Church Festivals and the Visualization of Identity in Collingwood Bay,Papua New Guinea

In Collingwood Bay, people celebrate the individual saints after which each Anglican church is named. These church festivals are a combination of Christian worship and traditional music and dances. They vary from small, village-based happenings to large regional performances in which objects and food are exchanged. For the Maisin people, the festivals not only express dedication to the church, they also embody the spirit of past clan festivities that connected clans and commemorated clan ancestors. This article ¹ The research on which this article is based was financed by the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO) and the Radboud University of Nijmegen, Netherlands. An earlier version of this article was presented as a paper, “Performing Bodies—Constructing Identities: Church Festivals in Collingwood Bay, Papua New Guinea,” at the Annual Conference of the Australian Anthropological Society (AAS) in Melbourne in 2004. I thank the anonymous reviewer for Visual Anthropology for providing useful comments and suggestions. discusses how, for the Maisin people, church festivals provide a contemporary arena in which various identities, emotions, and knowledge as well as affiliations are actually embodied and expressed visually.     

Antihaitianismo: an embodied discourse

ABSTRACT

In this article, I argue that contemporary manifestations of social, political and economic discrimination – antihaitianismo – in the Dominican Republic towards their Haitian neighbours have become embodied responses which are reproduced through everyday actions. Using ethnographic fieldwork and phenomenology, I explore a variety of contexts in which antihaitianismo has become part of a Dominican existential background that is provoked to surface in situations of heightened tension, stress or discomfort. I also show how this embodied discourse has affected and affects a race-centred, essentialist form of governance. This article is supplemented by a short film which can be found at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlIH4fpwUlU     

Mind the gap: Encountering contemporary art through play

Knowing how to approach and experience contemporary art is a challenge to many people outside the art world. Emerging contemporary art, as the newest of this genre, is often the most challenging. This article recounts my own early struggles as a researcher in this field, and proposes a way of understanding the interaction between artist, artwork and perceiver based on my observations of how contemporary artists encounter each others' work. I argue that contemporary art, and especially emerging contemporary art, creates a space to play by creating an intentional gap in the physical form and/or the semantic structure of the artwork. The object of play is the co‐investigation of an idea initiated by the artist, facilitated by the form of the work and furthered by the encounter. Play, it is argued, is essential to emerging contemporary art as an activity, a communicative frame and a disposition. I draw from earlier theoretical connections between art, play and liberation, challenging some of these assertions, and bringing others into relevance in the contemporary context.     

Conceiving relatedness: non-substantial relations among the Kamea of Papua New Guinea

This article considers the implications of imagining kinship as a non-embodied relation. In recent years, it has become commonplace to argue that relatedness is a gradually acquired state that can be built over time and by non-sexual means. In this view, relationships of consanguinity are not given at birth but are created through purposeful acts of feeding and caring. Here, I address a question that has been less commonly asked by anthropologists: need kinship always be imagined as entailing an embodied connection? Is there a way of thinking about cross-generational relationships that does not ground them in bodily connectedness, or, at the very least, one that imagines contexts in which they are not embodied as a substantial link between people? Drawing upon data collected among Kamea of Papua New Guinea, I describe a world in which the parent-child tie is conceptualized as one that is inherently non-embodied.     

Notes on the Sociology of Wantoks in Papua New Guinea

In Melanesian pidgin languages, wantok means someone with a similar origin as oneself, and connotes a familiarity and mutual solidarity. Wantok has also become a watchword of politics and elite discourse on the Pacific Islands' political and social development, where it is a figure of corruption, clientelism, and the lingering influence of tribal identity. Even among grassroots people, wantok sociality is common, especially in urban places, but wantok talk tends to paint the wantok as a drain and burden. In this paper, I argue that when people perform wantok status they juxtapose village and town as inversions. They thereby create familiar relationships in uncertain situations, but also posit intimacy as inimical to the idea of modernity as embodied in towns. This suggests that the wantok idiom draws upon a particularly segmentary logic of relatedness in which solidarity is relative to difference of varying scales. In so doing, wantoks transform the nature of the kinship ties which inform them. As evidence, I examine debates over urbanisation in Papua New Guinea (PNG), and ethnographic observations of a rural-urban nexus of Normanby Island and Alotau in Milne Bay Province, PNG.     

