Ethnology最新文献

{"title":"Painting culture: art and ethnography at a school for native americans","authors":"Lisa K. Neuman","doi":"10.2307/20456593","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/20456593","url":null,"abstract":"During the mid-twentieth century in Oklahoma, young artists at a school for American Indians selectively used ethnographic accounts of Native American cultures written by anthropologists to enhance their artistic representations. While creating Indian art became an important means of preserving knowledge of tribal cultures, cultural preservation took on a larger significance in the school's goal to train professional Indian artists whose livelihoods depended on the patronage of private collectors and museums. Art students utilized anthropological accounts of Indian cultures to help them succeed, but they and their teachers ultimately rejected anthropologists as final authorities on their cultures. Through their participation in art competitions that demanded specific representations of Indianness, their use of ethnography, and their rejection of anthropologists, young Indian artists created new indigenous identities.","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"45 1","pages":"173-192"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/20456593","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69217245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sexual magic and money: miskitu women¿s strategies in Northern Honduras","authors":"L. Herlihy","doi":"10.2307/4617571","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4617571","url":null,"abstract":"This is the published version of the article, made available with the permission of the publisher. The original published version can be found at: http://ethnology.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/Ethnology/index","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"45 1","pages":"143-159"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4617571","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69143512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reincarnation , sect unity, and identity among the druze","authors":"A. Bennett","doi":"10.2307/4617568","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4617568","url":null,"abstract":"A belief in reincarnation is atypical within Islam, although exceptions exist with a few small sects. This essay analyzes the role that reincarnation plays in maintaining a sense of unity and identity among the Druze, an Islamic sect residing primarily in the Levantine Middle East. It also describes the necessary conditions for reincarnation according to Druze doctrine and as evidenced in reincarnation stories. Reincarnation is of great social significance for the Druze, regarding family and village relations, and the Druze community at large. There is, however, some resistance within the community to a belief in reincarnation. This resistance is due in part to image management in the political context of Syria, and also because a belief in reincarnation is a stigma for a group in the Islamic Middle East. It also works against Druze efforts to present itself to the world as modern. (Islam, Druze identity, reincarnation) ********** A belief in reincarnation is atypical for Islam. There are, however, some Islamic sects that believe in reincarnation, including the Druze and Alawi who are most numerous in Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. These minority groups hold a tenuous position among Muslims, in some measure due to their belief in reincarnation, and are often considered by their mainstream Sunni or Shi'a co-religionists as heterodox or even heretical. Druze and Alawi differ in several particulars regarding how they describe the workings of reincarnation, but this essay focuses only on the Druze. The Druze believe that reincarnation occurs among all humans at all places and times, and that some remember previous lives but the majority do not. There is, however, no blanket agreement among Druze regarding reincarnation. There are many who are skeptics about the phenomenon and dismiss it outright. At the same time there are many others who circulate stories and maintain a curiosity and openness about the phenomenon. On both ends of the spectrum there is a guardedness associated with talk about reincarnation because of sensitivity to outside perceptions. A complicating factor is that the Druze sect is esoteric and secretive about most aspects of its religious tenets. As such it is difficult to ascertain much regarding how reincarnation fits into Druze doctrine. This essay, however, is less concerned with Druze reincarnation as religious doctrine and practice, and more as a social phenomenon that enhances sect unity and identity despite the fact that reincarnation is not uniformly accepted among Druze. The genre of concern here is reincarnation stories that may have roots in religious doctrine but exist and proliferate in everyday informal talk. Fieldwork for this research took place in two locales in southern Syria, Jeremana, and Suwayda. Jeremana is a densely populated urban neighborhood in southern Damascus with a large Druze population; Suwayda is a rural provincial capitol about one hundred kilometers south of Damascus and the villages in this provinc","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"45 1","pages":"87-104"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4617568","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69142984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Girl power: young women and the waning of patriarchy in rural North China","authors":"Yunxiang Yan","doi":"10.2307/4617569","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4617569","url":null,"abstract":"Since the early 1950s, several generations of young women in rural north China have responded to social changes brought about by state policies and practices, gradually