Front and Back Covers, Volume 34, Number 3. June 2018

Abstract

Cover caption, volume 34 issue 3Front Cover: UNDERAGE LABOUR IN LEBANONThe Lebanese scrap metal industry — one of the country's largest exports — relies heavily on marginalized young boys displaced from their homes in Syria. In their article in this issue, Elizabeth Saleh and Adrien Zakar focus on Harun, a 14‐year‐old waste picker promoted by his community from novice to scrapyard master (muallim). They follow him as he discreetly rummages in the rubbish of Beirut pushing a cart made from recovered plastic baskets and bins. Underage waste pickers are not supposed to be working and yet this is the only legitimate reason for their presence in Lebanon. During their tours across Beirut these underage waste pickers collect iron, copper and fizzy drink cans. They navigate the city concealing play under the guise of work. Through these salvaging games they foster a community of complicity among themselves that functions according to age hierarchies and involves rites of passage and codes of conduct. Although only just a child, Harun is mastering muallim — literally ‘the one who knows’ — learning the art of informal trade while confronting his social exclusion by mastering subterfuge and irony.Back Cover: IS DOWSING ‘UNSCIENTIFIC’?In this issue, Jonathan Woolley draws attention to a contemporary controversy in the media surrounding the reported use of dowsing by UK water companies. He delves into the background of this practice.Dowsing is a customary method for finding hidden water, objects or mineral deposits, practised in many European or European settler societies. While scientists and sceptics maintain that it is totally ineffective, dowsing is trusted by many practitioners even today, to divine accurate information about the world around them.Although frequently characterized as ‘pseudoscience’ by its critics, the practice of dowsing actually predates the scientific revolution by centuries. Therefore, to describe it as a form of ‘pseudoscience’ is inaccurate, as dowsing is based on embodied ways of knowing, quite distinct from the scientific method.Pseudoscientific theories of dowsing's efficacy — such as attributing the movement of rods to geomagnetic forces — are a late 19th‐century commentary on the practice that many dowsers today reject.In his 16th‐century treatment of mining and the smelting of ore, Agricola's De re metallica includes a detailed description of dowsing for metal ore.Image source: Agricola's De re metallica, Book 7, 1556.