Nutritional Consequences of Wealth Differentials in East African Pastoralists: The Case of the Datoga of Northern Tanzania

Among African pastoralists evidence that wealth is associated with other measures of household success is scant and the significance of wealth differentials for family welfare remains poorly understood. Predictions that wealth in livestock is associated with increased adequacy of household food supply and with improved child nutrition are tested with longitudinal data on herd size, household composition, food supply, and anthropometric status collected in 1992 for a sample of traditional Datoga households (n = 20) living in the Eyasi basin in northern Tanzania. Although a majority subsisted below poverty cutoffs estimated for east African pastoral populations, there was large variation among households in measures of wealth and resource availability. Individuals in relatively wealthy households did not appear to benefit either in terms of adequacy of household food supply or in terms of average growth performance of young children. Theoretical and methodological challenges in the study of the relationship between wealth and health in nomadic pastoralists are discussed.     

A Buddha Kingdom in the Golden Triangle: Buddhist Revivalism and the Charismatic Monk Khruba Bunchum

Khruba Bunchum Yanasangwaror, despite his youth, has already been proclaimed by many, in the Yuan Buddhist world of the upper Mekong region, to be a ton bun (‘source of merit’). His charismatic reputation derives from his ascetic virtues, his assumed accumulation of merit in past lives and his Bodhisattva‐like compassion for others. His compassion is expressed through dedication to the building of religious monuments that allows the laity to acquire merit by contributing labour and money. Another dimension of the conception of ton bun is that of sacral kingship. In these and other respects Khruba Bunchum's religious career emulates that of Khruba Siwichai, the famous northern Thai monk of the early 20th century. However, Khruba Siwichai's religious activities were confined to northern Thailand, whereas Khruba Bunchum's peregrinations throughout northern Thailand, northern Laos, Sipsongpanna (in China) and northeast Burma mark out a sacred Buddhist space, focused on the heart of the notorious Golden Triangle. I argue in this paper that this imagined sacred space both transcends and challenges the dominant discourse of modern nation‐state.     

Historicising the Cosmogony: Naming the Asala Perahara in Buddhist Sri Lanka

This article offers a novel interpretation of Sri Lanka's great ceremonial procession for the Buddha, the Asala Perahara. By conceptualizing the name, ‘Asala’ as a chronotope (Bakhtin 1981), and giving emphasis to its authorisation by Buddhist monks, the interpretation reveals that this ritual commemorates the origins of Buddhism in relation to the island of Sri Lanka, thus constituting it as a unique ‘quality space’ (Fernandez 1986) for its Buddhist inhabitants. The interpretation demonstrates that the distinction between mythic time and everyday time, as espoused by Lévi-Strauss (1972) is not only arbitrary, but spurious in this context. Furthermore, contra Seneviratne (1978), it shows that far from being an anachronism in contemporary society, the Asala Perahara in fact enacts its cosmic premise and is politically powerful precisely because it defines reality in religious terms.     

On getting nothing back: Managing the meaning of ethnicity in Canada's northwest territories*

In analysing life‐cycle rituals (rites of passage) it is important to consider not only the relationship between individuals and society, but also the role of the household. The change in status that an individual achieves through life‐cycle rituals also has implications for the status of the members of his/her household and of other kin. In the Andes, life‐cycle rituals are necessary for the physical, social and spiritual development of individuals and households. Analyses that exclusively associate physical development with ‘natural’ parents and social and spiritual development with godparents, ignore the complex relationship between the households of parents, children and godparents.     

The Ta'arof Tournament: cultural performances of ethno-national identity at a diasporic summer camp

Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, interviews and audio recordings at a US summer camp by and for Iranian-heritaged youth, this paper analyses the construction of ethno-national identity during the ‘Ta'arof Tournament’, a popular camp activity that literally makes sport of the Iranian custom of self-effacement, politeness and hospitality. A repertoire of six ta'arof strategies is identified: (a) reliance on pre-existing, commonly used ta'arof phrases, (b) ‘code-switching’ between English and Persian, (c) body gestures, (d) novel, hyperbolic ‘ta'arof-style’ phrases, (e) exaggerated ‘Iranian’ accents and (f) subversive and humorous re-enactments of life in immigrant households. Camp participants embrace, renew and transform the quintessentially ‘Iranian’ custom of ta'arof while self-consciously performing for one another. Despite scholarship that relies on ‘cultural trauma’ and ‘stigma’ to explain identity ‘loss’ among immigrant groups, these findings reveal that the ironic, tender cultural performance of ‘rituals’ like ta'arof serve as powerful source material for group affinity and belonging in diaspora.     