altering their position in the domestic sphere from statusless \"outsiders\" to new players in family affairs. While favorable conditions in larger social settings are necessary and important, equally important have been the agencies of young women who took advantage of the new opportunities to challenge the patriarchal order of family life. By focusing on individual young women, the previously marginalized members of the family, this article identifies and provides a better understanding of the most active driving force of family change from within. (Young women, agency, family change, China) ********** Although there are still many issues under debate among students of the Chinese family, it is widely agreed that the decline of parental authority and power is the most visible and significant change that has occurred in the domestic sphere in rural China since 1949. Such a trend began in the heyday of socialist transformation during the 1950s (Yang 1959) and continued in both the collective period (Parish and Whyte 1978) and the post-collective reform era (Davis and Harrell 1993; Bossen 2002). Thus far, most studies see the decline of parental power and authority as a result of a set of social changes occurring in larger social settings, such as the implementation of the new marriage law and other government policies, the state-sponsored attack on patrilineal ideology and kinship organization, and public ownership that disabled the family as a unit of production. The contribution of individual agency to the shifting power balance across generational line, especially the role played by young women, however, has been by and large underplayed, if not completely ignored. To balance the previous emphasis on external, social causes, this article explores the active role played by young women to redefine intergenerational power relations in particular and other dimensions of private life in general. Throughout this article the term \"young women\" is used to refer to rural women between the ages of 15 to 24, or as defined by social terms, those who are going through the transition period from a teenage daughter to a young daughterin-law. For a rural woman, this is the most difficult and important period in her life, full of changes and challenges (Wolf 1972). In the areas where this study was conducted, young women in this age group are referred to as guniang or yatou, which may be translated as \"girls\" in English. But guniang or yatou refer only to unmarried young women. Once a young woman marries, she is no longer a girl; but has been transformed into a daughter-in-law (xifu) and an adult woman. In a traditional family, young women were marginal outsiders with only a temporary position, as daughters married out and new daughters-in-law entered the domestic group under the rules of patrili","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"45 1","pages":"105-124"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4617569","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69143050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Drinking games, karaoke songs, and yangge dances: youth cultural production in rural China","authors":"A. Chau","doi":"10.2307/4617572","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4617572","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the different ways youth in rural Shaanbei, northcentral China participate in cultural production. It explores the media through which young people express themselves and the roles that social institutions (temples, schools, villages, households), modern technologies (video compact discs), and translocal/transnational mass media (satellite and cable TV) play in enabling youth to assert their presence as cultural beings and producers. Shaanbei youth do not choose between modern forms of entertainment (karaoke songs) or traditional forms (playing drinking games), or between institutionally organized activities and those self-initiated to express themselves. (Rural Chinese youth, cultural production, temple festivals, drinking games) ********** Anthropologists have a long-standing interest in studying the socialization of children and processes of enculturation cross-culturally, yet youth culture has largely remained the preserve of sociologists and specialists of popular culture. The study of Western youth culture has its roots in studies of youth social and cultural movements in the 1960s and 1970s: the Hippies, the anti-war protests, Punks, Beatles fans, etc. (Hall and Jefferson 1976; Hebdige 1979; Skelton and Valentine 1998). Youth culture in the West seems to be predicated on a self-conscious, relatively coherent set of mental attitudes and behavioral patterns, often dubbed subcultural or counter-cultural. The most important characteristics of Western urban youth culture are the degree of expressivity (e.g., It's \"loud\"!) in terms of music, fashion, hairstyle, and manners, and the effort to counter what is perceived to be adult stiffness and conservatism. Though having originated in the West, analytical approaches for studying Western urban youth movements seem to be easily transferable to the Chinese urban context, with the May Fourth Movement and subsequent student culture as prime examples of a self-conscious Chinese urban youth culture. In recent years, the import of rock 'n' roll, disco, hip hop, and rave parties further consolidated and expanded an urban youth style distinct from adult and other cultural productions (Farrer 2002; Moore 2005). (2) One might think that because rural China is portrayed in the media as being impoverished in things cultural (wenhua pinkun), (3) its youth lack the opportunity to have or produce culture. But this depends on where in rural China one looks. In certain parts of rural China, some forms of metropolitan youth culture are emerging since urban cultural forms are rapidly penetrating rural areas, especially along the coast and the