Sacred Objects and Sacred Places: Preserving Tribal Traditions

Sacred Objects and Sacred Places: Preserving Tribal Traditions. Andrew Gulliford. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 2000. 285 pp.     

Sacred natural sites and biodiversity conservation: a systematic review

Biodiversity and Conservation - Sacred natural sites (SNS) have gained recognition from conservationists, and are regarded as the oldest form of habitat protection in human history. Many case...     

Human rights and Japanese bioethics: a report from Japan

The main contentions of this paper are twofold. First, there is a more than century-old Japanese tradition of human rights based on a fusion of Western concepts of natural rights and a radical reinterpretation of Confucianism, the major proponent of which was the Japanese thinker Nakae Chomin. Secondly, this tradition, although a minority view, is crucial for remedying the serious defects in the present Japanese medical system.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Nakae Chomin sought to reinterpret Chinese tradition, especially Confucianism, by injecting the concepts of popular sovereignty and democratic equality, drawn from Western sources. The resulting view maintained the Confucian commitment to a moral nexus for society, but replaced hierarchy with egalitarianism.
The pressing need for such an approach to patients' rights in present-day Japan is illustrated by two recent cases: the photographing and commercial exploitation of patients' genitals without serious response by authorities, and the attempt by physicians to manipulate the time of death and, possibly, to improperly pressure family members in order to transplant organs from the brain-dead victim of a criminal assault.
Such problems stem from hierarchy and paternalism, which seem to be a legacy of the rapid, state-sponsored introduction of Western medicine in the mid-nineteenth century, and in particular from the government's adoption of and support for German military medicine as a model for Japan.     

Animals for the Gods: Magical and Religious Faunal Use and Trade in Brazil

Religious beliefs and practices have long influenced human perceptions and uses of nature. Animals in particular play a prominent role in magico-religious practices and given the historical and cultural depth of these relationships, understanding human-faunal relations is often fundamental to the cause of meaningful wildlife conservation. This study investigates the domestic and wild harvested species used for spiritual and religious purposes by adherents of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé. Introduced by enslaved Africans, this belief system combines animal and plant traditions derived from Africa with many others assimilated from Amerindians. We identified a total of 129 species of animals (or animal derived products) used and/or sold for magico-religious purposes; of these, 34. 8?% (n?=?45) are included in some list of threatened species. Most animals reported were mammals (n?=?29), followed by mollusks (20), fishes (19), birds (18) and reptiles (16); the majority (78?%) of reported species were wild-caught from terrestrial habitats (62?%), followed by marine and estuarine (24?%), and freshwater (14?%). We identified an extensive commercial network of collectors, middlemen/distributors, shop owners, and consumers. Rarity of a given species was often positively associated with economic value. Considering the ubiquity and underground nature of these practices, future conservation strategists are encouraged to work with Candomblé practitioners.     

The Implications of Marriage Rules and Descent: Categories for Merina Social Structures

Contrary to previous accounts, the Merina have cognatic, endogamous descent categories. As a result of Merina imperialism and French colonialism they are now dispersed all over Madagascar. Those of free descent still prefer to marry endogamously, although embarrassed at the taint of incest attaching to it, and to be buried in the tombs of the original villages around Tananarive which they consider home. The equally numerous population of slave descent has no such ties. They pride themselves on marrying exogamously and establish tombs in the villages where they have settled. The free not only thus maintain attachment to their traditional groupings but derive benefit from them for social and spatial mobility.