Showing papers in "Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology in 2010"
TL;DR: In this article, a study of middle-class Muslim Filipinos in Saudi Arabia and their discourses about and relationships with migrant domestic workers is presented. But the focus of the study was not on the domestic workers, but on their religious affiliations as Muslims.
Abstract: This paper is about middle-class Muslim Filipinos in Saudi Arabia and their discourses about and relationships with migrant domestic workers. Saudi Arabia is not simply a temporary stopping point to a better future elsewhere, but is also a place where the middle-class aspirations of Muslim Filipinos may be realised and where their religious affiliations as Muslims may be seen as enhancing rather than detracting from those dreams and imaginings. As part of a large and diverse diasporic community, middle-class Filipinos routinely interact and socialise with working-class Filipinos. They often provide succour and support for their compatriots who labour under difficult and legally unprotected conditions. Some employ migrant domestic workers in their homes, many of whom are irregular or takas (escapees). At the same time, they reproduce and reinforce many of the gendered stereotypes of domestic workers that often suggest moral failings of one sort or another. The simultaneous embracing of and distancing from ...
51 citations
TL;DR: Li et al. as mentioned in this paper investigated the financial and cultural impacts of tourism on inheritance and marital patterns of the matrilineal Mosuo of south-west China and found that Mosuo residing in tourist-impacted areas deviate more often from traditional matrilinal norms than Mosuo living in areas removed from tourism.
Abstract: China's domestic tourism industry has flourished since the mid-1990s, spreading wealth and infrastructure from cities to remote villages and presenting new opportunities for cultural exchange. This paper aims to determine the financial and cultural impacts of tourism on inheritance and marital patterns of the matrilineal Mosuo of south-west China. Data from household censuses and personal interviews show that Mosuo residing in tourist-impacted areas deviate more often from traditional matrilineal norms than Mosuo residing in areas removed from tourism. Households more frequently contain bilateral descendants in tourist-impacted areas, whereas they are more often strictly matrilineal in farming areas. Marital patterns also differ more from stated norms in tourist-impacted areas. I interpret differences as adaptive responses to variation in acquired wealth, arguing that cultural assimilation alone is unlikely to account for such differences. I argue that the results are consistent with the general hypothesi...
50 citations
TL;DR: Filipino pilgrimages to holy sites in Israel sacralise the humdrum and sometimes demeaning realities of their work, enabling them to transcend through performance the'migrant' label assigned to them by contemporary migration regimes in the international division of labour.
Abstract: Filipino Christian care and domestic workers’ migration to Israel is a deeply transformative process of embodied subjectification, imbuing their religious practice with imaginative meanings rather than merely economic. Filipino pilgrimages to holy sites in Israel sacralise the humdrum and sometimes demeaning realities of their work, enabling them to transcend through performance the ‘migrant’ label assigned to them by contemporary migration regimes in the international division of labour. Becoming pilgrims (and tourists) in the Holy Land, migrants discover alternative life narratives, which position them on a journey within a sacred geography at the centre of Christian devotion, suffusing their movements along transnational networks and migration routes. By interpreting Holy Land pilgrimages as dynamic and at times awkward encounters with the sacred, inflected by Filipinos’ legal, social and economic status in Israel, I show the creative fusion of pilgrimage, tourism and migration achieved by migrants in ...
40 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors highlight recent ethnographic work that discloses migrant women's creative engagements with the people and landscapes in the places they migrate to, and challenge a dominant view that construes women international migrants from Asia as docile bodies shaped and constrained by their transnational (re)productive labours.
Abstract: This issue highlights recent ethnographic work that discloses migrant women's creative engagements with the people and landscapes in the places they migrate to. We challenge a dominant view that construes women international migrants from Asia as docile bodies shaped and constrained by their transnational (re)productive labours. And we reject simplistic contemporary formulations of transnational migration that posit a singular, homogeneous ‘transnational social field’. Three key processes, relatively ignored and under theorised are interrogated: diaspora formation, ritual performance and changing normativities. A focus on diaspora encourages us to move beyond a political and economic analysis to consider cultural practices, continuities and discontinuities in migrants' relationships with the people and places they travel to, as well as those left behind. A focus on ritual emphasises the significance of religious performance in the making of place and convivial sociality. A focus on normativity foregrounds...
