Ethnology最新文献

{"title":"Seeking Numinous Experiences in the Unremembered Past","authors":"C. Cameron, John B. Gatewood","doi":"10.2307/3773809","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3773809","url":null,"abstract":"While increasing numbers of people are visiting historical sites and museums, the reasons for those visits are not well understood. An exploratory survey concerning what Americans want from their visits to such sites discovered that many tourists are motivated by more than information- or pleasure-seeking. Some indicated a quest for a deeper experience at heritage sites and a desire to make a personal connection with the people and spirit of earlier times. This impulse, termed \"numen-seeking,\" is a strong motivation for many who visit historical sites. (Heritage tourism, numen, visitor motivation, visitor experience) ********** Historical sites and museums in both North America and Europe have become increasingly popular visitor destinations over the past decades, a fact prompting the observation that history has become a booming industry (Jakle 1985; Kammen 1991; Lowenthal 1985; and Mooney-Melville 1991). The return to the past is also evidenced by heritage movements and collecting. Samuel (1994) describes the rise of the heritage movement in the United Kingdom, based on varieties of collecting, historical re-enactment, and retro-fashion house design and furnishing. Horwitz (1998) documents the growing numbers of Civil War enthusiasts in the United States who dedicate time and resources to battle re-enactments. Gatewood (1990) notes the proliferation of collectors of memorabilia who stockpile old records, comic books, and baseball cards. Gillis (1994:15-18) characterizes Americans and Europeans as \"compulsive consumers of the past\" who save everything because they are not sure what to save. Ironically, the interest in, or possibly mania for, history does not parallel knowledge of it. Alderson and Low (1996:23) report that visitors are poorly educated about historical sites: \"Visitors at today's sites no longer come with as much--or, sometimes, with any--historical knowledge.\" Falk and Dierking (1992) and Prentice (1993) cite studies that indicate that museum-goers have poor or uneven recall of what they have seen in exhibits. Jakle (1985), Kammen (1991), and Lowenthal (1985) provide further confirmation of this, citing research that demonstrates the sorry state of the public's knowledge of history. Given that so many visitors know so little of history, why they are such avid consumers of the past, especially when it comes to trips to museums and heritage sites, is puzzling. What is the draw of history? Generally speaking, museum professionals know relatively little about people's motivations for visiting historical sites and museums. While marketing surveys are routinely done by the big museum corporations, they are, with some exceptions, (2) demographic assessments that describe visitors in terms of their residence, age, sex, occupation, and income rather than motivational or psychographic profiles. Although probing interest in historical sites is clearly in the interest of many organizations, it is not routinely done, perhaps because of the ex","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"42 1","pages":"55-71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3773809","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68993502","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":"Kinship and marriage among the Omaha, 1886-1902","authors":"B. Ensor","doi":"10.2307/3773806","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3773806","url":null,"abstract":"\"Omaha\" kinship is a major model for patrilineal kinship and marital exchanges. However, some authors have suggested that kinship rules and unilineal descent are merely theoretical constructs of anthropologists or cultural ideals usually not followed in practice. Given the importance of \"Omaha\" kinship for theory, this article tests the normative rules for marriage against empirical data on actual marriage behavior among the late-nineteenth-century Omaha tribe of Nebraska using Bureau of Indian Affairs census rolls. The results confirm that the majority of Omaha did indeed follow the normative rules upon which the \"Omaha\" model is based. The implications for kinship studies is that descent theory and alliance models can still be considered valid approaches to societies prior to historic changes. (Omaha, Crow-Omaha exchange, patrilocal, patrilineal) ********** A trend among some anthropologists is to claim that classificatory kinship models are theoretical constructs imposed upon cultures by Euro-American ethnographers or that the models are normative descriptions of cultural ideals rarely practiced. Schneider (1984) critiques several preconceived assumptions on kinship that influence ethnographers' interpretations. One of Schneider's main criticisms is the assumption that non-Western cultures conceptualize biological relations in the same way as Western cultures, which he claims is the basis for descent theory (Carsten 2000; Franklin and McKinnon 2001; Schneider 1984). The realization that biological affinity is not conceptualized, operationalized, or even important to social life from one culture to another has given way to studies on relatedness in an effort to reinvent understandings of kinship (e.g., Carsten 2000; Franklin and McKinnon 2001). These studies emphasize multiple ways that individuals relate to one another: through descent relations, affinal relations, friendship relations, political relations, and economic relations (e.g., Hutchinson 2000; Stafford 2000). Relations are thus seen as actively manipulated and reconceptualized within changing cultural contexts. Another manner in which anthropologists are beginning to understand relatedness is through \"house\" theory. Although Levi-Strauss (1982, 1987) originally thought of his proposed house societies as one category alongside descent categories, more recent proponents of house theory tend to argue that people's relations rarely conform to the descent models (e.g., Gillespie 2000a; Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995). Gillespie (2000b: 1) summarizes this view in her opening paragraph: \"Ethnographic descriptions have dispelled the notion that prescriptive and proscriptive kinship `rules' govern social life.