Boredom, Time, and Modernity: An Example from Aboriginal Australia

In this article, I explore an anthropologically underresearched topic, boredom, utilizing ethnographic data from the Australian Aboriginal settlement of Yuendumu and situating that research in a comparative perspective. I examine the concept's genesis and meaning at Yuendumu using the social-constructivist approach to boredom as proposed in literature studies, sociology, and philosophy. That approach provides an account of how the emergence of boredom in 18th-century Europe is linked to processes of modernity. That perspective, however, has led to claims that boredom is a Western phenomenon and that its existence elsewhere is because of "Westernization." In this article, I argue against that perspective by linking instances of boredom at Yuendumu to perceptions of personhood and to conceptualizations of being in time—particularly socioculturally specific ways of perceiving time and postcolonial temporalities as generating the emergence of boredom. This boredom is a historically and socioculturally specific phenomenon, arising out of distinct sociocultural engagements with locally particular processes of modernity.     

Accountability and the academy: producing knowledge about the human dimensions of climate change

Calls for accountability and ‘impactful’ research are fundamentally reshaping the academy, giving rise to a large, critical scholarship on neoliberal regimes of accountability and their pernicious effects. But these calls also animate other institutional forms and practices that have received less critical attention. These include new forms of science that promise accountability through interdisciplinarity, collaborating with stakeholders, and addressing real‐world problems. This article considers one example of such accountable science: human dimensions of climate change field research. This research endeavour has produced surprising results, including the uncritical adoption of controversial Euro‐American ideas about traditional Others. In exploring how this has come about, the article considers how theoretical and disciplinary diversity are managed within this arena, and the organizing logics that enable climate sciences and scientists to work together. We ultimately argue that accountable science – like other neoliberal modes of accountability – can produce outcomes for which no one can be held to account.     

Pikisi kwaiyai! (pictures tonight!): The screening and reception of ethnographic film in the Trobriand Islands,Papua New Guinea

Ethnographic films hold great historical value for the communities in which they were filmed, yet people in source communities often lack access to them. Visitors engaging in ‘visual repatriation’ of ethnographic film can enrich both sides of the ethnographic exchange. I review my experiences screening ethnographic films with Trobriand Islanders, their reactions, and the various ways in which local communities regain ownership of these films, including re‐narration and renaming. My findings reiterate how source communities' reception of, and uses for, ethnographic film can sharply differ from the filmmakers' original agenda.     

Troubled landscapes,troubling anthropology: co‐presence,necessity, and the making of ethnographic knowledge

If ‘co‐presence is a condition of [anthropological] inquiry’ (Fabian), what sort of knowledge does it produce? I explore this question through an ethnography of a ‘troubled landscape’ in Malaysian Borneo: a lush, hilly region that has been the site of a dam construction and resettlement project since the late 2000s. My article uses the notion of co‐presence as both a lens through which to explore the predicaments of the four small communities affected by the scheme and a reflexive device that underscores the embeddedness of the ethnographic encounter in a larger relational field – one characterized as much by chance and necessity as it is by anthropologists’ intellectual agendas. In the process, I seek to trouble some of the methodological and ethical issues posed by anthropology's recent ‘ontological turn’, notably the long‐standing questions of what it means to ‘take seriously’ and how ethnography and the ethnographer are implicated in this project.     

Red Bucket for the Red Cordial,Green Bucket for the Green Cordial: On the Logic and Logistics of Warlpiri Birthday Parties1

Birthday parties are a relatively new occurrence at Yuendumu, a Warlpiri settlement in central Australia. By focusing on the food prepared and consumed at these parties, I examine the ritualised Warlpiri and non‐Warlpiri elements of these events, with a particular view to Warlpiri women's creativity in shaping and re‐shaping them. I contrast birthday party food from everyday staple foods and so‐called ‘bush tucker’, and analyse these different food types in regard to generational differentiation. Lastly, the role of the anthropologist in shaping birthday parties as well as in writing about them is scrutinised.     

