Paternalism's Changing Reputation

Research on the relationship between Aborigines and pastoralists in the Northen Territory can be divided into two traditions. A ‘Liberal-managerial’ tradition, represented by the work of Stevens and the Berndts, fails to explore Aborigines' constructs about that relationship. An alternative ‘ethnographic’ tradition has begun to correct this imbalance by using Aborigines' testimony. An interpretation of these materials suggests that Aborigines applied a model of exchange to their dealings with pastoralists and that their capacity to do so has been undermined by the gradual emergence of wage-labour relations in the industry.     

WHO fellowships--what do they achieve?

Training health professionals is one of WHO''s major strategies for improving health care in the developing world. The aim, to strengthen a country''s own capacity rather than injecting expertise from outside, is in the best tradition of sustainable development. But how effective is this so called "capacity building in human resources"? Since it accounted for $43m of WHO''s budget in 1992-3 and is considered by WHO to be a major contribution to health in individual countries, it deserves detailed examination.     

AIDS and medical confidentiality.

In summary, I have argued that the arguments offered or hinted at in favour of doctors'' breaking medical confidentiality by passing on information about their patients'' HIV state to others, including other doctors, when this is against the patient''s considered wishes are generally unconvincing. Although in highly exceptional cases there may be justifications for overriding confidentiality, the requirement of medical confidentiality is a very strong, though not absolute, obligation. Patients, their contacts, doctors and their staff, and the common good are most likely to be best served if that tradition continues to be honoured.     

Overcoming the Newtonian paradigm: The unfinished project of theoretical biology from a Schellingian perspective

Defending Robert Rosen's claim that in every confrontation between physics and biology it is physics that has always had to give ground, it is shown that many of the most important advances in mathematics and physics over the last two centuries have followed from Schelling's demand for a new physics that could make the emergence of life intelligible. Consequently, while reductionism prevails in biology, many biophysicists are resolutely anti-reductionist. This history is used to identify and defend a fragmented but progressive tradition of anti-reductionist biomathematics. It is shown that the mathematico–physico–chemical morphology research program, the biosemiotics movement, and the relational biology of Rosen, although they have developed independently of each other, are built on and advance this anti-reductionist tradition of thought. It is suggested that understanding this history and its relationship to the broader history of post-Newtonian science could provide guidance for and justify both the integration of these strands and radically new work in post-reductionist biomathematics.     

Ethnic intermarriage in Britain

Hebrewism, Globalized Israeliness and Mizrakhiut are examined as three major variants of Israeliness that struggle between them over dominance in the Israeli field of national culture. By discussing typical styles of literature and popular music associated with each variant, it is demonstrated how each is committed, albeit in a different way, to the belief in the idea of 'one nation - one culture', and to the construction of one, unique 'Israeli Culture'. Israel serves as a case to support a general argument about contemporary national cultures being a 'Bourdieusian' field in which invented tradition, global culture and sub-national / 'ethnic' culture are the major types of positions, struggling between them to define the dominant national cultural capital.     

Pentecostal peacefulness: virtue ethics and the reception of theology in Nepal

The anthropology of Christianity has struggled to theorize the place of theology in Christian social life. Drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre's account of virtue ethics, in particular his concepts of practice, narrative, and moral tradition, I explore the reception of Pentecostal theology in the Nepali city of Bhaktapur. I show how local Christians have drawn on Pentecostal eschatology to develop a pacifistic ethics, allowing them to negotiate local social and religious conflicts. The belief that Christ has decisively defeated evil spirits allows local Christians to detach themselves from cycles of aggression connected with witchcraft accusations, providing a space of security in which to cultivate distinctive practices of care. Connecting this local theology with a wider tradition in Pentecostal moral thought, I argue that MacIntyre's virtue ethics provides a powerful tool for interpreting the relationship between local circumstance and extra‐local theology, and for studying cross‐cultural patterns of theological reception.     

The Contest of Moralities: Negotiating Compulsory Celibacy and Sexual Intimacy in the Roman Catholic Priesthood

Religions can claim moral fixity while experiencing moral fluidity, a contradiction that produces social tensions. By going behind the facade of a fixed morality, found in the official teaching on compulsory celibacy for Roman Catholic priests, this article explores how respective moralities have been constructed and negotiated by the papacy of John Paul II and priests who have sexually intimate friendships. In examining social processes that are used in the production of moralities, I show how the papacy constructs etymologies to establish its claim that celibacy is an essential tradition, which are concomitantly rhetorical representations of a fixed morality. I then analyse the idiomatic constructions of priests with ‘friends' in which they informally challenge the etymological ploys of the papacy with alternative readings of tradition, representations that, in turn, create new moralities. Features of this contest of moralities are then examined, which suggest that the tension between moral fixity and moral fluidity constantly tests a religion's readiness for change.     

