Ethnology最新文献

{"title":"Vietnamese new year rice cakes: iconic festive dishes and contested national identity","authors":"N. Avieli","doi":"10.2307/3773995","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3773995","url":null,"abstract":"Vietnamese banh Tet (New Year rice cakes) are the most prominent culinary icons of the most important Vietnamese festival. This article examines the sociocultural ideas of contemporary Vietnamese national identity expressed by these dishes, and explores the implicit and complex ways by which they take part in developing Vietnamese cultural identity and nationalism. In terms of the \"Imagined Communities\" analytical framework, this food item serves as an important means for practicing and \"concretizing\" national identity. (Vietnam, national identity, food symbolism, rice cakes) ********** Tet, the Vietnamese New Year festival, is the most important event in the Vietnamese social calendar, and banh Tet, New Year's special cakes (sticky-rice loaves stuffed with green beans and fatty pork, wrapped in bamboo leaves, and boiled overnight), are its ubiquitous culinary icon. Eaten at the onset of the new year by everyone within the country and elsewhere who consider themselves Kinh (ethnic Vietnamese), this festive dish is the essence of the festival and, hence, of being Vietnamese. The cakes are models of the cosmic order. They reflect Vietnamese rice-growing culture and its nutritional logic, and the anxiety that characterizes Vietnamese sociocultural arrangements and conventions. What seems a solid and unified fabric is challenged by ruptures that characterize the contemporary Vietnamese polity, such as the tensions between autochthonous and imported cultural elements, and the contradictions between regional orientations and national identity. The nation's war-ridden history also finds expression in certain aspects of banh Tet. Thus, these humble rice cakes are multivocal and dynamic representations of Vietnamese national identity. Despite their importance, these culinary artifacts have been ignored by social scientists and scholars of Vietnamese culture. This article, based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in Hoi An (Central Vietnam) during 1999 and 2000, and shorter stays in 1998, 2001, and 2004, explores the varied and even contradictory ideas expressed by banh Tet in regard to a multifaceted, and at times contested, Vietnamese national identity. National identity has long been a contested construct, and an understanding of nationalism is still limited. Drawing on Anderson's (1983) notion of the \"imagined\" nature of communities as theoretical and abstract, this article stresses the ways by which food, and iconic national dishes in particular, take part in the construction and negotiation of various facets of this elusive entity. While some research on the practical and \"banal\" (Billig 1995) aspects of \"doing nationalism\" is recent, the role of food in constructing national identity has been largely overlooked. This article suggests that iconic dishes, due to various intrinsic qualities of food, are particularly suitable means for the negotiation and expression of complex and contradictory ideas concerning national identity, especially with aut","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"44 1","pages":"167-188"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3773995","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68996937","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":"Spirits of the hereafter : Death, funerary possession, and the afterlife in chuuk, micronesia","authors":"Katherine Boris Dernbach","doi":"10.2307/3773992","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3773992","url":null,"abstract":"In Chuuk, Micronesia, recently deceased kin often appear as spirit visitors and may possess female relatives in order to provide comfort and guidance, and to deriver important messages from beyond the grave. These spirits are fully sentient beings who retain social and emotional ties with their earthly homes and families, and occupy a liminal space between this world and the afterlife. During this liminal period, spirits must learn how to \"be dead,\" while the riving struggle to reconcile themselves to the corporeal death and new spiritual life of the departed. Spirit possession and other forms of spirit communication, including the popular use of ouija boards, help to facilitate the process of \"becoming dead\" on both sides of the cosmological divide. Traditional and contemporary mortuary rituals, death and the transformation of the soul into a spirit being, experiences of the afterlife, and interactions with the spirit world through funerary possession and spirit encounters are examined in order to understand death as a journey of becoming that is also marked by social rupture, ritual, and the problems of grief and attachment. (Spirit possession, death, cosmology, Christianity, Micronesia) This article examines how spirit possessions that occur shortly after death in Chuuk, Micronesia, facilitate the process of becoming dead. In Chuuk, recently deceased kin often appear as spirits to their living relatives and possess women of the family to give comfort and guidance, and to deliver important messages from beyond the grave. Funerary encounters and possessions occur during or shortly after the period of formal mourning, when mortuary rituals are performed, and are marked by intense