bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
production functions and decision models: complementary models
Authors: GLADWIN CHRISTINA H.
Published: November 2004

Economists use the maximization assumption to explain changes in behavior, such as the adoption of new farming practices in Puebla, Mexico. But this tests the maximization assumption itself and does not test models of farmers' actual decisions. Better explanation results from using natural decision models of the adoption process. Economic models, such as the production function, may be used to show the efficiency of practices after adoption decisions have been made.
population density in cross‐cultural perspective
Authors: LEVINSON DAVID
Published: November 2004

This paper reports the results of a holocultural study of the relationship between population density and human behavior. The findings indicate that high levels of density are not a cause of stress in humans. Crowding rarely leads to pathological behavior or the mistreatment of children in a sample of fifty nonliterate societies. Specific statistical tests are used to rule out the possibility that the results of this study can be attributed to methodological shortcomings.
heroes and Hebrews: the priest in the promised land
Authors: MARSHALL ROBERT C.
Published: November 2004

Methods and results of the structural study of myth and Old Testament source and textual criticism are applied in this analysis of the myth of Moses. The context of the myth is first traced out through the historical circumstances conditioning the myth's textual development, and the major contradiction underlying the myth is identified. The myth is then shown to have served as a model through which the Israelites could resolve their conflicting political and religious aspirations through the details of Moses' life as presented in the myth.
the moral imagination of the Kaguru: some thoughts on tricksters, translation and comparative analysis
Authors: BEIDELMAN T. O.
Published: November 2004

This essay questions some of the ways anthropologists employ the comparative method to understand the meaning of collective representations. To illustrate the argument, the category of trickster is examined for one East African people. Such anomalous figures serve didactically to stimulate the imagination which is essentially involved in moral rather than epistemological questions. It is argued that order and disorder, and indeed meaning, can be safely analyzed sociologically only within the terms of a particular system of beliefs and symbols, consequently posing serious problems for comparative study. [East Africa, Kaguru, trickster, epistemology, symbolism, comparative method]
the Anggor bowman: ritual and society in Melanesia
Authors: HUBER PETER B.
Published: November 2004

Throughout Melanesia, the mobilization of communities focuses on productions which may be broadly classed as “ritual events.” In a significant sense, such events generate society, and structure it according to the conceptual order in which they are grounded. This point of view is illustrated in the analysis of Anggor pig hunting as a ritual event which structures society in a specifically Anggor way; it suggests a comparative sociology of Melanesia grounded in a comparison of mobilizing events rather than of jural norms. [ritual, Melanesia, social organization, hunting, cosmology, Big Men, symbolism]
a model of illness treatment decisions in a Tarascan town
Authors: YOUNG JAMES C.
Published: November 2004

This paper describes the rationale underlying illness treatment decisions in a rural Tarascan community in west‐central Mexico. The focus is the development and verification of a formal model of treatment choice. The model, based on cognitive‐ethnographic methods, describes the principal kinds of information involved in treatment decisions and the process whereby actors use this information in selecting among the available treatment alternatives. Applied to test data on 323 actual illness episodes, the model correctly accounts for 91 percent of the treatment choices made. The relationship of the model to other recent work on decision making in natural situations and the implications of these findings for the study of medical choice in pluralistic settings are discussed. [decision making, hierarchical choice, illness treatment, Mexican ethnomedicine, Tarascans]
Ainu illness and healing: a symbolic interpretation
Authors: OHNUKI‐TIERNEY EMIKO
Published: November 2004

Ainu “metaphysical illnesses” are characterized by the presence of spiritual beings such as demons or deities in illness causation or aggravation, or as a source of curing power. This paper offers a symbolic interpretation of Ainu metaphysical illnesses by reference to the basic cognitive structure of Ainu medical epistemology, which is founded upon sacred‐profane dyads within a “social network” of cosmic organization. Pathogenic demons represent intrinsic, anarchic, and permanent structural anomalies. They contrast with extrinsic, creative, temporary cosmic disjunctions of the universe, which also cause illnesses. Anarchic anomalies of demons are differentiated from creative anomalies of mediation symbols, as embodied in the shaman's spirits. The power to counterattack structural anomalies (and to cure patients) derives from symbolism of the profane, which is tapped by nonformalized power of shamans and women in Ainu society. [symbolic anthropology, anomaly and mediation, ethnomedicine, women, Ainu]
on cultural schemata
Authors: RICE G. ELIZABETH
Published: November 2004

The notion of a schema as a cognitive construct which combines the structural and processing aspects of knowledge is undergoing intensive research in the new interdisciplinary field of cognitive science that brings together cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. The utility of the schema concept for cognitive anthropology is demonstrated through a controlled experimental investigation of the role of cultural schemata in story comprehension and recall. [cognitive anthropology, cognitive science, schemata, story comprehension, story recall]
Declining subcaste endogamy In India: the Hyderabad Kayasths, 1900‐75
Authors: LEONARD KAREN , WELLER SUSAN
Published: November 2004