peripheries of large cities. In a village near a major urban center (Heilongjiang in northeastern China), Yan (1999) found the local rural youth culture largely derivative of urban popular culture in terms of taste and activities (e.g., billiards, music cassette tapes, printed T-shirts). In Shaanbei, many aspects of youth culture are also drawn from metropo","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"45 1","pages":"161-172"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4617572","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69143520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Special money : Ithaca hours and garage sales","authors":"Gretchen M. Herrmann","doi":"10.2307/4617570","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4617570","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how special monies are used in two different sites of the alternative economy, the U.S. garage sale and a local barter currency called Ithaca HOURS, and how they are socially demarcated as special styles of exchange. Although characterized by different flows, money in both venues create value in the interstices of the mainstream economy; stretch the value of money, while allowing direct negotiation; foster justice in the marketplace; build community; encourage good ecological practice; and enable participants to at times \"beat the system\" of the prevailing economy. HOURS and garage sales, while not capable of superceding global capitalism, rely on and complement the mainstream economic order, and both sites afford glimpses of more humane and empowering ways to exchange goods and services. (Garage sales, Ithaca HOURS, local currency, United States) ********** Whether segregating pots of money for earmarked purposes such as rent, entertainment, or retirement, or creating different forms of money such as stamps, coupons, gift certificates, or frequent flyer miles, Americans generate various \"special monies\" with divergent meanings for particular uses, which have particular forms and distinctive social meanings (Zelizer 1994, 1996). Each form of money and payment generates specific social relations that do not readily shift from one use of money to another. Further, the meanings of special monies are articulated according to their \"flows,\" i.e., where they originate, the social meanings of where the monies are used, and their future direction(s) (Carruthers and Espeland 1998). This article examines some social meanings of two examples of special monies: garage sales, and Ithaca's HOURS (a form of local barter currency). In addition, it elaborates seven major overlapping and mutually reinforcing themes found in both modes of alternative economic activity, which are (1) creating value at the interstices of mainstream economy, (2) stretching money, (3) negotiating value, (4) working toward ecological sustainability, (5) creating justice in the marketplace, (6) beating the system, and (7) building community. By providing ethnographic documentation of social relations embedded in the use of money and of what some term the social economy (Williams 2005) or cultural economics (Gudeman 1986; Wilk 1996), this essay contributes to exploring the social meaning of money (Carruthers and Espeland 1998; Zelizer 1994, 1996). It also furthers discussions of the utility and value of local currencies (Evans 2003; Helleiner 2000; Jacob et al. 2004; Lee 1996; Pacione 1997; Papavasiliou 2005), and further delineates consumption-based oppositional practice, or what Helleiner (2000) calls \"consumption-based oppositional movements.\" Such treatments are especially important in the West, where the overarching market paradigm can obscure the social relations and cultural aspect of economic exchange (Carrier 1997; Dilley 1992). Defined as the temporary publ","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"45 1","pages":"125-142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4617570","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69143476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Christianity, Identity, Power, and Employment in an Aboriginal Settlement","authors":"C. Schwarz","doi":"10.2307/4617565","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4617565","url":null,"abstract":"This essay examines Aboriginal people's expression of Christian ideologies, values, and behaviors in regard to personhood. Christian practice in Galiwin'ku is a repertoire of individualization that fosters self-reliance and self-actualization, which relate to employment benefits and positions of political authority. Christianity is an important and equivocal site for staging opposition between community residents and for the expression of indigenous political agency within and beyond the settlement. Examining how Christianity informs the production of identities sheds light on some of the ways in which Aboriginal people negotiate tensions arising from a market economy and an egalitarian ethos. (identity, Christianity, indigenous agency, Aboriginal Australia) ********** Prolonged marginalization in the national economy has affected Aboriginal people living in remote regions of Australia (Austin-Broos and Macdonald 2005), and for several years the Aboriginal politician, Noel Pearson (2000), has urged for the indigenous people's integration into the market economy in order to reach greater economic self-sufficiency. Australia's indigenous citizens are currently confronted with a \"dual challenge of cultural difference and rapid change,\" Austin-Broos (2005:1) declares. She contends that the central issue now facing many Aboriginal people is the tension between their resistance to out-migration from their communities and the state's and Australian federal government' s reluctance to create jobs in these regions. The harsh reality of these competing interests has meant economic deprivation, poor health, limited educational opportunities, a small labor market, and