\" Schneider (1984) also claimed that an illogical separation of biological relations from political and economic relations characterized much of kinship theory prior to the 1970s. However, there is a tradition in anthropology for viewing a relationship between these inseparable parts. Socia","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"44 1","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/3773806","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68993464","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 menstrual hut and the witch's lair in two eastern indonesian societies","authors":"J. Hoskins","doi":"10.2307/4153011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4153011","url":null,"abstract":"Menstrual huts are associated with ideas of pollution, misogyny, and intersexual tension in the literature, but in Huaulu, Seram, I found an ambivalently charged but not necessarily negative view of female bodies. In contrast, the Kodi of Sumba do not seclude women during menstruation but do link menstrual contamination to venereal disease, herbalism, and witchcraft. Keeping menstruation secret expresses anxieties about bodily integrity that show a greater separation of male and female worlds than the public-health approach of the menstrual hut. (Menstrual huts, sexual politics, reproduction, witchcraft, pollution) ********** The anthropological literature on gender relations in Pacific Asia has tended to group ideas of menstrual pollution with sexual antagonism and the use of poisons and witchcraft by women against men in Melanesia, while the apparent absence of menstrual taboos, complementary or relatively unmarked gender relations, and harmonious households are connected with Indonesia and Polynesia. Since hiding menstruation from men and playing down its role in public correspond to Euro-American practices, this attitude has come to be seen as a reasonable norm, and an emphasis on menstruation as a deviant expression of intersexual conflict. My field experiences in two Indonesian societies, however, have led me to find this conclusion unsatisfactory. The Huaulu of Scram have extremely stringent menstrual taboos, and as a woman among them, I was required to comply strictly. (1) I spent five to six days each month in a menstrual hut on the edge of the village, refrained from eating big game, and bathed at a special fountain which was forbidden to men. But rather than showing animosity toward men, the other menstruating women indicated a wish to protect them and spare them from harm. Huaulu women were proud of the fact that they controlled a dangerous flow of blood, and they emphasized its creative and empowering aspects. In contrast, the Kodi women of the coastal villages of Sumba, with whom I had lived for three years before coming to Huaulu, kept their menstrual cycles secret, and (in the absence of tampons and toilets) instructed me on surreptitious techniques of doing so even when clothing was washed in mixed company at the river. It was in this society, however, that menstruation found its way into the witch's lair: the appearance of the menstrual flow and its believed relation to fertility, abortion, and venereal disease are all part of an occult realm of natural medicines that only women can control. The term for these medicines, moro, has the literal meaning of the color blue or green, and raw, uncooked, or unprocessed. Moro is also the term used to describe deep saturations of indigo dye on cloth. \"Blue medicines\" are part of a tradition of herbalism, midwifery, and witchcraft which concerns learning about roots and plants to keep the dyes in cloth from running, and also to control bleeding in women--after childbirth, following a villa","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"41 1","pages":"317-333"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4153011","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69378677","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":"Ambiguous bleeding: Purity and sacrifice in Bali","authors":"L. Pedersen","doi":"10.2307/4153010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4153010","url":null,"abstract":"Menstrual beliefs and practices in Bali defy simple classification. Menstruation may be relegated to the dump, as when a woman had to undergo a rite on a street midden when her monthly period coincided with the ritual time for a purification ceremony. But menstruation is also viewed as conferring raja status, and women do exhibit agency in this supposedly passive process. Experiences of menstruation, furthermore, may vary according to caste status. (Bali, classifications of pollution, restriction, agency, ambiguity) ********** As many tourists to Bali can confirm from personal experience, menstrual taboos remain in effect there. At the entrance to temples, female tourists find that the taboos pertain to them, too, a fact they almost invariably experience as an affront to their sex. Visitors stop short with some incredulity at the signs in English that forthrightly prohibit entry to menstruating women. Although they have had surprisingly little to say on the issue of