Showing papers in "Ethnology in 2005"

Generation KU: Individualism and China's Millennial Youth

Abstract: The People's Republic of China is undergoing dramatic changes, most of which have their roots in the government-initiated reforms of the 1980s. However, many of the current changes are being driven by China's younger generation, China's equivalent of America's millennials. One of the most prominent of these changes is a new kind of individualism valued by China's millennial youth. A key indicator of young Chinese attachment to this new individualism is the pervasive use of a new slang term associated with it, ku. Ku is the Chinese version of the American slang term "cool," and like cool, its emergence as a pervasive youth slang term is the verbal icon of a youth rebellion that promises to transform some of the older generation's most enduring cultural values. (China, youth, slang, culture change) ********** It is all but impossible to discuss China today without acknowledging the significance of its increasingly rapid pace of change. Change is evident in economic development, especially in major urban centers like Shanghai and Beijing, and in the new official attitude toward private enterprise that is, to say the least, supportive. These overt trappings of change are part of a global process that has made marketing by major corporations a force whose power and immediacy may exceed those of the various religious or political philosophies the world has seen so far. Corresponding to this economically driven change are other transformations that are particularly apparent in the educated youth of China's millennial generation (Hooper 1991; Marr and Rosen 1998). Of course young Chinese respond to the forces of globalization in a variety of ways, many of which are mutually contradictory. Some may pointedly speak out against commercial forces while others readily accept them or embrace the commodities that are their agents in the popular media of films, music, television, and the Internet. The millennials are the children of the Cultural Revolution generation. Largely because of globalization, their viewpoints and attitudes are profoundly different from those of their parents. A central feature of these attitudes is a kind of individualism that stands emphatically opposed to the collectivist spirit promoted during the Cultural Revolution, an individualism that is influenced by Western pop culture and is linked to the new Chinese slang term "ku," derived from the English slang term "cool." The ku of China's millennials is not a carbon copy of Western styles. There are different ways to be ku in contemporary China, but all reflect Western kinds of modernity and individualism. The adoption of the word ku as a basic slang term symbolizing the values of a current generation of Chinese youth is similar to what occurred in the U.S. twice during the twentieth century, first in the 1920s with the term "swell," and again in the 1960s when swell was replaced by "cool" (Moore 2004). In each case a fundamental transformation in values, driven by adolescents and young adults, was accompanied by the emergence and widespread acceptance of a new slang term of approval. China today is experiencing a similar transformation in values among its youth. The acceptance of new values by young people in the face of resistance by their elders is a pattern commonly found in modern societies where popular culture flourishes via mass media. It is also common for the younger generation to emphasize its association with their new values via a pervasively used slang term. In the case of ku, the newly adopted term is revealing in that it comes from a basic slang lexeme originating in Western popular culture, but is semantically linked to features not associated with the meaning of the Western term. In fact, the semantic modification of this slang term highlights what is most prominent in the way young Chinese identify themselves as distinct from their forebears. Ku is written with a classical Chinese character (also pronounced ku) whose original meaning was "cruel. …

Co-wife conflict and co-operation

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 the polygynous family. EXPLANATIONS FOR CO-WIFE CONFLICT AND CO-OPERATION The conceptual frameworks of behavioral ecology and evolutionary psychology are two of the more predominant explanatory schemes used to account for variation and continuities in polygynous family life. Although the two frameworks can form a unified theory, most researchers emphasize either the cultural variations or the continuity in their data. The behavioral ecologist Monique Borgerhoff-Mulder (1988, 1989, 1992) argues that material and related structural factors exert an enormous impact on shaping the quality of co-wife interaction, and that the degree to which a woman is materially dependent on her husband determines her willingness to co-operate or compete with a co-wife over material resources and reproductive considerations. From this it follows that the greater a wife's material dependence on her husband, the more frequent and Intense will be her conflicts with a co-wife. …

Wolof women, economic liberalization, and the crisis of masculinity in rural senegal

