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Religious conversion has long paralleled development schemes in Africa with reproductive health interventions being a particularly dense node of interaction. However, only recently have mission homes, designated spaces within Pentecostal churches for women to receive perinatal care and deliver their babies, brought church and state into confrontation over how and where women should deliver. As global health agencies pledge to decrease maternal death by aiming to increase access to biomedical interventions in the form of Safe Motherhood initiatives, mission homes offer women prayer and the promise of divine intervention as their own means of ensuring maternal survival. In Ondo, a state in southwest Nigeria, the government linked persistently high rates of maternal death to a protracted process of secularization and created legislation to condemn birth in mission homes as an act that was "too religious." This contemporary conflict occurs in the setting of two coinciding developments: a dramatic expansion and transformation of Pentecostal Christianity in the 1980s on one hand and an increase in global humanitarian concern for rates of maternal mortality on the other hand. Based on several years of fieldwork, To Be Delivered is a sustained historical and ethnographic study of the lived experiences of Nigerian women seeking pregnancy care under a government bent on modernizing through secularization. I mobilize conceptual tools provided by medical anthropology, secular studies, African studies, comparative literature, and critical race studies as I examine Nigeria's problem of maternal mortality. I approach secularism, not as the neutral space left when religion is removed, but as a pattern of political rule that necessarily intervenes on the religious. If modernity is a project, secularism entails the specific construction and distinction of categories of "the secular" and "the religious" that purportedly nonmodern people must strive toward. In Ondo, a woman's reproductive body is configured as a public space that the state seeks to sequester from what it deems to be "too religious." In tracking this national project of creating and sustaining a modern state through the intimate realm of lived experience, I ask: how are secular bodies made? What are the specific disciplining techniques and practices that attempt to render the religious body secular, and the forms of resistance and conflict they come up against? I attend to the cultivation of dispositions to understand how distinctions between "the religious" and "the secular" are constituted and undermined from intimate to national realms by studying how Nigerian women, their caregivers, and government officials enact their understandings of and assumptions underlying this binary as it relates to maternal health. Paying specific attention to the role of gender in state-building projects as women are routinely framed as indicators of success, I show how women's bodies and reproductive processes are a contested site for postcolonial states aspiring to what international funding and governing agencies construe as modern. Mission homes and the women who seek care in them call for renewed thinking around African women in relation to the project of secular modernity.

Civil wars, corporate exploitation, AIDS, and Ebola but also democracy, burgeoning cities, and unprecedented communication and mobility: the future of Africa has never been more uncertain. Indeed, that future is one of the most complex issues in contemporary anthropology, as evidenced by the incredible wealth of ideas offered in this landmark volume. A consortium comprised of some of the most important scholars of Africa today, this book surveys an intellectual landscape of opposed perspectives in order to think within the contradictions that characterize this central question: Where is Africa headed? The experts in this book address Africa's future as it is embedded within various social and cultural forms emerging on the continent today: the reconfiguration of the urban, the efflorescence of signs and wonders and gospels of prosperity, the assorted techniques of legality and illegality, lotteries and Ponzi schemes, apocalyptic visions, a yearning for exile, and many other phenomena. Bringing together social, political, religious, and economic viewpoints, the book reveals not one but multiple prospects for the future of Africa. In doing so, it offers a pathbreaking model of pluralistic and open-ended thinking and a powerful tool for addressing the vexing uncertainties that underlie so many futures around the world.