menstruation, the reaction of scholarly observers of Balinese culture has been similar. If mentioned at all, the complex of taboos and regulations surrounding it has tended to be viewed as somewhat of a jolting exception to otherwise relatively egalitarian gender relations (Covarrubias 1986). More recently, scholars have treated the issue of gender relations in Bali in more depth (Wikan 1990), but remain almost silent on the circumstances of the menstruating woman. Balinese women, meanwhile, generally adhere to certain menstrual taboos as a regular and accepted part of their lives. In 1998, in a noble house in eastern Bali, I observed a ceremony performed for a woman whose period coincided with a family temple purification marking the onset of preparatory sacred work for a major ancestral ritual. Reminding her that she must heed her elders, the woman's paternal aunt summoned her to the garbage heap outside the palace walls. Placed at the top of the heap, she was sprinkled with holy water in a brief rite performed by her aunt. At first glance, such a practice of sending the menstruating woman to the garbage heap--expressly, as the women envisioned it, because her condition belongs with the filth there--seems to resonate with conclusions such as Covarrubias's, that although in Bali \"the woman is by no means the proverbial slave of Oriental countries ... once a month, during menstrual time, a wife's life is not a happy one\" (Covarrubias 1986:156). There is no more graphic expression of menstruation as pollution than the image of the woman on the garbage. Other evidence, however, complicates any easy assumption that such practice necessarily reflects female oppression. This same woman stepped down from the garbage to talk at length about how the menstruating woman in Bali is said to become \"like a raja.\" These positive and negative images of menstruation appear to coexist without contradiction to the Balinese actors involved. After introducing the complex of menstrual taboos found in Bali","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"41 1","pages":"303-315"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4153010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69378662","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":"A Woman's Vapor: Yupik Bodily Powers in Southwest Alaska","authors":"P. Morrow","doi":"10.2307/4153012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4153012","url":null,"abstract":"Menstrual pollution is represented as a repressive ideology that particularly restricts women. Menstrual traditions among Yupik Eskimos of southwest Alaska challenge this model. Here, menstrual practices are understood within a set of social rules applied to persons (including men) in various states, and do not signal gender-based social-structural ambiguity. Anthropologists should not assume that menstrual restrictions are everywhere understood or experienced as rigidly inhibiting, implying regulation of the person, or indexing a primary concern with gender. (Menstrual traditions, gender, Alaska Native/Native American, Central Yupik) ********** Among the Malemut, and southward from the Lower Yukon and adjacent districts, when a girl reaches the age of puberty she is considered unclean for forty days; she must therefore live by herself in a corner of the house with her face to the wall, and always keep her hood over her head, with her hair hanging disheveled over her eyes.... The same custom formerly prevailed among the Unalit, but at present the girl is secluded behind a grass mat in one corner of the room for the period of only four days, during which time she is said to be a-gu-lin-g'a-guk [aglenrraq], meaning she becomes a woman, and is considered unclean. A peculiar atmosphere is supposed to surround her at this time, and if a young man should come near enough for it to touch him it would render him visible to every animal he might hunt, so that his success as a hunter would be gone. (Nelson 1983 [1899]:291) At the beginning of a Yupik Eskimo (1) story told around 1980, the half-human/ half-animal beings called ircinrraat are hosting a ceremony and, we are told, have explicitly forbidden the attendance of aglenrrat (those who are starting to bleed). A boy is getting ready to go to the ceremony, and his grandmother instructs him to accept and bring home all gifts that the ircinrraat offer him, even if they appear to be nothing but grass and weeds. He heads off to the festivities. The girl who has just had her first period is overcome with curiosity (a typical prelude to trouble in Yupik Eskimo stories) and goes to the hill where the ircinrraat are holding the ceremony. She can see into the hillside, which is magically open. People are laughing and dancing inside, but she is unable to climb the riverbank to get there. Like Sisyphus, she keeps sliding back all night, eventually wearing out the knees of her thigh-high skin boots. The boy, on the other hand, has a wonderful time and (unlike all the other guests) does not discard the seemingly worthless plants that the ircinrraat distribute. He and his wise grandmother are happy when the refuse turns into valuable furs on his return. Although restrictions have been relaxed in the past 40 years, Yupiit (literally, real people; sing., Yupik) are familiar with the long list of prohibitions surrounding menstruation in Yupik Eskimo society. As in many other hunting cultures, a menstruating woman is tho","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"41 1","pages":"335-348"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4153012","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69378839","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":"Ingesting menstrual blood: Notions of health and bodily fluids in