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Ethnographic case studies explore what it means to “belong” in Oceania, as contributors consider ongoing formations of place, self and community in connection with travelling, internal and international migration. The chapters apply the multi-dimensional concepts of movement, place-making and cultural identifications to explain contemporary life in Oceanic societies. The volume closes by suggesting that constructions of multiple belongings—and, with these, the relevant forms of mobility, place-making and identifications—are being recontextualized and modified by emerging discourses of climate change and sea-level rise.
The volume addresses how capitalism has been very effective in generating wealth and technological innovation, but has also been associated with social inequity and environmental damage. Its inherent flaws have been highlighted by the escalation of ecological problems arising from growth-oriented capitalism and various economic crises.
As an important contribution to debates on property theory and the role of law in creating, disputing, defining and refining property rights, this volume provides new theoretical material on property systems, as well as new empirically grounded case studies of the dynamics of property transformations. The property claimants discussed in these papers represent a diverse range of actors, including post-socialist states and their citizens, those receiving restitution for past property losses in Africa, Southeast Asia and in eastern Europe, collectives, corporate and individual actors. The volume thus provides a comprehensive anthropological analysis not only of property structures and ideologies, but also of property (and its politics) in action.
The Bird's Head Peninsula of New Guinea covers some 30,000 square kilometres of enormously varied landscape. Although it is home to an indigenous population of just 114,000, these people share more than twenty languages. Wider knowledge of the peninsula was recently gained through an extensive interdisciplinary research project (ISIR) involving anthropologists, archaeologists, botanists, demographers, geologists, linguists, and specialists in public administration. In analysing the findings of the project, this book provides a systematic comparison with earlier studies, addressing the geological past, the latest archaeological evidence of early human habitation (dating back at least 26,000 y...
This study analyzes ritual and domestic water use in a rural and an urban community in West Java, Indonesia. This is an area where water quantity and quality is a problem. The focus is on people who live at the edge of Citarum River, one of the most polluted rivers in the world. Most people there are Muslim. What is the relation between people's perceptions of pollution (of Upper Citarum River) and purification (in Islamic teaching) and their practices of water use. It studies the perceptions of pollution and purification of Sundanese Muslims in West Java and the effects of those perceptions on practices of domestic and ritual water use. Making a discourse analysis of local narratives the study argues that most people don't see pollution as problematic. For them it has become normal. They make a distinction between clean water (in medical sense) and pure water (in ritual sense).
Ethnographic Artifacts: Challenges to a Reflexive Anthropology examines anthropological practice and product, confronting issues of representation and the power of discourse in the lives and practice of both those doing research and of those being researched. Using eight case studies by ethnographers who share extensive research experience in the Pacific, the volume outlines "the trouble with ethnography" so representative of the end of this century, where ethnography itself is perceived as a codification of contested relations. Ethnographic Artifacts takes a unique approach to the social life of ethnography. The editors identify three domains in which ethnographic artifacts are given meanin...
Presenting a new interpretation of entrepreneurial behaviour, this book focuses on how entrepreneurs consider the future, looking at their social practices, language and rituals through which they neutralize or smoothen future unknowns. The study theorizes entrepreneurial behaviour as 'future-work': the social practices, language and rituals through which entrepreneurs neutralize or smoothen future unknowns. The study is grounded in ethnographic case material from global frontiers: second-hand car dealers in West Africa; exporters of fresh fish from Lake Victoria, East Africa; farmed fish entrepreneurs in Greece; and investment bankers in Financial America. It targets students and scholars from the social sciences and economics, and it has theoretical and practical implications.
Today's New Zealand is an emerging paradigm for successful cultural relations. Although the nation's Maori (indigenous Polynesian) and Pakeha (colonial European) populations of the 19th century were dramatically different and often at odds, they are today co-contributors to a vibrant society. For more than a century they have been working out the kind of nation that engenders respect and well-being; and their interaction, though often riddled with confrontation, is finally bearing bicultural fruit. By their model, the encounter of diverse cultures does not require the surrender of one to the other; rather, it entails each expanding its own cultural categories in the light of the other. The time is ripe to explore modern New Zealand's cultural dynamics for what we can learn about getting along. The present anthropological work focuses on religion and related symbols, forms of reciprocity, the operation of power and the concept of culture in modern New Zealand society.
In this volume, the author, former Director of missiology and for may years professor of missiology, religious anthropology and interreligious dialogue at Saint Paul University, Ottawa, "goes spiritually throughout the whole world" in order to study the interplay between "white supremacy" and christianization of the poeples. Where does this interplay happen and under which conditions ..., slavery, colonialism, economical factors and so forth. A great difference in "doing mission" becomes visible between Asia, (India, China, Japan) and the rest of the world.
This book sheds new light on processes of cultural transformation at work in Oceania and analyzes them as products of interrelationships between culturally created meanings and specific contexts. In a series of inspiring essays, noted scholars of the region examine these interrelationships for insight into how cultural traditions are shaped on an ongoing basis. The collection marks a turning point in the debate on the conceptualization of tradition. Following a critique of how tradition has been viewed in terms of dichotomies like authenticity vs. inauthenticity, contributors stake out a novel perspective in which tradition figures as context-bound articulation. This makes it possible to vie...