This paper explores how reproductive life has changed through the development, transnational spread, and commercialization of assisted reproductive technologies (in vitro fertilization, gamete donation, and surrogacy). (Economic) geography has been slow to take up the vibrant debates in anthropology, sociology, gender studies, and other neighboring disciplines on assisted reproductive technologies and their effects on society, kinship, and reproduction. In this paper, I argue that an analysis of the fast‐growing transnational market of assisted reproduction has much to gain from economic geographies with their interest in the making of markets across borders and feminist economic geographers' engagement with how new forms of gendered and racialized divisions of labor intersect with particular economic, cultural, political, and social contexts. I discuss literature on assisted reproductive technologies and their transnational economies against the background of these two issues—the transnational making of fertility markets and the global division of reproductive labor along axes of gender, race, class, and nationality. The conclusion points out the need for articulating geographies of assisted reproduction that integrate a geographic perspective into the study of assisted reproductive technologies and reproductive economic geographies that push the boundaries of economic geography towards the economies of (assisted) reproduction.

"Are humans violent or peaceful by nature? We are both. In this ambitious and wide-ranging book, Agner Fog presents a ground-breaking new argument that explains the existence of differently organised societies using evolutionary theory. It combines natural sciences and social sciences in a way that is rarely seen.
According to a concept called regality theory, people show a preference for authoritarianism and strong leadership in times of war or collective danger, but desire egalitarian political systems in times of peace and safety. These individual impulses shape the way societies develop and organise themselves, and in this book Agner argues that there is an evolutionary mechanism behind this flexible psychology. Incorporating a wide range of ideas including evolutionary theory, game theory, and ecological theory, Agner analyses the conditions that make us either strident or docile. He tests this theory on data from contemporary and ancient societies, and provides a detailed explanation of the applications of regality theory to issues of war and peace, the rise and fall of empires, the mass media, economic instability, ecological crisis, and much more.
Warlike and Peaceful Societies: The Interaction of Genes and Culture draws on many different fields of both the social sciences and the natural sciences. It will be of interest to academics and students in these fields, including anthropology, political science, history, conflict and peace research, social psychology, and more, as well as the natural sciences, including human biology, human evolution, and ecology."

This article examines the way in which Machiavelli deals with violence in The prince. First, a perspective of violence is proposed in the light of Machiavelli's political anthropology. Secondly, it is explained how the author modifies the nature and meaning of virtue to justify violence. It is also explained how Machiavelli uses prominent characters of Christianity to stress a tension between political action and morals. Finally, it is argued that Machiavelli's literary exercise in The Prince is not limited to show violence as a necessity or even an unavoidable evil, but in fact poses a complex justification that diminishes its brutality and transforms it into a desirable and admirable feature of the ruler if it is displayed under certain conditions. ; En el artículo se trabaja el modo en que Maquiavelo aborda la violencia en El príncipe. Primero, se propone una visión de la violencia en sintonía con la antropología política planteada por Maquiavelo. En segundo lugar, se expone el cambio conceptual de la virtud como recurso para justificar el uso de la violencia. Luego, se muestra cómo Maquiavelo utiliza figuras prominentes del cristianismo para enfatizar la tensión entre acción política y moral. Finalmente, se sostiene que el ejercicio literario de Maquiavelo en El príncipe no se limita a plantear la violencia como una necesidad o mal inevitable, sino que introduce una justificación compleja, que atenúa su brutalidad y la convierte en un atributo deseable y admirable en el gobernante si es utilizada bajo ciertas condiciones.

Este texto da una mirada autocrítica desde la antropología a las políticas de exclusión de la tradición intelectual de Occidente y su marco social, político y económico, a los problemas de propiedad creados por estas políticas y, finalmente, a las posibles oportunidades de coarticular las ciencias oficiales y las ciencias del Otro.Cómo citar este artículo: DOVER, Robert VH, "El encuentro inminente de otros recíprocos: estrategias para el reconocimiento de saberes plurales", Revista Educación y Pedagogía, Medellín, Universidad de Antioquia, Facultad de Educación, Vol. XVI, N.° 39, (mayo-agosto), 2004, pp. 13-25.Recibido: enero 2004Aceptado: mayo 2004 ; This text gives an auto-critical look from anthropology to the exclusion policies and intellectual traditions in the West and its social, political and economical frame to the problems of private property created by these policies and, finally, to the potential opportunities to co articulate official sciences and the sciences otherness.How to reference this article: DOVER, Robert VH, "El encuentro inminente de otros recíprocos: estrategias para el reconocimiento de saberes plurales", Revista Educación y Pedagogía, Medellín, Universidad de Antioquia, Facultad de Educación, Vol. XVI, N.° 39, (mayo-agosto), 2004, pp. 13-25.Received: january 2004Accepted: may 2004 ; Ce texte porte un regard depuis l'anthropologie pour faire l'autocritique des politiques d'exclusion de la tradition intellectuelle d'occident et son cadre social, politique et économique, aussi q'aux problèmes de la propriété engendrés par ces politiques et finalement, on envisage des possibilités d'articulation entre les sciences officielles et celles de l 'Autre.