From Racing to Rugby: All Work and No Play for Gogodala Men of Western Province,Papua New Guinea

In this article, I analyse how Gogodala men in Western Province approach the sport of rugby league football as an extension of the practice of canoe racing. Despite colonial changes and mission attempts to redeem canoe racing by labelling them ‘cultural games’, canoe races continue to embody clan relations and demonstrate inner masculine strength, collective clan power and a local work ethic. Although there has been a general lack of attention given to studies of sport in Papua New Guinea, a discourse has emerged that analyses sports competitions as either a modern form of play and a replacement for past ritual activities or as a contemporary exemplar of warfare and other eradicated practices. As the Gogodala have not practised headhunting or warfare for over one hundred years, I want to contribute to this discussion by exploring how contemporary canoe racing and rugby league form an integral part of conceptualisations of work and dala ela gi, or ‘the male way of life’.     

Depth cues, behavioural context, and natural illumination: some potential limitations of video playback techniques

By expanding on issues raised by D’Eath (1998), I address in this article three aspects of vision that are difficult to reproduce in the video- and computer-generated images used in experiments, in which images of conspecifics or of predators are replayed to animals. The lack of depth cues derived from binocular stereopsis, from accommodation, and from motion parallax may be one of the reasons why animals do not respond to video displays in the same way as they do to real conspecifics or to predators. Part of the problem is the difficulty of reproducing the closed-loop nature of natural vision in video playback experiments. Every movement an animal makes has consequences for the pattern of stimulation on its retina and this ”optic flow” in turn carries information about both the animal’s own movement and about the three-dimensional structure of the environment. A further critical issue is the behavioural context that often determines what animals attend to but that may be difficult to induce or reproduce in an experimental setting. I illustrate this point by describing some visual behaviours in fiddler crabs, in which social and spatial context define which part of the visual field a crab attends to and which visual information is used to guide behaviour. I finally mention some aspects of natural illumination that may influence how animals perceive an object or a scene: shadows, specular reflections, and polarisation reflections. Received: 23 November 1999 / Received in revised form: 9 February 2000 / Accepted: 10 February 2000     

Art and the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition in Europe: comments on the archaeological arguments for an early Upper Paleolithic antiquity of the Grotte Chauvet art

The spectacular art of the Grotte Chauvet stands out among all other examples of Aurignacian art, which are restricted to a handful of sites in other regions of western and Central Europe, which take the form of sophisticated carvings on organic materials and of simple engravings on rockshelter walls. Given its sophistication, Chauvet has understandably come to feature prominently in debates as to the nature of human symbolic origins, the behavioral capacities of Homo sapiens, the nature of the dispersal of modern humans across Europe, and the possibly contemporary extinction of Homo neanderthalensis. Significant objections to such an antiquity have, however, been made in recent years on the grounds of the style, themes, and technical practice of the art itself, and on the grounds of the AMS radiocarbon dating program that was first seen to suggest an early Upper Paleolithic age. To date, no attention has been paid to claims for an Aurignacian age on specifically archaeological grounds. Here, I undertake a critical examination of the archaeology of the cave and its wider region, as well as attempts to verify the antiquity of the art on the basis of comparison with well-dated Aurignacian art elsewhere. I conclude that none of the archaeological arguments withstand scrutiny and that many can be rejected as they are either incorrect or tautologous. By contrast, hypotheses that the art is of Gravettian-Magdalenian age have not been successfully eliminated. The age of the art of the Grotte Chauvet should be seen as a scientific problem, not an established fact. While it may prove impossible to prove an Aurignacian age for some of the Chauvet art I suggest a set of expectations that would, in combination, strengthen the robusticity of the ‘long chronology’ argument. The onus is upon Chauvet long chronologists to do this, and until they do, we must conclude that the art of the Grotte Chauvet is not dated, and very possibly much younger than claimed.     

Dancing the Main jo'oh: Hma ‘Btsisi’ Celebrate Their Humanity and Religious Identity in a Malaysian World

Official government census takers tick the religion box titled ‘none’ when they fill out the forms for most Orang Asli. Yet at weddings and other festivities, the Hma' Btsisi', an indigenous Mon‐Khmer speaking people of Peninsular Malaysia, perform a religious dance and song cycle called the main jo'oh. Today, in Malaysia, the main jo'oh is a government centrepiece for Orang Asli culture. Btsisi' are frequently asked to perform the main jo'oh for the Malaysian public and for tourists. The main jo'oh is displayed as a curious, albeit beautiful and exotic performance by a heathen people who have ‘no’ religion. But this paper points out that the dance is far from being solely an exotic relic. I argue that the meanings embodied in the dance performance form the foundation of Btsisi' beliefs; in other words, their religion. I conclude by discussing the main jo'oh in the modern Btsisi' and national context. In particular, I demonstrate that the main jo'oh is a way for the Btsisi' to identify and distinguish themselves from other Orang Asli communities as well as from the majority Malay population.     