Thai Love Thai: financing emotion in post-crash Thailand

Since the crash of the Thai baht in 1997, Buddhist mass rituals of money and passion in Thailand are addressing the emotional predicaments of globalization with technologies of community that refigure the nation – from a geo-spatial body into a monetary spirit. Buddhist donation ceremonies, intended to shore up the national currency reserves, as well as mass rites staged to aid the spirit of the nation's leader, represent emerging practices of money, love, and identity in Thailand. This might suggest that the study of emotion should shift emphasis from the interpretation of numerous cultural systems toward addressing a shared global situation of subjection to international financial integration and uncertainty.     

Modeling rendille household herd composition

Previous analysis of Rendille household herd composition revealed a transition from camel to cattle ownership for sedentary impoverished Rendille pastoralists of northern Kenya. In an attempt to delineate determinants of livestock holdings, logistic regression analysis of 112 household herds from the Rendille settlement of Korr, Marsabit District, Kenya was undertaken. Results indicated that household wealth, measured in present livestock holdings, past drought losses, and livestock sales, formed better predictors of cattle ownership than did household characteristics pertaining to labor supply, wage earners, age-set membership, and birth order of household head. These results are discussed in light of pastoral strategies designed to minimize risk.     

‘Beach-Boy Elders’ and ‘Young Big-Men’: Subverting the Temporalities of Ageing in Kenya's Ethno-Erotic Economies

ABSTRACT

In the 1980s, Samburu men from northern Kenya began migrating to coastal tourist resorts to sell souvenirs and perform traditional dances for European tourists. Many of them engaged in transactional sex or marriages with European women attracted to the image of the exotic African young male warrior. Through relationships with European women, some Samburu men managed to rapidly accumulate wealth, becoming so-called ‘young big-men’. As a way to transform their wealth into more durable forms of respectability, these men used their money to marry local women and speed up their ritual initiation into elderhood. Meanwhile, there also emerged the figure of ‘beach-boy elders’, men who aged before accumulating sufficient wealth. They returned to coastal tourist resorts, dressed as young warriors, and waited to find European partners. In the article, I argue that beach-boy elders and young big-men produce queer moments in the temporalities of ageing, in that they subvert normative expectations of ageing at the very same time that they seek to produce them.     

Birding and DNA: species for the new millennium

Capsule Based on the 1999 Witherby Memorial Lecture – reviews how developments in molecular and population genetics have led to a reappraisal of species limits in birds.

The taxonomy of birds of the West Palearctic has moved from the comparative stability of the ‘Voous List’ into a period of serious activity, with new data emerging in almost every issue of every evolutionary and avian journal! This activity comes from two directions. Firstly, developments in population genetics, molecular biology, acoustics, behaviour and distributional studies have opened new avenues to measuring differentiation among groups of birds. This, in turn, has led to the recognition that earlier views of what constitutes a ‘species’ are in need of modification (‘improvement’), and the emergence of the ‘lineage concept’ of species. I review some of the species concepts most relevant to avian studies, and attempt to show how and why this change has happened, and its consequences for taxonomy and species limits. Examples are given in the form of ‘case studies’, and include Carrion/Hooded Crows Corvus corone/cornix, Green-winged/Eurasian Teals Anas carolinensis/crecca and Phylloscopus warblers.     

Modelling emotion,perfecting heart: disassembling technologies of affect with an android bodhisattva in Japan

As part of a surge in technologies with so-called ‘artificial emotional intelligence’, robotics engineers and Buddhist monks in Japan have developed an android bodhisattva to deliver teachings at a popular Zen temple. Like many recent robots in Japan, the android is designed to impact visitors’ feelings. For this reason, it can be called a ‘technology of affect’. In order to communicate how new affective technologies are facilitating intimacy in human-machine relations in Japan, we employ the concept of ‘disassembling’. By conceptually disassembling technologies of affect and placing them in performative contexts, we show how technologies of affect also disassemble established associations between artificial agents and the feelings they evoke in popular imaginaries. We argue that identifying these disassembling processes helps demonstrate how emerging AI technologies can engender social change at the level of affect through evocative depictions of machine emotion.     