During the recent years, social sciences have developed interest in the body, considering it as a social reality, a result of a historical construction and a product of cultural representations, but the political uses of the body have been relatively neglected. On the basis of two case-studies recently conducted in France, one on the distribution of subsidies to job-seekers, the other one on the legalization of undocumented immigrants for humanitarian reasons, the present paper analyzes the way in which the body becomes a resource for the claim of a right, justified by disease or suffering. These examples give clues for the comprehension of the moral economy of illegitimacy and the foundations for a political anthropology of the body. ; Durante los últimos años, las ciencias sociales se han esforzado en captar al cuerpo como una realidad social, fruto de una construcción histórica y producto de representaciones culturales, pero se han dedicado menos al análisis de los usos políticos del cuerpo. Basándose en dos estudios de casos realizados recientemente en Francia, uno sobre la distribución de subsidios a desempleados y el otro sobre la regularización de los indocumentados en nombre de la razón humanitaria, el presente artículo analiza la manera en la que el cuerpo sirve de recurso para reivindicar un derecho, a título de la enfermedad o del sufrimiento. A través de estos ejemplos, se trata de comprender la economía moral de la ilegitimidad y de proponer una antropología política del cuerpo.

During the recent years, social sciences have developed interest in the body, considering it as a social reality, a result of a historical construction and a product of cultural representations, but the political uses of the body have been relatively neglected. On the basis of two case-studies recently conducted in France, one on the distribution of subsidies to job-seekers, the other one on the legalization of undocumented immigrants for humanitarian reasons, the present paper analyzes the way in which the body becomes a resource for the claim of a right, justified by disease or suffering. These examples give clues for the comprehension of the moral economy of illegitimacy and the foundations for a political anthropology of the body. ; Durante los últimos años, las ciencias sociales se han esforzado en captar al cuerpo como una realidad social, fruto de una construcción histórica y producto de representaciones culturales, pero se han dedicado menos al análisis de los usos políticos del cuerpo. Basándose en dos estudios de casos realizados recientemente en Francia, uno sobre la distribución de subsidios a desempleados y el otro sobre la regularización de los indocumentados en nombre de la razón humanitaria, el presente artículo analiza la manera en la que el cuerpo sirve de recurso para reivindicar un derecho, a título de la enfermedad o del sufrimiento. A través de estos ejemplos, se trata de comprender la economía moral de la ilegitimidad y de proponer una antropología política del cuerpo.