emotions of love/sadness (ttong), grief/loss (leetiipeta), and suffering (riaffou) shared by the living and the newly departed. Spirits of the newly deceased remain fully sentient beings who wish to be with their living kin. They occupy a liminal place between the worlds of the living and the dead, and hover invisibly around their earthly families and homes, as yet uncertain about their place and role in the afterlife. During this liminal period, the soul of the dead (nguun), in becoming a spirit of the dead (sootupw), becomes a new kind of Chuukese person and social agent in the world. At the same time that a sootupw learns to \"be dead,\" those left behind mourn their loss while they wait and wonder about the fate of their loved one's soul. The spirit may initiate contact and provide answers through possession or encounters, or the living may attempt to communicate with the spirit by talking to the grave or \"playing\" ouija board, an introduction that is increasingly popular today. In this way, the living undergo their own process of reconciling themselves to the corporeal death and new spiritual life of their departed relative. Most anthropological writing on this topic focuses on mortuary rituals and the attendant social and emotional aspects of death and dying, that is","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"44 1","pages":"99-124"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3773992","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68996820","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":"The afterlife of asabano corpses : Relationships with the deceased in Papua New Guinea","authors":"R. Lohmann","doi":"10.2307/3773996","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3773996","url":null,"abstract":"Before contact with the West, the Asabano of Papua New Guinea treated human remains differently depending on the type of relationship survivors planned to have with the deceased. Traditional methods included corpse exposure with curation or disposal of bones, disposal of corpses in rivers, and cannibalism. Following their conversion to Christianity, Asabano burned or buried their bone relics and commenced coffin inhumation in cemeteries. These practices left distinctive memories and physical records that served as means to alter, enhance, or terminate relations with the deceased who are biologically but not, according to the Asabano, socially dead. (Burial, funerals, death, mortuary, religion) ********** One of the most remarkable achievements of humankind is the belief that death need not end relationships. Ending or enhancing relations with the deceased is widely considered to be a matter of choice for the living. This article is about how this attitude is played out in a remote area of Papua New Guinea. How people there handle an individual's remains is thought to influence future relationships with the deceased, or even extinguish the life that people assume does not end with biological death. The case has archaeological as well as ethnological implications insofar as perceived distinctive relationships with the deceased leaves an identifiable material record (on the value of holistic anthropology for the study of mortuary ritual, see Chesson 2001). The Asabano of central New Guinea say that formerly, when an important man died, the body was placed on a platform high in a tree. After a month or two, the bones were collected and carried in a feather-covered net bag to the sacred house, in which only men were allowed. Men carried individual bones for success in hunting, painted skulls to give them power in battle, and buried bones in gardens beneath sacred Cordyline plants to ensure a good harvest. The skulls of important women, who helped raise pigs, were hidden in net bags in communal houses, where families slept. However, the bones of ordinary women, children, and young men were left because they could not help the living. Slain enemies were spiritually destroyed by being cast into rivers or eaten. These practices were halted following conversion to Christianity in the 1970s, when these bone sacra were destroyed as a statement of commitment to the new god who had left them no relics but the Bible (Lohmann 2001). Since then, corpses have been buried == rather than exposed, and relations with the deceased are attenuated and no longer involve bone relics. The various and changing fates of Asabano corpses correspond to the types of relationship with the deceased that survivors wish to maintain or extinguish. Such relationships are understood to continue beyond the grave, and appear to the Asabano to be mutual. CHANGING SOCIAL RELATIONS WITH THE DECEASED \"Becoming dead,\" Humphreys (1981:263) remarked, \"stretches from the decision that a person is","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"44 1","pages":"189-206"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3773996","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68996949","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":"Mummers and moshers : Two rituals of trust in changing social environments","authors":"C. Palmer","doi":"10.2307/3773994","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3773994","url":null,"abstract":"This article compares two seemingly disparate rituals: the disguised house-visiting in rural Newfoundland known as \"mumming,\" and the aggressive dancing known as \"moshing\" that occurs at concerts of some popular music. Both are activities where participants place themselves at risk of harm at the hands of other participants, and both can be seen as rituals simultaneously demonstrating trust and trustworthiness. For such rituals to be successful in promoting trusting relationships, there must be a pre-existing trust among the participants, and the rituals must be closely governed by spoken or unspoken rules that maintain the fine line separating demonstrations of trust from a violence that can injure and destroy relationships. This hypothesis is examined by the effect of the absence of these conditions on the two rituals. (Risk, trust, Mumming, Moshing) This article compares two activities that appear to be very different from each other: \"mumming\" and \"moshing.