Abstract: Among Wolof farmers in Senegal's Peanut Basin, patriarchal control of household dependents has diminished in conjunction with economic liberalization, state disengagement, and the formation of rural weekly markets. This article builds on twenty-six months of ethnographic fieldwork to explore a crisis of masculinity expressed by men in their oral testimonies and everyday discourse. In domestic struggles over labor and income, male control over women has decreased in the postcolonial epoch. Male household heads, in wrathful fashion, condemn women for their individualism, selfishness, and open sexuality. Men's discourse of social decay contrasts with the more neutral narratives produced by women, who stress household solidarity and the pragmatics of household survival in response to economic insecurity. Wolof husbands and wives confront economic change through different discourses and practices, all the while renegotiating domestic authority. (Wolof women, economic liberalization, masculinity crisis, Senegal) One day, while conducting fieldwork with Wolofpeanut farmers in Senegal, my moped broke down. Waiting under a shade tree for the mechanic to repair the carburetor, I worried about the interview that I was missing, and noticed that I was not the only woman there anxious about her work. The mechanic's young wife stood quietly nearby as she kept a donkey-cart in rein, surveying the landscape impatiently. She wanted to go to the water tower, a kilometer away, and fill two barrels with water for cooking and washing. She was obliged, however, to wait for her husband's navetane, a hired farm hand who had mentioned earlier that he needed the woman's assistance to weed her husband's peanut field. It appeared that the woman was no longer needed but, having no word, she sent a child to the fields to confirm this. The wait was frustrating and the woman revealed, through her body language and comments, her annoyance at having to sit about idly when she had water to fetch and other tasks to complete. Then a male customer of the mechanic chided her for her impatience. "Women don't own the world," he announced, and told her she had no right to complain. The woman immediately retorted, "Men don't own the world either, only Allah owns the world!" Ten minutes later, she wordlessly rolled the heavy barrels from her cart and gave up with a sigh. She had waited too long and the pump would soon shut down until evening. Her morning's work was lost.

Vietnamese new year rice cakes: iconic festive dishes and contested national identity

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 authoritarian regimes such as Vietnam's. FOOD AND NATIONAL IDENTITY Iconic dishes are powerful markers of national identity. Mennell (1985), in his comparison of English and French cuisines, argues that recognizable national cuisines appear hand-in-hand with the appearance of the modern nation-state, while Bell and Valentine (1997:168) point out that "food and the nation are so commingled in popular discourses that it is often difficult not to think one through the other.... " In a similar vein, "[s]tories about eating something somewhere ... are really stories about the place and the people there ... the reading of a food's story reveals, like any good biography or travelogue, a much bigger story ... of particular times and places" (Freidberg 2003:3-4). While these writers stress the strength and immediacy of the relations between food and national identity, they also point out that iconic national dishes are more often than not imagined (Anderson 1983) or invented (Hobsbawn and Ranger 1983). …

The afterlife of asabano corpses : Relationships with the deceased in Papua New Guinea

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 'dying' ... to the complete cessation of all social action directed towards their remains, tomb, monument or other relics representing them." Between these two points are rites of passage marking the deceased person's altered place in the group (van Gennep 1960), and an ongoing relationship between survivors and the deceased, who are regarded as not truly dead. It is anthropologically useful to also define death in social terms as a point at which social interaction with the deceased becomes impossible, given prevailing cultural models of reality. With death the nature of survivors' interaction with the deceased is changed and eventually ended. This end is social death, as the deceased person moves beyond memory or is willfully excluded from society. For many, personalities of the deceased are not utterly cut off from the living. People often perceive further communications from the deceased through dreams, successes attributed to ancestral blessings, or simply poignant memories. …

Temple-building and heritage in China

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, the emphasis there is on how these cultural symbols were utilized by villagers to form networks in the local community. The present study complements the studies just mentioned by revealing the multiple meanings of temples for people living in China and Hong Kong, and how they and the nation state utilize and appropriate the meanings differently. The temples were constructed as a result of a transnational (i.e., Hong Kong and Taiwan) concern with cultural heritage, the local economy, and tourism. (2) This article suggests that temple construction could be examined as a deliberate process of inventing heritage for tourism and economic development. Two questions will be addressed. How was the revival or invention of heritage triggered by transnational links and subsequently exploited by the locals, together with the efforts of the overseas Chinese and the state for multiple purposes? And how did the process of constructing temples and heritage create and mediate relationships between the locals and other Chinese in China and Chinese overseas? …

Caste, class, and community in India: an ethnographic approach

Abstract: The anthropology of India has been dominated by an emphasis on caste that has inhibited an integrated approach to understanding class in India. Using an ethnographic approach that takes into account the symbolic and material aspects of caste and class, this article focuses on the attempts to form a "community" of potters among a large group of potter-artisans in central India. It is problematic, however, to view this community as a federation of potter castes or as simply a bloc of classes. Katznelson's (1986) insights into different aspects of class formation help to understand how caste and class get constructed in the formation of a community. Here the apparently caste-based dispositions of potters reveals a class consciousness that is culturally organized by a custom that men work the potter's wheel and women do the marketing. (Caste, class community, India).

