Jonathan Benthall

The red cross and red crescent movement and Islamic societies, with special reference to Jordan

Abstract This article reviews the history of the relations between the International Red Cross Movement and Islamic societies since the early years of the Movement; focusing first on the problem of the Movements emblem, which has resulted in 26 countries today using the emblem of the Crescent rather than the Cross, and second on ideological and practical tensions today between the Movement as a whole and its Islamic constituents. The article concludes with a brief case study based on recent research in Jordan and a note on Palestine.

Technological art and Studio International’s eclectic vanguardism

ABSTRACT This article takes the editorship by Peter Townsend of Studio International, to which the author contributed regularly between 1969 and 1972, as a starting-point to recall decisive personal encounters with Roy Lichtenstein’s paintings, Wen-Ying Tsai’s sculptures, Jasia Reichardt’s exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity and the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science. It goes on to re-endorse the earlier argument that a long historical time-scale was required for the aesthetic implications of photography to become clear, and that, like photography, the computer and holography are technological media whose immediate interactions with aesthetics and the culture at large will take many decades to pan out. Earlier claims about the relationship between art and ecology are then reviewed. Finally the article suggests that though world politics have changed considerably since the 1960s and 1970s, artists have undiminished opportunities to grapple with the challenges of new technologies directly, rather than retreating into a closed system.

Our Genius for the Equivocal

In 1987, Sir Edmund Leach, the most influential British social anthropologist of his generation, startled a conference in Norwich of the Association of Social Anthropologists by declaring that ethnographic monographs were essentially fictions, expressing the personality of the author. When asked what should be the goal of the anthropologist, he replied, ’To write another War and Peace’. This and some similar papers were published by him and have come in for much criticism: for instance, from a leading anthropologist of the next generation, Adam Kuper, who has regretted that Leach made such a concession to fashionable post-modernism, the ’literary turn’ in anthropology, shortly before his death (Kuper, 1999: 15-35). For what it is worth, I was present at that conference and knew Leach well. It was clear to me then that his intellectual powers were failing as a result of the brain cancer which

The Utility of Anthropology: An Exchange with Norman Tebbit

Peacock, D.P.S. Pottery in the Roman World. Harlow: Longmans. We wish to thank the following bodies for their help and financial support to the project or to ourselves: Society of Antiquaries of London; Royal Geographical Society; University of Sheffield Expeditions Committee; Sigma Xi Scientific research Society; Petrie Watson Exhibition Committee. Thanks are also due to our supervisors at Sheffield, Dr. Richard Hodges and Dr. John Collis. Help in Egypt was generously provided by Mr. Barry Kemp, Pamela Rose and Professor Lanny Bell. Paul Blank kindly helped by acting as interpreter. To these, and to the potters of Deir el-Gharbi whose co-operation and hospitality we enjoyed, we are most grateful.