bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Proto‐Athapaskan culture: the use of ethnographic reconstruction
Authors: PERRY RICHARD J.
Published: November 2004

The segmentation of Athapaskan‐speaking groups over the past two millennia presents an unusual opportunity to observe culture change from a common base in diachronic perspective. To utilize such a “radiation” model, however, something of the Proto‐Athapaskan culture base must be reconstructed. Comparison of ethnographic data provides insights into Proto‐Athapaskan concepts of extrasomatic power, femaleness, death, and other cultural features. These can give form to the reconstructed aspects of Proto‐Athapaskan culture developed through archaeology, linguistics, and other approaches. [Athapaskan, culture change, ethnographic reconstruction, eschatology, women, ideology]
the political economy of death: communication and change in Malagasy colonial history
Authors: FEELEY‐HARNIK GILLIAN
Published: November 2004

The competition for labor associated with the incorporation of the Sakalava of northwestern Madagascar into polities of steadily increasing scale has involved the ongoing reorganization of social relations through the symbolism of death. During the precolonial period Malagasy spoke a common language of ancestors and relics by which to negotiate relations of labor and loyalty. French colonists sought to destroy Malagasy institutions and substitute their own language of law. As they failed to do so, they reverted to what they had learned of customary practices, thereby placing all parties outside the law as originally imposed. The contemporary association between a moribund economy and a lively preoccupation with the dead takes a distinctively Malagasy form among the Sakalava, but its general features may be widespread. [political economic change, religion, death, language, law]
masters of tradition: customary land tenure and new forms of social inequality in a Vanuatu peasantry
Authors: RODMAN MARGARET
Published: November 2004

The persistence of customary land tenure in a cash‐cropping context is giving rise to new forms of social inequality that masquerade as perquisites of traditional preeminence in Longana, Vanuatu. This paper examines the processes through which a few customary landholders were able to create relatively large coconut plantations in the 1930s, and the ways in which some of their heirs have maintained these holdings, emerging as wealthy individuals who are beginning to follow copra production and investment strategies that increasingly differentiate them from smaller landholders. A flexible system of customary land tenure has both legitimized the actions of such individuals and obscured the new consequences of following tradition. [land tenure, social inequality, differentiation in peasantries, copra, Melanesia]
a matter of touristic “indifférence”
Authors: DUMONT JEAN‐PAUL
Published: November 2004

Based on a recent fieldwork experience in an island of the central Philippines, this paper compares ethnography and tourism and shows that the ethnographic relationship can be reversed as the ethnographer becomes a touristic attraction for the people under study. It is argued that Derrida's concept of “différance” is essential to the recognition of otherness and that “indifférance” prevents tourists and, more unfortunately, anthropologists from perceiving the identity of their respective hosts. [Philippines, Siquijor Island, tourism, fieldwork, reflexive anthropology, “différance,” Derrida]
mother or mistress but never a monk: Buddhist notions of female gender in rural Thailand
Authors: KEYES CHARLES F.
Published: November 2004

Notions of gender have a givenness for most people as they are rooted in fundamental assumptions about the underlying meaning of reality. In Buddhist Thailand, gender notions can be shown to derive from sources that formulate a Buddhist world view. In this paper it is maintained, contrary to the argument of some scholars, that Thai Buddhist culture does not relegate women to a religiously inferior status relative to men. Rather, both males and females who understand the world in Buddhist terms face the same problem of attachment to the world, although the characteristic tension between worldly attachment and orientation toward Buddhist salvation is expressed for females in gender images that are different than those for males. [gender imagery, images of women, sex roles, Buddhism, Thailand]
the horns of the Mediterraneanist dilemma
Authors: HERZFELD MICHAEL
Published: November 2004

Recent studies of moral and symbolic systems have taken for granted the concept of a “Mediterranean culture area.” Consequently, readings of the ethnographic and ethnohistorical record have increasingly demonstrated a disturbing tendency to circularity, particularly in studies of the symbolism associated with sexuality and envy. This circularity has extended to the uses of archaeological evidence: similarities between ancient and modern symbols have virtually been created in support of the Mediterraneanist thesis. These generalizations, moreover, often rely selectively on materials from only a restricted part of the circum‐Mediterranean region. As a result, Mediterranean and other stereotypes are reinforced, whereas they should instead be critically examined as part of the symbolic universe inhabited by informants and anthropologists alike.
the political use of Sande ideology and symbolism
Authors: BLEDSOE CAROLINE
Published: November 2004

Recent studies of the women's Sande society of West Africa have argued that the Sande seeks to produce symbolically pure adult women as well as bonds of female solidarity. This paper shows that Sande elite often side with elite men and exploit subordinate women. Crucial Sande symbolism merges differentiating features between the sexes. Conclusions are drawn about strategic uses of the Sande ideology by the elite in the context of its regional political economy.
familiarity, vocabulary size, and recognition ability in four semantic domains
Authors: GATEWOOD JOHN B.
Published: November 2004