36 citations
TL;DR: The formation of Wa identity and xenology through rice beer drinking, a key arena of social interaction governed by intricate rules, is discussed in this article, where the shared drinking of home-made beer not only shapes Wa sociality and invites the "participant intoxication" of anyone who would submit to Wa mores, but also defines as outsiders those who would refuse to share, including those appalled by the beer's uncleanliness, real or imagined.
Abstract: Self–other distinctions are always made in a dynamic process of incorporation and exclusion, based on locally produced sociocultural rules constantly redefined in practice. In the present paper, I discuss the formation of Wa identity and xenology through rice beer drinking, a key arena of social interaction governed by intricate rules. The shared drinking of home-made beer not only shapes Wa sociality and invites the ‘participant intoxication’ of anyone who would submit to Wa mores (including foreign ethnographers), but also defines as outsiders those who would refuse to share, including those appalled by the beer's uncleanliness, real or imagined. Rice beer drinking is briefly compared with betel chewing and smoking tobacco, and is also contrasted with commodified Chinese liquor in terms of their use and effect in social interaction and ethnic distinction in the Wa lands at the China–Burma frontier, with special attention to the problem of Wa autonomy.
33 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored how Filipino migrants narrate and experience ambivalent notions of care as they move across borders and found that their labour is fraught with ambiguity as they distance themselves from ideas of care in their working lives.
Abstract: Notions of care have multiple inflections in the lives of Filipino medical workers in Singapore. The present paper explores ethnographically how Filipino migrants narrate and experience ambivalent notions of care as they move across borders. Their labour is fraught with ambiguity as they distance themselves from ideas of care in their working lives. They position themselves as professionals and attempt to shed the long-standing associations of Filipinos as ‘unskilled’ care labour in the global economy and the feelings of shame ‘care’ evokes. However, discussions of care are at the heart of their narratives on the forms of sociality they have left behind in the Philippines and on their notions of how one ought to live in the world with others.
25 citations
TL;DR: The province of Yunnan as mentioned in this paper is the most diverse province in China and borders within China on Tibet, Sichuan, Guizhou and Guangxi, and beyond China on Burma, Laos and Vietnam.
Abstract: Geographically, the province of Yunnan is extraordinarily diverse. It borders within China on Tibet, Sichuan, Guizhou and Guangxi, and beyond China on Burma, Laos and Vietnam. It is larger than Ger...
25 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an ethnographic analysis of the religious stories and activist experiences of four women migrant workers in Hong Kong is presented. But these women are not typical of the spectrum of religious possibilities facing Hong Kong's migrant workers, but each woman's tales point to the ways in which migratory experiences shape lives and religious perspectives in complex and unexpected ways.
Abstract: Migrant domestic workers confront a multiplicity of difficulties and challenges. Within the ‘host’ context, some join religious groups that offer comfort by replicating the religion of home; others experiment with new religions or denominations that appeal to them within the modern global context; others ignore or reject religion altogether. This article offers an ethnographic analysis of the religious stories and activist experiences of four women migrant workers in Hong Kong. These women are not typical of the spectrum of religious possibilities facing Hong Kong's migrant workers, but each woman's tales point to the ways in which migratory experiences shape lives and religious perspectives in complex and unexpected ways. The migratory context provides new imaginative resources with which to reconsider religious perspectives, familial and gender expectations, reformulate pasts, and re-envision futures.
25 citations
TL;DR: The role of religion in the Cebuano Santo Nino-Sinulog fiesta in New Zealand is explored in this paper, where the metaphoric interface between two homes in the diasporic consciousness and the significant role of sacred symbols in aiding and facilitating the maintenance of imagined ‘Filipino identity in a foreign land.
Abstract: Catholic diasporic populations often carry their icons and customary modes of devotion with them. Among New Zealand's secular society, some migrant communities display their religion publicly through processions, fiestas and festivals. The present article explores the role of religion in the Filipino diaspora. I focus on the celebration of the Cebuano Santo Nino–Sinulog fiesta in New Zealand and examine how Filipino cultural forms of expression connect and mix notions of homeland, family, home, sacred domain, identity and transnational settlement. By examining the fiesta and its structure of power relationships, I explore the metaphoric interface between two homes in the diasporic consciousness and the significant role of sacred symbols in aiding and facilitating the maintenance of imagined ‘Filipino’ identity in a foreign land.
24 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the household as a space of confluence between Islamic ethical practice and the affective and immaterial labour entailed by domestic work, as well as between global Islam and the feminisa...