Bengal","authors":"K. Hanssen","doi":"10.2307/4153014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4153014","url":null,"abstract":"Ideas about seed in food, mantras, music, and bodily emissions are important to Vaishnava Bauls. Among these, menstrual blood is central, the wellspring of emotional and mental activity. When the power of a woman's flow is moderated through dietary practices, contact with it leads to commensality. This essay examines the strategies pursued by a female Baui called Tara, her conflicting notions about social growth, and bonding relating to menstrual blood. (Person-centered ethnography, renouncers, music, health, emotion) ********** A husband and wife in Bengal sing and beg for a living. Rising at dawn, and taking their instruments and begging bags, they follow the road leading out of their village, walking until they reach the railway station. They always sing on the same train, a local full of people taking produce to the market. They prefer this train, as they know the passengers. The woman, Tara, has been singing on this train since she was a girl. She is in her early thirties. Her husband is ten years older. Although their caste identity is that of untouchable leatherworkers, they also term themselves Vaishnava Baul, which entails that they are orange-clad mendicants who beg for alms while singing. Some songs are about the blue-complexioned god Krishna and his lover, the goddess Radha. Other songs address notions of procreative seed, thought to be present in bodily fluids, including menstrual blood. Rivers rising once a month are a woman's monthly flow. A flower blooming after twelve years signifies a young girl starting to menstruate. To drink the honey from the flower or to go swimming in the river is to ingest a woman's flow in order to be nourished. Ingesting menstrual blood is the focal point of Vaishnava Baul ideology, a tradition sustained by means of recruitment. Yet many converts continue to reside in their natal village, thus maintaining daily contact with their kin and neighbors. This fact has been insufficiently emphasized. Instead, previous accounts have tended to describe the adherents as marginal wanderers, \"renouncers,\" opposed to society at large (Capwell 1974; Dimock 1989; Salomon 1995:187). In keeping with this binary framework, it might easily be surmised that ideas of menstrual blood as a beneficent fluid are inversions of orthodox norms and practices, where the substance is thought to be polluting. Yet the situation is more complex than a model based on dichotomies implies. Notions held about this substance play across boundaries. Perceptions gained prior to becoming a renouncer continue to be relevant and ideas gained later feed back into the community in which Vaishnava Bani renouncers live. For instance, the lyrical imagery of their songs alluding to a woman's flow does not comprise a separate code language as might be assumed. For though the underlying meaning may seem veiled and enigmatic, as Salomon (1995:196) has noted, this does not mean that it is inaccessible, since if it were it would hold little appeal for ordin","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"41 1","pages":"365-379"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4153014","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69378861","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":"Kinds of Plains Cree culture","authors":"N. W. Braroe","doi":"10.2307/4153028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4153028","url":null,"abstract":"The Nehiyanak, a Canadian Plains Cree band, is renegotiating an imposed identity as morally inferior to an estimable ethnic segment of local society. Evidence includes Nehiyanak assertiveness in the display of cultural symbols and a growing visibility in the community ceremonial calendar. Comparing the 1990s to the 1960s, a restricted use of the culture concept in current ethnic theory is contrasted to a more inclusive meaning in traditional anthropological description. Nehiyanak ethnological culture, while not immediately relevant to ethnic cultural work, nonetheless provides content to the latter, and mediates ethnic choices. (Cree Indians, ethnicity, culture theory, culture change) ********** The Nehiyanak, a Plains Cree band, has had a change of fortune since I first encountered them in the 1960s. They then held a stigmatized ethnic identity in the rural Canadian community of Short Grass (2) that they had no means to repudiate. An asymmetrical relationship of wealth and power severely limited Indian opportunity for projecting moral self-worth. Now, with expanded resources and a claim to an estimable identity, the Nehiyanak speak with a voice formerly denied them to say who and what they are. They employ a special version of contemporary Cree culture in doing so. This essay compares the community of the past to that of the present, and explores the utility of current theorizing about the culture of ethnicity for explaining what has happened to the Nehiyanak. It examines a restricted usage of the concept of culture that is a part of ethnic theory, one that contrasts with a traditional ethnological sense of the term. It argues that failure to attend to the most inclusive cultural context, resulting from exclusive focus on Cree ethnic culture, gives a misleading and fragmented account of band life, and only a partial explanation of Nehiyanak ethnic action. The preoccupation of Indians with certain identity attributes, such as spirituality, assumes different forms depending on whether an activity takes place within band confines or in exchanges with whites; that is, whether it is relevant ethnologically or ethnically. To consider such differences mere situational compartmentalizations overlooks