Art as "Presented Scenario" for Children (Use of Theatrical Pedagogical Methods in Art Assignments with Children Aged 3-10 Years)

The theme "Children and art" contains many riddles and questions. In these times of crisis in the one-sided rationalist orientation of our educational system, many look to art for a solution. Unfortunately, however, only a few have as yet succeeded in overcoming the inertia of the logical approach to comprehending the surrounding world. This applies not only to the natural sciences but also to the domain of bringing children in contact with the arts. Representational art and music have especially suffered. Theater, thanks to its ludic nature, suffers less. The pedagogy of art continues to employ an informational approach, although now dull and dry information about the life and activities of artists, composers, and writers and the names of works of art are being replaced by information about figurative-emotional content of a very general nature. Special art schools teach the crafts particular to each art form. But the most basic aspect, that without which art could not exist, which defines art as play, namely, its sensuous reflection of the world, remains unexplored. In particular, this aspect consists of: (1) creativity, the imaginative, ludic transformation of impressions of the real world; and (2) the personal element in what is expressed.     

Modo-UG, a marsupial nonclassical MHC class I locus

Modo-UG is a class I gene located in the MHC of the marsupial Monodelphis domestica, the gray, short-tailed opossum. Modo-UG is expressed as three alternatively spliced mRNA forms, all of which encode a transmembrane form with a short cytoplasmic tail that lacks phosphorylation sites typically found in classical class I molecules. The three alternative mRNAs would encode a full-length form, an isoform lacking the α2 domain, and one lacking both α2 and α3 domains. Genotyping both captive-bred and wild M. domestica from different geographic regions revealed no variation in the residues that make up Modo-UG’s peptide-binding groove. Modo-UG’s low polymorphism is contrasting to that of a nearby class I locus, Modo-UA1, which has a highly polymorphic peptide-binding region. Absence of functional polymorphism in Modo-UG is therefore not a general feature of opossum class I genes but the result of negative selection. Modo-UG is the first MHC linked marsupial class I to be described that appears to clearly have nonclassical features.Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available for this article at     

Moved to Dance: Remix,Rasa, and a New India

This article looks at Bollywood dance to explore the production of the commodified bodies of global consumer culture. It focuses on “embodiment” to examine how dominant sensibilities are altered through changes in dance training and technological innovations. I argue that analyzing the dancing body as a locus of experience and expression shifts the ground from culture as text or discourse (popular in postcolonial, poststructuralist or choreographic analysis) to embodiment of subjectivity. “Remix” is the term that describes both the new training techniques and the aesthetics of Indian dances. Since the older boundaries of high and low, classical and popular are fluid under globalization, “remix” is replacing traditional codes and aesthetic experiences associated with rasa. I draw on my fieldwork among the “background dancers” in Bollywood films to argue that as consumer culture creates the dominant mode of cultural expression in India, the only durable form of dance practice seems to be the practice of consumption.     

A cross-culture,cross-gender comparison of perspective taking mechanisms

Being able to judge another person''s visuo-spatial perspective is an essential social skill, hence we investigated the generalizability of the involved mechanisms across cultures and genders. Developmental, cross-species, and our own previous research suggest that two different forms of perspective taking can be distinguished, which are subserved by two distinct mechanisms. The simpler form relies on inferring another''s line-of-sight, whereas the more complex form depends on embodied transformation into the other''s orientation in form of a simulated body rotation. Our current results suggest that, in principle, the same basic mechanisms are employed by males and females in both, East-Asian (EA; Chinese) and Western culture. However, we also confirmed the hypothesis that Westerners show an egocentric bias, whereas EAs reveal an other-oriented bias. Furthermore, Westerners were slower overall than EAs and showed stronger gender differences in speed and depth of embodied processing. Our findings substantiate differences and communalities in social cognition mechanisms across genders and two cultures and suggest that cultural evolution or transmission should take gender as a modulating variable into account.     

Haiti, insecurity, and the politics of asylum

In this article, I seek to show how states of insecurity provoked by ongoing social, economic, and political ruptures in Haiti can disorder individual subjectivity and generate the flight of individuals seeking asylum within and across borders. Nongovernmental actors working in Haiti and with Haitians in the diaspora frequently managed the long-term psychosocial effects of insecurity. Their interventions can range from repressive to compassionate and influence the formation of identity and the embodied experiences of trauma for vulnerable Haitians. The case of a young Haitian refugee who was repatriated to Haiti from the United States in the 1990s demonstrates how insecurity is both an existential state reflecting the disordering of embodied experience, as well as a collective sociopolitical condition the effects of which cannot be managed or contained within national borders. The case is emblematic of the plight of thousands of Haitians affected by the January 12, 2010, earthquake.     