Abstract: Over the past two decades, tens of thousands of migrant domestic workers in Kuwait have developed new-found ‘Islamic piety’.1 Occurring in a much maligned and understudied region—the Arabian Peninsula—this widespread phenomenon has either been elided, cynically dismissed or the motivations for these conversions and their sociohistorical conditions of possibility assumed. Domestic workers’ own articulations focus on ‘house talk’ and suggest a shift in analytic focus, with an emphasis on everyday relationships and activities within households as generative of their new-found Islamic piety. Domestic workers experience becoming Muslim not as a radical break from their previous relationships and religious practices, but as a gradual reworking of them. The domestic workers’ expression of their new-found Islamic faith points to the household as a space of confluence between Islamic ethical practice and the affective and immaterial labour entailed by domestic work, as well as between global Islam and the feminisa...
23 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore Filipino migrants' religious space in France by examining irregular migrant Filipinas' church involvement and show the contrasting attitudes of these women towards religion: some find in the Church a social institution supporting their social and economic incorporation in France, whereas others stay away from religious gatherings to avoid prejudice and gossip, pointing to the key roles of religion in the structuring of migrant populations, as well as of the Church as a centre of collective identity, a source of empowerment and an instrument of social control.
Abstract: Religious belongings help migrants, especially irregular ones, to confront the precariousness of their lives. France represents a peculiar case because it is a secular country where undocumented migrants have access to free medical care and their children to compulsory education. The present paper explores Filipino migrants’ religious space in France by examining irregular migrant Filipinas’ church involvement and shows the contrasting attitudes of these women towards religion: some find in the Church a social institution supporting their social and economic incorporation in France, whereas others stay away from religious gatherings to avoid prejudice and gossip. These attitudes point to the key roles of religion in the structuring of migrant populations, as well as of the Church as a centre of collective identity, a source of empowerment and an instrument of social control.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show how an exchange-based approach to faith persists in the diaspora and enables migrants to renegotiate long-distance forms of kinship, rather than being the good converts or diligent congregation members of their self-descriptions.
Abstract: Migration may offer Filipinos abroad new ways to practice religious faith and opportunities to extend social networks, but many must at the same time sustain and renegotiate kinship ties at home. The obligations of kinship can mean declarations of faith are not always what we may think. Rather than being the good converts or diligent congregation members of their self-descriptions, migrants may continue to be drawn into village ritual at home. The present paper aims to shows how an exchange-based approach to faith persists in the diaspora and enables migrants to renegotiate long-distance forms of kinship.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the lack of a truly global anthropology in the world today and consider why such a world anthropology does not exist and offer a more personal account, based on my experience as an editor of an international journal attempting, to some extent, to counter the hegemony of the American anthropological core.
Abstract: In the present paper, I first discuss the lack of a truly global anthropology in the world today and consider why such a world anthropology does not exist. I then offer a more personal account, based on my experience as an editor of an international journal attempting, to some extent, to counter the hegemony of the American anthropological core. Finally, I look at the referee system and argue that, for all its benefits, it nonetheless serves to prevent the emergence of a global anthropology. The major questions raised in this paper are how, in an anthropological world riven by a huge gap between the core and periphery, as well as by different national schools of anthropology, can refereeing of journal articles take place in a fair and balanced way; and, if it cannot take place, what does this mean about the nature and future of anthropology as a discipline?
TL;DR: This article presented a critical analysis of State and non-State interventions into the intimate and sexual lives of Sri Lankan migrant women in Beirut and interrogates the ways that normative ideals of heterosexual marriage and family are regulated and enforced transnationally.
Abstract: This paper presents a critical analysis of State and non-State interventions into the intimate and sexual lives of Sri Lankan migrant women in Beirut and interrogates the ways that normative ideals of heterosexual marriage and family are regulated and enforced transnationally. Drawing on research in Lebanon and Sri Lanka in 2006–9, I juxtapose official representations of Sri Lankan migrant women with migrant accounts that disclose the diverse and often transgressive realities of migrant lives. Focusing in particular on a United Nations Development Program report, I highlight how non-State actors, deliberately or otherwise, fall in line with moralistic State discourses in ways that purposefully ignore and act to constrain women's sexual agency in diasporic situations. The promotion and repression of certain sexualities, images, desires and stereotypes leads to the marginalisation of those who deviate from the norm and places them in an even more precarious situation outside state protection.