Fifty‐four American college students were asked to rank four domains (musical instruments, fabrics, trees, and hand tools) with respect to their familiarity with each and to rate their knowledge about the domains on a seven‐point scale. Then they were asked to list all varieties of each domain they could think of in a free‐recall task. Subsequently, they indicated which of the segregates appearing in their lists they could recognize if encountered in a natural setting. Analyses show that the four domains differ significantly in familiarity to the sample, that vocabulary size and recognition ability vary significantly from one domain to another, and that familiarity is a strong predictor of salient vocabulary size, though less so of recognition ability.
the role of words in Aguaruna hunting magic
Authors: BROWN MICHAEL F.
Published: November 2004

In their interpretations of magical acts and utterances, anthropologists frequently argue that magic and technology are informed by two different kinds of logic, the former “expressive” in character, the latter “instrumental.” A close analysis of magical hunting songs used by the Aguaruna of Amazonian Peru reveals that the songs are part of a general ordering process that encompasses the strategic use of thoughts, speech, objects, and acts to achieve practical ends. In Aguaruna thought the expressive imagery of magical songs is an instrumental tool that shapes events in the performer's world.
honor and the sentiments of loss in a Bedouin society
Authors: ABU‐LUGHOD LILA
Published: November 2004

Beginning with the observation that among the Awlād c Alī Bedouins of the Egyptian Western Desert individuals respond to personal loss with two contradictory sets of sentiments, one expressed in ordinary language and public interactions and the other expressed in a form of poignant lyric poetry spontaneously recited in intimate contexts, this paper explores the significance of the coexistence of discrepant discourses on emotion for understanding the relationship between the self and cultural ideals. For Awlād c Alī, like others in circum‐Mediterranean societies, the cultural ideals are those entailed by the honor code. Analysis of the links between this code and the two discourses reveals the complexity of the relationship between cultural ideology and individual experience and its articulation. [self and emotion, ideology, honor code, poetry, Middle East Bedouins, loss]
Coeur d'Alene exceptions to proposed universals of anatomical nomenclature
Authors: PALMER GARY B. , NICODEMUS LAWRENCE
Published: November 2004

This paper tests proposed universals of anatomical nomenclature with data from Coeur d'Alene, an Interior Salish language. Coeur d'Alene terms present exceptions to the taxonomically derived universals proposed by Brown (1976) because their semantic and syntactic structures are more complex than those recognized by current lexicography. A large group of Coeur d'Alene terms for surface parts references a set of spatial relations which are best modeled with a partially ordered componential paradigm rather than a part‐whole taxonomy. Analysis of surface terms reveals a type not previously recognized in taxonomic studies: the composite specific lexeme. [semantics, componential analysis, lexicography, ethnoanatomy, Salish, North America]
“we feed our father”: paternal nurture among the Sabarl of Papua New Guinea
Authors: BATTAGLIA DEBBORA
Published: November 2004

Among matrilineal peoples in Papua New Guinea, power symmetries and asymmetries, with their bases in indigenous models of gender and generation‐based relations, are often revealed in the way paternal nurture is conceptualized and the way people act in relation to it. In the case of the Sabarl, these relations are marked in “paths” of symbolic action and embodied concretely in the movement of ritual foods and objects featured in affinal exchanges. The ritual action and exchange scene is especially elaborate and circumscribing at death, when the contribution of males to the reproductive process is formally acknowledged. The position of males within the matrilineal system is examined here in relation to the larger theme of societal and cultural continuity, [ceremonial exchange, matrilineal systems, mortuary symbolism, Papua New Guinea]
the chief of the Chambri: social change and cultural permeability among a New Guinea people
Authors: ERRINGTON FREDERICK , GEWERTZ DEBORAH
Published: November 2004

Facing an environmental crisis wrought by the introduction of a South American aquatic fern, the Chambri of the East Sepik province of Papua New Guinea have created a new social status, a “chief.” In our explanation of the significance of this political innovation, we suggest that the arrival of the Europeans altered the Chambri understanding of the inherent restrictions in human life. The presence of the Europeans provided the Chambri with what they regarded as not only the solution to their immediate environmental crisis but to their basic cosmological contradiction, that between intensity of power and density of social life. [New Guinea, cultural change, political anthropology]
women, remittances, and reproduction
Authors: GRIFFITH DAVID C.
Published: November 2004

Reproduction has become a central issue in the analysis of peasant households that supply migrant labor to capitalist enterprises. Many have argued that the physiological reproduction of peasantries in underdeveloped countries has been accompanied by the reproduction of their social and economic conditions. When peasant households finance reproduction, they subsidize the continued strength and expansion of capitalist enterprises that depend on their surplus labor, as well as maintain peasant relations and techniques of production. Jamaican peasant women use remittances from seasonal labor migrants to the United States to help meet the costs of reproducing their households and their social and economic conditions, without significant improvement. In addition, migrants' wives and girlfriends must increase their work on their peasant farms to compensate for the absence of male household members. This supports arguments that peasant participation in wage labor markets, a common means of integrating peasant households into wider social and economic systems, can result in the conservation of peasant techniques and relations of production, as well as the further subordination of women to household production and reproduction processes. [British West Indies, peasants, labor migration, international development, women's roles]
Oedipus and ancestors
Authors: WEINER ANNETTE B.
Published: November 2004