what crosses between them, and misses instructive insights into the culture of which the ethnological and ethnic are analytical parts. Taken together, the ethnic and ethnological constitute the total culture of the band, and this essay discusses several ways the two are processually intertwined. NEHIYANAK IN THE 1960S During my early fieldwork (1963-1970), the reserve was the home of about 150 Crec living in eleven households, segregated from the white world. There had never been a Christian mission there, nor a resident agent of the Indian Affairs Branch (IAB). Officials seldom visited the band. Families got by on very small incomes provided by government relief, augmented by sporadic agricultural work for whites during haying time and by fencing. For read","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"41 1","pages":"263-280"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4153028","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69379009","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":"BODIES, HEAT, AND TABOOS: CONCEPTUALIZING MODERN PERSONHOOD IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN LOWVELD","authors":"I. Niehaus","doi":"10.2307/4153025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4153025","url":null,"abstract":"The meta-narrative of modernity often posits an inevitable shift from \"dividual\" to \"individual\" modalities of personhood. This presumes that with growing commodificatiion, persons are no longer enmeshed in networks of reciprocal exchange, but acquire a sense of individual autonomy, and perceive the body as bounded from external influences. The villagers in the Bushbuckridge area of South Africa, however, continue to perceive the body as permeable and partible. They believe that bodies transmit substances to and incorporate substances from other bodies, and that the conjunction of breath, aura, blood, and flesh gives rise to a dangerous condition of heat. By practicing various taboos associated with sex, pregnancy, and death, villagers aim to avoid contamination. This system of taboos is not a relic of the past, but is integral to contemporary situations of life. (Taboos, bodies, personhood, modernity, South Africa) ********** A few years ago, when I worked at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, I received a telephone call from the head of security. In a desperate voice he explained that he had issued each member of the security staff two brand-new uniforms and politely asked them to return their old ones. \"We want to create a good impression,\" he said. \"We don't want our people to go around wearing old shoes, trousers, and shirts.\" But many workers refused, saying that it was taboo to hand in their old clothing. Our security manager had heard that my area of interest was \"South African cultures\" and wanted to know whether the workers were fooling him. \"Are there really such beliefs?\" he asked. My conviction that the university's security staff did not hastily invent culture was based on my fieldwork among Northern Sotho and Shangaan residents of Bushbuckridge, a region of the South African lowveld. (2) This research revealed that in local knowledge one's body was not totally bounded, and that one's aura (seriti) and sweat contaminated one's clothes. This belief was pervasive and serious. Sometimes clothes could be used as a substitute for the owner. I once observed a housewife performing the first-fruit (go loma) ritual at the beginning of the harvest season. Her four children were obliged to bite the fruits from her garden in order of their seniority. But the third daughter was studying in Johannesburg and could not partake. Unperturbed, she still performed the ritual by simply applying a mixture of the fruits on her third daughter's clothes. Throughout my fieldwork people were greatly concerned that items of their clothing might fall into the wrong hands and that witches (baloi) might bewitch them through their clothes. For this reason, men allowed only their mothers and their wives to wash their underwear, sheets, and bedding. Like the security manager, anthropologists frequently have to contend with the anomalous persistence of seemingly traditional beliefs in contemporary settings, such as university campuses. Such beliefs ","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"41 1","pages":"189-207"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4153025","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69379350","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 CULTURE OF MARGINALITY: THE TEENEK PORTRAYAL OF SOCIAL DIFFERENCE","authors":"Anath Ariel de Vidas","doi":"10.2307/4153026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4153026","url":null,"abstract":"The marginality of the Teenek Indians of Mexico gives rise to discourses among this group that serve to justify its relegation to the fringes of modern life. Those discourses reflect a concrete, inexorable, social, economic, and political situation that is reformulated in the Teenek system of representation. This article explores the problem of constructing an ethnic identity as it is reflected in the realities and world views of the indigenous microcosm facing national society. (Mexico, Teenek [Huastec] Indians, ethnicity, world view) ********** The Teenek Indians in northeastern Mexico are notable for a peculiar attitude that combines a state of apparent deculturation with a particularly self-deprecating discourse: \"We are less than nothing,\" \"stinking,\" \"dirty Indians,\" \"ugly idiots,\" \"cowards,\" etc. These rather unexpected opinions were collected during my fieldwork in several Teenek villages, particularly the village of Loma Larga-San Lorenzo, near the town of Tantoyuca, in the northern part of the State