TL;DR: The Ambonwari people of East Sepik Province in Papua New Guinea have radically altered their relationships with bush spirits and, simultaneously, their attitudes towards their landscape as mentioned in this paper, under the influence of the Catholic charismatic movement.
Abstract: Over the past decade, under the influence of the Catholic charismatic movement, the Ambonwari people of East Sepik Province in Papua New Guinea have radically altered their relationships with bush spirits and, simultaneously, their attitudes towards their landscape. During the current process of abolishing prohibitions pertaining to taboo places, the Ambonwari have also abolished a set of cultural activities that were characteristic of ancestral placemaking and have weakened the effect these places and their spirits have on the Ambonwari's contemporary life world. By abandoning their relationships with bush spirits and embracing God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and by moving their eyes, thoughts and feelings from earth to heaven, the Ambonwari want to transcend their familiar landscape and the life world that it sustains.
TL;DR: This paper explored how post-1949 political economic changes and changes in representations of cultural identity have been experienced by both the village residents of Longquan and the town residents of Dayanzhen in north-west Yunnan's predominantly Naxi Lijiang basin.
Abstract: The present article explores how post-1949 political economic changes and changes in representations of cultural identity have been experienced by both the village residents of Longquan and the town residents of Dayanzhen in north-west Yunnan's predominantly Naxi Lijiang basin. Longquan is now at the epicentre of the new ‘Shuhe’ epic tourism village development complex, whereas the gucheng (or ‘old town’) part of Dayanzhen (or Lijiang Town) was essentially the epicentre for an even earlier epic tourism town development project. The impact of this recent large-scale (primarily domestic) ethnic tourism is contextualised within the entrenched urban–rural divide that lies between these two locales. Implications for state, popular culture and local representations of Naxi ethnic identity, gender, rurality and class are examined.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on women migrants married according to Islamic law, which accords them protection and confinement in Saudi Arabia, where women are privileged, yet also vulnerable to shame.
Abstract: Pinay (Filipina) migrant workers in Saudi Arabia are finding ways to reclaim their selves through their exercise of womanhood. They live and work in an environment in which women, although veiled, cry for protection beneath the regulation of their bodies. The present paper focuses on women migrants married according to Islamic law, which accords them protection and confinement. As Muslim wives they are privileged, yet also more vulnerable to shame. Their condition is rendered more fragile in that they are not in their own country. Although their bodies are their own to rule, they inevitably bear the brunt of institutional restriction. Although deployed as docile bodies, they can try to be agents of their own emancipation.
TL;DR: The authors analyzed the dynamics of cross-border business culture in the migrant home village of Heshun, and explored the local interpretations of landscape and the prominent role it plays in local culture.
Abstract: In a border region of Yunnan province, the Han people of Heshun, despite their hybrid origins, manipulate Confucian symbols to shape the landscape as a reference to the realities of local business competition and trading activities. The present paper analyses the dynamics of cross-border business culture in the migrant home village of Heshun, and explores the local interpretations of landscape and the prominent role it plays in local culture. The continued appeal to a Confucian culture reinforces flourishing cross-border activities. Confucian culture and merchant culture are intertwined in encultured ways through activities that accord with the requirements of a Han Chinese identity. The paper suggests that two ultimately conflicting ideologies, namely Confucianism and mercantilism, can be unified through the discourse of landscape, which acts as a means of transforming wealth into reputation.
TL;DR: The authors explored children's paid work in the plantations by looking at the three dimensions of their economic lives: the local economy, their households and their individual lives, addressing the tension between children's agency and the systems that constrain it.
Abstract: Children contribute substantially to the workforce needed to produce tobacco in Indonesia. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, I discuss the reasons behind children's economic involvement in tobacco cultivation in the eastern region of the island of Lombok in eastern Indonesia. I explore children's paid work in the plantations by looking at the three dimensions of their economic lives: the local economy, their households and their individual lives. I address the tension between children's agency and the systems that constrain it.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine religious practice in the everyday lives of Sri Lankan women working in Jordan and show how ritual activities and participation in church groups play important roles, both moral and material for Sri Lankans in the diaspora.