Oedipus in the Trobriands. MELFORD E. SPIRO.
the 19th‐century Tlingit potlatch: a new perspective
Authors: KAN SERGEI
Published: November 2004

The paper explores the meaning of the 19th‐century Tlingit memorial potlatch and explains some of the reasons for its centrality in the Tlingit sociocultural order. By drawing on existing accounts of this complex ritual and on data obtained during fieldwork in 1979–80 and 1984, the study focuses on the symbolism of ceremonial objects, ritual acts and discourse, as well as the interaction and relationships among actors. By treating the dead as active participants and by analyzing the role of the cultural values associated with them, the paper presents a more holistic interpretation of this ritual than previous works on the subject and suggests some implications of its findings for research on comparable ceremonies in other Northwest Coast societies. [mortuary ritual, symbolic analysis, potlatch, Northwest Coast, Tlingit]
finding fish: the tactics of Icelandic skippers
Authors: DURRENBERGER E. PAUL , PÁLSSON GÍSLI
Published: November 2004

We discuss the literature on decision making in fishing and describe several objective factors related to Icelandic fishing skippers' behavior regarding times and destinations of their fishing trips. We argue that the information available to them and the knowledge and theories they have developed often can lead them to several different conclusions. They therefore follow hunches and other processes of decision making. We develop a statistical analysis of data on fishing locations in order to be able to describe the behavior, but not the cognition, of these skippers. [fishing, decision making, Iceland, skipper effect, statistics]
symbolic dialects and generations of women: variation in the meaning of post‐divorce downward mobility
Authors: NEWMAN KATHERINE S.
Published: November 2004

This paper reports on a study of 30 white, middle‐class American women who have suffered severe losses in household income as the result of divorce. It argues that subjective interpretations of “downward mobility” following divorce differ for women from two different cohorts or generations. These differences are explained in terms of the dynamics of the domestic cycle that distinguish the two cohorts and in terms of variations in symbolic systems each group maintains as a result of historically specific experiences. The concept of symbolic dialects is developed to analyze these variations. The paper also identifies different adaptive strategies of adjustment to income loss and the ways these affect relations between children and divorced mothers. [American culture, symbolic analysis, income loss, life cycle, divorce, women's studies]
Walter Rodney: the historian as spokesman for historical forces
Authors: WALLERSTEIN IMMANUEL
Published: November 2004

A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545 to 1800. Oxford Studies in African Affairs.

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London and Dar es Salaam

A History of the Guyanese Working People, 7887‐1905. Johns Hopkins
keeping it oral: a Yekuana ethnology
Authors: GUSS DAVID M.
Published: November 2004

Following a brief survey of early ethnographic contact, this paper focuses on the dynamics of what Roy Wagner has termed “reverse anthropology,” the “metaphorization” of the foreign into one's own ideology. Through an analysis of various myths, the manner in which new historical realities have been incorporated into the existing symbolic structures of the Yekuana Indians of Venezuela is discussed. While attention is devoted to the transformation of the Spanish into a powerful negative symbol, it is the technology they introduced, particularly literacy, that is mainly focused upon. Issues such as cultural creativity, mythopoesis, and the relation between history and myth are all central to this discussion of oral cultures as dynamic systems of thought capable of accommodating new information and ideas.
talking about troubles: gender differences in Weyéwa speech use
Authors: KUIPERS JOEL C.
Published: November 2004

In the Weyéwa highlands of western Sumba, men and women employ a richly metaphorical, poetic form of “ritual speech” in response to sudden misfortune. Men's speech, in the context of divination, placation rites, and celebration songs, tends to be strictly parallelistic, narrative, and indirect, and concerns the continuity of the patriline. Men are regularly paid for their performances, but may be fined for errors. Women's ritual responses to misfortune consist of evocative laments and ululations. While women's speech may influence the immediate social environment, females are not fined for errors. This division of labor in speech relates systematically to the cultural notions of descent as well as the cultural construction of gender in Weyéwa society.
giant fish, giant otters, and dinosaurs: “apparently irrational beliefs” in a Chipewyan community
Authors: SHARP HENRY S.
Published: November 2004

Dan Sperber's recent formulations of Rationalism advocate a form of cognitive reductionism in the interpretation of “apparently irrational beliefs” that is contingent upon a linear model of brain functioning analogous to the operations of a computer. This paper considers several nonexistent beings among the Chipewyan, arguing that such reductionism is invalid. As shared forms, their meaning is consistently indeterminate and temporally nonlinear, invalidating the assumptions of a Rationalist approach. [Chipewyan, Northern Athapaskans, rationalist, explanation, representations]
turn‐taking, overlap, and the task at hand: ordering speaking turns in legal settings
Authors: HAYDEN ROBERT M.
Published: November 2004