of Veracruz. (2) Two and a half years' residence in the area, from March 1991 to September 1993, was augmented by shorter visits up to November 1995. Teenek self-denigrating indigenous discourses are recurrent and common to people of both sexes, different ages, and in different places. The startling contrast they offer to the assertions of ethnic identity and the search for roots so prevalent today around the world invites analysis of the discursive construction of the social categories they express. Indeed, as Levine (1999) suggests, ethnicity stems above all from a cognitive method of classifying human beings. Accordingly, my research explores the elaboration of a disconcerting ethnic identity by examining the realities and conceptions of the indigenous microcosm vis-a-vis national society (Ariel de Vidas 2002). The self-denigrating remarks such as those mentioned tend to justify the social and spatial marginality of the Teenek with respect to their mestizo neighbors. Most of these non-Indians, whom the Teenek consider to be better off than themselves, live in the town nearby, and represent for the Indian population both the positive aspects (modernity, power, money, etc.) and negative aspects (betrayal of tradition, immorality, greed, etc.) of Western culture. Although the Teenek lack such emblematic Indian traits as traditional clothing, agricultural rituals, distinctive ceremonies, and a system of religious offices (the cargo system), their situation is not one of anomie, since as a group they have preserved their language and a cosmology rooted in the Mesoamerican tradition. Thus, while the Teenek are primarily negative in their remarks about themselves, this discourse does not imply a weak sense of belonging. In a way, these autochthonous comments justify the group's marginal position and reflect a cultural construction of Teenek identity in which the disparities between social groups, which in the Teenek view arise from ontological d","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"41 1","pages":"209-224"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4153026","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69379358","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":"CULTURAL MODELS OF GENDER IN SRI LANKA AND THE UNITED STATES","authors":"V. D. Munck, N. Dudley, Joseph Cardinale","doi":"10.2307/4153027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/4153027","url":null,"abstract":"Sri Lankan cultural models of gender are compared with those in the United States. Nineteen questions were given to samples of Sinhala Buddhists, Sri Lankan Muslims, and U.S. residents. Most participants were interviewed about their answers. Consensus analysis was used to determine if there were distinctive cultural boundaries between Muslim, Sinhalese, and U.S. samples. This determined that Muslim and Sinhalese informants shared a more or less consistent cultural view of gender that was significantly different from that of the U.S. informants. Within the Sri Lankan sample, the greatest differences were between Sinhalese and Muslim females. The Sri Lankan sample engendered or dichotomized traits as specifically male or female much more than did the U.S. sample. In general, the Sri Lankan sample associated positive traits with males and negative traits with females. The results show that the Sri Lankan cultural model of gender is much more shaped by patriarchal precepts and practices than the U.S. model of gender. (Gender, cultural model, patriarchy, consensus analysis, Sri Lanka, United States) ********** This article describes and compares Sri Lankan and U.S. cultural models of gender. It seeks to shed light on two interrelated questions: 1) What do cultural models of gender look like? and 2) Are these models culturally distinct; that is, with a unique core, but with larger areas of overlap? The Sri Lanka data for this research came from de Munck's fieldwork there from June 1979 to February 1982. Almost all of that time was spent in the village of Kutali, located in the south-central Moneragala District. The comparison of Sri Lanka and the United States is opportunistic, taking advantage of de Munck's more than three years of research in Sri Lanka and the opportunity to apply the same (or very similar) data-collection methods in the United States. It is also an interesting and useful comparison as it treats three religious-ethnic groups: Buddhists, Muslims, and Judeo-Christians, as well as sample populations from Third World and First World cultures. It may be assumed that whatever core similarities exist between these respective populations are potentially cultural universals and unique traits may be limited to the respective cultures or similar cultures. The concern here is with understanding the pattern of thought-feeling complexes of members of the respective cultures and to consider if these complexes are shared across cultural boundaries. The theoretical orientation for this research is based on recent advances in cognitive anthropology and the cognitive sciences. It employs a version of Brumann's (1999:S1) definition of culture as \"designating the clusters of common concepts, emotions, and practices that arise when people interact regularly,\" without specific concern for the \"practices that arise\" and extending the notion of interacting regularly to include indirect interactions through the mass media and participation in the same social ","PeriodicalId":81209,"journal":{"name":"Ethnology","volume":"41 1","pages":"225-261"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2002-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2307/4153027","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"69378949","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}