Race and the politics of identity in Nepal

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 came here." Previously, the peoples that the MNO began to call Mongols had thought of themselves as belonging to a jati, a caste or ethnic group; in this framework, it was not biological differences but cultural practices, language, religion, and their social ranking below high-caste Hindus that were the key attributes of identity. By a process of racialization (see Barot and Bird 2001), this group of people came to be represented and categorized in racial terms as part of the mobilization of the MNO (Omi and Winant 1986; Winant 1994). This essay analyzes why the MNO asserted a racial identity for this diverse group of people, and the meanings of the MNO's invoking race in this political and historical context. In addition, it deepens anthropological understanding of uses of race by people who are subaltern; i.e., economically and politically subordinate within a society. It was not inevitable that the MNO would define the population it sought to mobilize as a race. …

Walking streets, talking history: the making of odessa

Abstract: Through walking streets and talking history, the members of the My Odessa club sense their city as place. History is encountered in buildings, ruins, monuments, and stories as both a diffuse feeling and a dialogic process. The walkers' practice of exploring nooks and crannies of the city and speaking with local residents is informed by a "large family" form of sociality, and a notion of Odessa as courtyard where space is conceived as communal. In walking the city, participants subvert and recreate aspects of Soviet and post-Soviet urban space and generate a sense of their city as distinct from a national space. (Space and place, sensing history, postsocialist transformation) ********** Every Sunday in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odessa, between 20 and 30 residents, mainly elderly, gather on a street in "old Odessa," (1) the area built prior to the October Revolution of 1917. With their guide, Valerii Netrebskii, they ramble for two or three hours down a chosen street, stopping frequently to be transported to past epochs by Valerii's layered account of the history of a particular building, empty lot, or courtyard. They discover hidden parts of streets, such as an overgrown block of Champagne Lane. They enter courtyards and speak with residents, as on Cable Street where walkers, some of them Jews, debated with a Jewish resident the pros and cons of emigrating. They ponder the connection of certain places with well-known landmarks, as when Valerii explained how the fish fountains on the Pushkin Monument were made in the Jewish Labor Association's technical college on the corner of Bazaar and Cable Streets. They use motifs from Odessan authors' works in describing their environment, as Inna did in noting how a new metal balcony reminded her of Bezenchyk's coffin in the novel Twelve Chairs. Walkers express wonder when discovering new places, outrage at the poor upkeep of architectural landmarks, irritation when previously accessible buildings are fenced off, and amusement at participants' jokes and interjections. The walks of the My Odessa club, which I joined from August to November 2002, are about sensing Odessa as place. (2) Sensing Odessa as place as these walkers do is intricately related to sensing history and the experience of sociability. Although the group is relatively small and not overtly political, in that it does not lobby the local administration, through these walks a sense of the urban landscape is transmitted in which Odessa is conceived as Russian, cosmopolitan, cultured, distinct from Ukraine, and more connected with Russia and the outside world. The group's practices are influenced not only by Soviet Odessan concepts of urban space and the formation of a post-Soviet public sphere in which informal groups can organize, but also by the prerevolutionary architecture and geography of the city. Odessa was founded in 1794 by Catherine II to stabilize, settle, and develop trade in the lands north of the Black Sea that the Russian Empire had acquired from the Ottoman Empire (Herlihy 1986). The city was established a few decades after the remaining vestiges of autonomous Ukrainian political formations east of the Dnipro River had been dismantled; indeed, Ukraine did not attain full political sovereignty until 1991, with the exception of brief periods in 1918-1919. Throughout the nineteenth century, Odessa was one of the most rapidly developing cities in Europe, and by the mid- 1800s was the third-most prominent city in the Russian Empire in size, economy, and cultural importance. Inhabited by Greeks, Italians, French, Poles, Jews, Bulgarians, Germans, Moldovans, Russians, and Ukrainians, among others, the city was cosmopolitan from the outset. It emerged from Catherine's policy of attracting foreign merchants, administrators, and colonists from western Europe and the Ottoman Empire to develop Novorossia (New Russia). By the early twentieth century the city was linguistically and culturally more Russian than a century previously. …