Anthropologists and linguists have often noted the careful sequencing of speaking turns in Western courts, and have posited that overlapping speech in legal contexts is dysfunctional and obstructs the proceedings. Data from panchayats (councils) in India and among Indians in Fiji indicate that these functional arguments may be unfounded when, as in most legal cases, the task at hand is not one of fact‐finding, but rather of the normative evaluation of known facts. The distinction between these disparate tasks is critical for understanding legal processes, which may be distinguished through examination of the degree of sequencing of speaking turns. This narrow point has broader implications regarding the presumption that conversations and other group verbal activities are cooperative undertakings, and may aid in avoiding false comparisons of legal processes, thereby leading to a more general anthropology of law. [legal processes, argument, ethnography of speaking, India, U.S.]
the Western Woods Cree: anthropological myth and historical reality
Authors: SMITH JAMES G. E.
Published: November 2004

The Cree are believed to have been located east of Lake Winnipeg at the time of initial European contact. According to this belief, French and English guns gave them technological superiority over their neighbors to the west, permitting them to rapidly conquer the lands west to the Peace River. Accumulating archaeological, ethnological, historical, and linguistic evidence establishes Cree as the aboriginal inhabitants of the western region. The development of the ethnological myth and the historical reality are analyzed, and some theoretical implications suggested. [Cree, ethnohistory, culture change, cultural persistence, cultural ecology]
ownership at sea: fishing territories and access to sea resources
Authors: DURRENBERGER E. PAUL , PÁLSSON GÍSLI
Published: November 2004

By showing that small‐scale fishermen practice a number of forms of self‐regulation, among them some that many have referred to as “property” at sea, anthropologists have challenged the assumptions of the “tragedy of the commons” model—that unregulated harvesting of a common‐property resource is the cause of depletion of sea resources. Some have been inspired by ecological models of territoriality developed to explain the behavior of human foragers. We argue that rules of access to sea resources can only be understood in the context of the total socioeconomic system of which they form a part, including its land‐based component. We also suggest that while the concept of ownership does apply to some forms of sea tenure, the extension of the concept to include informal rules of access is obfuscatory. [fishing, ownership, sea tenure, ecology, states]
sacrifice and sacred rule in Africa
Authors: Beidelman T. O.
Published: November 2004

Sacrifice in Africa, a Structuralist Approach. LUC DE HEUSCH
the headhunter as hero: local traditions and their reinterpretation in national history
Authors: HOSKINS JANET
Published: November 2004

After independence, a search for national heroes in the Indonesian struggle against colonialism drew attention to Wona Kaka, a Sumbanese headhunter who raided Dutch forces in 1911. Praised by some as the first figure in a common national history, he is also used as a champion of local tradition who resists integration into the “imagined community” of the Indonesian state. Controversy over efforts to “call back his soul” from Java shows the ideological bases of the construction of history and clashes between nationalism and opposition to outside control. [history, headhunting, colonialism, nationalist ideology, mythology, Indonesia]
discourse genres in a theory of practice
Authors: HANKS WILLIAM F.
Published: November 2004

In order to analyze language use within a theory of social practice, it is necessary to develop a coherent approach to speech genres. This paper contributes to such an approach, by treating genres as elements of linguistic habitus, consisting of stylistic, thematic, and indexical schemata on which actors improvise in the course of linguistic production. The empirical focus is “official” Maya language documents produced in 16th‐century colonial Yucatan. The rise of novel discourse genres in colonial society was part of the emergence of new, hybrid forms of action. [Mesoamerica, Maya, discourse analysis, social practice]
cross‐currents in the theory of state formation
Authors: CARNEIRO ROBERT L.
Published: November 2004

Development and Decline: The Evolution of Sociopolitical Organization. HENRI J. M. CLAESSEN, PIETER VAN DE VELDE, and M. ESTELLIE SMITH
symbol and meaning in Nayar marriage ritual
Authors: MOORE MELINDA A.
Published: November 2004

This paper examines the three ceremonies of the Nayar marriage complex—tälikettukalyänam, tirandukalyänam, and the ceremony beginning a sambandham relationship—as rituals consisting of indigenously meaningful symbols. These rituals are shown to have significantly different yet comparable focuses, based on their treatment of persons of each gender and of the prestige and social connections of tayavads. The symbolic representation of the taravad as a house‐and‐land unit is found to be a unifying theme.
in pursuit of hegemony: representations of authority and justice in a Sri Lankan village
Authors: BROW JAMES
Published: November 2004