This paper explores the declining endogamy of the Kayasth subcastes of Hyderabad, India, by analyzing patterns of endogamous and exogamous marriages from 1900 to 1975. The data are divided into three time periods: 1900‐25, 1926‐50 and 1951‐75. So that marriages can be analyzed in terms of preference or pattern, we have removed the effects of unequal population sizes via a normalization technique (Romney 1971). Marriage choice is expressed by using an odds‐ratio. Exogamous marriage patterns are analyzed using this index of choice between each pair of subcastes for each time period. The results indicate a striking change in marriage preferences over the three time periods. The Kayasths move from a highly endogamous system to one that is only moderately endogamous. [normalization technique, endogamy, subcastes, Kayasth, Hyderabad, India]
Straight sister‐exchange and the transition from elementary to complex structures
Authors: MULLER JEAN‐CLAUDE
Published: November 2004

Through an examination of exclusive straight sister‐exchange in which cross‐cousin marriage at the next generation is explicitly forbidden, it is demonstrated that the transition from elementary to complex structures can be effected differently from the way deduced by Claude Levi‐Strauss. Levi‐Strauss' evolutionary scheme is only one of several possibilities of passing from elementary to complex structures. Other possibilities are suggested, and the idea of a necessary evolutionary process is rejected. [sister‐exchange, cross‐cousin marriage, kinship theory, elementary structures, complex structures, bridewealth]
Never give a shepherd an even break: class and labor among the Komachi
Authors: BRADBURD DANIEL A.
Published: November 2004

Problems inherent in the use of hired shepherds by Middle Eastern nomadic pastoralists have been generally overlooked. This paper examines this question and argues that, at least among the Komachi of Kerman, Iran, the employment of shepherds by nomads marks the division of tribal society into classes which parallels the class structure of capitalist societies. The paper then examines the bases and implications of this aspect of Komachi society in terms of differential access to basic resources, conflict, alienation, and ideological palliatives. Through the penetration of an external capitalist market, Komachi shepherds have come to embody the contradictions of the Komachi social formation best described as “ambulatory peasantry.” [Middle East, pastoralism, economic anthropology]
“We are born in each others' houses”: communal and patrilineal ideologies in Druze Village religion and social structure
Authors: OPPENHEIMER JONATHAN W. S.
Published: November 2004

Druze religion establishes an ideological representation of social reproduction in terms of Druze unity, religious initiation, the differential religious statuses of young men and old men and of men and women, and also in terms of a doctrine of transmigration of souls. This ideology is contradicted by political conflict which has its own ideological representation in patrilineal particularism. The paper considers the competition between these ideologies at the level of the village and in the relationship between the Druze people and the Israeli state. [Middle East religions, ideology and social structure, ethnicity, Druze religion, Palestinians, age and gender roles]
the transformation of agrarian patron‐client relations: illustrations from India
Authors: MICHIE BARRY H.
Published: November 2004

A multipurpose patron‐client system vertically integrates people of disparate status, wealth, and power within an autonomous local polity and subsistence economy. It is well documented that the demise of this system is associated with the penetration of national and state institutions such as competitive politics and a commercial economy. The problem remains, however, of explaining why a multipurpose patron‐client system is incompatible with these new circumstances. The necessity of the demise of such a form and its replacement with some other form are explained in this paper in terms of the changing properties and attendant shifts in substantive logic, rationale, and imperatives of the politicoeconomic system on which the patron‐client system is based.
carving up the profits: apprenticeship and structural flexibility in a contemporary African craft market
Authors: SILVER HARRY R.
Published: November 2004

African apprentice workgroups have structural limitations at the level of the individual unit which hinder the elasticity of their response to market fluctuations. Substantivists have noted that analysis of these institutions as classic Western “enterprises” may therefore be misleading. However, their divergence from this model need not totally invalidate examination of such workgroups from a formalist perspective. Under the guidance of entrepreneurs, individual units may be temporarily integrated into broader structural networks which are sensitive to market demands. Hence, a melding of economic perspectives may prove most fruitful in analyzing such institutions. [economics, social organization, culture change, art]
sex, money, and the status of women in aboriginal south Bougainville
Authors: NASH JILL
Published: November 2004

Comparison of three societies of aboriginal south Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, shows an increasing exchange value placed on the sexual services of women, as seen in marriage exchanges, fines for adultery and fornication, gifts between lovers, and prostitution. This increase is in direct relation to the development and use of general‐purpose money. Implications for the comparative status of women and the evolution of society are noted. [Bougainville, status of women, economics of sex, social evolution, money]
the socioeconomic determinants of political leadership in a Tojolabal Maya community
Authors: THOMAS JOHN S.
Published: November 2004