Unusual granules in the ejaculatory duct of a Microphthalmus species (Polychaeta,Annelida)

Summary The paired prominent ejaculatory ducts of the hermaphroditic polychaete Microphthalmus cf. listensis are surrounded by gland cells the processes of which penetrate the ducts themselves. These cells produce, in separate regions, two different types of spherical granules. Type I is composed of an electron dense and an electron lucent part. Type II granules contain a tubular filament that forms a single or double spiral in the periphery of a more or less unstructured electron dense material. Golgi vesicles give rise to this granule type. During the passage of sperm, these granules are obviously discharged into the lumen of the duct. Here they change form and probably dissolve. Their function is as yet unknown; capacitation of sperm is assumed.     

What Do Abelam Images Want from Us?: Plato's Cave and Kwatbi's Belly

In this paper I compare two origin myths, one from the Abelam speaking area of the Sepik region, Papua New Guinea, the other, the allegory of Plato's Cave found in The Republic. I explore the effects which each of these different conceptions of iconography and aesthetics has on the other when they intersect. I argue that fieldwork itself can be looked at as a hybrid form in the sense that it brings into juxtaposition different systems of thought and contrasting cultural tropes. At the moment of intersection a new cultural form, a hybrid, is produced in that someone may ask a question which has never been asked before and respondents may think about something they have never consciously thought about before. I attempt to imaginatively reconstruct one such moment when Anthony Forge questioned Abelam painters in the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea about their iconographic system. By comparing the two origin myths we can better comprehend why Forge received particular and, from his viewpoint, problematic answers to questions about the meaning of particular painting designs. The comparison reveals that the myths are inversions of one another and imply radically differing conceptions of space and iconography. The paper ends by demonstrating that Abelam painters in their turn have questions about systems of representation different from their own. This can be seen in their interrogation of the author about the labels on perfume bottles and their response to an art gallery in Sydney, Australia, which they visited with the author.     

Coevolutionary aesthetics in human and biotic artworlds

This work proposes a coevolutionary theory of aesthetics that encompasses both biotic and human arts. Anthropocentric perspectives in aesthetics prevent the recognition of the ontological complexity of the aesthetics of nature, and the aesthetic agency of many non-human organisms. The process of evaluative coevolution is shared by all biotic advertisements. I propose that art consists of a form of communication that coevolves with its own evaluation. Art and art history are population phenomena. I expand Arthur Danto’s Artworld concept to any aesthetic population of producers and evaluators. Current concepts of art cannot exclusively circumscribe the human arts from many forms of non-human biotic art. Without assuming an arbitrarily anthropocentric perspective, any concept of art will need to engage with biodiversity, and either recognize many instances of biotic advertisements as art, or exclude some instances of human art. Coevolutionary aesthetic theory provides a heuristic account of aesthetic change in both human and biotic artworlds, including the coevolutionary origin of aesthetic properties and aesthetic value within artworlds. Restructuring aesthetics, art criticism, and art history without human beings at the organizing centers of these disciplines stimulate new progress in our understanding of art, and the unique human contributions to aesthetics and aesthetic diversity.     

A New Toxic Substance,Teleocidin, Produced by Streptomyces

The production and isolation of a new toxic substance, Teleocidin, and its biological properties were previously reported^1,2). Thereafter it has been found that an other strain of Streptomyces produced such specific toxic substance as Teleocidin in its cultured mycellium. Comparative tests of these two purified crystalline powders showed the new toxic substance resembles Teleocidin closely though differs in certain chemical properties. Therefore, the original Teleocidin is designated Teleocidin A, whereas that produced by a new strain of Streptomyces is named Teleocidin B, which had been tentatively called as the SK-toxic substance.

From the results of the chemical studies of Teleocidin B and its hydrogenated derivative, which was easily obtained as a crystalline form by the catalytic hydrogenation of Teleocidin B with Adam’s catalyst, molecular formula, C₂₈H_39~41N₃O₂ was postulated for Teleocidin B.

It was also recognized that an alcoholic hydroxyl, a lactam ring and a heterocyclic ring like indole or pyrrole structure existed as the functional groups of Teleocidin B.