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This concluding reflection of the Colloquy considers how the bioeconomy, as an analytical lens, may cast light on processes of colonization beyond the territorial frame of spatial domination, settlement, and exploitation. Examining the power to colonize with special reference to the politics and policing of migration, it shows how certain migrants have come to serve as a laboratory in the quest to extract value from life itself—which itself links back to historical colonizations. What we may call a "new anthropology" is taking shape at the confluence of algorithms of artificial intelligence, mechanisms of finance and surveillance, and the multipolar geopolitical world emerging amid the Western project's demise. Understanding the new frontiers of value extraction of this piecemeal yet powerful (quasi) science of humankind constitutes a crucial analytical task for us "old anthropologists," and the bioeconomy may serve as a tool in this endeavor.

The Malian town of Timbuktu, long considered the epitome of remoteness in the Western imagination, has undergone a dramatic transformation from tourist outpost to terrorism-haunted site of a UN peacekeeping intervention, in a shift accompanying conflict-hit Mali's wider relabelling as a 'danger zone'. Casting an eye on this distressing turn, this article considers the 'cartopolitics' of distance and danger from a historical perspective while analysing the machinations of foreign interveners and cartographers. It shows how Mali's insertion into the 'war on terror' drew on colonial and precolonial mappings intermixing desire and danger, domination and fear, science and fantasy. Concluding, the article argues that if military strategy was once seen as paralysed by a 'Vietnam syndrome', today we see something akin to a 'Timbuktu syndrome' as Western powers obsess about controlling perceived dangers emanating from remote sites yet increasingly fear entering these 'Timbuktus' of a revived geographic imagination.

For a brief post-Cold War moment, it seemed as if global division would yield to connectivity as marginal regions would be rewired into the world economy. Instead, the post–9/11 years have seen the spread of ever-larger "no-go zones," seen as constituting a danger especially to Western states and citizens. Contact points are reduced as aid workers withdraw, military operations are conducted from above, and few visitors, reporters, or researchers dare venture beyond the new red lines. Casting an eye on this development while building on anthropology's critical security agenda, this article draws an ethnographic map of "global danger" by showing how perceived transnational threats—terrorism, drugs, and displacement—are conjured, bundled, and relegated to world margins, from the sub-Saharan Sahel to the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Mali, it shows how a relationship by remote control has developed as Western interveners seek to overcome a fundamental dilemma: their deep concern with threats emanating from the danger zone set against their aversion toward entering it. As ambivalent sites of distance and engagement, I argue, such zones are becoming invested with old fantasies of remoteness and otherness, simultaneously kept at arm's length and unevenly incorporated into a world economy of risk.

This article starts with an observation made by many migrants and refugees stuck at Europe's borders: that reception and detention facilities have become a money spinner and a racket. In conversation with the extensive literature on the biopolitics of borders, the article approaches this business as a "bioeconomy" to highlight how migration controls (sometimes framed in the idiom of care) facilitate profiteering and predation. Rather than focusing on the production of cheap, deportable labor, the bioeconomy perspective developed here is concerned with the extraction and generation of financial and other value from life itself. Visiting the US-Mexico and Euro-African borders in turn, it considers biotechnologies for surveillance and detection; detention and "warehousing"; and risk strategies for deterring migration, in each case delving into the political economy of human vitality in both its physical and psychological dimensions. The article concludes by asking whether irregular migrants may be "canaries in the coal mine" of an increasingly prevalent mode of profiteering from life itself.

Ever since the 'refugee crisis' hit European shores, policymakers, journalists and politicians have sought out knowledge on 'unwanted' migration and 'what to do about it'. As influential people knock on academic doors – at times seeking out anthropologists, such as this author – how should we engage, and under what conditions? The seemingly endless rounds of panel debates, conferences and other policy‐focused outreach pull academics towards 'high‐level' engagements, while short‐term or politically driven 'emergency' funding pushes us towards narrowly defined research objectives. Meanwhile, the 'impact' agenda – most developed in the UK, yet increasingly encroaching on other academic ecosystems – is shifting institutional incentives towards specific forms of scholarly activity. This article builds an 'auto‐ethnographic' account of my own experiences of crossing the borders of anthropology at a time of perceived migratory crisis and increasing impact calls. Delineating the pitfalls and risks of 'capture' by policy agendas, the article argues for active navigation of the borderlands between academia and its various publics. For anthropologists to wrest some control, I suggest, we must be willing to take risks and get our hands dirty; strategically deploy our ethnographic sensibilities to the full; and stand ready to apply our analytical skills to powerful systems – including, not least, to the impact agenda itself.