Several Mesoamerican researchers postulate control of material and social resources as key determinants of political leadership in peasant communities, yet few objectively demonstrate this relationship. This paper uses data from a Tojolabal Maya community in Chiapas, Mexico, to quantify and test the relation between control of material and social resources and leadership. Preliminary results suggest that individuals who control more resources in the community tend to be political leaders. Further, of the variables explored, control of wealth resources, family size, and involvement in friendship networks appear crucial in predicting leadership. These findings provide support for subjective interpretations made by others on the determinants of leadership in Mesoamerica. A number of social networks are analyzed and two methods for determining involvement are employed. [centrality, leadership, political power, social network, Tojolabal Maya]
demographic constraints on caste: a Fiji Indian example
Authors: BROWN CAROLYN HENNING
Published: November 2004

It is usually assumed that caste, and with it caste‐endogamous marriage, is disappearing in overseas Indian communities. This paper reexamines some previously published data on endogamous marriage among Indians in Fiji in an effort to determine whether endogamy is truiy disappearing. Results of this study show that, as caste populations increase, so does the frequency of endogamy. These facts are discussed in terms of the structural theory of caste, particularly with regard to the relation between a structure of ideas and the material conditions of existence which determine the expression of the structure. The data also suggest that the desire for a larger subgroup population to meet ideal marriage rules may be an incentive to population growth, and therefore a matter of interest to those concerned with population dynamics and population control. [marriage, overseas Indians, demography, caste theory, structuralism]
leatherworkers and love potions
Authors: LINDHOLM CHARLES
Published: November 2004

The Pukhtun of Swat, North Pakistan, believe that the water used to wash the corpse of a leatherworker makes an effective love potion. To explain this belief, the Swati social structure is outlined and the symbolic role of the leatherworker, with his complementary opposite, the barber, is elucidated. Through a series of transformations, the love potion is understood within a consistent symbolic framework. [symbolic anthropology, structural analysis, sexual antagonism, role theory, Middle Eastern social organization]
consensus and variation in the interpretation of religious symbolism: A Swedish example
Authors: STROMBERG PETER
Published: November 2004

In this study of religious symbolism among a group of Swedish Protestants, three church members are shown to attribute different meanings to certain of the group's key symbols. This raises the twofold problem of the nature of the consensus constituting the group and whether key symbols can have any uniform influence on group members' behavior when the latter hold different views about the meaning of the symbols. This analysis proposes a solution to both of these problems based on the discovery of a formal structural similarity among belief systems that are substantively different. Informants agree on the meaningfulness, if not the meaning, of key symbols. Although they see that meaningfulness as being constituted in different ways, they trace the consequences of the symbols to a similar end, that of “inner‐worldly” activism[symbolic anthropology, anthropology of religion, Christian symbolism, Protestant religious groups]
toward a semiotics of “purity” and “pollution” in India
Authors: BEAN SUSAN S.
Published: November 2004

In spite of the fact that “purity” and “pollution” have been given a prominence in the study of Indian society unequaled by any other indigenous concepts, little attention has been paid to the explication of the content and structure of these as Indian conceptual categories. This paper is intended as a contribution to that explication and an argument for the central place of linguistic analyses in it. The paper contains a structural semantic analysis of the language of “purity” and “pollution” in Kannada and suggests a semiotic framework for integrating that analysis with others, both linguistic and nonlinguistic. [India, purity and pollution, ethnographic semantics, semiotics]
women and the emerging family on the Israeli kibbutz
Authors: PARKER SEYMOUR , PARKER HILDA
Published: November 2004

Considerable speculation and controversy have arisen in the recent literature about the changing role of women and family on the Israeli kibbutz. A prevailing view is that the emerging family and the decline of a collectivist system of child socialization constitute an index of the kibbutz woman's “retreat” to a more conventional feminine role. The authors of this paper lived in a kibbutz for a period of about four months, during which time they were able to utilize questionnaire and participant‐observation methods to learn more about the underlying meaning of recent changes in the family and the role of the kibbutz woman. Our data indicate that emerging familism is not exclusively a female phenomenon; both sexes are involved. Furthermore, viewed in the context of kibbutz life, this phenomenon does not indicate a reversion to a traditional Western female role, [women's studies, Israeli kibbutz, gender status, collective communities]
female altruism reconsidered: the Virgin Mary as economic woman
Authors: BROWNER CAROLE , LEWIN ELLEN
Published: November 2004

Standard ethnographic descriptions of Latin American women indicate that the wife‐mother role complex is a uniform entity despite the variety of socioeconomic settings in which it is found. Data collected in Cali, Colombia, and San Francisco, California, suggest clear differences in the way working‐class Latin American women perform this common role. Caleñas emphasize the dimension of wife and the importance of conjugal affiliation; they pay relatively less attention to ties with children. By contrast, San Francisco Latinas devote themselves to the maternal role and consider relations with husbands to be of secondary significance. These differences will be shown to arise from varying economic and social conditions present in the two settings. [motherhood, women's roles, economic strategies, Colombia, Latino immigrants, urban anthropology]
the domain of emotion words on Ifaluk
Authors: LUTZ CATHERINE
Published: November 2004

