In many Mediterranean countries we observe newcomers to the political arena: new forms of social networking, growing opposition, and protest articulated by local communities or locally active social movements. In this special issue we present fresh research on localized practices of resistance by protest groups, solidarity initiatives, and cultural projects, which have arisen in the wake of the 2008 crisis. Based on ethnological fieldwork, the volume offers insights into the media-based protest against the commodification of the historic Marseille district Panier (Philip Cartelli); urban gardening in Ljubljana as a practice opposing the growing neoliberal market economy (Saa Poljak Istenic); and the movement Genuino Clandestino, a solidarity network of small-scale farmers in Italy (Alexander Koensler). Three case studies deal with social movement in Greece: a solidarity network in Volos, where citizens developed an alternative exchange and trading system (Andreas Streinzer); grassroots mobilizations as resistant practices in the inner urban neighbourhood of Exarchia in Athens (Monia Cappuccini); and finally rural solidarity networks on the Peloponnese peninsula (James Verinis). A comparative discussion of Mediterranean protest movements (Jutta Lauth Bacas and Marion Naser-Lather) identifies underlying common features in these clearly different, yet relatable practices of protest: among others, the major role of face-to-face interaction and mutual trust.

This issue opens with an in-depth analysis by Antti Lindfors of the ways that satire is intertwined with moral understandings, bringing recent discussions from the anthropology of ethics as well as emotions to the stand-up comedian's stage in Finland and elsewhere. Ethical issues are also at stake in Britta Lundgrens's examination of how Swedish health-care providers involved in the threat of an epidemic as well as adverse side-effects of vaccinations face double-bind situations and deal with their own doubts. Then Niels Jul Nielsen and Janus Jul Olsen explain how the neoliberal transformations in Denmark's social welfare system have resulted from the loss of a perception of the working class as a potential threat to societal stability and peace. Anastasiya Astapova's article which provides the inspiration for this issue's cover art, looks at the folklore of Potemkinism in Belarus, local attitudes and narratives around the "facade" performance. And finally, Jernej Mleku explores the symbolic complexity and material significance of the burek in Solvenia, one of the country's most popular and yet disrespected foods.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com Taking its cue from the study of 'lived religion', Secular Bodies, Affects and Emotions shows how the idea of a secular public is equally marked by a display and cultivation of affect and emotions. Whereas it is widely agreed that religion is often saturated by emotion, the secular is usually treated as a neutral background serving as the domain of public, rational deliberation. This book demonstrates that secularity and secularism are also upheld by bodily practices and emotional attachments. Drawing on empirical case studies, this is the first book to ask and explore whether a secular body exists. Building on the work of Talal Asad, the book argues that the secular is not an absence of religion, but a positive entity that comes about through its co-constitutive relationship with religion. And, once we attune ourselves to recognizing its operations as grammar which structures social practice, writing an anthropology of the secular could become a new possibility.

Christmas is not a holiday just for Christians anymore, if it ever was. Embedded in calendars around the world and long a lucrative merchandising opportunity, Christmas enters multicultural, multi-religious public spaces, provoking both festivity and controversy, hospitality and hostility. The Public Work of Christmas provides a comparative historical and ethnographic perspective on the politics of Christmas in multicultural contexts ranging from a Jewish museum in Berlin to a shopping boulevard in Singapore. A seasonal celebration that is at once inclusive and assimilatory, Christmas offers a clarifying lens for considering the historical and ongoing intersections of multiculturalism, Christianity, and the nationalizing and racializing of religion. The essays gathered here examine how cathedrals, banquets, and carols serve as infrastructures of memory that hold up Christmas as a civic, yet unavoidably Christian holiday. At the same time, the authors show how the public work of Christmas depends on cultural forms that mark, mask, and resist the ongoing power of Christianity in the lives of Christians and non-Christians alike. Legislated into paid holidays and commodified into marketplaces, Christmas has arguably become more cultural than religious, making ever wider both its audience and the pool of workers who make it happen every year. The Public Work of Christmas articulates a fresh reading of Christmas - as fantasy, ethos, consumable product, site of memory, and terrain for the revival of exclusionary visions of nation and whiteness - at a time of renewed attention to the fragility of belonging in diverse societies. Contributors include Herman Bausinger (Tubingen), Marion Bowman (Open), Juliane Brauer (MPI Berlin), Simon Coleman (Toronto), Yaniv Feller (Wesleyan), Christian Marchetti (Tubingen), Helen Mo (Toronto), Katja Rakow (Utrecht), Sophie Reimers (Berlin), Tiina Sepp (Tartu), and Isaac Weiner (Ohio State).

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com Taking its cue from the study of 'lived religion', Secular Bodies, Affects and Emotions shows how the idea of a secular public is equally marked by a display and cultivation of affect and emotions. Whereas it is widely agreed that religion is often saturated by emotion, the secular is usually treated as a neutral background serving as the domain of public, rational deliberation. This book demonstrates that secularity and secularism are also upheld by bodily practices and emotional attachments. Drawing on empirical case studies, this is the first book to ask and explore whether a secular body exists. Building on the work of Talal Asad, the book argues that the secular is not an absence of religion, but a positive entity that comes about through its co-constitutive relationship with religion. And, once we attune ourselves to recognizing its operations as grammar which structures social practice, writing an anthropology of the secular could become a new possibility.

World War I marks a well-known turning point in anthropology, and this volume is the first to examine the variety of forms it took in Europe. Distinct national traditions emerged and institutes were founded, partly due to collaborations with the military. Researchers in the cultural sciences used war zones to gain access to "informants": prisoner-of-war and refugee camps, occupied territories, even the front lines. Anthropologists tailored their inquiries to aid the war effort, contributed to interpretations of the war as a "struggle" between "races", and assessed the "warlike" nature of the Balkan region, whose crises were key to the outbreak of the Great War.