Showing papers in "Ethnos in 1992"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that it is becoming increasingly difficult to conceptualize society and culture as units of study when we study systems which are in important senses unbounded, and the main theoretical and epistemological issue raised is the relationship between agency and structure, or between holist and individualist orientations in social analysis.
Abstract: Several current problems in social anthropology are confronted in this essay. The main theoretical and epistemological issue raised is the relationship between agency and structure, or between holist and individualist orientations in social analysis. The main empirical and methodological problem is the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult to conceptualise society and culture as units of study when we study systems which are in important senses unbounded. The empirical material is mainly drawn from the population of Indian origin in Trinidad, and it is shown in which ways systemic levels as well as agency and structure interact in the creation of Indo‐Trinidadian identity, which, it is argued, is to a great extent created through abstract mediating structures and not exclusively through face‐to‐face contact.
13 citations
TL;DR: In medieval Iceland, the concept of inviolateness was central to notions of honor as discussed by the authors, and the concept was used to define private rather than public delicts in Icelandic law.
Abstract: Medieval Iceland was a stratified society without a state to enforce differential access to resources. Like other stateless societies its law defined private rather than public delicts. It did so in terms of the concepts of individual holiness, inviolateness, and ways one could lose holiness by violating other people's holiness. This concept was central to notions of honor. As the institutional structure collapsed, so did concepts of honor. Icelanders recorded their law and sagas about their past and the 13th century as a response to these changes.
12 citations
TL;DR: In the high jungle of the Peruvian montana Asheninka males occasionally manipulate dress codes to improve their bargaining position vis-a-vis settler/colonists as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the high jungle of the Peruvian montana Asheninka males occasionally manipulate dress codes to improve their bargaining position vis‐a‐vis settler/colonists. Settler values are constructed on a civilized/uncivilized dichotomy corresponding to a colonist/Asheninka dichotomy of ethnic categories. Asheninka appropriations of the “civilized” translates settler values into Asheninka power games, and the symbols of the “civilized” end up as means of strengthening Asheninka identity.
11 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the discourse attendant upon "old" places in contemporary Japan through a case study of a commuter village near Kyoto and shows how such localities are represented in a national debate about the strength of Japan's vanishing tradition, and how local communities mobilize parts of this debate in their dialogue with a variety of collective others.
Abstract: This article examines the discourse attendant upon ‘old’ places in contemporary Japan through a case study of a commuter village near Kyoto. It shows how such localities are represented in a national debate about the strength of Japan's ‘vanishing’ tradition, and how local communities mobilize parts of this debate in their dialogue with a variety of collective others about local identity. The guiding axii of this nostalgic discourse are assertions about the typicality of ‘old’ places and their uniqueness. Finally, the article shows how alongside a debate about such communities as repositories of tradition, there is a discussion about their feudal legacy, social control and political conservatism.
10 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that the principle "if we feed them we do not feed on them" applies differently to domesticated species and to wild ones, and that sharing food with them implies attributing to them the status of fellow social beings.
Abstract: The Huaulu people of Seram (Eastern Indonesia) say that it is taboo for them to eat the animals which they feed. The reason is that sharing food with them implies attributing to them the status of fellow social beings. This status implies in turn a degree of personhood. Persons may not be treated as the ultimate thing: food. The article shows that the principle “if we feed them we do not feed on them” applies differently to domesticated species and to wild ones. If some individuals of a domesticated species are raised by the Huaulu, the whole species becomes taboo to eat. But in the case of wild species the taboo is limited to the individuals which are actually raised. The article also shows that the principle is not the only reason for the taboo on domesticated animals, but a shorthand for a variety of other reasons that have to do with the place of those animals in Huaulu society.
9 citations
TL;DR: The A.A. as discussed by the authors addresses why an animistically-inspired system of ritual practices, structured around hazy notions of chaos and order, remain viable in Japan for both the common person as well as for elites, based upon both ancient and invented '' rituals''.
Abstract: The A. addresses why an animistically-inspired system of ritual practices, structured around hazy notions of « chaos » and « order », remain viable in Japan for both the common person as well as for elites, based upon both ancient and « invented » rituals. Shinto religious practices would seem a likely candidate for extinction within Japan's hightech consumer society. And yet, it is commonplace that new cars be blessed at a shrine, that new residences, officers, or factories be built after exorcism ceremonies purify and calm the land and its deity, that children are dedicated there, and that governmental functions frequently invite ritualistic encapsulation that shapes and orders the consciousness of those involved, often in nationalistic directions.
6 citations
TL;DR: The social categories "Maya" and "mestizo" have been applied to denote the Yucatec Mayan people in Mexico as discussed by the authors, and a cluster of perceived attributes (schemata) evoked by the terms a...
Abstract: The social categories “Maya” and “mestizo” have been applied to denote the Yucatec Mayan people in Mexico. This article examines the cluster of perceived attributes (schemata) evoked by the terms a...
5 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that our understandings of culture are built upon fundamentally weak sociological assumptions, and that the self is problematic, and so elusive to anthropologists.
Abstract: Why is “the self so problematic, and so elusive to anthropologists? Is it, perhaps, that our understandings of culture, despite being heavily theorised, are built upon fundamentally weak sociological assumptions? How, in fact, are selves socially constituted ? How can the social constitution of selves be conveyed in ethnography, and how can the sociology of self inform our ideas about culture?
4 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine processes, evidenced in a number of activities, rules, linguistic conventions and other customs, which produce and regulate the impact of these ambiguities on social relations within a camp in the United States.
Abstract: Counselors at a summer camp for adults with cerebral palsy and other disabilities must deal with the contradictory ideas that campers are special people deserving special treatment and that they should be treated no differently from anyone else. This contradiction produces ambiguities affecting boundaries usually taken to exist between handicapped and non‐handicapped persons. This paper examines processes, evidenced in a number of activities, rules, linguistic conventions and other customs, which produce and regulate the impact of these ambiguities on social relations within a camp in the United States.
2 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the author relates his pains and delights as he moved away from the Jerusalem “modernization” grand theory sociological paradigm of the 1960s to the Manchester School compelling fieldwork doctrine.
Abstract: Anthropologists who have worked in recent decades experienced the breakdown of a dominant methodological and theoretical ethos. The author relates his pains and delights as he moved away from the Jerusalem “modernization” grand theory sociological paradigm of the 1960s to the Manchester School compelling fieldwork doctrine. And he relates his later attraction to the Geertzian genre and the more recent encounters with the mixed blessing of reflexivity and “post‐modernism”. The latter have opened new fields for exploration and liberated the anthropologist from strict disciplinarian borders and ideological taboos. But the new genres seem also to jeopardize the raison d'etre of the ethnographic project. The author associates his changing loyalties and tastes with his choice of ethnographic fields.
1 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the interplay of local, national, and international historical and contemporary processes as manifested in a Sri Lankan Muslim village festival and shows that the festival is a product of the historical isolation of the village and its attempt to establish a distinct Muslim social identity.
Abstract: This article examines the interplay of local, national, and international historical and contemporary processes as manifested in a Sri Lankan Muslim village festival. The author shows that the festival is a product of the historical isolation of the village and its attempt to establish a distinct Muslim social identity. In contemporary Sri Lanka a separate Muslim identity is no longer in doubt and the festival has become a focal event for competing and, potentially, mutually exclusive social identities as exemplified by Sufism, Sri Lankan nationalism, and pan‐Islamic fundamentalism.