This paper analyzes the hegemonic state of play between the local culture of a village in Anuradhapura District, Sri Lanka, and the dominant ideology of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism. It focuses on a government housing project that was started in the village in 1978. This project provided numerous opportunities for the authoritative propagation of the dominant ideology, but the manner of its implementation violated local cultural norms and caused a serious rupture in the village community. [Sri Lanka, nationalism, kinship, politics, ideology]
locating ethnographic practice: romance, reality, and politics in the outback
Authors: MYERS FRED R.
Published: November 2004

This paper explores the contest over the meaning of the appearance of previously uncontacted Pintupi Aborigines in late 1984, arguing that an important site of Pintupi social action is transaction with the outside and their struggle to define their own framework of understanding. The event was interpreted by varying “audiences” in terms of their differing motivations and favored conventions for representing the Aborigine. I analyze my role as ethnographer, scientist, advocate, and academic and the use of ethnographic knowledge in mediating these competing discourses.
the dialogics of tribal self‐representation in Jordan
Authors: LAYNE LINDA L.
Published: November 2004

Bedouin tribes have come to symbolize Jordan's national identity. The symbolization of tribes and the tribalism discourse of which it is a part have dialogically influenced tribal self‐representations. In response to the denigration of tribal culture by its critics and the appropriation of tribal culture by the State as the keystone of Jordan's national heritage, the tribes of Jordan are reconceiving and reevaluating their culture. Two examples from the tribes of the Jordan Valley–the changing meanings associated with traditional Bedouin dresses and a local exhibition of tribal culture–illustrate the dialogic process by which the tribes of Jordan are constituting themselves in a changing world.[Jordan, tribes, nationalism, representation, dialogism]
Tappers and sappers: rubber, gold and money among the Mundurucú
Authors: BURKHALTER S. BRIAN , MURPHY ROBERT F.
Published: November 2004

The following paper presents a description and analysis of social and cultural change among the Mundurucú Indians of the upper Tapajós River, Brazil, from Robert Murphy's 1952–1953 fieldwork through the 1979–1981 field trip of Brian Burkhalter. This is a period that saw a transition from a Mundurucú trade economy in wild rubber, exchanged through a barter‐credit system, to digging, or sapping, of placer deposits of gold within the context of a cash economy. The change has had far‐reaching effects on the Mundurucú system of social relations, which has seen a further erosion of institutions based on communality, commensality, and cooperation, and a growing prevalence of monetary objectification of persons and their labors. [Mundurucú Indians, South American ethnology, social change, monetary exchange, trade]
socialist peddlers and princes in a Chinese market town
Authors: SIU HELEN F.
Published: November 2004

The problems of economic liberalization in a market town in south China raise theoretical and empirical questions concerning the role of the state at the local level, both in the past and in the present. The failure of the party‐state to disengage itself from society today is due to an administrative history to the unfolding of which the town residents have contributed their efforts. In an era of entrepreneurial vigor that is promoted officially, social life and economic choices continue to be guided by manipulations of and around bureaucratic power. State and local society have interpenetrated each other in ways that are overlooked by conceptual schemes that emphasize their mechanical opposition. What we have here is an example of “state involution,” of their inextricable interlocking.[rural China, socialist transformation, market revival, political culture, state involution, social change]
managing the heart to brighten face and soul: emotions in Balinese morality and health care
Authors: WIKAN UNNI
Published: November 2004

This article contests previous interpretations of Balinese ceremonious grace and enjoins attention to praxis to discover what meanings people themselves attribute to their acts. The theatrical imagery of “masks” and “faces” is judged to be an extraneous imposition, which conceals Balinese compelling concerns. Central, from their perspective, are notions of “managing one's heart” to “make one's face look bright and clear,” a shared testimony to what effort it takes to achieve poise and grace. I suggest that this effort derives its motivating force from fear of sorcery linked with notions of morality and health and invoke a Balinese “ethnotheory of emotion” to lay bare connections they emphasize between feeling, expression, vitality and interpersonal morality. Methodologically, I point to the importance of contextualizing interpretations and attending to everyday praxis.[Bali, ethnotheory of emotion, health care, vitality, sorcery]
toward a theory of culture and class: an Iberian example
Authors: LIPUMA EDWARD , MELTZOFF SARAH KEENE
Published: November 2004

This paper sets out an alternative theory of the relationship between culture and class, arguing that such a theory must focus on the intrinsic connection of production to the symbolic order. The proposed approach is based on, and brings together, a critical reinterpretation of Marx, the analyses by Bourdieu and others on forms of capital, the growing body of research on the processes of political encompassment, and recent work in sociolinguistics on objectification. Focusing on ethnography in Spain, particularly the transformation of the Galician fishing communities, the paper reconceptualizes the role of labor in class formation in order to generate an alternative account of class identity.[culture, class, labor, Spain, class identity]
Narrative practices and the social construction of self in childhood
Authors: MILLER PEGGY J. , POTTS RANDOLPH , FUNG HEIDI , HOOGSTRA LISA , MINTZ JUDY
Published: November 2004