Ethnographic atlas XXXI: Peoples of easternmost Europe

Abstract: In the current installment of the Ethnographic Atlas, we present formalized data (following Murdock's scheme) on seventeen peoples of the European part of the former Russian Empire and the Soviet Union not covered by any of the previous installments of the Ethnographic Atlas. Different peoples of the sample were integrated into Russia in different historical periods, from medieval (the Ingrians, Karelians, Veps, Votes) to early modern (the Besermyan, Bashkir, Chuvash, Kazan Tatar, Mordva, Udmurt) to modern (the Gagauz, Estonians, Lithuanian Karaim and Tatar, Latvians, Livs, Moldovans). Some of them have always remained within Russia's borders (the Besermyan, Bashkir, Chuvash, Ingrians, Karelians, Kazan Tatar, Mordva, Udmurt, Veps, Votes), while others departed after the fall of the Russian Empire, during the 1920s and 1930s, and live outside of Russia today. After the break up of the USSR, there arose the independent republics of Estonia (the Estonians), Latvia (the Latvians and Livs), Lithuania (the Lithuanian Karaim and Tatar), and Moldova (the Gagauz and Moldovans) (Kizilov 1984; Tishkov 1998). OVERVIEW The reviewed peoples belong to the following cultural blocks: Finno-Ugrian: Permic (the Udmurt and Besermyan) and Finn (the Erzia Mordva, Veps, Livvik Karelians, Ingrians, Estonians, Livs, Votes); Turkic (the Kazan Tatar, Lithuanian Tatar, Bashkir, Chuvash, Gagauz, Lithuanian Karaim); Indoeuropean: Baltic (the Latvians), and Romanic (the Moldovans). The Besermyan speak a dialect of the Udmurt language. The Erzia Mordva as Volga Finns are linguistically closer to the Baltic Finns than to the Permians (the Udmurt and Besermyan). Among Baltic Finns two groups are represented: Northern and Southern. The Karelians and Ingrians belong to the former and are linguistically very close to the Finns proper. In fact, Finnish linguists consider Ingrian to be a dialect of Finnish (see Shlygina 2003:593). The Veps also belong to the Northern group. The Votes and Livs together with the Estonians represent the Southern group of the Baltic Finns. The Udmurt belong to the Permian group of the Finno-Ugrian linguistic family together with the Komi-Zyryan and Komi-Permiak. They are ethnographic heirs of the local Anan'ino and Pjanobor archaeological cultures of the eighth to the third century BCE (Vladykin 2000:433). By their origin, the Besermyans are a small group of southern Udmurts, having taken refuge among the northern Udmurts in the wake of political turmoil caused by the Tatar-Mongol destruction of the Volga Bulgarian state, the defeat of the Golden Horde state by the armies of Tamerlan, and other violent political events. Having settled outside the former territory of Volga Bulgaria, they retained a clearly defined cultural identity and their own self-name, which ultimately stems from the Arabic [muslimun.sup.a] (via Persian mosalman and corrupted Turkic busurmen). Although pagans originally, they had never actually been Muslims (Russians superficially Christianized them starting from the mid-eighteenth century CE) (Napolskikh 1997:52-3; Goldina 1996:19). Much more numerous than the Besermyan, the Chuvash are also descendants of the refugee population that fled to the outskirts of the Volga Bulgaria and mixed there with the Mari. Their language, being the only survivor of the early Bolgar (Proto-Bolgar), has won over the local Finno-Ugrian languages and dialects, and their culture in general being a blend of early Turkic and Finno-Ugric traditions. To the beginning of the twentieth century, they retained a considerable portion of the Proto-Bolgar paganism (Vorobjev 1956:30-5; Salmin 1994:162-4, 186, 272). Like the Besermyan and Udmurt, they were more or less Christianized beginning with the mid-eighteenth century. Together with the Gagauz, they are among the very few Christianized Turkic peoples. Also apart from the Chuvash and Gagauz, all the other Turkic peoples of the present installment speak the languages of the Kypchak group, being thus the descendants of the populations linguistically assimilated by the main population of the Golden Horde. …