Mobility,white bodies and desire: Euro‐American women in Jakarta

This paper illustrates how cultural logics of desire are being transformed in the context of the global economy refashioning intimate lives. Exploring the experiences of Euro‐American female professionals in Jakarta, it suggests that they become uncomfortably visible as ‘white bodies’; their desirability appears compromised, especially given Orientalist discourses which valorise Asian women's bodies. At the same time, women's position as well‐paid employees generates a contradictory logic of desire: the ‘ego‐boost’ they experience at work may intensify their demands on the masculinity and enlightened views of potential partners, thus rendering Indonesian men, with their perceived bodily effeminacy and ‘traditional values’ unattractive. As one response to the lack of desirability, some women engage in a moral discourse that casts Indonesian women whom they consider ‘bargirls’, as well as the Euro‐American men they attract, as morally deficient. The paper thus provides an alternative perspective on reconfigurations of desire in the context of global gendered mobility.     

Claiming respectable American motherhood: homebirth mothers, medical officials, and the state

Based on ethnographic research regarding public policy and grassroots organizing for midwifery in Virginia, this article explores how medical discourses around appropriate health care practices intersect with state discourses about what practices are considered "respectable" versus "pathological" for its citizens. In recent legislative debates about the legalization of direct-entry midwifery, medical officials have extended their criticism of midwifery and homebirth to mothers who resist state-sanctioned childbirth practices. This article examines how medical officials challenge the respectable mothering practices of homebirthers by linking them with women they deem pathological--child abusers, negligent mothers, and drug users--and placing them outside the cadre of "normal" American mothers who acknowledge the "logical" and "natural" superiority of biomedical childbirth practices. I also address homebirth mothers' responses, which assert that their political advocacy for midwives is a respectable mothering practice because they are responsible citizens who desire what they deem the best care for their children.     

Settler indigeneity and the eradication of the non‐native: self‐determination and biosecurity in the Falkland Islands (Malvinas)

This article analyses how settlers of the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) construct themselves as ‘natives’ through environmental management. Taking a multispecies ethnographic and historical approach to studying the Falkland Islanders’ self‐determination claim, I explore a series of ecological practices that demonstrate how some nonhumans become institutionalized into systems of racial and colonial classification whereas others appear natural. I show how agroindustrial and technoscientific value systems categorize human and nonhuman cohabitants according to degrees of political, economic, and ecological status through particular periods in the Falklands: from the eradication of ‘native pests’ (1833‐1982) to defence against ‘alien invaders’ (1982‐present). Towards a conclusion, I analyse how Islanders have begun to uproot their own ecological imperial past through removal of British‐introduced ‘invasive’ species and native habitat restoration. The article argues that attention to how settlers colonize with natives contributes significantly to a critical multispecies anthropology with broader implications for debates on ethnogenesis and indigeneity.     

Sleep habits of Iranian pre-school children in an urban area: Late sleeping and sleep debt in children

Using BEARS (Bedtime problems, Excessive sleepiness, Awakenings during the night, Regularity of sleep, Snoring), and CSHQ (Children’s Sleep Habits Questionnaires) screening tools with 224 participants revealed that Iranian children have shorter night sleep duration than expected (9.54 vs 12 h) for their age group. Earlier sleepers had longer night sleep duration (10:36 ± 1:12; 9:12 ± 1:06 h, P > 0.001), and total daily sleep time (11:36 ± 1:42; 10:36 ± 1:30 h, P = 0.005) than late sleepers. A majority (85%) of naptakers had sleep bedtime of 22:00 or later. The poor sleep quality of Iranian preschool children is probably due to cultural characteristics, climate differences, or harmful sleep habits.

     

Equivocal locations: being ‘red’ in ‘Red Bologna’

This article addresses a classic ethnographic problem in the study of Italy: how is it that people can subscribe simultaneously to seemingly contradictory ideologies, such as Catholicism and Communism? It does so by describing examples from Italy's ‘showcase city’ of the left, ‘Red Bologna’, in which to be ‘red’ is ubiquitous but each person's ‘red’ is a different thing: being ‘red’ (differently) is the idiom in which real political distinctions are expressed over issues like religion or immigration. In parallel, I discuss the relationship between the ‘field’ as a location and the ‘field’ as a conceptual topic. My account replicates internal ethnographic differences at the analytical level by highlighting the differences between being left‐wing in Bologna and its meaning as a concept in anthropology. Hence the ‘equivocal location’: a field‐site that is productively different, from what an inexperienced ethnographer expected from it, from conceptual discussions in anthropology, and from itself.     