The cognitive organization of the domain of emotion words on the island of Ifaluk is examined. Native speakers define and sort emotion words based on the situation in which the relevant emotion typically occurs. English emotion words, by contrast, are usually organized on physiological principles. Universal dimensions of meaning found in other studies of psychological language and culture are also found here, however, and these dimensions, being themselves multidimensional, are interpreted in light of the Ifalukian ethos, [cognitive anthropology, emotion, ethnopsychology, psychological anthropology, Ifaluk]
Tetzcoco in the early 16th century: the state, the city, and the calpolli
Authors: HICKS FREDERIC
Published: November 2004

Examination of the internal structure and system of tribute in the pre‐Hispanic city of Tetzcoco, Mexico, indicates that the city contained several kinds of territorial groupings that received the services of commoners. These commoners were organized into calpolli, which were basically groups with common tributary obligations. They gave service either in food production, unskilled labor, or specialized skilled work, but it was usually part‐time, compensated with lands for subsistence, and this gave the city a dispersed layout. [Aztec, calpulli, craft specialization, tribute, urbanism]
Economic decision making in a public marketplace
Authors: PLATTNER STUART
Published: November 2004

The free competition, flow of information, and open entry of public produce marketplaces should enforce maximal economic efficiency of firms. Economic anthropologists have insisted for years that regular, customary relations between economic actors are as important as efficiency. Custom and efficiency in the economic behavior of family‐firm produce merchants in an urban, public produce marketplace in St. Louis, Missouri, are analyzed using multiple regressions. Factors representing economic custom are strongly significant in explaining gross sales. The economic anthropological position is supported using econometric data drawn from a contemporary capitalist marketplace. [economics, markets, decision making, quantitative methods, urban United States]
models of caste and the left‐hand division in South India
Authors: MINES MATTISON
Published: November 2004

Historically, castes in South India were divided into right‐hand and left‐hand sections. This paper is an examination of the KaikkooLars, a caste of weaver merchants belonging to the left‐hand section. In many features this caste is distinctive, the source of its uniqueness being the caste's social and economic marginality that allows its members a degree of separateness from the agrarian‐based village. The implications of this separateness for theories of caste are explored. It is argued that because anthropologists have concentrated their research on the agrarian village, they have widely overlooked mercantilism as a locus of power in rural India. [caste, right‐hand/left‐hand division, dual organization, symbolism, mercantilism, India]
technical innovation in the New England fin‐fishing industry: an examination of the Downs and Mohr hypothesis
Authors: ACHESON JAMES M. , REIDMAN ROBERT
Published: November 2004

Studies of the diffusion of innovations have produced very inconsistent results. Downs and Mohr state that the problem lies in the way innovation is conceived and argue that the diffusion of innovations can only be understood by considering the match, or compatability, between the innovations and their potential adopters, and not by studying the innovations or adopters separately and out of context. Our study of the diffusion of 18 technical innovations in the New England fin‐fishery supports this viewpoint. Most of the data from our study make no sense except in terms of the Downs and Mohr hypothesis. We reach two conclusions: (1) there is no one group of fishermen who is more prone to adopt these innovations; and (2) the ethnography and a regression analysis indicate that innovations are adopted when they match the needs of the adopter. Downs and Mohr also recommend a methodology that leads to a general model of innovation. Our study indicates that their suggested methodology is flawed. [innovation, fishing, New England, diffusion, methodology]
a structural semantic analysis of Bear Lake Athapaskan kinship classification
Authors: RUSHFORTH SCOTT
Published: November 2004

Among the Bear Lake Athapaskan‐speaking Indians of Canada's Northwest Territories, kinship principles were in the past, and continue to be, among the most important features of social organization. To understand these principles it is first necessary to analyze the Bear Lake system of kinship classification — the description of which requires use of structural semantic analysis. Such a description is productive and accounts for the ability of Bear Lakers to appropriately classify an indefinite number of individuals. [Athapaskan, kinship, structural semantics]
Something borrowed: wedding cakes as symbols in modern Japan
Authors: EDWARDS WALTER
Published: November 2004

The incorporation of new—and especially borrowed—elements into existing rituals presents a problem for symbolic analysis: if the additions are to be understood as meaningful rather than random, it must be shown that the incorporated element has been coherently integrated into the already existing system of symbolic meanings. In order to understand one example of a borrowed element, the Western‐style wedding cake in modern Japanese weddings, this paper begins with an examination of the symbolic distinctions operative in a variety of contexts of Japanese culture. It concludes that the cake can be seen as coherently integrated in terms of these distinctions into the wedding ritual, as a symbol of fertility, [symbolic anthropology, semiotics, marriage rites, ritual change, Japan]
“comets importing change of Times and States”: ephemerae and process among the Tabwa of Zaire
Authors: ROBERTS ALLEN F.
Published: November 2004