Not Without a Cost: Contemporary PNG Art in the 21st Century

This article addresses the life experiences and work of two contemporary Papua New Guinean artists: Saun Anti from the artistically conservative Middle Sepik River area, and Wendi Choulai, from Melbourne, Australia. Anti's story of reprimand, censorship, and banishment, and Choulai's being the antithetical situation, illustrate some hurdles faced by contemporary PNG artists. Anti's and Choulai's art posed a challenge to their people's concept of traditional forms as well as to the preconceptions of collectors and curators. They are artists torn between two worlds: the world of “tradition,” reciprocity, and initiation, and the sophisticated, cosmopolitan world of the international artist.     

The Politics of Tradition: Toward a Generic Culture in Vanuatu

The paper examines the role of the elite in generating constructions of tradition in present-day Vanuatu. While stopping short of postulating a ‘conspiracy theory’ interpretation, the paper does argue that the proto-bureaucratic 'class' is attempting to gain control over a symbolic code derived from traditional practices (kastom) so as to promote social cohesion and establish a civil polity. The negative case of kava, a symbol of traditional culture which was significantly not included in this corpus is discussed at length.     

Harvey,Aristotle and the Weather Cycle

It is well known that Harvey was influenced by Aristotle. This paper seeks to show that Harvey's quantitative argument for the circulation and his analogy of the heart with a pump do not go beyond Aristotle and may even have been inspired by passages in Aristotle. It also considers the fact that Harvey gives much greater prominence to a macrocosm/microcosm analogy between the weather cycle and the circulation of the blood than he does to the pump analogy. This analogy is prominent in both the preface to the king and pivotal chapter eight of De Motu Cordis, and may indicate a significant influence from the Renaissance natural magic tradition. The full implications of this analogy are critical for Harvey's conception of the nature of the circulation, especially the constant interconversion of venous and arterial blood and the passage of blood through the lungs. The tendency to assume that Harvey had a superior method since he made such an important discovery may have led not only to overestimation of the influence from the new science of the seventeenth century, but also to underestimation of influence from the magical tradition.     

Maori “bird calls” or “whistles”

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.     

Melanesian Kastom and Its Transformations

Editorial Board Note: In 2006, the Discipline Group of Anthropology and Sociology at The University of Western Australia hosted a symposium, ‘Anthropology in the West: 1956–2006’, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the then Department of Anthropology by the late Ronald Berndt and his wife, Catherine, whose contributions to anthropology were a major focus of the symposium. Symposium participants also documented contributions made by UWA staff and students from Anthropology and Sociology within and beyond Australian social science. A notable theoretical focus on kastom in the work of Robert Tonkinson, who in 1984 succeeded Professor Berndt in the Departmental Chair, was the topic of Lamont Lindstrom's paper, published here in a fuller, revised and fully refereed version. We intend to publish further papers from the symposium in later issues of Anthropological Forum.

If Ronald and Catherine Berndt are ancestral spirits haunting Anthropology and Sociology at The University of Western Australia some 50 years after the founding of the Department of Anthropology, their student, Bob Tonkinson, still happily with us, is their intellectual descendant and institutional heir. As in the case of the Berndts, issues relating to social change, religion and values, and, in particular, the politics of tradition have loomed large in Tonkinson's career. I trace, in this retrospective essay, the rise to prominence of an anthropology of Melanesian tradition and, more specifically, Tonkinson's contribution, notably his analyses of tradition's ‘symbiotic’ relations with Christianity, its identity functions, its local versus its national significance, and its relations with evolving anthropological theories of culture in a shrinking world. Tonkinson's Vanuatu research, which began among Ambrym Island emigrants, has spanned, over the past forty years or so, many notable transformations: from New Hebrides to Vanuatu; from modernisation theory to world systems and globalisation; and from tradition to kastom.     

Restoring the Narrative of American Environmentalism

The conventional narrative of American environmentalism is no longer very helpful for conservationists and restorationists seeking philosophical justification and guidance for their work. The tradition has often been cropped into a narrower and simplified account of the battle between the philosophies of wise use and preservation, a move bolstered by the turn to historical images of President Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir visiting California's Yosemite National Park in the early years of the twentieth century. This cropped conservation picture needs to be restored and widened to engage the pragmatism that has always been a part of the U.S. environmental tradition, but that became eclipsed by preservationist ideology with the rise of the fields of environmental history and environmental philosophy in the late twentieth century. Restoring this lost pragmatism to the environmental tradition will prove vital to recovering the value of environmental history and philosophy for conservation and restoration practice and to reclaiming a more holistic and useful narrative of people, culture, and environment.     

The image of loss: Jalal Toufic's filmic Beirut

Jalal Toufic's cinematic and literary pieces form a unique corpus within contemporary Arab filmmaking. His esthetic vision—built around a sublime understanding of image as loss—not only connects with the current ruins of the Lebanon he films, but also resonates with the classical tradition of the nasib in Arabic poetry.     