cited By 0 ; The Ghost Dance was a distinguishing phenomenon in Lakota history that caused a lot of friction and divisiveness among the Lakota people in 1890. From the very beginning, however, the Lakota Ghost Dance was studied mainly from the perspectives of white Americans, and the Lakota views were only in passing incorporated into this narrative. The earliest accounts created a tradition of treating the Lakota Ghost Dance as a military, political, or religious-political movement. This approach is characterized by phrases such as Sioux outbreak, Messiah Craze, or Ghost Dance war, so often used even in the titles of these works The tradition continued into the late twentieth century, when alternative interpretations began to emerge. However, there is still much to be understood about the Ghost Dance from the Lakota point of view. In The Lakota Ghost Dance of 1890, I was able to locate and use a number of Lakota accounts of the Ghost Dance that had not been used before. Since the Lakota voice was only one part of that study, much of the material could only be used partially or had to be left out. Some of the documents are long, 15–20 pages each, some are written in Lakota or Dakota and need time-consuming translation. Some of the documents have been at least partly published before, while others have not been used so far. In this article, I will present and analyze excerpts of some of the key documents representing different approaches to the Ghost Dance among the Lakotas. © 2017 Plains Anthropological Society. ; Peer reviewed

Remoteness has returned to world politics. Instead of the flat world' once proclaimed by leading liberal voices, the world map today looks more rugged and uneven than it has in a long time. While some areas are smoothly connected to global capital and cultural flows, others are becoming more marginalised and 'distant', at least from the viewpoint of global centres of power. In this introduction, we build an analytical approach to remoteness as a social and political process rather than a primordial condition. We emphasise three key aspects of remoteness: its deep entanglement with forms of connectivity; its economic usefulness; and its amenability to 'remote control'. In considering these aspects, we bring anthropology's long heritage of studying 'marginal' societies to bear on the political resurgence of remoteness in a new world disorder of proliferating global dangers, lucrative frontier economies and heritage‐making.

Afghanistan has come to be seen as emblematic of the security threats besetting peace and security operations, and in this article we consider the response to such threats via the 'bunkering' of international staff. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative survey with aid and peacebuilding officials in Kabul, we illustrate how seemingly mundane risk management procedures have negative consequences for intervening institutions; for the relation between interveners and national actors; and for the purpose of intervention itself. Bunkering, we argue, is deeply political – 'imprisoning' staff behind ramparts while generating an illusion of presence and control for ill-conceived modes of international intervention.

This paper compares the security paradigms for combating terrorism, drugs and irregular migration and argues that while these have largely failed on their own terms, they have also proven rather successful for the actors shaping them. Through a spatial political economy analysis of systems of intervention, the paper shows how vested interests have helped perpetuate counterproductive approaches, while risks (including that of human suffering) have routinely been 'exported' into geographical 'buffer zones'. In analysing the stakes in such systems, we deploy the metaphor of games. This term allows us to highlight divergences between 'official' goals, such as 'winning the war,' and unstated aims, such as perpetuating security investments, relocating risk or stoking fear for political gain. Equally important, game terminology helps us highlight the spatial and social dynamics of collaboration, conflict and rule-manipulation within the system. In exploring these dynamics, the paper puts focus empirically on the complex collaborations between Western states instigating intervention and poorer 'partner states,' showing how a skewed geopolitical distribution of risk may tilt security interventions in the instigators' favour while maintaining 'skin in the game' for less powerful actors.

Deliverable 2.2 of the Intermode-TRANS project presents a first version of guidelines on intermodal transfer techniques needs and technologies. The guidelines are based on an initial investigation of joint European projects and other sources, as well as on discussions with researchers and stakeholders, the results of which were presented in Deliverable 2.1 - State of art on intermodal transfer techniques. A series of workshops with stakeholders and experts in intermodal transport and transshipment facilities and techniques brought a number of additional identified problems and research needs,. Principally, the workshops confirmed the findings of D2.1, which therefore form the core also of these guidelines.The guidelines include a summary of more than 24 joint European research projects, addressing intermodality, where several results have not yet become exploited. Identified areas of development and recommendations for further work address a.o. technology for transshipment, including container standards and handling, harmonization of rail infrastructure and rail and road vehicles, marketing and knowledge management in the field, information systems for logistics support, training and awareness-raising, the cost vs. benefit structure, and a number of actions of a political and organizational nature.