The study of spectacular 19th‐century comets, as perceived by the Tabwa of Zaire, provides an opportunity to consider the process of symbolization. Firsthand written accounts discovered in archives are complemented by present‐day informants' exegeses. The comet was felt to augur—perhaps to cause—great misfortune. Its symbolism is one of transition and transformation; the prosopopoeic comet was made the subject of allegory, a story form in which multiplicity of interpretive levels allows narrators and audience to reflect upon social analogies of the “pristine volitility and freedom” and the “pure possibility” the apparition was taken to represent. The discussion leads to an understanding of why, as one very old man had it, the comet was Jesus bringing Europeans the astounding technology and other powers that allowed them to conquer and dominate the Tabwa with such ease. No single interpretation of great changes of Times and States suffices to capture them for the apprehension of all people at all times; so must the symbols marking the advent of transition and transformation be multireferential as the creative impulse is given play. [non‐Western astronomy, symbolic analysis, religious change, cosmology, Tabwa, southeastern Zaire]
a trinity of Christs: cultic processes in Andean Catholicism
Authors: SALLNOW M. J.
Published: November 2004

This article uses historical and contemporary ethnographic data to elucidate the patterns of religious processes in the central Andes. It focuses on three neighboring Catholic shrines in a Peruvian rural locality. The interrelated devotional histories of these shrines are shown to exemplify processes evident in both the precontact and postcontact epochs whereby popular cults, patterned according to an indigenous Andean cosmology, are variously officialized, stifled, or controlled by emergent cultural elites. [Peru, Andes, Quechua, Catholicism, religious change]
taskonomy: a practical approach to knowledge structures
Authors: DOUGHERTY JANET W. D. , KELLER CHARLES M.
Published: November 2004

The New Ethnography spawned studies in cognition focusing on reference, naming, and the relations among labeled categories. Building on this research, we examine the connections between labeled categories and everyday behavior. In day‐to‐day situations, standard labeled segregates are often aspects of taken‐for‐granted knowledge. A task at hand differentially focuses an individual's awareness as strategies for action in the situation are constructed. Knowledge is thus selectively focused and organized in response to constraints of the task. The basic units in this organization are the notions (often unlabeled) of particular processes and things and the complexes of relevant features that people focus on. These units and their interrelations are flexible constructs subject to continual modification as the task at hand changes, [ethnomethodology, ethno‐science, preindustrial technology, New Ethnography, cognition]
“instigating”: storytelling as social process
Authors: GOODWIN MARJORIE HARNESS
Published: November 2004

This paper investigates a particular form of storytelling, instigating, that occurs within a gossip‐dispute activity called “he‐said‐she‐said.” Through the storytelling a party is informed about another person's having committed the offense of talking about her behind her back. The larger framework of the dispute provides organization for the storytelling process in several ways: (1) it provides structure for the cited characters and their activities within the story; (2) it influences the types of analysis recipients must engage in to appropriately understand the story; (3) it makes relevant specific types of next moves by recipients: for example, evaluations of the offending party's actions during the story, pledges to future courses of action near the story's ending, and rehearsals of future events at story completion and upon subsequent retellings. [conversation analysis, social organization, narrative, gossip, situational analysis, Black English Vernacular]
hermeneutics and world construction in Maranao disputing
Authors: BENTLEY G. CARTER
Published: November 2004

Recent studies have analyzed disputing and dispute resolution as cultural processes, focusing on meaning construction and its relation to constitutive principles of social structure. Ricoeur's text model provides a methodological basis for such analysis. According to this model, the meaning appropriated from texts (case accounts) depends on culturally specific assumptions about subjectivity (being in the world), referentiality (truth and truthfinding), and interlocution (third‐party functions and authority). Description of these assumptions, in their dialectical relation to the substantive content of case account's, allows partial characterization of the Maranao “horizon” or “habitus,” the preconscious basis for Maranao perception and experience. The described features of Maranao habitus are explained, using the theory of practice, by topographic and ecological constraints on accumulation of economic and political power. [interpretive anthropology, disputing and dispute resolution, Philippines]
universals and rule options in kinship terminology: a synthesis of three formal approaches
Authors: WOOLFORD ELLEN
Published: November 2004

Extension rules, relational analysis, and componential analysis are integrated into a new generative model of kinship terminology focusing on the universal aspects of kin‐term systems. Widely divergent consanguineal systems (Crow‐Omaha, Dravidian, Iroquois, and Eskimo) are shown to share a substantial core of rules and to display virtually identical relationships between superordinate categories. Tax's rule of uniform reciprocals applies without exception at the proper level of abstraction. Primary differences between systems, such as cross! parallel phenomena, follow from the interaction of universal rules with a small number of rule options. [kinship terminology, universals, generative model, extension rules, relational analysis, componential analysis]
kin classification as social structure: the Ambrym case
Authors: SCHEFFLER H. W.
Published: November 2004