Spirits of the hereafter : Death, funerary possession, and the afterlife in chuuk, micronesia

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, on the beliefs, practices, and experiences of the living (e.g., Bloch and Parry 1982; de Witte 2001; Metcalf and Huntington 1991). Comparatively little has been said about the spirit world in terms of the parallel journey taken by the souls of the dead. This article approaches the process of becoming dead as one that occurs on both sides of the cosmological divide between the world of the living and the afterlife. I take seriously the beliefs of Chuukese/Mortlockese (2) in spirits, encounters, and possession, and endeavor to elucidate the processual journey of death and the afterlife in ways that make sense to them, not just to anthropologists. Therefore, 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 the process of death as a journey of becoming that is also marked by social rupture, ritual, and the social/emotional problems of grief and attachment. …

Mummers and moshers : Two rituals of trust in changing social environments

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 and Schultz 2003:72; Levinson 1996:194)--are forms of communication that influence people to refrain from taking short-term advantages in order to reap larger, longer-term benefits, and to trust other individuals to do the same. However, the link between rituals and co-operative relationships is still a subject of debate. Recently there has been an attempt to use Costly Signaling Theory (CST) to explain exactly how some rituals have the communicative effect of building trust and commitment in long-term co-operative relationships (Atran 2002; Cronk 1994; Frank 1988; Irons 2001; Smith and Bird 1999; Sosis 2000a, 2000b, 2003, 2004; Sosis and Alcorta 2003; Sosis and Bressler 2003). This approach attempts to account for religious rituals "that are costly in time [e.g., praying five times per day] and sometimes in other ways" (Irons 2001:293), such as pain (e.g., the sun dance), energy (e.g., the sacrifice of food or money, or prolonged dancing), or risk (e. …

Cosmology, resources, and landscape: agencies of the dead and the living in duna, Papua New Guinea

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)

The Way of the Buffaloes: Trade and Sacrifice in Northern Laos

Abstract: This article links buffalo sacrifices among Rmeet (Lamet) in Northern Laos to trade. Buffalo sacrifices for house spirits reintegrate ill persons into a socio-cosmic whole consisting of relations to agnatic kin, ancestors, and spirits. Yet, this sociality is dependent on external forces. Buffaloes are bought rather than raised, and the availability of paid labor and markets interacts with the rituals. But while sacrifice reproduces representations that make up a "social whole," the market operates by a sociality that is less easy to delineate. Thus, when objects are transferred from market to ritual, they acquire new meanings. Buffaloes turn from trade goods into representations of socio-cosmic relatedness. Yet, as a comparison of rural and suburban sacrifices demonstrates, trade patterns directly influence ritual practice. Market exchange is referenced as a model in the ritual. Trade and sacrifice can be seen as types of exchange that are resources for each other but remain separated. (Laos, Lamet, sacrifice, trade, exchange) ********** Three types of questions structure this article. The first is ethnographic: How do the Rmeet (Lamet), a Mon-Khmer speaking group in northern Laos, handle buffaloes both as trade items and as sacrificial animals? The second, more analytical type, arises from the perspective that both trade and sacrifice should be understood as types of exchange: What is the specific relation between them in this context? How do relations to inter-ethnic markets interact with rituals that depend on trade items? A third type, of a more theoretical nature, emerges from the second: What kind of entities are defined by these types of exchange? Do the values which have to be shared in order to enable the exchange define a bounded entity like "society" or an indefinite one like "market?" The notion of societies as wholes is closely linked to the idea that exchanges reproduce society (Mauss 1990; Godelier 1999), and this approach has sparked analyses of great intricacy and attention to detail (e.g., Barraud et al. 1994; Platenkamp 1988). The argument is pervasive. Social relations are predicated on exchange, and exchange is based on a degree of agreement regarding the value of the items exchanged. Sharing values and ideas is a major indicator of participation in a society. The existence of ongoing exchanges begs the question of whether the entity to which the exchanging parties belong can be described as a specific "society." On the other hand, the notion of societies as wholes has met with serious criticism, and the foregoing argument indicates one of the reasons why (Graeber 2001; Weiner 1992). Intersocietal exchange in terms of trade is a common phenomenon and begs the question of where "society" is located. Thus, there are opposing forces at work theorizing exchange. One claims that a shared value system, at least partially, is the base of ongoing exchange, leading to a coherence that appears as "wholeness." The other stresses the openness and integrating power of exchange across boundaries. Objects moving from one group to another in order to be integrated into rituals provides a starting point to address these issues. Ethnic labeling does not automatically answer the question of the boundaries of a value system that enables exchange, nor does an easy evocation of "society." Yet, it is clear that different values inform different exchanges, and on this basis categorizations can be made and boundaries determined. I will argue that "society" can be used to label entities defined by shared values, but that this concept does not have a privileged position among other types of boundaries. In order to describe the spheres of exchange that cannot easily be defined by "society," the term "sociality" will be used. Both terms are potentially plural; there are many forms or modes of sociality. Trade and purchase are modalities of exchange, and not the other way around (Levi-Strauss 1967:Ch. …

