Front and Back Covers, Volume 24, Number 4. August 2008

Front cover and back cover caption, volume 24 issue 4 Front cover Front cover: Front cover The front cover of this issue illustrates Vasiliki P. Neofotistos’ article on the 2006 film Borat: Cultural learnings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan. In the film, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen plays Borat Sagdiyev, a Kazakh journalist, who leaves his country on a project funded by the Ministry of Information to travel with his film producer to ‘US and A, the greatest country in the world’ and make a ‘movie film’ about American culture, with the putative aim of gaining insights into what makes America great and applying them to Kazakhstan. The film has generated contrasting reactions, ranging from CNN's praise of it as ‘most excellent comedy’ to lawsuits filed by, among others, residents of the Romanian village in which part of the film was shot. Borat has been condemned as deeply offensive to women, Kazakhs, fraternity brothers and Jews alike. In this issue Neofotistos focuses on some of the lessons that Western audiences could potentially take away from the film, using the notion of the grotesque as a tool to read Borat as an allegory of America that invites us to revisit aspects of our own culture and hence as a highly appropriate film for our times. Back cover Back cover: ‘FORTRESS’ SOUTH AFRICA? A South African and a foreigner find common ground in Islam. The two men are about to enter a mosque in downtown Pretoria for Friday prayers. Prayers at this mosque provide a meeting ground for Muslim men and women from all over Africa, and from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Foreigners attending the mosque range from diplomats to illegal immigrants. Significant numbers of black South Africans from all walks of life have converted to Islam in recent years. In this issue John Sharp shows that there are many circumstances in which ‐ as in this photograph ‐ South Africans and foreigners from elsewhere in Africa pursue shared interests peacefully. Anthropological field research points to the range of these contexts, which have largely been ignored by commentators attempting to explain the episode of mass ‘xenophobic’ violence that wracked South African cities and towns in May 2008. Explanations focus on the xenophobic attitudes of ordinary South Africans, and link these attitudes to competition for resources between locals who are poor and their equally poor counterparts from further north. Recent research indicates, however, not only that relationships between poor South Africans and poor foreigners are more complex than most commentators allow, but also that South African xenophobia begins at the top, among the leaders of the ANC government and the black and white elites whose interests it serves. Sharp argues that a newly‐issued report on the xenophobic violence by a government‐orientated think tank reproduces the dominant xenophobic discourse in its recommendation that the state should construct a ‘Fortress SA’ with impenetrable borders, while seeking to mask its adherence to official discourse by representing its proposals as a response to the xenophobic attitudes of poor South Africans. As Sharp suggests, anthropological research might offer a more nuanced response to the issues.