Anthropologists have tended to regard systems of kin classification as dependent structures, shaped primarily by the group structures of societies. It is suggested here that in some instances they shape both interpersonal and intergroup relations. The kinship systems of Ambrym Island (in the former New Hebrides), once described as the terminologies of six‐class systems of marriage regulation, are reexamined; it is shown how they structure marriage possibilities, both between individuals and between lineages. [Ambrym, kin classification, marriage‐class systems]
rationalization and nostalgia: cultural dynamics of new middle‐class Japan
Authors: KELLY WILLIAM W.
Published: November 2004

In the postwar decades, a cultural construction of Japan as a “New Middle Class” society has gained a broad orienting force in the society. New typifications of work, family, and society have provided frames of reference for the redefinition and reorganization of everyday routines. This paper illustrates how the people of one region have come to terms with such typifications in the midst of state programs for the rationalization of its agriculture and national media efforts to sentimentalize its regional culture. Rationalization and nostalgia are shown to reveal fundamental ambivalences in and about the lifeways of contemporary japan.
tradition against itself
Authors: INDEN RONALD
Published: November 2004

The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship and Society. J. C. HEESTERMAN.
ancestors and protestants: religious coexistence in the social field of a Zambian community
Authors: BOND GEORGE C.
Published: November 2004

This essay explores the coexistence of the ancestor cult and the Presbyterian Free Church as constituent elements of the ritual and ideological field of Yombe society in northern Zambia. It takes the position that these two religious expressions may be appropriate to the experiences, consciousness, and actions of individuals as they pursue personal interests and social goals in situations of rapid social change. The uneven penetration of capitalism is taken as conducive to ritual coexistence and as providing the setting for exploring changing patterns of gender relations and stratification in the rural community of Uyombe.
reflections on Christianity in China
Authors: FRIED MORTON H.
Published: November 2004

Although Christian missions were present in China by A.D. 671 and mission‐introduced medical and educational institutions have flourished, Christianity has never gained an important place in Chinese religious life. This essay reflects upon the long‐term failure of Christianity to adapt to local beliefs and contexts (in contrast to Buddhism), and suggests that the future of Christianity in China is no more secure than its past.
the production of possession: spirits and the multinational corporation in Malaysia
Authors: ONG AIHWA
Published: November 2004

This essay explores different interpretations of spirit possession episodes in multinational factories based in Malaysia. Drawing on fieldwork data and secondary sources, it deciphers the cryptic language of Malay spirit possession in relation to gender symbolism, social boundaries, and morality. This interpretation is contrasted to the corporate view that, by using the cosmopolitan medical model, converts workers into patients. By presenting these divergent views of spirit possession in factory settings, the essay seeks to illuminate general questions regarding the connections among affliction, cultural experience, and hegemony in the process of social change. [Malay culture, industrial capitalism, spirit possession, gender, symbolic analysis, medical anthropology, hegemonic discourse, world system]
the romance of resistance: tracing transformations of power through Bedouin women
Authors: ABU‐LUGHOD LILA
Published: November 2004

Resistance has become in recent years a popular focus for work in the human sciences. Despite the theoretical sophistication of many anthropological and historical studies of everyday resistance, there remains a tendency to romanticize it. I argue instead that resistance should be used as a diagnostic of power, and I show what the forms of Awlad ‘Ali Bedouin women's resistance can reveal about the historically changing relations of power in which they are enmeshed as they become increasingly incorporated into the Egyptian state and economy. [resistance, power, Bedouins, women, the state, Egypt]
cancer, control, and causality: talking about cancer in a working‐class community
Authors: BALSHEM MARTHA
Published: November 2004

This article examines discourse between health educators and residents of a white, inner‐city, working‐class community, a high cancer risk area targeted for a cancer education project. The community's rejection of project messages advising changes in lifestyle is described as a form of resistance. Through rhetoric about fate and cancer, community residents refuse science the power to define the terms of the discourse, and articulate a critique connecting scientific authority to wider contexts of social class and access to power and legitimacy.
“toiling ingenuity”: food regulation in Britain and Nigeria
Authors: GUYER JANE I.
Published: November 2004

The article addresses the history of British and Nigerian food regulation as an example of the logic of regulatory processes in the modern history of metropolitan, colonial, and postcolonial countries. I argue that three relatively internally coherent models of regulation have been developed in Britain and that a fourth is under current construction. These models have replaced one another, but incompletely, in the metropolitan repertoire. The previous models remain available, and groups within the metropolis advocate their mobilization with respect to other populations. In the struggle over implementation, the models are replicated only partially, resulting in apparently anomalous dynamics. Nigeria is used as an example. The article advocates the anthropological study of formal sector regulation as one of the most important political processes in the current world. [state regulation, food systems, colonialism, global processes, Nigeria]
male gender and rituals of resistance in the Palestinian intifada: a cultural politics of violence
Authors: PETEET JULIE
Published: November 2004