The Sense of Tranquility: Bodily Practice and Ethnic Classes in Yucatan

Abstract: While bodily practice has become a major area of investigation in cultural anthropology, its connection to ethnicity remains to be explored Among the Yucatec Maya, however, one cultural value, tranquility, is enacted through bodily practices and also serves as an axis for ethnic distinction Moreover, a specific logic associating tranquility with morality serves as an incisive critique of wealthier Others, all the more important as the Maya are incorporated into the global economy at the bottom of the class hierarchy An understanding of ethnicity is incomplete without an ethnography of bodily practice and an investigation into how ethnic identity emerges daily in relation to embodied experiences (Mexico, Maya, ethnicity, social class, embodiment) ********** Visitors to the Mayan village of Dzitnup, in Yucatan, Mexico, are told by virtually everyone they meet that Dzitnup is a wonderful place because it is "tranquil," and that "everyone gets along here" These repeated assertions are puzzling in view of the fact that the village has two political factions, people argue over the national political parties, and Catholics and Protestants accuse each other that their ways are contrary to the will of God This article explores the ways these Yucatecans talk about tranquility, which involves its demonstration in bodily practice, and its importance for ethnic and class identities It concludes with a call for a wider investigation into relationships between bodily practice and ethnicity, particularly the behavioral correlates of ethnic identities After three centuries of Spanish colonial rule, and arguably two centuries of neocolonialism, how Maya-speaking people configure social identity and difference has aroused scholarly interest Concern in these matters intensified in the 1980s and 1990s during the civil war that pitted a Guatemalan army against Maya villagers, and again with the Zapatista rebellion of 1994 in Mexico and the military occupation of Chiapas that continues to this day Some ethnographers suggest that romanticism about the Maya--involving tourists, archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and National Geographic magazine illustrations--has placed constraints on how Mayan people assert their ethnic identity (Castaneda 1996; Hervik 1999) Others have stressed the creative articulation of ethnicity in the context of struggles for indigenous rights under state military power (Alonso Caamal 1993; Fischer 1999, 2001; Fischer and McKenna 1996; Hale 1994; Nash 1995, 1997, 2001; Warren 1992, 1998; Watanabe 1995; Wilson 1995) Still others focus on the correspondence between ethnic identities and class realities (Gabbert 2004), or examine how identities emerged in relationship to colonial and state administrative procedures (Castaneda 2004:42; Eiss 2004; Fallaw 2004; Restall 2004; Watanabe 2000) Berkley (1998) points to the relationship between language ideology and ethnic identity, as does Castaneda (2004:41), who cautions against eliding the realities of cultural and ethnic diversity because "the terms 'Indian,' 'ladino,' 'mestizo,' 'indigenous' are not equivalent across the Maya world [and] do not have any stable meaning" (emphasis in original) Attention in this essay is given to a relatively neglected area: the relationship between identity and bodily experience In Santiago Chimaltenango, Guatemala, Watanabe (1992) found that a sense of community emerged through the experience of collective action, and argued for a study of the relationship between identity and experience (Watanabe 1995; see also Fischer 1999) How bodily practice (as distinguished from body adornment [cf Turner 1995]) relates to perception and identity has become an area of anthropological concern (Bourdieu 1984; Csordas 1990; Farnell 1999; Lock 1993; Martin Alcoff 1999; Merleau-Ponty 1962; Van Wolputte 2004) It is useful to understand how perceptions and feelings that emerge with bodily experience relate to how Maya think about themselves and others …