Este artículo despliega la idea de indigenizar el derecho internacional al reconocer al derecho indígena como derecho. Al dirigir las jurisprudencias indígenas al marco del derecho internacional, se posibilita transformar sus raíces; denomino a este proceso antropología jurídica inversa. Al indigenizar el derecho internacional utilizando una antropología jurídica inversa, el artículo presenta un estudio de caso sobre el genocidio en curso de los pueblos indígenas de Colombia en la era de la ecología global del Antropoceno. En este contexto, explico las consecuencias políticas de valorar las cosmologías indígenas en relación con sus territorios. De hecho, las representaciones dominantes de los territorios indígenas, teniendo en cuenta las dimensiones topográficas y biológicas de la superficie de la Tierra, han olvidado el pluriverso de seres orgánicos e inorgánicos que crean y negocian su vida social junto con las relaciones ecológicas y espirituales de los pueblos indígenas. ; This article displays the idea of indigenizing international law by recognizing indigenous law as law. Transforming international law becomes possible by directing indigenous jurisprudences to it —I call this process inverse legal anthropology—. Based on inverse legal anthropology, i present a case study on the ongoing genocide of Colombian indigenous peoples in the age of the global ecology of the Anthropocene. I also explain the political consequences of valuing indigenous cosmologies regarding their territories. While mainstream representations of indigenous territories include the topographic and biologic dimensions of the earth's surface, they forget the pluriverse of organic and inorganic beings that make and negotiate their social living together with indigenous peoples, and their ecological and spiritual relationships. ; Este artigo desenvolve a ideia de indigenizar o direito internacional ao reconhecer o direito indígena como direito. Para que se possa transformar suas raízes, é preciso dirigir as jurisprudências indígenas para o campo do direito internacional — denomino esse processo de "antropologia jurídica reversa". Ao indigenizar o direito internacional por meio de uma antropologia jurídica reversa, este artigo apresenta um estudo de caso sobre o genocídio dos povos indígenas da Colômbia em andamento na era da ecologia global do Antropoceno. Nesse contexto, explico as consequências políticas de valorizar as cosmologias indígenas quanto a seus territórios. De fato, as representações dominantes dos territórios indígenas, considerando as dimensões topográficas e biológicas da superfície terrestre, têm esquecido o pluriverso de seres orgânicos e inorgânicos que criam e negociam sua vida junto com as relações ecológicas e espirituais dos povos indígenas.

This book critically analyses the existing condition of cities in developing countries with special reference to planning and infrastructure networks in India. It provides an overview of the nature of opportunities presented by cities; major challenges that cities would face in future; and codifies the ways and means to transcend the challenges of contemporary urban growth and quality of urbanisation. It discusses key themes such as architecture of density, transformation of land-use zones to development zones, development of railway infrastructure, planning and design guidelines for bus rapid transit, and urban water planning and universal access to housing to create an enabling environment for deliberations and a better future for cities in the developing world. The book integrates insights from governance, planning, and design and highlights implications of spatial integration. It brings together current issues in Indian urbanisation, smart technologies used in building smart cities and high-rises, and urban and regional governance to explore forms of sustainable development planning that factor human needs. Accessible and topical, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of urban studies, urban and city planning, development studies, sociology, public policy and administration, political sociology, anthropology, architecture, geography, and economics, as well as to professionals, planners, policymakers, and non-governmental organisations.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Human remains and identification presents a pioneering investigation into the practices and methodologies used in the search for and exhumation of dead bodies resulting from mass violence. Previously absent from forensic debate, social scientists and historians here confront historical and contemporary exhumations with the application of social context to create an innovative and interdisciplinary dialogue, enlightening the political, social and legal aspects of mass crime and its aftermaths.Through a ground-breaking selection of international case studies, Human remains and identification argues that the emergence of new technologies to facilitate the identification of dead bodies has led to a "forensic turn", normalising exhumations as a method of dealing with human remains en masse. However, are these exhumations always made for legitimate reasons?Multidisciplinary in scope, this book will appeal to readers interested in understanding this crucial phase of mass violence's aftermath, including researchers in history, anthropology, sociology, forensic science, law, politics and modern warfare.The research program leading to this publication has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n° 283-617