Veiled cinema: A conversation with Yousry Nasrallah

This interview with Yousry Nasrallah introduces an increasingly important Egyptian director to American audiences through his latest film, On Boys, Girls, and the Veil. The film is a documentary about a phenomenon sometimes misleadingly called “the veil” by Westerners. Nasrallah's film discusses relations between men and women through their own conversations about the wearing of clothes designed to restrict vision. The interview relates Nasrallah's work to the larger tradition of Egyptian filmmaking.     

Making the cosmopolitan canopy in Boston's Haymarket Square

Using ethnographic data on Boston's Haymarket Square, this paper demonstrates how public space and a market opportunity can generate solidarity among people of different ethnicities in the form of a cosmopolitan canopy, and how a single ethnic tradition can nurture an open, public multi-ethnic environment. The paper illustrates how Haymarket vendors' treatment of ethnic and racial difference is actively deployed in the construction of new groups that largely transcend such distinctions. This article outlines the mechanisms by which a cosmopolitan canopy is sustained, and how it serves a constructive social function within the city.     

The Oslerian Tradition and Changing Medical Education: A Reappraisal

Although only 21 of Sir William Osler''s 45 years in academic medicine were spent in US medical schools (1884 to 1905), he played a major role in shaping modern medical education in this country. The integration of scholarship with patient care, together with the science and art of medicine, was central to Osler''s teaching and writing throughout his career. A classic generalist and a charismatic clinical teacher, he taught by example and was as concerned with the ideals of medicine as with its science and knowledge.Many changes have reshaped the content, process and concerns of American medical education since Osler''s time. Subspecialization and balkanization of medical education and practice have become dominant. Many of the important issues in medicine today do not fit neatly into the domain of any of the established specialties or medical organizations. There is now an urgent need to promote generalist attitudes in medicine, and the Oslerian tradition has much to offer in approaching today''s problems in medical education and practice.     

United and Divided: Christianity,Tradition and Identity in Two South Coast Papua New Guinea Villages

The Motu and the Hula, two south coast Papua New Guinea societies, are linguistically related, have similar social organisation and were economically linked before European colonisation. They were both introduced to Christianity by the London Missionary Society in the late 19th century, and each appeared to incorporate the new religion into their social life and thought quickly and unproblematically. More than a century later, however, generalities about the similar adoption of Christianity by the Motu and the Hula are no longer possible. Nor are generalities about the engagement with Christianity within one or the other group, as individual Motu and Hula villages have unique histories. In this regard, while Christianity has now arguably become part of putative tradition among the Motu, some Hula are experiencing conflict between Christianity and their sense of tradition. In particular, while in the Motu village of Pari Christian virtues are appealed to as part of Pari's conception of itself as a ‘traditional’ Motu village, the situation in the Hula village of Irupara is more or less the contrary. Many people in Irupara are now lamenting ‘tradition’ as something lost, a forgotten essence destroyed or replaced by Christianity. Based on fieldwork in both villages, this paper discusses some differences in their engagement with Christianity and compares contemporary perceptions of religion, tradition and identity in both societies, informing a commentary on notions of tradition and anthropological representations of the Melanesian experience of Christianity.     

American political culture and the shifting meaning of race

This study of undocumented immigrant Nepalese workers in Japan analyses their ethnic history, demographics, migration strategies and work experiences. The majority belong to ethnic groups which the British designated 'martial races', whose tradition of foreign service as 'Gurkha' soldiers in the British and Indian Armies produced a culture of emigration and a remittance economy in rural Nepal. As a result, the present generation has been socialized to be familiar with international migration as an economic option, and has access to networks for its accomplishment. Japan's industrial structure and relative affluence have generated chronic shortages of workers to fill jobs shunned by Japanese in manufacturing and construction industries. This has elevated wages to levels which attract economically distressed foreign migrants such as those from Nepal. Despite the isolation and discrimination which they suffer, these Nepalese find the financial rewards to be sufficient to outweigh the hardships.     

German government investigates anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism in Germany has a long tradition. It dates back to religious anti-Semitism many centuries ago culminating in the Holocaust. More recently, anti-Semitism was rising again in Germany. At least partly, it was encouraged by recent news reports on the Israel-Palestine conflict. This occurred at the time when a new Anti-Semitic party – the Alternative for Germany – emerged at Germany's political scene. To ascertain the prevalence of anti-Semitism, Germany's federal parliament set up an independent commission in 2012. In 2017, the commission reported its findings. This review discusses the commission's results focusing on a definition of anti-Semitism; hate crimes based on anti-Semitism; the extend of anti-Semitism in Germany's political centre; anti-Semitism in the media, social movements and racist organizations; an evaluation of anti-Semitism based on surveys and interviews; anti-Semitism in Germany's political parties; and finally, anti-Semitism of refugees and migrants. The report concludes recommendations seeking to prevent anti-Semitism.