\" Mumming (also known as \"mummering,\" or \"janneying\") was a traditional form of disguised Christmas house-visiting that occurred in the small fishing villages of Newfoundland, Canada. Moshing (also known as slam dancing) is a seemingly aggressive colliding of bodies that occurs with members of the audience at concerts featuring such forms of music as punk rock and metal in an area known as a \"mosh pit.\" Despite their apparent differences, both modes of behavior are a form of costly signaling that I refer to as rituals of trust. This hypothesis is evaluated by examining how both rituals are altered by changes in the social environment in which they occur. TRUST, RITUALS, AND COSTLY SIGNALING THEORY \"For the better part of our evolutionary history ... the well-being of any individual rested heavily in the hands of others\" (Wiessner 2002:21). Humans are constantly faced with situations where there are benefits to co-operating with others, but these may involve the risk that the other person may defect, cheat, or take advantage for short-term benefits. Trust is what reduces that risk and allows having the long-term mutual benefits of co-operation, or what is known in evolutionary theory as reciprocal altruism (Trivers 1971). The confidence that the other person will act as expected is trust, that which allows overcoming \"immediate self-interest in anticipation of delayed returns\" (Wiessner 2002:23). Because \"trust can form the basis for mutually supportive relationships that would not be possible without such trust\" (Irons 2001:292), it is of great \"interest in organizational research and the social sciences\" (Fichman 2003:133), with examples ranging from team-building exercises in corporations (Dyer 1987) to political science studies of trust among nation states (Kydd 2000). As the familiarity of the phrases \"rites of intensification\" and \"rites of solidarity\" suggest, many anthropologists have assumed that certain rituals--i.e., repetitive forms of stereotyped social co-operation (see Lavenda","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"44 1","pages":"147-166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3773994","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68996894","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":"Co-wife conflict and co-operation","authors":"William R. Jankowiak, M. Sudakov, Benjamin C. Wilreker","doi":"10.2307/3773961","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3773961","url":null,"abstract":"Conventional wisdom holds that the polygynous family system is as sexually and emotionally satisfying as a monogamous one. Ethnographic accounts of 69 polygynous systems, however, provide compelling evidence that the majority of co-wives in a polygynous family prefer pragmatic co-operation with one another while maintaining a respectful distance. Moreover, there often is a deep-seated feeling of angst that arises over competing for access to their mutual husband. Co-wife conflict in the early years of marriage is pervasive, and often marked by outbursts of verbal or physical violence. Co-wife conflict may be mitigated by social institutions, such as sororal polygyny and some form of \"social security\" or health care. Material wealth may be divided more or less equally, but as a husband's sexual attention (a primary source for increased fertility) and affection cannot always be equitably distributed, there is ongoing and contentious rivalry among co-wives. (Co-wife conflict, jealousy, co-operation, pair bond) ********** Cultural anthropologists generally assume that humans are highly adaptable to a wide range of life circumstances. Less accepted is the qualification that \"cultural models can have significant psychic costs for individuals\" (Shore 1996:49). The assumption of enormous adaptability has also been challenged by many anthropologists (see Brown 1990 for overview) concerned with the topics of reproduction and family intimacy. For example, some (Ekvall 1968; Levine and Silk 1997) find that the fraternal polyandrous marriage system is unstable largely due to sexual and emotional factors, rather than economic considerations. Research on co-wife relationships in polygynous families find them to be emotionally unsatisfactory for the majority of participants (Al-Krenawi 1999; Al-Krenawi and Graham 1999; Chisholm and Burbank 1991; Hill and Hurtado 1996; Jankowiak 2001 ; Meekers and Franklin 1995; Strassman 1997; Ware 1980). However, other researchers (Borgerhoff-Mulder 1992; Kilbride 1994; Madhavan 2002; Mason 1982) report that under certain circumstances, women living in a polygynous family system enjoy material and emotional satisfaction. This article examines the effect of