Narrative, self, and face‐to‐face interaction all intersect in everyday storytelling practices in which children and caregivers make claims to personal experiences. This article examines such practices as a site for the social construction of self in early childhood. Drawing upon excerpts of narrative talk from a variety of cultural traditions in the United States, we describe the self‐relevant meanings and processes entailed in three particular narrative practices. [narrative, self, childhood socialization, language socialization, ethnopsychology]
“Everywhere we go, We are in danger”: Ti Manno and the emergence of a Haitian transnational identity
Authors: GLICK‐SCHILLER NINA , FOURON GEORGES
Published: November 2004

The lyrics of Ti Manno, a popular Haitian singer, and the short‐lived Ti Manno movement are examined in order to elucidate the factors that shape the multiple and overlapping identities of Haitian immigrants. It is argued that, as black immigrants, Haitians tend to be “transnationals” who form identities that allow them to accommodate to and resist realities of race and class in both Haiti and the United States. [transnationalism, ethnic identity, race, immigration, Haiti, nationalism, class]
the woman who didn't become a shaman
Authors: WOLF MARGERY
Published: November 2004

When a Taiwanese village woman began to display shamanistic behavior, her neighbors had to decide whether she was being called by a god to speak for him, possessed by a ghost, exploited by her husband, or crazy. Although she had many of the attributes of a successful tang‐ki, or shaman, she was finally labeled crazy because of her marginal status in the community and in the male ideology. [China, Taiwan, gender, shamans, self]
Sexual solidarity and the secrets of sight and sound: shifting gender relations and their ceremonial constitution
Authors: KRATZ CORINNE A.
Published: November 2004

This article looks at shifting gender relations among Okiek in Kenya as they have diversified their forest‐based hunting and honey‐gathering economy and examines the role of initiation ceremonies in creating and legitimating the structure of Okiek gender relations. Okiek gender relations are founded on a contradiction between complementarity at the level of household production and hierarchy in access to and control of material and social resources. Over time, that contradiction has sharpened. [cultural identity, gender relations, ceremony and ritual, Kenya, historical approaches, hunters and gatherers, Okiek]
the hajj: sacred and secular
Authors: DELANEY CAROL
Published: November 2004

A comparison of the pilgrimage to Mecca made by Turkish villagers with that made to their natal villages by Turkish immigrants in Europe argues for blurring the boundaries between the categories “sacred” and “secular” as well as those between pilgrim and migrant. It suggests that the hijra (emigration of Muhammed) and the hajj (his pilgrimage home) provide a symbolic model, unavailable for non‐Muslims, that implicitly structures and makes comprehensible the ritualistic and obligatory character of the immigrants' journey home. [Islam, symbolism, pilgrimage, Turkish peasants and immigrants]
Concepts of parenthood: the Warnock Report, the Gillick debate, and modern myths
Authors: CANNELL FENELLA
Published: November 2004

This article examines the notion of the family in the United Kingdom as a “contested domain” during a period of public reformulation of kinship ideas. In public discourse, threats to the family from two sources were perceived: new technologies of reproduction had led to the possibility of reproduction without sex; contraception prescription practices had evoked for some an image of disorderly sex without reproduction. Moving beyond simple contrasts such as commerce versus kinship, this essay examines the complex play of images in the public and media debate about English kinship. It shows that the conflicting positions examined inhabit a single ideological terrain, one in which the naturalness of the family is presupposed. Maternal nurture and bonding provide the key bio‐moral metaphor in these positions. The article contributes to recent explorations of the “discourse among discourses” in advanced capitalist societies.
Citrus and the state: factions and class formation in rural Belize
Authors: MOBERG MARK
Published: November 2004

This article examines local‐level politics and their effect on class formation in two neighboring Belizean villages. Charlestown and More Hope exhibit differing degrees of patronage‐based factionalism, which is related to the state's differential involvement in local politics. This involvement is in turn governed by the perceived political value of individual rural constituencies. The effects of factionalism on class structure in Charlestown—a community heavily contested by the governing party and its rivals—are illustrated in the context of an expanding export‐oriented citrus economy.
Scholarly consequences: current views of the conquest of the American Southwest
Authors: HURTADO ALBERT L.
Published: November 2004

Columbian Consequences. Volume 1: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives on the Spanish Borderlands West. DAVID HURST THOMAS, ed.
Reweaving the fringe: localism, tradition, and representation in British ethnography
Authors: NADEL‐KLEIN JANE
Published: November 2004

Assertions of localist identity pervade modern British society. Most ethnographic accounts look at localism primarily from the inside, but this article argues that ideas about localism must also be regarded from the outside, as part of the marginalizing dynamics of the global division of labor and the experience of class. Localism has been variously represented as romantic, heroic, or backward. Such representations indicate the ongoing negotiation of identity and status within a context of gross inequality of power. [localism, Scotland, community, identity, marginality]
Backward countryside, troubled city: French teachers' images of rural and working‐class families
Authors: REED‐DANAHAY DEBORAH , ANDERSON‐LEVITT KATHRYN M.
Published: November 2004

