Social Anthropology

This paper presents the change in the practice of ethnographic presentation as witnessed by an anthropologist whose own field reports have progressed from observing ‘whole communities’, to a society dispersed in an urban environment, to the portrayal of unrelated participants in voluntary associations and support groups. The paper tackles the professional uncertainties raised by the postmodern discourse that seems to detract from the centrality of fieldwork in the anthropologists' endeavour as well as well as in the perception of their professional identity.

Borders of nation‐states have come to be a natural order in human lives. They are not only edges of a state but also seen as an essential reference of national identity. Based on a capitalist‐oriented and racial discriminating way of thinking, borders regulate movements of people. In an era of global inequality of mobility rights, freedom of mobility for some is only possible through systematic exclusion of others. This paper is an auto‐ethnography of borders and ‘illegal’ travelling. Based on personal experiences of a long journey across many borders in Asia and Europe, I attempt to explore how the contemporary border regime operates. The paper focuses on the rituals and performances of border crossing. This is a narrative of the late 20th century through the eyes of an ‘illegal’ migrant.

Governance is commonly described as the governmental form typical of late‐modernity resulting from the collaboration between government and civil society. Governance – we are told – is to be preferred to previous governmental patterns, for not only is it more cost‐effective but also participatory and empowering. This article takes such claims at face value and examines them ethnographically to see how they are applied in relation to migrants in the ‘progressive’ city of Barcelona. The article argues that migrants' participation in governance means participation in token consultative institutions and in policy‐implementation by proxy (i.e. through local ‘pro‐migrant’ NGOs hired to deliver public services to migrants). It also argues that the empowerment that derives from participating in governance is greater for governmental bodies and for the local non‐profit ‘immigration industry’ than it is for migrants.

In Islamic law, breastfeeding institutes a type of kinship relation (, ‘milk kinship’), historically a medium for complex social and political networks in the Middle East, although of diminished frequency in modern times. My research focuses on Islamic Middle Eastern reactions to new reproductive technologies such as fertilisation: for Muslim religious specialists, milk kinship provides a way of thinking through and resolving the ethical dilemmas of the use of donor eggs and surrogacy arrangements. Rather than disappearing under modernity, then, milk kinship endures as a resource for the mediation of social relations and intellectual challenges.

This paper considers the challenge to anthropology represented by a topic such as global denim. Using the phrase ‘blindingly obvious’, it considers the problems posed by objects that have become ubiquitous. While there are historical narratives about the origins, history and spread of denim, these leave open the issue of how we make compatible the ethnographic study of specific regional appropriations of denim and its global presence in a manner that is distinctly anthropological. Ethnographies of blue jeans in Brazil and England are provided as examples. These suggest the need to understand the relationship between three observations: its global presence, the phenomenon of distressing and its relationship to anxiety in the selection of clothes. As a manifesto, this paper argues for a global academic response that engages with denim from the global commodity chain through to the specificity of local accounts of denim wearing. Ultimately this can provide the basis for an anthropological engagement with global modernity.