The articulation of culture, agriculture, and the environment of Chinese in Northern Thailand

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 (eg, 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 everlasting value to society So defined, a sustainable agriculture must be ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially just (Ikerd 1992) The chief concern of the present study is to find out how members of a society realize the goals of environmental soundness, adequate material benefit for life sustenance, and justice for all parties THE CHINESE DIASPORA IN THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE The Golden Triangle is a region bordering on Thailand, Myanmar (formerly Burma), and Laos Covering approximately 200,000 square kilometers, the area encompasses dramatic topographic features, including major rivers, rugged mountains, lowland basins, and river valleys (Anderson 1993; Geddes 1983; Kunstadter 1983; Lewis and Lewis 1984; Young 1962), and is ethnically and biologically diverse A vertical human adaptation pattern consists of: Thais and Shans, who farm rice paddies for subsistence in the basins, and Karens, who construct rice terraces in the valleys above …

Fijian Males at the Crossroads of Gender and Ethnicity in a Fiji Secondary School

Abstract: This article explores how two transgendered Fijian males navigate the intersections of sex, gender, and ethnicity or "race" in a Fiji secondary school Their experiences illustrate, on the one hand, the negotiability of a transgendered category in Fiji On the other hand, there is the potential for transgendered identity to open spaces for engagement with nonFijian ethnic markers in the face of essentialist discursive practices on ethnicity The case study shows the individualized ways that two transgendered males negotiate and challenge notions of Fijian male authenticity (Transgender, Fijians, ethnicity, Fijian schools) ********** In a seminal text, Butler (1990) problematizes contemporary Western notions of sex and gender, with sex constituting a particular biological construct rooted in a dimorphism of male and female bodies versus gender as a culturally constructed concept subject to malleability and negotiation by oppositionally sexed bodies She notes that to reckon gender as a "free-floating artifice" in relation to sex leaves much unexplained about sex since it retains its status as a finite, a priori category: And what is sex anyway? Is it natural, anatomical, chromosomal, or hormonal, and how is a feminist critic to assess the scientific discourses which purport to establish such "facts" for us? Does sex have a history? Does each sex have a different history, or histories? Is there a history of how the duality of sex was established, a genealogy that might expose the binary options as a variable construction? (Butler 1990:6) Drawing from Foucault (1978), Butler answers her own questions, arguing that the Western notion of sex is far from an objective fact of nature, tracing its "genealogy" to the eighteenth century medicalization of reproduction in the West, which rendered the physiologically distinctive roles of male and female in reproduction focal, and heterosexuality morally and functionally normative Butler (1990) identifies the resultant "heterosexual matrix" that provides the grid through which both sex and gender are interpreted, and which consigns nonheterosexuals, third genders, and transgendered persons to the status of exotic, deviant others She proposes that ultimately the givens of sex in the West should be recognized as the actual outcome of patriarchal "regulatory mechanisms" that claim the repetitive enactment of behavioral differences between males and females as natural and as sexual conventions In short, sex is a cultural construction; sex is work Errington (1990) more explicitly defines and empirically confronts the situatedness of Western notions of sex as a "particular construct of human bodies" (Errington 1990:26) that holds that differences in genitals are normatively contiguous with such "elements of hidden anatomy" as chromosomal and hormonal differences, as well as differences in bodily fluids, sexual preferences, practices, and specialized roles that potentially lead to reproduction Yet, she seizes upon the opportunities that comparative analyses present for decentering Western constructs by engaging notions of sex in Southeast Asian societies, illustrating that while sex is everywhere recognized as including some distinction in male and female biology, the way these differences are reckoned, the emphasis they are given, and allowances for additional sex categories vary across societies Societies of island Southeast Asia are among those where not only are bodies not gendered in such fixed, oppositional ways, but where practice potentially overrides sexed bodies in social classification In terms of relative access to prestige and power, which are defined in spiritual rather than secular terms, Errington (1990) observes that Island Southeast Asians tend not to be biological reductionists: they usually do not claim that women, because they are anatomically women, are weak or ineffective Rather, they are probabilists: they point out that women and men are basically the same, but because of the activities women engage in or fail to do, they tend not to become prominent and powerful (Errington 1990:40) …