This article examines ritualized inscriptions of bodily violence upon Palestinian male youths in the occupied territories. It argues that beatings and detention are construed as rites of passage into manhood. Bodily violence is crucial in the construction of a moral self among its recipients, who are enabled to juxtapose their own cultural categories of manhood and morality to those of a foreign power. Ritual as a transformative experience foregrounds a political agency designed to reverse relations of domination between occupied and occupier. Simultaneously, it both reaffirms and transforms internal Palestinian forms of domination. [Middle East, masculinity, ritual performance, violence, body, construction of self]
brother/sister relationships: connectivity, love, and power in the reproduction of patriarchy in Lebanon
Authors: JOSEPH SUAD
Published: November 2004

The Arab brother/sister relationship has been overlooked, romanticized, or seen as an extension of the patriarchal father/daughter relationship. The central role of the brother/sister relationship in the reproduction of Arab patriarchy, as a result, has been missed, misconstructed, or underestimated. This article argues that Arab brothers and sisters in Borj Hammoud, Lebanon, developed connective relationships based on love and nurturance, while paradoxically also based on power and violence. These dynamics were manifested psychodynamically, social structurally, and culturally. Connectivity, love, and power underwrote the central role played by the brother/sister relationship in the reproduction of Arab patriarchy, [family culture, psychodynamics and social structure, gender, urban working class, Lebanon]
the politics of appropriateness and appropriation: recontextualizing women's dance in urban Senegal
Authors: HEATH DEBORAH
Published: November 2004

Recontextualized in various settings, the dances and poems that women perform in urban Senegal reveal a struggle over shifting notions of appropriateness. Set apart from everyday practice, they are occasions for reflexive awareness, not only for dancers and their audiences, but also for the ethnographer, particularly in the role of participant‐performer. [dance, gender, performance, hegemony, reflexivity, Senegal]
rethinking resistance: dialogics of “disaffection” in colonial Fiji
Authors: KAPLAN MARTHA , KELLY JOHN D.
Published: November 2004

In a colonial society of indigenous Fijian Pacific islanders, colonizing British, and indentured South Asian “coolies,” the terms “loyalty” and “disaffection” were a crucial locus of debate. This article examines important moments of dialogue in Fiji's colonial history, not to reveal the unified logic of an enduring British hegemony, nor to find the agency of the colonized in “resistance,” but to discover the relations of domination actually made and contested. Contests for power in postcolonial Fiji continue a dialogue about chiefship and custom, labor and profit, citizenship, and, above all, loyalty and disaffection, [colonialism, dialogics, Fiji Islands, hegemony, resistance, Overseas Indians]
social change and the creation of underdevelopment: a Northwest Coast case
Authors: MCDONALD JAMES A.
Published: November 2004

The situation of many aboriginal peoples in Canada manifests similarities to the dependency exhibited in the underdeveloped world. This article examines changing relations of production, to outline the evolution of the articulation of a northwest coast Tsimshian community with the world economy. The Tsimshians participated in several relations of production, including those represented by various circuits of capital, to develop the Tsimshian economic formation, creating a dependency at the same time as the economic conditions were being appropriated into the emerging capitalist economic formation, out of the control of the Tsimshians and stifling their further development, [social change, development, dependency, Northwest Coast, Tsimshian]
nonunilinear descent groups in the plateau culture area
Authors: ACKERMAN LILLIAN A.
Published: November 2004

Evidence is presented that nonunilinear descent groups existed in the traditional Plateau Culture Area and still persist today. Each extended family traces itself through either males or females back to a founding ancestor, making such a group a nonunilinear descent group. This is noteworthy because most such descent groups have been identified among horticulturalists, whereas traditional Plateau societies had a fishing‐gathering‐hunting economy. [Plateau, nonunilinear descent groups, extended families, land tenure, naming, family historians]
dismembering Yugoslavia: nationalist ideologies and the symbolic revival of genocide
Authors: DENICH BETTE
Published: November 2004

The violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia has added the term “ethnic cleansing” to the global vocabulary. This article interprets the ideological and historical context within which these practices erupted, focusing on the symbolic dynamics of genocide as a critical underlying issue in the ethnic war that began in Croatia in 1991, spreading to Bosnia‐Herzegovina the following year. The World War II Croatian state's extermination policy against Serbs is examined in terms of the history and structural logic of mutually exclusive 19th‐century Serbian and Croatian nation‐state ideologies. The post‐Titoist revival of these ideologies was involved with symbolic revivals of both the wartime Croatian state and the memory of genocide, but with contrary meanings for Serbs and Croats. The “forgotten” burial sites of massacre victims provided a powerful reservoir of traumatic memory, subject to manipulation on the part of all who seized the “disjunctive moment” to reconstitute the state according to nationalist definitions. [nationalist ideology, genocide, ethnic conflict, cultural memory, Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia]
cultural difference and the density of objects
Authors: WEINER ANNETTE B.
Published: November 2004