The paper "Who Can Question Blumenberg Except for Blumenberg Himself" brings forward the question of which factors and features of the philosophy of this German thinker of the second half of the 20th century make it the case that he has moved away from academic mainstream and given philosophy back the typical characteristics of German philosophical tradition: erudition, cultivated character, adequacy, good taste in the selection of vital problems and their solutions, and, above all, critical thinking, which, on the journey between the peaks of Kant and Blumenberg himself, frequently waned, disappeared in dark gorges of being and time and vanished in polished aesthetics of the hermeneutics of God's intentions. The study focuses on Blumenberg's concept of actio per distans, which, combined with the theory of absolute metaphor and cognitive metaphor, gives rise to his historical phenomenology and politically, economically and phenomenologically oriented anthropology. At the end, the author mentions the problem of 'metametaphorics', which is newly developed as a project based on a deep misunderstanding of Blumenberg's metaphorology: the paper presents several arguments proving a discrepancy between metaphorology and metametaphorics, derived primarily from Blumenberg's theory of (the constant cultural reproduction of) myth.

This article examines the "trade and institutional missions abroad of the Central Region". Journeys abroad were configured as a "regional" public policy within the mentioned subnational integration process, largely due to the agro-export profile of the associated provinces, along with the significant weight held by local entrepreneurs. Through focusing on the relevance attributed by "state officials" and "businessmen" to those missions, the article argues that the "success" of these journeys has little to do with their apparent (commercial) content, but more with the production of a (political) dynamic where "federalism" works as a fundamental value-in-action. In theoretical and methodological terms, the analysis is constructed from an ethnographic perspective based on the conceptual developments of political anthropology, and the anthropology of the State. In this regard it seeks to contribute to understand the ways in which various social actors participate in building up state dynamics. ; El presente trabajo examina las "misiones comerciales e institucionales internacionales de la Región Centro". En este proceso de integración subnacional, los viajes al exterior se fueron configurando como una política pública 'regional' debido, en gran parte, al perfil agroexportador de las provincias socias y al peso de los empresariados locales. A través de focalizar la relevancia atribuida por "funcionarios" y "empresarios" a dichas misiones, se argumenta que su "éxito" no tiene que ver tanto con su contenido (comercial) aparente sino con la producción de una dinámica (política) que tiene al "federalismo" como un valor-en-acción fundamental. En términos teórico-metodológicos, el análisis está construido desde una perspectiva etnográfica basada en los desarrollos conceptuales de la antropología política y del Estado, y en este sentido busca contribuir a comprender las formas en que diversos actores sociales construyen las dinámicas estatales. ; O artigo examina as "missões internacionais de comércio e institucionais da Região Centro". Nesse processo de integração sub-nacional, as viagens ao exterior foram configuradas como política pública "regional" devido, em grande parte, ao perfil agroexportador das províncias parceiras e ao peso que têm os empresários locais. Através de um foco na relevância atribuída por "funcionários" e "empresários" a essas missões, argumenta-se que seu "sucesso" não tem que ver tanto com seu conteúdo (comercial) aparente, mas com a produção de uma dinâmica (política) onde "federalismo" é um valor-em-ação fundamental. Teórica e metodologicamente, a análise é feito seguindo uma perspectiva etnográfica, com base nos desenvolvimentos conceituais da antropologia política e antropologia do Estado. Neste sentido, o trabalho busca contribuir para a compreensão de como diversos atores sociais constroem as dinâmicas do estado

