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Based on materials from expeditions to the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug during 2006 and 2007, this article discusses the role of a small museum in the local society of a district administrative center. The article focuses on a specific class of sacred Nenets objects in the museum's collection, called locally babushka (grandmother) and a “working model“ of a sacred site that is itself a sacred site for local residents, both indigenous and Russian, to explore the social relationships forged by the museum and its collection among local residents of all ethnicities. The museum and its objects are not removed from social life and rendered dead and preserved under glass. They remain alive in a network of relationships between human and non-human persons.

This article discusses the evidence of markets in the Ancient Near East. The major points are (1) the shortcomings of the misguided application of the Polanyi model and (2) the ensuing implications of the failure to integrate economic history into modern economic theory. The analysis concentrates on Ancient Egypt, as it presents the most significant problem for economic history and theoretical modelling. Detailed criticism of the means by which the Polanyi model is upheld is coordinated with an argument in favour of recognising the importance of markets. The argument is that these markets are relevant both to long-term economic history and to modern economic theory - and that this must lead to a new debate about ancient and modern economies.

In the debates surrounding the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway was used as a model. This article traces how eyewitness accounts of Canadian settlement patterns were used by Russian entrepreneurs to argue the case for the financing and organisation of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Given the tense international political climate at the end of the 19th century, the Trans-Siberian also became a focus for imperial rivalry. This article gives a good overview of comparative colonial enterprise in two great continental colonies.

This article focuses on the practices that led to the elimination of the possibility of establishing an independent academic sector—professional-academic colleges—in the first years after the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. This sector, the "service tradition" of non-university institutions, focuses on meeting economic and social needs through professional and vocational education. The only academic model in Israel that evolved under the control of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ) was the comprehensive university model. By describing the ongoing problems of the School of Law and Economics (SLE) in Tel-Aviv, we can learn about the close relations that were established between politicians and the HUJ and the paradox that has resulted in the rapid growth of the SLE but also its integration with the comprehensive university.

This article looks at the historicisation of the native speaker and ideologies of authenticity and anonymity in Europe's language revitalisation movements. It focuses specifically on the case of Irish in the Republic of Ireland and examines how the native speaker ideology and the opposing ideological constructs of authenticity and anonymity filter down to the belief systems and are discursively produced by social actors on the ground. For this I draw on data from ongoing fieldwork in the Republic of Ireland, drawing on interviews with a group of Irish language enthusiasts located outside the officially designated Irish-speaking Gaeltacht.

In this article, the author investigates, from an anthropological point of view, why many Iranian women (and even some men) resort to rhinoplasty – that is, surgery to alter the appearance of the nose – for cosmetic purposes. When did this phenomenon begin in Iran? Which social classes and ages are concerned? What is the relationship between this practice and Iranian society in general? Is it the result of foreign cultural influences? What comparisons can be made with other cultures? Born of a micro-sociological case, these interrogations address the anthropology of Iranian society, which, like many others, has been engaged for several decades in an ‘exchange process’ that today is commonly known as globalisation.