Abstract: The present article examines religious practice in the everyday lives of Sri Lankan women working in Jordan. As a minority in a predominantly Muslim country, Buddhist migrants lack some of the supernatural and social resources they may otherwise tap into in times of need. Rather than forgoing ritual activities during their sojourns, Buddhists and Roman Catholics alike use Christian churches as arenas for the making and fulfilling of ritual vows. Many Buddhists also attend Catholic and Pentecostal church groups. Yet, despite the adaptive use of Christian sites of worship by Buddhists, this is not a case of Buddhism transformed. These activities should be understood as Buddhism by other means, a further instance of a personalised and pluralist approach to the divine. This analysis emphasises the affective, emotional dimensions of religious practice. It shows how ritual activities and participation in church groups play important roles, both moral and material, for Sri Lankans in the diaspora.
TL;DR: The authors examined the ways that bodies move in one particular culture in Papua New Guinea, namely the Lelet, and argued that women's bodily movements, comportments and dispositions are heavily circumscribed by conventions that define what sorts of movements are appropriate to their gender.
Abstract: Following Marcel Mauss, who argued that the way people move and position their bodies is socially learned and culturally specific, I examine the ways that bodies move in one particular culture in Papua New Guinea, namely the Lelet. I extend Mauss' insights by drawing on the work of Judith Butler, who suggests that gender is a performance rather than instinctive. Looking at the kinds of actions Lelet women perform, I argue that these play an important part in constituting them as gendered beings. Lelet women's bodily movements, comportments and dispositions are heavily circumscribed by conventions that define what sorts of movements are appropriate to their gender. This process of engendering is quintessentially about power and shows how particular forms of power produce particular subjects. Although these gender conventions are sometimes enforced by punitive means, women largely come to embody them as a process of self-government. Although the Christian church has upheld such conventions in the past, the ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the Church in particular is a publicly accessible focal point for both Muslim and Christian migrants and asylum seekers in Egypt, providing opportunities for collective worship and conviviality and supplying practical assistance to migrants, including southern Sudanese refugees, many of whom are domestic workers.
Abstract: Religion is important to both Egyptian and non-Egyptian women involved in domestic work. The present paper argues that church in particular is a publicly accessible focal point for both Muslim and Christian migrants and asylum seekers in Egypt, providing opportunities for collective worship and conviviality and supplying practical assistance to migrants, including southern Sudanese refugees, many of whom are domestic workers. Informal networks, including those sponsored by religious organisations, comprise crucial channels for obtaining viable jobs in household services, in which religious affiliation is one criterion of selection. In the absence of formal legal status, religion also provides a normative framework for regulating and contesting employer–employee relationships.
TL;DR: The change in ethnic identity of Han miners who migrated to the Wa Hills during the seventeenth-nineteenth centuries is discussed in this article. But they did not have the resources to return to their home villages and so settled in the Wa hills, and only by changing their ethnic identity and becoming Wa could they avoid being attacked and headhunted.
Abstract: The present paper discusses the change in ethnic identity of Han miners who migrated to the Wa Hills during the seventeenth–nineteenth centuries. When the mines closed, the miners did not have the resources to return to their home villages and so settled in the Wa Hills. Only by changing their ethnic identity and becoming Wa could they avoid being attacked and headhunted, as well as gain access to local resources, especially land. Changes in ethnic identity over a long period is evident from the village names, family names, legends and genealogies.1
Journal Article•
TL;DR: This paper explored how the Ang (De'ang), a group of Mon-Khmer-speaking people in south-west Yunnan, are involved in market exchange through sales of tea in both periodic markets and tea factories.
Abstract: This paper explores how the Ang (De'ang), a group of Mon-Khmer-speaking people in south-west Yunnan, are involved in market exchange through sales of tea in both periodic markets and tea factories. The relationships between Ang villagers and their tea buyers reveal something of the complexity of the interactions between the kin-based gift/personal relationships and commodity relationships that are affecting the incorporation of minority people into China's socialist market economy today.
TL;DR: In this article, a review essay explores a question at the core of the book, namely how we can conceptualise localised and global practices and ideas through which contemporary and decolonised Indigenous and gendered forms of identification are shaped.
Abstract: Ty P. Kāwika Tengan's Native Men Remade. Gender and Nation in Contemporary Hawai'i documents how a group of Indigenous Hawaiian men (including the author), as part of a broader cultural nationalist movement, is reworking notions of masculinity and indigeneity by recreating a modern-day warriorhood. While praising the work for expanding anthropological methods and writing, the present review essay explores a question at the core of the book, namely how we can conceptualise localised and global practices and ideas through which contemporary and decolonised Indigenous and gendered forms of identification are shaped. A truly intercultural approach is proposed for a less limiting understanding of what ‘real’ and masculine Indigenous men and others can be.