structural and psychological factors on co-wife conflict and co-operation. Specifically, it seeks to determine whether a pair-bond impulse is present in every culture, and if so, whether it undermines co-wife co-operation. Unlike previous studies of co-wife conflict and co-operation that focus only on one culture or a single geographical region, we have expanded the scope to include co-wife interactions in cultures from all over the world. We also identify the material, social, and emotional factors that can undermine or strengthen co-wife bonds. Examining how individuals respond to the polygynous family allows for a more thorough exploration of the polygynous family's divisiveness. To this end, we use the reasons for co-wife conflict as a means to identify anxieties within t","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"44 1","pages":"81-98"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3773961","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68996192","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":"Race and the politics of identity in Nepal","authors":"Susan I. Hangen","doi":"10.2307/3773959","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3773959","url":null,"abstract":"While many anthropological studies on race have focused on dominant uses of race, race can be a powerful form of oppositional identity. Subaltern people may assert racial identities for political mobilization. This article investigates why a small political party that sought to mobilize Nepal's ethnic groups chose to redefine them as members of the Mongol race. By tracing the historical and contemporary meanings of race and other discourses of identity in Nepal, the article analyzes the meanings of this construction of race, and shows bow using race appeared to be an effective political strategy. (Race, strategic essentialism, identity politics, Nepal) ********** In east Nepal in 1997, activists of a small political party called the Mongol National Organization (MNO) held a rally on a windy village hilltop. Seated on the ground was an audience of about 50 children and adults from many of the ethnic groups who live in this part of Nepal: Rai, Limbu, Sunuwar, Magar, and Gurung. Among the first speakers of the day was the president of the MNO's district committee, a stout Rai man in his thirties. Broadcasting over a loudspeaker rigged to a car battery, he explained to the crowd what it meant for them to be Mongol: We are a Mongol community, we are not a caste either; we are Mongol. For example, in this world there are three types of people. One is white with white skin like Americans, for example like sister here [referring to me].... The other has black skin and is called Negro. The other is called the red race like us: short like us; stocky like us; with small eyes and flat noses like us. Altogether you find these three types of people in the world. So from these three groups, we call one group Mongol. Mongol, meaning, we are this country's Mongols. People called Mongols are found in many places in the world. One [group of] Mongols is also found in China and other Mongols are found in Malaysia. There are Mongols in the world but we are not those foreign Mongols. We are the Mongols of Nepal. We are Nepal's Mongols and our fight is with the Hindu rulers here. By asserting that these peoples were Mongols, this MNO leader defined them as a race. He argued that they are members of one of the major biological groups of people in the world, and that Mongols in Nepal could be identified by a specific set of physical features that they shared with Mongols in other parts of Asia. The idea that this heterogeneous group of people belonged to a Mongol race was a recurring theme in MNO communications during my research in the mid-1990s. These frequent references to the racial identity of Mongols were necessary because it was an uncommon way for people to identify themselves in Nepal. Many of the people that the MNO sought to mobilize in east Nepal had never thought of themselves as Mongols prior to the arrival of the MNO. One young Magar man expressed what many other party supporters would say in conversation: \"We didn't know that we were Mongols until the MNO ","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"44 1","pages":"49-64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3773959","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68996624","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":"The articulation of culture, agriculture, and the environment of Chinese in Northern Thailand","authors":"Shu-min Huang","doi":"10.2307/3773956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3773956","url":null,"abstract":"The Yunnan Chinese who settled in northern Thailand's Golden Triangle after 1964 used their traditional knowledge of hill farming and crop diversity, plus their extensive ethnic networks based on multi-layered Chinese identity, to establish viable communities in a mountainous region. By focusing on producing cash crops such as lychee nuts, tangerines, ginger roots, and bamboo shoots, they established a sustainable rural livelihood that is environmentally friendly, economically profitable, and socio-culturally self-renewing. This study addresses issues of sustainable agriculture and livelihood. (Sustainable agriculture, The Golden Triangle, Thailand, Chinese diaspora) ********** This article reports on an investigation of the sustainability of agricultural