Patrilateral Bias among a Traditionally Egalitarian People: Ju/'hoansi Naming Practice

Abstract: The Ju/'hoansi (!Kung) of Namibia and Botswana are unusual for the strong norm to name children exclusively for kin and primarily for grandparents. Naming carries important significance by linking the two namesakes and because names are a basis for extending fictive kin links. In the 1950s Lorna Marshall reported that the father has the right to name children and that he "invariably" named them for the paternal grandparents, although having the option of naming children born later for his wife's parents. The authors used a large database of genealogical information that was collected nearly concurrently with Marshall's report to test the strength of the naming rule and found that approximately 70 per cent of men name the first-born son or daughter for their own parent of the child's gender. The degree of compliance is of interest because it falls short of 100 per cent. However, analysis of the naming patterns reveals a strong patrilateral bias in naming for the paternal rather than the maternal grandparents. This type of gender and unilateral bias is not normally reported for Ju/'hoansi, who are otherwise described as gender egalitarian and bilateral in most customary practices.

Chabad in Copenhagen: fundamentalism and modernity in Jewish Denmark

Abstract: After establishing its mission in Copenhagen, Denmark, over ten years ago, the Hasidic group, Chabad, has little success to show for its proselytizing efforts. Yet it is admired and welcomed by the religiously liberal Danish Jews for its stringent religiosity, cultural otherness, and commitment to social ethnicity. Despite the profound ideological differences between the two, relations between Chabad and the Jewish community have been markedly positive. Indeed, Chabad's organizational independence has allowed it to relieve internal strains that have increasingly troubled the established Jewish community. The anthropology of religious fundamentalism has largely focused on ideological conflicts between fundamentalist and liberal religious ideologies. This case suggests that closer attention to social processes can enrich an understanding of the complexities of social interaction and the possibilities for engagement between ideologically opposed religious groups. (Hasidism, liberalism, Danish Judaism) ********** One Saturday in the autumn of 2000, just after midday, I joined a procession leaving the gates of the Great Synagogue in central Copenhagen. It was not a grand procession, but a ragged chain of perhaps thirty people trailing along the narrow sidewalks of the Danish capital. We had just come from religious services, and our suits and dresses stood out among the crowds of shoppers and tourists. It was our leader, however, who stood out the most. A small man of about thirty with a long auburn beard, he wore a long black coat, black pants, boxy black shoes, and a huge black fedora hat. He strode briskly at the front of the column as we wound our way through the old center city, taking us across the bridge to Frederiksberg and finally to a small brick apartment block with a metal plaque outside one of its doors. The plaque read "Chabad House," in Hebrew and English. The man in black, an English-born rabbi named Yitzchock Loewenthal, stood by the door and greeted us as we straggled up, a few at a time, to shake his hand and thank him for his invitation before going inside. There we stayed, most of us for hours, generating a buzz of talk, prayer, and clanking dishes that filtered through the windows of the little apartment until well after sunset. The weekly walk from the synagogue to Chabad House will never rival the changing of the palace guard at Amalienborg, but for those who know its context, it is a remarkable event. The long walk itself is a striking act of piety in a generally nonobservant Jewish community, where few worry about the prohibition against driving on the Sabbath. In a self-consciously modern Jewish community, moreover, where most Jews dress, speak, and behave in a manner indistinguishable from their non-Jewish neighbors, marching through the streets behind a man in full Hasidic dress makes a powerful statement. Perhaps most surprising, however, is the procession's size. Ten years ago, Chabad House did not exist; eight years ago, it attracted only a handful of tourists and the occasional curious Dane. Today, it regularly draws dozens on Saturday afternoons, and hundreds for its frequent holiday festivals. It maintains weekly Kabbalah classes, Hebrew instruction, social gatherings, and Sabbath dinners, each with a body of regular attendees. The larger Jewish community in Denmark is shrinking, following a trend common to much of the Western world, but the growth and vitality of Chabad are unmistakable. In its piety, its commitment, and its public visibility, Chabad seems to have found an appeal that has eluded the Jewish establishment in Copenhagen. On its face, the success of Chabad in Denmark seems to confirm a widespread thesis in the social science r Antoun 2001; Eisenberg 1996; Failer 1997; Lawrence 1989; Shahak and Mezvinsky 1999; Stump 2000; Westerlund 1996). …