French primary school teachers criticize both urban working‐class and rural families, but often for different reasons. Their discourse about families reflects conflicting themes in French culture—the romanticization of rural life and the idealization of the bourgeois family model. Our analysis shows that the dominant ideology of the family in France is not coherent, and that teachers make use of ambiguous symbols and images of the family in order to privilege the “rationality” of the middle classes over the “irrationality” of the lower classes. We argue that more attention must be placed on such “everyday uses of domination” so that the contradictions and ambiguities inherent in dominant ideologies may be better understood. [education, ideology, France, social class]
Unwed mothers and household reputation in a Spanish Galician community
Authors: KELLEY HEIDI
Published: November 2004

In the coastal Galician community of Ezaro, villagers evaluate households headed by unwed mothers in apparently contradictory ways. This article seeks to explain that phenomenon by examining villagers' complex and flexible concepts of the household and of gender roles. While the high incidence of illegitimacy in coastal Galicia is distinctive, this case points out the general importance of considering alternative household ideals and, moreover, illustrates the fact that, in southern Europe at least, female reputation is not entirely dependent on women's relational ties with men. [household, gender, illegitimacy, Spain, cultural complexity]
status, property, and the value on virginity
Authors: SCHLEGEL ALICE
Published: November 2004

This article tests and confirms the proposition that a cultural value on the virginity of girls is, in large part, a function of the form of marriage transaction. The study is based on a worldwide sample of preindustrial societies and includes an interpretation of the association between several forms of marriage transaction and a prescription of or preference for premarital female virginity. Several other explanations for the value on virginity are also discussed. [virginity, bridewealth, dowry, marriage transactions]
Gender segregation and cultural constructions of sexuality in two Hispanic societies
Authors: TAGGART JAMES M.
Published: November 2004

Cáceres villagers in Spain and Sierra Nahuat villagers in Mexico separate men from women according to each culture's particular construction of sexuality. This article explains the differing degrees of gender segregation in the two groups by examining sexual beliefs expressed in popular folktales. Comparison of the Cáceres and Sierra Nahuat cases suggests that sexual beliefs justifying gender segregation have their antecedents in early childhood and develop according to the organizational requirements of the system of production. [gender segregation, sexual beliefs, family organization, Spain, Nahua of Mexico]
the politics of androgyny in Japan: sexuality and subversion in the theater and beyond
Authors: ROBERTSON JENNIFER
Published: November 2004

The gendered body is constructed and performative. Androgyny involves the scrambling of gender markers (clothes, gestures, speech patterns) in a “surface politics of the body.” I explore the politics of androgyny in Japan as they have been embodied and enacted by same‐sex theater actors and expressed in Japanese society at large. The referent of androgyny, or the body of the androgyne, has changed over the past 300 years from male to female. Since the early 20th century, androgyny has been deployed in both dominant and marginal discourses to camouflage “unconventional” female sexual choices and practices by creating the illusion of an asexual identity. It has also been evoked in reference to females who “do” both “female” and “male” gender without being constrained by either. [androgyny, gender, sexuality, theater, girls and women, Japan]
“the past is far and the future is far”: power and performance among Zulu migrant workers
Authors: ERLMANN VEIT
Published: November 2004

The study of isicathamiya, a tradition of competitive song and dance among Zulu migrant workers in South Africa, shows that performance is not necessarily a coherent expressive system with an underlying unitary organizing principle. The rich symbolic overlay in this tradition constitutes a performative, empowering strategy. It mediates migrant workers' ambiguous experience of alienation and powerless‐ness by framing social interaction in spheres of virtual time, constructing protective spaces, and metaphorically remodeling a social order beyond the given and now. This article focuses on the temporal organization of isicathamiya, the internal organization of performance groups, the complex symbolic representation of “home” in choir names, the construction of hierarchical social relationships and gender inequity in performance roles, the ritualization of regional opposition in competition, and the aesthetic expression of conflict in panegyrical song texts and sound patterns. [South Africa, Zulu, ethnomusicology, performance, music, dance]
Social conflict and political activism in the Brazilian Amazon: a case study of Gurupá
Authors: PACE RICHARD
Published: November 2004

This article examines the economic and political conditions leading to social conflict and to political activism by small farmers and rubber/timber extractors in the rural Amazonian community of Gurupá, Brazil. Gurupá's case is compared with a general “frontier scenario” in which activism is generated by severe dislocations affecting land tenure and social relations of production, as well as by violence. None of these dislocations, however, is very marked in Gurupá. Instead, conflict and activism are prodded by market‐based tensions and, to a lesser degree, political tensions. This article also describes farmer/extractor mobilization in Gurupá, with particular attention paid to the role of the progressive sector of the Catholic church. [Amazon, social conflict, small‐farmer mobilization, liberation theology, Christian Base Communities]
namechasers
Authors: JACQUEMET MARCO
Published: November 2004