systems established by Chinese in the Golden Triangle of northern Thailand. Several interrelated issues or controversies are embedded in the concepts of sustainable agriculture and development in northern Thailand. One is the nature of slash-and-burn agriculture. Scholars have debated whether this is viable and environmentally friendly in tropical rainforests (Fox 2001; Hansen 1994; Reed 1990; Young 1998). Most anthropologists view this practice as maintaining tropical agro-ecological systems and biodiversity, and critical for the survival of marginal tribal cultures (Anderson 1993; Bates 2001; Fox 2001; Geertz 1963; Young 1998). Others disagree, and point to its negative effects in soil erosion, destruction of vegetation, and as wasteful of natural resources. For example, an article that appeared in a widely circulated conservationist magazine asserted that the people living in the Ranomafana rainforest of southeastern Madagascar are the forest's worst enemy, slashing and burning huge swaths of trees to clear land for crops (Knox 1989:81). A second issue relates to the conflicting demands on tropical rainforests, such as environmental preservation and biodiversity, population pressures, and long-and short-term economic development (Anderson 1993; Fox 2001; Young 1998). Alarming views about disappearing rainforests include examples of endangered species that have lost their habitat and soil erosion due to slash-and-burn agriculture (e.g., Wright 1993:451). With these disparate views, the question comes down to who should have the decision-making power in formulating forest use policies: the land-hungry farmers, the conservationists, or the economic development officials. These issues are related to sustainability. While the concepts of sustainable agriculture, sustainable livelihood, or sustainable development have broad appeal, there is little consensus about what are the necessary and objective criteria with which to measure sustainability (Francis 1990; Gold 1999; Hatfield and Keeney 1994; Helmore 2001; OECD 1995; Roling and Wagemakers 2000). Although these issues defy simple answers or uniform criteria for objective assessments, sustainable agriculture may be regarded as capable of providing","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"44 1","pages":"1-12"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3773956","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68996576","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":"Temple-building and heritage in China","authors":"S. C. Chan","doi":"10.2307/3773960","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3773960","url":null,"abstract":"Building Huang Da Xian temples in Jinhua, in the Lower Yangtze Delta, is a \"heritage\" process, an interpretation, manipulation, and invention of the past for present and future interests. Local memories of the saint Huang Da Xian were awakened by Hong Kong pilgrims, and the subsequent construction of temples enacted the politics of nationalism with a transnational connection. The process of remembering the saint and constructing temples creates, mediates, and invents relationships between the locals in Jinhua and Chinese living in mainland China and elsewhere. The multiple meanings of temple- building are examined for mainland Chinese, Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the nation state. While the mainlanders treat new temples as places to perform religious activities, attract tourists, and develop the local economy, temple construction for the overseas Chinese is a nostalgic search for authenticity and roots. The state has utilized Huang Da Xian as a symbol of nationalism to reinforce a Chinese identity among mainlanders and all other Chinese. (Temple, heritage, tourism, religion, Wong Tai Sin) ********** Temple construction and reconstruction in China have been common since the 1980s. At an individual level, temples are often understood to be built to solve anxieties and problems for people living in cities and villages. Temple revival is often for healing wounded cultures and recovering the status of individuals and clans (Jing 1996; Aijmer and Ho 2000). From a societal perspective, the revival of temples is also perceived as a process of recycling cultural fragments under new circumstances (Siu 1989:134), with religion a means to reverse the moral decadence and the commoditi-zation of relationships brought about by economic reforms (Weller 1987). Religious sites show the power dynamics between local authorities and the state (Tsai 2002; Watson 1985; Aijmer and Ho 2000; Hsiao 1960; Dean 2003:352). Ritual celebrations sometimes symbolize resistance against the state (Potter 2003; Feuchtwang 2000), through which the hegemonic model is challenged (Weller 1995; Sangren 1987; Dean 1998:277). Cults and religion also provide a site of \"cultural contestation and competing local interests\" (Dean 1998:281). While attaining a degree of integration with the state, local society preserves its uniqueness through a complex and diverse network of local and regional cults (Dean 1998:338). Various forces within the state create or revive temples and grant different meanings to the practice of religion at the local level. But the role of overseas Chinese in reviving or creating religious activities and ritual celebrations has received relatively little attention. The discussions in Kuah (2003) and Woon (1984) of religious practices such as ancestral worship and building