Front and Back Covers, Volume 24, Number 6. December 2008

Abstract

Front cover caption, volume 24 issue 6Front coverA television newscaster reports from a prayer meeting organized in support of Barack Obama on the eve of the US election in Kogelo, Western Kenya. Foreign and local journalists descended on this small village which is home to Mama Sarah, Obama's paternal step‐grandmother. As this picture was taken, religious and cultural leaders, schoolchildren and local politicians were praying for the success of their ‘son’, although they were also careful to offer up prayers for John McCain.The newscaster stands in front of a painting by local artist Joachim Onyango Ndalo, famous for his colourful portrayals of historical events, African presidents and other world leaders. The painting shows Obama surrounded by political figures, including Colin Powell, Bill Clinton and the British queen. In January of this year Ndalo was forced to flee from his home in Western Kenya to Uganda during the violence that followed Kenya's contested elections between the Party of National Unity (PNU), led by President Kibaki, and the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), the opposition party led by Raila Odinga. Although pro‐Odinga, the artist was branded a traitor by some members of his community for accepting a commission to paint Stanley Livondo, a Kibaki supporter and opponent of Odinga for the Langata parliamentary seat. Ndalo's workshop and paintings were destroyed. He has since returned home and plans to send his painting to America as a gift to Obama for his inauguration.Back cover caption, volume 24 issue 6FINANCIAL CRISIS: The financial crisis unfolding since September this year has wiped out savings and threatens livelihoods across the world. Future generations will have to pay for the nationalization of gigantic debts that we never thought we had. This crisis, the worst of its kind since the Great Depression, demands an overhaul of the world's financial system. What might anthropologists contribute, beyond our insight into the world's informal economies and peasant markets?In this issue, Keith Hart and Horacio Ortiz argue that the breakdown of the economists' intellectual hegemony demands a new approach to money more sensitive to its social dimensions and to redistributive justice. A fresh reading of Mauss and Polanyi would be one good place to start.Stephen Gudeman, in his diary of witnessing the financial markets in October, argues for the relevance of anthropological concepts such as ‘spheres of exchange’, a realm of people, relationships and materials that cuts across market processes and lies beyond the economic vision of Wall Street and Washington, but should be represented in policy‐making.Anthropologists have produced many detailed examples of how communities make use of markets within economies. Now, as the world searches for a new system of governance, is the time for anthropologists to make their voices heard.Perhaps a President's Council of Anthropological Advisors might complement the existing Council of Economic Advisors. What better time for such a proposal than the election of a new US president with roots in Hawaii, Kansas, Indonesia and Kenya, whose mother was herself an anthropologist?