Gender Differences in Polysomnographic Sleep in Young Healthy Sleepers

Middle‐aged and elderly populations exhibit gender differences in polysomnographic (PSG) sleep; however, whether young men and women also show such differences remains unclear. Thirty‐one young healthy sleepers (16 men and 15 women, aged 18 to 30 yr, mean±SD, 20.5±2.4 yr) completed 3 consecutive overnight sessions in a sleep laboratory, after maintaining a stable sleep‐wake cycle for 1 wk before study entry. Standard PSG sleep and self‐rated sleepiness data were collected each night. Across nights, women showed better sleep quality than men: they fell asleep faster (shorter sleep onset latency) and had better sleep efficiency, with more time asleep and less time awake (all differences showed large effect sizes, d=0.98 to 1.12). By contrast, men were sleepier than women across nights. Both men and women demonstrated poorer overall sleep quality on the first night compared with the subsequent 2 nights of study. We conclude young adult healthy sleepers show robust gender differences in PSG sleep, like older populations, with better sleep quality in women than in men. These results highlight the importance of gender in sleep and circadian rhythm research studies employing young subjects and have broader implications for women's health issues relating to these topics.     

Facilitated personhood

Anthropological models of personhood suggest that the individual is produced through relational ties to others, including humans and nonhumans. American ideas about the individual are deeply ideological, obscuring the human relations that make ‘personhood’ a possible, desirable concept that motivates subjection. Attending to neurological disorders and the technologies that attempt to remedy communication impairments shows that not only is the labour of other humans obscured in producing the individual, but so are the facilitating capacities of technologies and institutions. This article focuses on memoirs of disability and ethnographic and historiographic research on neuroscience to show how personhood is facilitated and produced through engagements with people, technologies, and institutions that attempt to render particular forms of subjection through communicative practices.     

Capitalism as culture,and economy1

Contemporary cultural anthropology has been marked by its distance from the analysis of economy. I argue that anthropology as a discipline has suffered from this distance and suggest a form in which these interests can be reconciled for the purposes of ethnographic research. The discussion is divided into three sections. In the first, I trace the ‘disappearing’ of economy from cultural anthropology. In the second, I propose a schema for bringing economy back. This schema involves adopting a phenomenology of the subject that relies on notions of value drawn from Appadurai and from Heidegger and Marx. Finally, I instance two examples of this schema in my own ethnographic research. One concerns Central Australia and pertains to recent debates about remote indigenous life. The other concerns Kingston Jamaica and references debates about gender, sex and dancehall. Both milieux involve types of change and violence that can bear on modern subjects. My suggestion is that anthropology will address these issues in more interesting ways if economy becomes a part of ethnographic analysis.     

WHAT IS IT TO BE A DAUGHTER? IDENTITIES UNDER PRESSURE IN DEMENTIA CARE

This article concentrates on the care for people who suffer from progressive dementia. Dementia has a great impact on a person’s well‐being as well as on his or her social environment. Dealing with dementia raises moral issues and challenges for participants, especially for family members. One of the moral issues in the care for people with dementia is centred on responsibilities; how do people conceive and determine their responsibilities towards one another? To investigate this issue we use the theoretical perspective of Margaret Walker. She states that ideas about identity play a crucial role in patterns of normative expectations with regard to the distribution of responsibilities in daily practices of care. The results of this study show how the identity of a family‐member is put under pressure and changes during her loved one’s illness that leads to difficulties and misunderstandings concerning the issue of responsibility. These results offer an insight into the complexities of actual practices of responsibility and highlight the importance for those caring for people with dementia of attending carefully to how they see themselves and how they see other people involved (Who am I? Who do I want to be for the other?). Answers to such questions show what people expect from themselves and from one another, and how they, at any rate, are distributing responsibilities in a given situation. Professional caregivers should take into account that family members might have different ideas about who they are and consequently about what their responsibilities are.     

‘It is hard being the different one all the time’: gringos and racialized identity in lifestyle migration to Ecuador

This paper explores the identities that North American lifestyle migrants in Ecuador adopt as they adjust to life in a new racialized social environment. It is based on qualitative interviews with migrants from North America, as well as ethnographic field notes. North Americans describe their growing community in racialized terms and adopt a series of practices that demonstrate anxiety about their position in the racialized social order of Ecuador. The paper discusses the strategies that North American migrants engage in to diminish the importance of their racialized identities in Ecuador. I identify two main practices that complicate North American incorporation in Ecuador: self-policing practices that aim to optimize Ecuadorians' perceptions of them; and desires for integration and ethnic mobility, which seek to erase their ‘Otherness’.     

