In this article we argue that the knowledge economy is reshaping anthropological research and popular understandings of ethnography. Interviews with British social anthropologists working in, and outside, academia provide insights into how the practices and meanings of ethnography are being reworked. UK policy expectations that research (and its impact) can be measured, monitored and accounted for in monetary terms place particular demands on qualitative social research. To make our case, we focus on the prominence of the business metaphor of the 'value chain' in contemporary accounting practice and its use in the quantitative measurement of social research. Within social anthropology this new economy of measurement can be seen in debates over fieldwork practice. We show that as anthropology departments harden their methodological allegiances to fieldwork, very different understandings of ethnography are being developed beyond the academy. We conclude that methods, and debates over methods, are prisms through which to understand the changing social and economic expectations placed upon qualitative research.

This article looks at the representations of Naqab Bedouin in Bedouin advocacy NGOs, and their relationship to changing dynamics of Palestinian and Israeli nationalism, and to wider dynamics of control and risk management. Much has been written on the folklorisation of Bedouin culture, and on representations of the Bedouin in development. The Bedouin have been important as a traditional Other for a modern Israel, and as the ‘Negev Bedouin’ a transitional society and object of development. These ideas have been refashioned by a new body of knowledge on the Naqab Bedouin created by NGO advocacy, highlighting different aspects of Bedouin marginalisation, placing them within different rights frameworks of variously framed ‘Palestinian’, ‘indigenous’, ‘minority’ or ‘civil’ rights. This article looks at the construction of the Bedouin as an object for advocacy by Bedouin NGOs for a wider audience, and particularly how these representations have presented challenges to the control regime around the Naqab Bedouin. The post-OIslo transformation has been resonant with evolving new forms of control and exploitation in contemporary capitalism that channel Bedouin claims within national and international norms and frameworks, and are guided by the modalities of risk management and considering the Bedouin as a risk. I argue that this evolving structure of risk-based governance is reformulating Israel/Palestine, and this is where the Naqab has relevance for the dynamics of the wider Middle East.

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