ancestral halls in South China mainly focus on the revival of lineage culture. Although Dean (1998) stresses that pilgrims from overseas played a role in the development of temples in Fujian, t","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"44 1","pages":"65-80"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3773960","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68996184","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":"Cosmology, resources, and landscape: agencies of the dead and the living in duna, Papua New Guinea","authors":"P. Stewart, A. Strathern","doi":"10.2307/3773958","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3773958","url":null,"abstract":"Among the Duna people of Papua New Guinea, ideas about the dead and the living are intertwined through cosmological perceptions of, and ritual interactions with, the landscape. These ideas change to accommodate and deal with new issues that arise. Malu (narratives of origins) link kin with land and to spirit figures. In the context of colonial and post-colonial mining for minerals and drilling for oil, malu have been reformulated as a way of claiming compensation from mining companies. Central to the Duna perspective is the notion that the agencies and substances of the dead and the living are interlinked. An act of suicide may lead to demands for compensation as a result of the suicide being caused by \"shaming\": the agency of the dead person therefore lives on. In images of this sort, the connection between the living and the dead is vividly portrayed. (Agency, ancestors, compensation, cosmology)","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"47 1","pages":"35-47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2005-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3773958","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68996584","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":"Muchongolo Dance Contests: Deep Play in the South African Lowveld","authors":"I. Niehaus, John H. Stadler","doi":"10.2307/3774033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3774033","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that Geertz's concern with cultural performances as \"stories people tell themselves about themselves\" continues to be a valid focus of anthropological inquiry. Like Balinese cockfights, muchongolo dancing contests in the Bushbuckridge municipality of South Africa offer metacommentary on everyday life and struggles in the form of a competition. Through the juxtaposition of movements and costumes with the actions of spectators outside the dance arena, and through the lyrics of songs, the dancers enact a confrontation between xintu (the past, tradition) and xilungu (the present, ways of whites). This war of images and words stimulates a critical consciousness about political economic processes that cannot be captured by simplistic labels such as acquiescence and resistance. (Dance, tradition, modernity, Shangaan, South Africa) ********** Few anthropological works are as controversial as Geertz's (1972a) famous study of the Balinese cockfight. Geertz wrote this essay to demonstrate the central postulates of his interpretive approach: that people's actions are signs intended to convey meanings, and that \"doing ethnography is like trying to read (in the sense of 'construct a reading of') a manuscript--foreign, faded, full of ellipses, incoherences, suspicious emendations, and tendentious commentaries, but written not in conventionalized graphs of sound but in transient examples of shared behavior\" (Geertz 1972a:106). He treats the cockfight as an acted text, as a Balinese reading of Balinese experience, a story they tell themselves about themselves. When men engage in cockfights, Geertz suggests, they lay their own public selves on the line through the medium of their cocks. The men engage in status rivalry, a \"deep play\" that transcends calculus of material loss and gain and is a matter of life and death. Geertz finds the text subversive and disturbing. The fight says that beneath the skin of every Balinese man is an animal and that the Balinese experience is really less about poise, grace, and charm, than about jealousy, envy, and brutality. The cockfight reveals these hidden values in the context of the terrible massacres that occurred in Bali after 1965. Critical commentators claim that Geertz does not really show how to access and interpret these unspoken Balinese values. Some of his interpretations, such as his comparisons to Macbeth, are clearly those of the metropolitan scholar rather than those of Balinese themselves (Crapanzano 1986). Second, commentators also question the appropriateness of Geertz's textual metaphor, arguing that it is problematic to collapse data of various sorts (direct observations, interviews, and secondary accounts) into the status of a single type, a text (Kuper 1999). Third, critics claim that whereas Geertz provides a thick description of the actual cockfight, his analysis of the context to which the event relates is thin. Geertz only pays lip service to the history of the cockfight and to the man","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"59 1","pages":"363-380"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2004-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3774033","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68997318","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}