Front and Back Covers, Volume 23, Number 5. Ocotober 2007

Abstract

Front and back covers caption, volume 23 issue 5Front coverThe front cover illustrates Julie J. Taylor's article on the outcome of the San people's court case against the Botswana government. The photo shows Roy Sesana, leader of the San organization First People of the Kalahari and chief appellant in the case, with Gordon Bennett, the San group's lawyer, at the start of the case in July 2004. In the course of the last century, the San or Bushmen of southern Africa became possibly the most studied indigenous group in the world. In addition to suffering land dispossession and violence during the colonial period, their image in the West has long been that of exotic and innocent ‘Other’, fuelled over time by the work of scientists, anthropologists and filmmakers among others. In recent years the San have become part of wider debates about indigeneity, poverty and development, often in relation to land rights. Many San have formed their own representative institutions and have also entered into relationships with national and international NGOs to campaign for their rights as an indigenous minority. From 2004, San claims to land in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in Botswana drew unprecedented attention in the international media, due in part to the efforts of local NGOs and the British‐based advocacy group Survival International. After protracted court proceedings and much controversy, the case finally came to an end in late 2006. At first sight the outcome appeared to offer victory to San applicants, but matters in the Central Kalahari are far from resolved, raising questions about the role of advocacy groups and the fate of marginalized San groups elsewhere.Back cover(IM)PERSONAL MONEYRoboti of Giribwa Village, Trobriand Islands (above) is seen wearing the armshell Nanoula and the necklace Kasanai. Both have been circulating in the kula for at least a century and were already famous when Malinowski saw them. He was sure that these valuables were not money because they were not an impersonal medium of exchange, but Marcel Mauss, in a long footnote to The gift, wrote: ‘On this reasoning there has only been money when precious things have been really made into currency – namely have been inscribed and impersonalised, and detached from any relationship with any legal entity, whether collective or individual, other than the state that mints them… One only defines in this way a second type of money – our own.’This exchange was in some ways the high point of economic anthropology. The world of national currencies issued and controlled by states and banks must now come to terms with innumerable virtual instruments such as those seen flashing on the screens of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (below). But, as the current ‘sub‐prime mortgage’ crisis shows, these anonymous money instruments are still closely linked to personal credit. The challenge facing anthropologists today is to renew the legacy of Mauss and Malinowski in ways that illuminate such matters of universal practical concern.In this issue, Keith Hart argues that money, like society itself, is and always has been both personal and impersonal. A pragmatic anthropology should aim to show that the numbers on people's financial statements constitute a way of summarizing their relations with society at a given time. The next step is to explain how these numbers might serve in building a viable personal economy. When we are able to take responsibility for our own economic actions, we will understand better the social forces impinging on our lives. Then it will become more obvious how and why ruling institutions need to be reformed for all our sakes.