Paul Henley

Even before it was published, Christy and the late Jacqueline Turner’s Man Corn provoked media hubbub. Last November, the New Yorker published a long profile of Christy Turner, and soon afterwards the story was picked up in Britain. The Times dedicated half a page to a discussion of the book’s findings, and even reflected on them in a leader. Turner, a biological anthropologist from Arizona with a reputation for being something of a loner, has become such a media celebrity that he now has an agent. Recently, he declined to give an interview to a British television company on the grounds that he was already contractually obliged to a US company making a programme for Channel 4.

Ever since the invention of the first moving-image camera, there has been a feeling among anthropologists that film-making should form part of their ethnographic work. But exactly what this should entail has remained strangely uncertain, and concern has been expressed that it’s simply not possible to identify a form of film practice peculiar to anthropologists.

There was a time when a...

As the Afghanistan crisis subsides, the European question once again assumes centre stage. ‘Surrender’, a tabloid headline proclaimed shortly before Christmas. This wasn’t an exhortation to Osama bin Laden, but rather the Daily Mail’s considered description of Britain’s latest concession to Europe. It had nothing to do with the euro: the polls suggest that the...