The western psychic as diviner: Experience and the politics of perception

Divination has been a well‐studied subject in the field of anthropology. Yet diviners within Western societies have been curiously ignored. Van Dijk's and Pels’ (1996) concept of the ‘politics of perception’ is discussed as a means of under‐standing why this is the case. Redressing this gap, I study the practices and experiences of an American psychic. This ethnographic material helps to move us beyond the patient‐client dialogue to address the internal processes of the diviners themselves. The reflexive exegesis of Elizabeth, an American diviner, reveals the spontaneous, visual nature of her practice and also highlights the role of the senses and emotions in divination. Other examples of sensory experience, such as in cases of blindness, show that those senses deemed lower down’ in the hierarchy of perception can be accurate modes of gaining knowledge of the world.     

Reduced physical activity in adults at risk for type 2 diabetes who curtail their sleep

Adults with parental history of type 2 diabetes have high metabolic morbidity, which is exacerbated by physical inactivity. Self‐reported sleep <6 h/day is associated with increased incidence of obesity and diabetes, which may be mediated in part by sleep‐loss‐related reduction in physical activity. We examined the relationship between habitual sleep curtailment and physical activity in adults with parental history of type 2 diabetes. Forty‐eight young urban adults with parental history of type 2 diabetes (27 F/21 M; mean (s.d.) age 26 (4) years; BMI 23.8 (2.5) kg/m²) each completed 13 (2) days of sleep and physical activity monitoring by wrist actigraphy and waist accelerometry while following their usual lifestyle at home. Laboratory polysomnography was used to screen for sleep disorders. The primary outcome of the study was the comparison of total daily activity counts between participants with habitual sleep <6 vs. ≥6 h/night. Secondary measures included daily time spent sedentary and in light, moderate, and vigorous physical activity. Short sleepers had no sleep abnormalities and showed signs of increased sleep pressure consistent with a behavioral pattern of habitual sleep curtailment. Compared to participants who slept ≥6 h/night, short sleepers had 27% fewer daily activity counts (P = 0.042), spent less time in moderate‐plus‐vigorous physical activity (?43 min/day; P = 0.010), and remained more sedentary (+69 min/day; P = 0.026). Our results indicate that young urban adults with parental history of type 2 diabetes who habitually curtail their sleep have less daily physical activity and more sedentary living, which may enhance their metabolic risk.     

Sunday Lunch in Fiji: Continuity and Transformation in Ideas of the Household

In this article, I compare drawings of "Sunday lunch" produced by Fijian village children in 1990 and 2005 and their responses to prepared drawings in 1982, which show remarkable continuity over time. I suggest this continuity is largely attributable to the ritualization of eating practices. At the same time, the children's data indicate that a substantive, if subtle, change is occurring in ideas of the inclusiveness of the household; I suggest that this change may be a function of an intensification of commodity exchange in day-to-day village life. As the children's data demonstrate, continuity as well as transformation in ideas over time may be understood as a function of the self-same ontogenetic process through which we make sense of our relations with others in the lived world. I argue that such ethnographic studies of ontogeny enable us both to appreciate the material validity of our informants' ideas and to render them analytical.     

Shown but not Shared,Presented but not Proffered: Redefining Ritual Identity among Warlpiri Ritual Performers, 1990–2000

Little has been written on the construction and projection of indigenous social identity in public (‘non‐restricted’) ritual among Aboriginal Australians. Elsewhere, I have analysed nearly half a century of such public rituals (1946–1990) among the Warlpiri of Yuendumu in Central Australia, concentrating on the shifting forces of gender and kinship. This paper focuses on the key moments motivating senior Warlpiri women, since the 1990s, to reconfigure their ritual participation and roles in inter‐indigenous ceremonial events. I analyse how these women participate in inter‐Aboriginal performances, exhibiting the iconic and sensory virtues of the Dreaming and weaving new forms of political identity, shaped by the pressures of neo‐colonialism, with female ambassadors of other Aboriginal groups. I argue that in this performative process women are reconfiguring the meanings of Aboriginalities and rearticulating their connectedness to one another, a connectedness rooted in their beliefs and responsibilities towards the Dreaming.