This article examines the "trade and institutional missions abroad of the Central Region". Journeys abroad were configured as a "regional" public policy within the mentioned subnational integration process, largely due to the agro-export profile of the associated provinces, along with the significant weight held by local entrepreneurs. Through focusing on the relevance attributed by "state officials" and "businessmen" to those missions, the article argues that the "success" of these journeys has little to do with their apparent (commercial) content, but more with the production of a (political) dynamic where "federalism" works as a fundamental value-in-action. In theoretical and methodological terms, the analysis is constructed from an ethnographic perspective based on the conceptual developments of political anthropology, and the anthropology of the State. In this regard it seeks to contribute to understand the ways in which various social actors participate in building up state dynamics. ; El presente trabajo examina las "misiones comerciales e institucionales internacionales de la Región Centro". En este proceso de integración subnacional, los viajes al exterior se fueron configurando como una política pública 'regional' debido, en gran parte, al perfil agroexportador de las provincias socias y al peso de los empresariados locales. A través de focalizar la relevancia atribuida por "funcionarios" y "empresarios" a dichas misiones, se argumenta que su "éxito" no tiene que ver tanto con su contenido (comercial) aparente sino con la producción de una dinámica (política) que tiene al "federalismo" como un valor-en-acción fundamental. En términos teórico-metodológicos, el análisis está construido desde una perspectiva etnográfica basada en los desarrollos conceptuales de la antropología política y del Estado, y en este sentido busca contribuir a comprender las formas en que diversos actores sociales construyen las dinámicas estatales. ; O artigo examina as "missões internacionais de comércio e institucionais da Região Centro". Nesse processo de integração sub-nacional, as viagens ao exterior foram configuradas como política pública "regional" devido, em grande parte, ao perfil agroexportador das províncias parceiras e ao peso que têm os empresários locais. Através de um foco na relevância atribuída por "funcionários" e "empresários" a essas missões, argumenta-se que seu "sucesso" não tem que ver tanto com seu conteúdo (comercial) aparente, mas com a produção de uma dinâmica (política) onde "federalismo" é um valor-em-ação fundamental. Teórica e metodologicamente, a análise é feito seguindo uma perspectiva etnográfica, com base nos desenvolvimentos conceituais da antropologia política e antropologia do Estado. Neste sentido, o trabalho busca contribuir para a compreensão de como diversos atores sociais constroem as dinâmicas do estado

This article examines the "trade and institutional missions abroad of the Central Region". Journeys abroad were configured as a "regional" public policy within the mentioned subnational integration process, largely due to the agro-export profile of the associated provinces, along with the significant weight held by local entrepreneurs. Through focusing on the relevance attributed by "state officials" and "businessmen" to those missions, the article argues that the "success" of these journeys has little to do with their apparent (commercial) content, but more with the production of a (political) dynamic where "federalism" works as a fundamental value-in-action. In theoretical and methodological terms, the analysis is constructed from an ethnographic perspective based on the conceptual developments of political anthropology, and the anthropology of the State. In this regard it seeks to contribute to understand the ways in which various social actors participate in building up state dynamics. ; El presente trabajo examina las "misiones comerciales e institucionales internacionales de la Región Centro". En este proceso de integración subnacional, los viajes al exterior se fueron configurando como una política pública 'regional' debido, en gran parte, al perfil agroexportador de las provincias socias y al peso de los empresariados locales. A través de focalizar la relevancia atribuida por "funcionarios" y "empresarios" a dichas misiones, se argumenta que su "éxito" no tiene que ver tanto con su contenido (comercial) aparente sino con la producción de una dinámica (política) que tiene al "federalismo" como un valor-en-acción fundamental. En términos teórico-metodológicos, el análisis está construido desde una perspectiva etnográfica basada en los desarrollos conceptuales de la antropología política y del Estado, y en este sentido busca contribuir a comprender las formas en que diversos actores sociales construyen las dinámicas estatales. ; O artigo examina as "missões internacionais de comércio e institucionais da Região Centro". Nesse processo de integração sub-nacional, as viagens ao exterior foram configuradas como política pública "regional" devido, em grande parte, ao perfil agroexportador das províncias parceiras e ao peso que têm os empresários locais. Através de um foco na relevância atribuída por "funcionários" e "empresários" a essas missões, argumenta-se que seu "sucesso" não tem que ver tanto com seu conteúdo (comercial) aparente, mas com a produção de uma dinâmica (política) onde "federalismo" é um valor-em-ação fundamental. Teórica e metodologicamente, a análise é feito seguindo uma perspectiva etnográfica, com base nos desenvolvimentos conceituais da antropologia política e antropologia do Estado. Neste sentido, o trabalho busca contribuir para a compreensão de como diversos atores sociais constroem as dinâmicas do estado