Cultural Anthropology in 2018: Captivity and Its Unruly Failures

The Carceral State: An American Story

This article reviews key works in the anthropology of mass incarceration, generated by anthropologists and their interlocutors whose research is directed outside physical sites of imprisonment. My geographical focus is on the United States during the last decade's political and economic Zeitgeist, shaped by the manifestations and consequences of the carceral state and the prison industrial complex. My discussion is also guided by research invigorated by anthropology's decolonizing drive and growing concern about racism within and outside the academy. Along the way, and emphasized in the final section, I make the case that anthropology's abiding interest in kinship is a productive approach for configuring our understanding of the American carceral state and the racial landscapes of carcerality. The research reviewed shows how deeply carcerality is embedded in race, illuminating its destructiveness in Black and brown communities, yet also revealing the creation of regenerative spaces of kinship.

Introduction

The introduction to this special issue begins by surveying the significance of what we call Africa’s internal energy frontiers for understanding a global energy realignment marked by experiments in renewable technologies as well as revanchist investments in fossil fuels. It then discusses capture as a concept rooted in both Marxist informed accounts of global energy regimes as well as the political histories and practices of African populations. Finally, it discusses the articles as spanning three economies of capture along Africa’s energy frontier: resurgent extractivism, post-carbon development and consumer renewables.

Uneasy Entanglements

This article considers the entanglements revealed by the recent and rapid influx of solar technology on the archipelago of Zanzibar. Following a technical failure that left the islands without electricity for three months in 2009–10, the Zanzibari government has pursued several avenues to increase energy autonomy, including solar power. However, the future of energy independence promised by solar development is complicated by a legacy of political conflict and new relationships of dependence and inequality. Drawing on interviews with domestic energy users, government officials, state engineers and NGO activists, and situated within the unique post-revolutionary context of Zanzibar, this article explores how solar innovations and investments contribute to the reimagining of social, economic and political entanglements while simultaneously reproducing persistent discourses of hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion.