In this issue:

ARTICLES

Preaching Against Copyright:  Martin Luther King and the Power of Double-Voicing
Susan Harding, University of California, Santa Cruz

Confounding Conventional Wisdom: Women’s Power and Low HIV Rates among the Ju/’hoansi of Namibia and Botswana
Richard Lee, University of Toronto
and
Ida Susser, Hunter College, CUNY

Attention!
Emily Martin, New York University  

Are Women Evolutionary Sex Objects? Why Women Have Breasts
Fran Mascia- Lees, Sarah Lawrence College

Audience with the Maharaja of a Saurashtrian Princely State
John Borneman, Princeton University
and
Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi, Cornell University

SHORT ESSAYS

Reading Faces
Tom Strong, Princeton Univ ersity

FUTURE ARTICLES

Making Movies in Bolivia
Jeff Himpele, New York University

In Bolivia, an indigenous video collective that has produced prize-winning fictional films has recently emerged. Their films vividly reinforce indigenous cultural symbols, values, narratives and ways of knowing that are not found in the dominant mass media.  Himpele travels with the collective to film festivals in the US and screenings among Bolivian communities where the group has sought to establish and reinforce networks of indigenous video makers across the Americas and to open up distribution channels for all of their work.

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing:  How The Language of Welfare "Reform" Misrepresents the Experiences of the Poor
Sandra Morgen, University of Oregon

How did a policy that makes poor mother's work, erodes their economic security, reduces their opportunities to be competitive for higher wage jobs, and puts the needs of their children below a state's need to meet an arbitrarily chosen quota demonstrating "welfare-to-work" get defined as "success"?  As someone who has been doing anthropological research on the impact of "reformed" welfare on poor families I am struck by how easily volumes of research questioning the wisdom of many of the changes in public assistance were ignored by Congress in its political zeal to "get tough" on the poor.  In this article I examine how the language of welfare restructuring, like a wolf in sheep's clothing, misrepresents the actual experience of many poor families.  Beginning with the most basic level -- calling this "get tough" policy "reform--" the language welfare administrators and policy makers have adopted masks and sugar coats policies that have created severe economic hardship, despair and stress for millions of poor families across this country. I look at the renaming of public welfare agencies in many states with terms that signal self sufficiency and economic independence, the vocabulary of self sufficiency and work and the terms used for processes of sanctioning families for their failure to meet agency expectations, showing how the language encodes a series of highly problematic assumptions and values that are at odds with the lives, needs and aspirations of many poor families.

Television Soap Operas and the Campaign against Religious Extremists in Egypt
Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University

This article analyzes the way Egyptian television, and particularly the most popularform of programming--the evening teleserial--was mobilized long before 9/11 to try to undermine the credibility of  religious extremists or "terrorists."  The effects of the government- sponsored attempts to represent religion on television are complicated. Although they might not succeed in persuading citizens, they help refashion religion as something fundamentally tied to the nation.

“Nothing Coming”: Living and Working in Supermax Prisons
Lorna Rhodes , University of Washington

In the nation’s “supermaximum” prison units prisoners are kept in solitary cells for 23 hours a day.  This article describes the social world that emerges from such restricted conditions.  How do prisoners and officers interact?  What kinds of resources do prisoners and staff draw on to survive?  What happens to the mentally ill?.  Based on long-term ethnographic research in these units, the article conveys the intensity fostered by such confinement and raises questions about its purpose and effects.

From the Cosmopolitan to the Personal: women's strategies for the prevention and care of HIV/AIDS in southern Africa
Ida Susser,  Hunter College, CUNY

On Punishment
John Borneman , Princeton University

An Anthropological Perspective on ‘Fastrunner’
Faye Ginsburg, New York University

Posted:  January 16, 2003
E. Martin, New York University
Copyright 2002
All rights reserved.