1993 American Ethnological Society Distinguished Lecture, presented at the spring meeting, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Writing History into the Landscape: Space, Myth, and Ritual in Contemporary Amazonia
Authors: Santos‐Granero Fernando
Published: November 2004

Like members of most nonliterate societies, the Yanesha preserve historical memory through narrative and performative practices such as myths, traditions, reminiscences, rituals, and body practices. Among the Yanesha, however, these coalesce into a major inscribing practice, that of "writing" history into the landscape. I contend that "topographic writing" constitutes a protowriting system based on "topograms"—individual elements of the landscape imbued with historical significance through myth and ritual. When combined in sequential or nonsequential ways, these elements behave as "topographs" (units of a longer narrative). Through this mnemonic device the Yanesha have preserved not only the memory of the mythical consecration of their traditional territory, but also that of its despoliation and desecration in more recent times, [history, myth, ritual, landscape, memory, protowriting systems, Amazonia]
Allusions to Ancestral Impropriety: Understandings of Arthritis and Rheumatism in the Contemporary Navajo World
Authors: Schwarz Maureen Trudelle
Published: November 2004

Navajo people frequently attribute occurrences of arthritis and rheumatism to inappropriate contact with menstruating women or menstrual blood. During ethnographic interviews about rules governing contact with various types of blood, Navajo consultants often explained these norms with allusions to key portions of the Navajo oral histories. The connections made by Navajo consultants in these contexts suggest that, like many other diseases, afflictions such as arthritis and rheumatism are metaphorically linked to ancestral impropriety or immorality. That is, particular actions on the part of ancestors of the Nihookáá Dine'é (Earth Surface People) are referenced as the precedent for considering certain types of menstrual and game animal blood dangerous to the health and well‐being of contemporary Navajo people. in exploring the means by which these types of blood have come to carry such significance in the Navajo world, I contribute to disciplinary concerns about more effective ways to study so‐called menstrual taboos and demonstrate how language, bodily substances, bodily ills, human agency, and ancestral actions intertwine. [Native Americans, Navajo, body, illness, menstruation, sexuality, arthritis/ rheumatism]
'A Native Man Is Still a Man': A Case Study of Intercultural Participation in Social Movements
Authors: Landsman Gail , Krasniewicz Louise
Published: November 2004

A case study of a “failed interaction” between a Mohawk Indian women's health group and the Women's Peace Encampment in upstate New York is presented. We focus on a decision‐making process that, despite one group's professed interests, nevertheless served to hinder intercultural participation in a social movement We argue for events as the appropriate unit of analysis in the study of complex societies, and suggest that meanings, related to each other as components of interpretive frameworks, play an important role in the trajectory of a social movement
No longer shall you kill: Peace, Power and the Iroquois Great Law
Authors: Saraydar Stephen C.
Published: November 2004

This paper compares expressions of social and political philosophy in the Iroquois story of creation with events and themes central to the story of the Confederacy's founding. The recurring concepts of peace, power, love, and clear‐thinking are discussed in connection with issues that have figured prominently in Iroquois life for over five hundred years. The results provide a basis for dialogue between Iroquois and anthropologist and argue for greater concern for the relevance of anthropological texts to the people about whom they are written.
Proto‐Science and Proto‐Anthropology: A View
Authors: Becker Marshall Joseph
Published: November 2004

Robert E. Bieder. Science Encounters the Indian, 1820‐1880; The Early Years of American Ethnology. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1986. xiii. 290 pp. $19.95 (cloth).
Morgan—Lawyer, Ethnologist, and Intellectual
Authors: Francello Joseph A.
Published: November 2004

Thomas R. Trautmann. Lewis Henry Morgan and the Invention of Kinship. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987. xiv. 290 pp.
Ethnographic Fictions
Authors: Moffatt Michael
Published: November 2004

John O. Stewart. Drinkers, Drummers and Decent Folk: Ethnographic Narratives of Village Trinidad. (Introduction by Robert A. Manners) Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. xviii. 230 pp. $12.95 (paper); $39.50 (cloth).
Tales of A Korean Shaman
Authors: Huang Shu‐min
Published: November 2004

Laurel Kendall. The Life and Hard Times of. Korean Shaman: Of Tales and the Telling of Tales. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988. 157 pages. $9.95 (paper); $23.00 (cloth).
Male and Female in New Guinea
Authors: Dubisch Jill
Published: November 2004

Marilyn Strathem. The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. xv. 422 pp. $40 (cloth).
Night Life
Authors: Teski Marea C.
Published: November 2004

Dennis Tedlock. Days from. Dream Almanac. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990. xv. 93 pp. $21.95 (cloth); $11.95 (paper).