The custom of nicknaming has been studied in rural communities throughout Mediterranean Europe. All reports indicate that nicknames are a prominent and critical feature of social interaction within these communities and that they function as mechanisms of social control and social integration. However, the political implications of these findings have not been explored at any broader level. Because nicknaming is a discourse practice used to construct a particular representation of the social world, it may become a mechanism for reinforcing the hegemony of nationally dominant groups over local groups that threaten the production and reproduction of established social power. This study will document how, in the early 1980s in Naples, Italy, the Italian Justice Department used its knowledge of nicknames to identify and prosecute members of an urban network allegedly involved in criminal activities. The article will thus also address the serious limitations of transforming this knowledge into an apparatus of security over large sectors of the underclasses. [political and legal anthropology, justice, naming and discourse, social identity, urban networks, Mediterranean Europe]
on the uses of relativism: fact, conjecture, and black and white histories at Colonial Williamsburg
Authors: GABLE ERIC , HANDLER RICHARD , LAWSON ANNA
Published: November 2004

At Colonial Williamsburg, the idea that histories are interpretations that change in relation to changing social circumstances competes with a notion of history as “just the facts.” The first approach, historical relativism, is more frequently enunciated in presentations of African‐American history than in presentations of the history of the founding fathers. The museum thus asserts that black history is “conjectural,” but it continues to present mainstream history as factual. Ironically, then, multiculturalism (the inclusion of a previously excluded group) and relativism work to shore up the legitimacy of mainstream history by making it seem more real and truthful than the history of other groups. [museums, African‐American history, public history, cultural relativism, multiculturalism, Colonial Williamsburg]
the hegemony of discontent
Authors: LINGER DANIEL T.
Published: November 2004

This article discusses the political significance of common sense, an issue originally broached by Gramsci. It has two objectives: first, to develop a theoretical concept of common sense that recognizes its emotional dimension; and second, to show that commonsense thought and feeling need not tranquilize a restive populace but can even incite violent, if contained, rebellion. The discussion is grounded in a detailed case study of an election and riot in the Brazilian city of São Luís. In São Luís, a profound ambivalence toward superiors pervades a common sense of power arising in the social domains of family, religion, and work. This volatile common sense of power is the cornerstone of São Luís' hegemony of discontent, a cognitive and emotional universe permitting ambitious politicians to mobilize popular outrage against rivals but thus far precluding challenges to the clientelistic structure within which political competition occurs. [Brazil, politics, hegemony, rebellion, common sense]
violence, sacrifice, and divination: giving and taking life in eastern Indonesia
Authors: HOSKINS JANET
Published: November 2004

Classical theorists have focused on the “gift of life” in sacrifice and its reinforcement of hierarchical divisions, but have paid little attention to the violent “taking of life” and the divinatory significance of the body. This case study from the Kodi people of Sumba examines what is at stake in the bloody struggle between sacrificers and their animal victims. Social relations between juniors and seniors are dramatized by the subjugation and killing of water buffalo that have been contributed by junior members. When these usually meek, docile animals suddenly turn on their slaughterers in a final desperate battle of resistance, the young men who sacrifice them identify with the animals they kill and praise their courage and manliness. The violent death of the animals is part of a contested process that moves from metonymic bonds to metaphoric transfers, taking symbolic associations and giving them a performative significance. After death, the “reading” of the liver and storing of the horns turns the buffalo into a visual medium of communication and memory, returning the “voice” that a myth says was lost at domestication. [sacrifice, violence, divination, man/animal symbolism, Indonesia]
Under a spell: the strategic use of magic in Greek Cypriot society
Authors: ARGYROU VASSOS
Published: November 2004

In Cyprus, actors who use the notion of magic to explain particular events and acts are typically labeled “superstitious” and “ignorant.” The arguments employed to support this accusation are strongly reminiscent of colonial anthropology and, like it, they function to legitimate relations of domination. Evidence from Cyprus suggests that far from signifying superstition, recourse to the notion of magic is a social strategy. Similarly, a community's acceptance of magical explanations may be construed in terms of the “performative appropriateness” of magic in Cyprus. [strategy, ideology, power relations, magic, Cyprus]
“foreign chickens” and other outsiders: gender and community in Greece
Authors: DUBISCH JILL
Published: November 2004

Anthropological discussions of gender in the Mediterranean have tended to focus on two related issues: the control of female sexuality, particularly in terms of concepts of “honor and shame,” and women's power and its relationship to the public and private spheres of community life. This article seeks to move beyond these issues to a broader examination of gender ideology. It suggests that gender needs to be seen in a shifting context of boundaries, representations, and conflicts at the domestic, communal, and even national level. Using data from a Greek village, the article explores women's positions as representations of both “inside” and “outside” and relates such representations to ongoing discourses about personal, village, and national identities. [gender, women's roles, Greece, the Mediterranean, social boundaries]