fish efficiently. Mobilising knowledge in Tasmanian salmon farming*

Marianne Elisabeth Lien

How do certain forms of knowledge become globally mobile? Focusing on Tasmanian salmon farming, this article addresses the negotiation of locally situated knowledge against the persuasive power of universalising expertise. It is argued that intensive salmon farming relies upon techno‐scientific regimes of production in which the universality of salmon as biogenetic artefact is already inscribed. Intensive salmon farming thus lends itself well to the need for legibility and abstract calculations of large‐scale capitalism. The alliance between scientific and economic interests pushes towards greater technological sophistication, and, in turn, towards a standardisation of salmon as a global universal artefact.

Marketing scents and the anthropology of smell*

Brian Moeran

This paper examines the situated meanings of smell in the production and consumption of incense in Japan. Arguing that neither anthropology nor marketing – in spite of certain shared methodological and theoretical concerns – has been particularly successful in examining smell itself (as opposed to the socio‐cultural aspects thereof), the paper shows how both incense manufacturers and retailers need to consider factors – like colour coordination, packaging and naming – that are extraneous to smell and incorporate them into their practices in order to create and sustain olfactory taste among contemporary Japanese.

Tunnel vision

THOMAS HYLLAND ERIKSEN

Editorial

DORLE DRACKLÉHELENA WULFF

School bureaucracy, ethnography and culture

Conceptual obstacles to doing ethnography in schools

Ángel Díaz de Rada

The object of this essay is to offer a reflection on the obstacles that block the ethnographic intent when we try to do ethnography in school institutions. These obstacles are presented conceptually with reference to three main axes that shape school as a bureaucratic reality: school as a hypertrophied medium of individualistic codifying, school as a universalist and instrumentalist device, and school as a device to restrict the cultural field. These ideas are illustrated by means of some empirical examples, the majority of which come from an ongoing investigation in Guovdageaidnu, in northern Norway.

Social Anthropology

Anthropologie sociale

Volume 15 Issue 2

edited by Achino‐Loeb, Maria‐Luisa

by Howe, Leo

by Kraus, Wolfgang

by March, Kathryn

by Mozo González, Carmen and Fernando Tena Díaz

edited by Olson, David R. and Nancy Torrance

edited by Pierce, Steven and Anupama Rao

edited by Rockman, Marcy and James Steele

by Säävälä, Minna

edited by Steffen, Vibeke, Richard Jenkins and Hanne Jessen

by Zeitlyn, David

by Argyrou, Vassos

by Bestard, Joan, Gemma Orobitg, Júlia Ribot and Carles Salazar

edited by Boissevain, Jeremy and Tom Selwyn

edited by Coleman, Simon and Peter Collins

by Enloe, Cynthia

edited by Handelman, Don and Galina Lindquist

by Haraway, Donna. by Lehmann, Chris

edited by Hosmer, Brian and Colleen O'Neill

Law and disorder in the postcolony*