What is ‘social anthropology’ today? How should a journal with that title attempt to negotiate its global scope, its particular lines of descent, its kinship relations? Since Jean-Claude Galey's declaration of intentions in the first issue of Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale (Galey 1992), no comparable assessment of the future of the journal, and of the field at which it is directed, has appeared in its pages. In the previous issue, Eduardo Archetti reflected on the journal's past ten years. He provides much food for thought and insight, but – showing a modesty that is as characteristic of my predecessor as it is out of proportion with his actual editorial achievements – says little about where the journal could or should be headed. It seems appropriate, therefore, to formulate a more explicit statement of editorial intent on the occasion of the first issue to appear under my direction.

As anthropologists forge a more engaged anthropology, it is important to combat the stereotypes of the discipline that the public holds. The recent controversy over Patrick Tierney's Darkness in El Dorado fed on two of these stereotypes: the ‘evil imperial anthropologist’ who does harm to the ‘good subaltern’ native, and the vision of anthropology as a discipline split between ‘scientists’ and ‘postmodernists’. Neither stereotype reflects the research that anthropologists are currently conducting on critical social issues such as immigration, race relations, health care and indigenous land rights. In order to overcome this disjunction between image and reality, we need, first, to transform our relations with the public; second, continue to change our relations with the communities we study by viewing them as equal partners in research and educational activities; and, third, work out effective ways of researching critical social issues that will expand the influence of anthropology in policy debates. I provide examples from the United States of efforts to accomplish these three goals: the AAA's project for a museum exhibit on ‘Understanding race and human variation’, the Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies at the University of New Mexico, and recent research projects on Medicaid Manage Care and welfare reform.

In the context of events on and after 11 September 2001, this paper examines the genre of macro-scenarios, one-big-thing stories, which entered public debate in the post-Cold War period: ‘the clash of civilisations’, ‘the end of history’, ‘the coming anarchy’ etc. It is argued that anthropologists, as they engage with a wider public, should attend to such macro-scenarios, offering ethnographically based critiques of their oversimplifications, but without resorting only to ethnographic qualifications, exceptions and miniatures. Comparative perspectives toward emergent regularities in social life may still allow macro-anthropological contributions to public debates over possible, desirable or undesirable futures.

The paper presents Louis Dumont's point of view on the ‘tribes’ of India according to his controversy with F. Bailey in Contributions to Indian Sociology. I focus in particular on the influences of the Europeanist experience and on the Maussian formation of Dumont on his later perspective in the Indian field. One can then see that what Dumont called the ‘local point of view’ was his specific perspective (adapted from Robert Hertz's legacy) regarding the Indian ‘tribes’. The last part of the article tries to show that this ‘point of view’ is still fruitful in as much as it combines holistic and ethnohistorical perspective, here particularly on the relations between the ‘tribes’ and the ancient local kingdoms.

This paper discusses critically the concept of ‘appropriation’ and evaluates the usefulness of applying the term in the analysis of cross-cultural communication in a global world. Specifically, I look at contemporary art practices that involve the ‘appropriation’ of ideas, symbols and artefacts from other cultures. Early twentieth century theories of cultural change and cultural contact (in German-speaking anthropology, the United States and Britain) were clearly interested in the ‘migration’ of particular elements (symbolic and material) across cultural boundaries, but suffered from a holistic view of bounded cultures. Recent theories of cultural globalisation on the other hand do not pay sufficient attention to the individual actors (as opposed to groups of individuals) in cross-cultural contact. Hybridisation, creolisation, transculturation and other concepts focus more generically on mixtures of different cultural practices in entire societies, but less on individual strategies. Appropriation then is reevaluated as a hermeneutic procedure, an act of dialogical understanding, by which individual actors negotiate access to, and traffic in, symbolic elements which have no fixed meaning.

This essay argues that the Hindu notion of auspiciousness, adherence to propitious timings, inauguration ceremonies and other practices that are conducive for success in future dealings has become pivotal for the definitions of Hindu middle-classness in India. First the concept of auspiciousness and the debate that ranged in relation to it in the 1980s and early 1990s is reviewed. Then, some ethnographic sketches of housing among Hyderabadi new middle-class Hindus are presented. In social practice centred around auspiciousness, Hindus who identify themselves as middle class find a way of creating social value and respectfulness which does not derive directly from the hegemonic notions of hierarchy, purity and caste. While not rejecting the principles of hierarchical social relations, new middle-class Hindus remodel notions of social honour from within by stressing auspiciousness instead of purity.

During the last decade at least twelve anthropologists studied the identities building process in the border region of western Greek Macedonia. Having lived in this area as a resident for four years, I operated both as an ethnographer and as a semi-native informant for other colleagues. My betwixt-and-between status forced me to reflect upon the relationship between ‘anthropological’ and ‘native’ discourses of knowledge and upon the local understandings of the anthropological discourse. This autobiographical paper argues for the impossibility of presenting clear-cut distinctions between ethnographers, natives, native ethnographers and ethnographic natives.

From the editor

This new section of Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale – one of the experiments with different genres and formats referred to in the editorial for this issue – is meant to report on recent initiatives within the global field(s) of social anthropology or on recent trends traceable in different anthropological traditions (the less well known in particular). Consisting of relatively short statements (approximately 2500 words), the format allows for reports on plans and efforts rather than achievements, reviews of the scholarly paradigms and events of the past decade rather than the books of last year, and opinions about the directions in which global events are, or should be, pushing social anthropologists. We are proud that the World Anthropologies Network is the first initiative to be presented within this new framework.

Robert Gibb has accepted the invitation of the executive committee to succeed Andrew Dawson as book review editor of Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale. This issue provides a brief statement of the direction in which it is hoped to develop the reviews section, along with a current list of the books received by the journal. A full reviews section will re-appear with the next issue.