welfare dependency for the majority of Australia's indigenous citizens. A notable absence from these pressing issues is a consideration of the role that Christianity plays in negotiating the tensions between government and Aboriginal interests. An exception to this neglect is a review of the transition from a domestic moral economy patent to hunter-gatherers to an engagement with a cash economy by Peterson (2005), who discusses the emergence of life projects that are indigenous derived and developed independently of those promoted by the state and market. Peterson (2005) contends that in comparison with North America, life projects in Australia are often fragmented, reactive to government policy, and contested within communities. He observes that when discussions about life projects seem to be the most self-conscious and coherent, they are often formulated in a Christian context. Peterson (2005:14) also notes that the ways people involve themselves in \"the treadmill of wage labor\" include out-marriage, moving away, or becoming involved with a Christian sect. This essay attempts to contribute to understanding how Aboriginal people have responded to new conditions and how they remake themselves in the changing contexts, with Christian practice as the point of entry. Fieldwork (2003-2005) in the Y","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"45 1","pages":"71-86"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4617565","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69142945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Why spheres of exchange","authors":"P. Sillitoe","doi":"10.2307/4617561","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4617561","url":null,"abstract":"Spheres of exchange, a classic anthropological topic, is briefly reviewed. The concept prompts looking at implied spheres of production. All production is not the same; different arrangements characterize different spheres, as with subsistence goods compared to wealth items. The implications are significant for acephalous political orders that eschew any section of society exercising control over resources or capital needed by others for livelihood, so exerting hegemony over them. Spheres of exchange intimate the disconnection of subsistence from wealth production, effectively inhibiting relations of domination, promoting egalitarian distribution of livelihood resources. The introduction of (all-purpose) money, in the process of historically interrelated colonial, globalizing, and economic development interventions ruptures the insulation of spheres, marking the arrival of capitalist market arrangements and associated antithetical hierarchical rich and poor relations. (Economic anthropology, spheres of exchange, production, acephalous politics) ********** The topic of spheres of exchange is standard fare in anthropology courses. It is presented as descriptive ethnography, commonly in the spirit of \"this is something that you need to know as part of your anthropological education,\" and invariably leaves students puzzled as to the import of such arrangements. The information is filed away with an appropriate ethnographic example for subsequent recall in an examination (e.g., see Plattner 1989:175-78; Narotzky 1997:71-75; Gudeman 2001:133-37). Like several other pieces of anthropological exotica, such knowledge seems incomplete. My experience as an instructor delivering lectures on economic anthropology has confirmed this impression, as curious students regularly ask why some people have spheres of exchange. One increasingly feels obliged to give more explanatory attention to the \"why spheres of exchange\" question and not expect students to find the answer themselves in the ethnography. Perhaps a formulation offered here might satisfy students' curiosity. What are spheres of exchange? They are an arrangement where material objects are assigned to different spheres for transactional purposes. People freely exchange items within the same sphere and readily calculate their comparative values. But things in different spheres are not immediately exchangeable against one another, such that between spheres there is no ready conversion (Bohannan and Dalton 1962:3-7). The question students regularly ask is why do some populations place such restrictions on the exchange of things? That in West Africa one cannot give yams in return for cloth, or in the Solomon Islands taro for turmeric cylinders, is a puzzle. There is no obvious reason why some cultures should institute such barriers to the transaction of things that might otherwise change hands. This is the key problem addressed here. The argument focuses on the independent circulation of subsistence items an","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"39 1","pages":"1-24"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4617561","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69143302","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bone and flesh, seed and soil: patriliny by father¿s brother¿s daughter marriage","authors":"N. S. Altuntek","doi":"10.2307/4617564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4617564","url":null,"abstract":"Behind patrilineal descent is an asymmetrical descent structure based on sex, and father's brother's daughter marriage. Because it is a means of constructing the patrilineage, patrilateral parallel cousin marriages continue to exist. The Kurds in eastern and southeastern Turkey illustrate this apparent paradox with the position of women in the patrilineage and their structural relationship with the mother's brother. (FBD marriage, patriliny, Turkey, Kurds) ********** Patrilateral parallel cousin marriages occupy a special place in the study of kinship and marriage. Such marriages are characteristic of Middle East peoples and are referred to as preferred. Thus, \"in some social contexts Middle Easterners assert that if a woman and her family choose not to marry a father's brother's son, his consent and that of his family must be obtained\" (Eickelman 1998:169). Such consent implies that the father's brother's son has priority of marriage with the father's brother's daughter. The fact that tribal societies (e.g., Arabs and Kurds) where such practices are followed are also patrilineal makes father's brother's daughter (FBD) marriage problematic. Bourdieu (1991:32), for example, points out that \"structuralism either ignores or brackets off\" this problem, but structural-functionalist theory holds this marriage type provides stability in family and kinship relations. While Barth (1986:396) emphasizes that these marriages enhance in-group solidarity and prevent corporate group fission, Murphy and Kasdan (1959:18), in contrast, claim that the factor underlying segmentation is FBD marriage. These positions are in opposition, yet both attribute to FBD marriage the function of providing homeostasis for social and political organization. By contributing to maintaining harmony within the family (Khuri 1970:597), FBD marriage is credited with having a positive function for social and psychological stability, and economic factors reveal a similar stability. Through FBD marriage, property remains intact within the family (Rosenfeld 1958:1138), thus preserving established property relations. Underlying these arguments is the presumption that \"parallel cousin marriage is the only structurally pertinent form of marriage: other forms of alliance do not constitute' normative unions'\" (Atran 1985:667). Atran (1985:686) criticizes this presumption because it reduces kinship and marriage forms to \"a single mechanical model,\" when FBD marriage should be understood as \"a matter of social strategy.\" Bourdieu (1991:49) emphasizes that FBD marriage \"can never be fully defined in genealogical terms,\" and separates practical kin, relatives that are present in a relation set by the individual, from official kin, those relatives that are included in the genealogy (Bourdieu 1991:33-35). For him, matrimonial strategies are material and symbolic capital, managed by relatives in practical groups who \"rest on a community of dispositions (habitus) and interests which is also the basis o","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"45 1","pages":"59-70"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4617564","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69142928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Polygyny, Rank, and Resources in Northwest Coast Foraging Societies","authors":"M. Walter","doi":"10.2307/4617563","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4617563","url":null,"abstract":"Polygyny involving high ranking men and women facilitated the mobilization of resources in food, wealth, and labor in Northwest Coast societies. Men were more involved with food procurement and women with food storage. Senior wives of polygynous chiefs supervised the labor of junior wives and slaves, and the creation and allocation of food stores. Greater freedom from mundane tasks gave elite women time to manufacture valuables such as textiles and baskets used in trade and potlatching. Chiefs depended on their wives' relatives for assistance in potlatching, trade, and defense. Polygyny created and reinforced alliances and increased the numerical strength of households and villages, providing economic and political advantages in an area of frequent warfare. Cross-cultural tests for relationships between women's subsistence contributions and polygyny have neglected consideration of food processing and food storage among foragers like Northwest Coast peoples. (Northwest Coast, polygyny, women's economic importance, marriage alliance) ********** Although the Pacific Northwest Coast is a region of cultural diversity, the earliest European accounts of the peoples there and later ethnographic descriptions reveal some recurring themes. These include a reliance on marine resources, especially salmon, extensive food storage, an emphasis on inherited rank and wealth accumulation, dramatic ceremonies and artistic traditions, potlatch feasts, warfare, slavery, and corporate kin group, as well as some individual and/or community ownership of resource harvesting areas (Suttles 1990; Richardson 1982). Two key resources, red cedar and salmon, \"formed the environmental base upon which classic Northwest Coast culture was built\" (Donald 2003:292); however, shellfish may have been more important in Northwest Coast diets than is usually recognized, particularly for women and those of lower status (see Moss 1993:643). Large, permanent, often multi-family plank houses were occupied during part of the year, while less formidable structures provided shelter at seasonally occupied resource-harvesting sites away from the main villages. While residential mobility was limited, considerable logistical mobility was associated with subsistence activities, trade, warfare, attendance at potlatches, and visiting. Despite a heavy reliance on marine and riverine resources, there was extensive harvesting and storage of land based flora and fauna for manufacturing, food, and medicines. Wood and plant fibers were \"absolutely essential to the harvest, transport, processing, and storage of all the other subsistence resources\" (Norton 1985:103). Although less widely discussed, polygynous marriage involving high ranking men and women was also common in this region until well into the nineteenth century. Despite the association of polygynous marriage with wealthy or high ranking people throughout the region (Donald 1997:25; Driver and Massey 1957:400; Jorgensen 1980:167-68, 453-54; Suttles ","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"45 1","pages":"41-58"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4617563","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69142916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}