The distribution and biology of nomadic birds in the Karoo, South Africa

Dryland nomadic bird species, as a proportion of all bird species in a biome in southern Africa, are highest in the arid grassland and arid and semi-arid Karoo in South Africa. Nomadic birds, of which the most widespread species is the greybacked finchlark Eremopterix verticalis (Smith), are most frequently observed in the north-central and north western Nama Karoo. The species richness of nomadic species is inversely correlated with species richness of all bird species in the Karoo. Since the distribution of nomadic birds is in areas where rainfall is patchy, low (<250 mm per year) and aseasonal, this supports the idea that fewer species are able to cope with resources that are patchy in time and space, and that there has been selection for nomadism in the species that are able to use patchy environments. Species richness and abundance of nomadic birds is negatively correlated with rainfall amount but positively correlated with the coefficient of variation of the rainfall and with rainfall in autumn. The frequency of nomadic birds is inversely correlated with altitude range; nomadic species are most often recorded in structurally simple habitats (shrubland and grassland) on open plains. Most nomadic bird species in the Karoo are granivorous. Perennial desert grasses are important components of the habitat and diet of small nomadic granivores, and also provide nest sites and nest material. Nomadic birds can breed throughout the year, without a clearly defined ‘season’ in both the Succulent and Nama Karoo. Average clutch sizes do not differ significantly between resident and all nomadic species in the arid and semi-arid Karoo. Nomadism is an evolutionary stable strategy for individual species only when extremes in environmental conditions are frequent enough, and unpredictable enough, to maintain movements to high resource patches or to maintain dispersal away from low resource patches. If high rainfall years are too regular or infrequent, or peaks in fluctuations of resources in the environment too low, or rainfall patches are randomly distributed, nomadism would not be maintained as part of the individual behaviour pattern.     

The spirit of the gift,the price of potency: a Maussian model of the Southeast Asian state of Luwu

This rereading of Mauss's The gift shifts the focus of discussion from the Maori hau to another example: tanoana (potency) among the Toraja (To Pamona) of Central Sulawesi. This potency animates an exchange with (human) gods that is at once gift and purchase (maoli). By tracing the intersection of this Maussian literature with that on the animist foundation of the Southeast Asian state, I analyse the nature of potent gifts that serve as a form of social currency in a ‘spiritual economy’ tying centre with (Toraja) periphery in the kingdom of Luwu. This ‘money’, imbued with royal potency, is a medium for the payment of debt only and not a medium of exchange, which gives ‘purchases’ made with it the characteristics of a ‘gift’ and also an opportunity to extract tribute. The Maussian analysis of the blurring of person and thing, and of persons and spirits, thus offers new insight into the nature of political power in the Southeast Asian state.     

Post-race,post politics: the paradoxical rise of culture after multiculturalism

Declarations of the end of race ignore the continuing impact of racism upon socio-economic inequality in ‘racial states’. Nevertheless, the idea of post-racialism has gained ground in a post-9/11 era, defined by a growing suspicion of diversity. Clearly racialized, this suspicion is couched in cultural-civilizational terms that attempt to avoid the charge of racism. Hence, attempts to counteract the purported failure of multiculturalism in Europe today pose culturalist solutions to problems deemed to originate from an excess of cultural diversity. This is part of a deepening culturalization of politics in which the post-race argument belongs to a post-political logic that shuns political explanations of unrest and widening disintegration in favour of reductive culturalist ones. The culturalization of politics is elaborated by relating it to the displacement of the political that originated with the nineteenth-century ascendance of race, thus setting ‘post-racialism’ firmly within the history of modern racism.     

A personal narrative of particular things: Tevau (feather money) from Santa Cruz,Solomon Islands

In October 2006, Salome Samou, from Santa Cruz Island, Solomon Islands, visited the British Museum, London, to see the collections from her home island. This paper presents her response to the tevau in the collection (frequently referred to as ‘feather money’). Tevau are objects of prestige and value, formerly used in a regional network of exchange. They were especially important in bridewealth payments, but have not been used on Santa Cruz Island since the 1980s. Today, Samou wants to revive their use, a re‐introduction that reflects a linkage of tevau and their manufacture to contemporary ideas of social identity. This paper explores Samou’s interaction with the tevau in the collection, including past interpretations of their use. For Samou, the process of viewing the tevau produced a narrative that embraced personal memories as well as challenged perspectives on past cultural and social practices. I discuss how these particular objects materialise transformed, and transforming, regimes of value.     

The consumption of ritual and the changing values of filial piety in ancestor worship

Ancestor worship is regarded as the key element of the Han people's belief system across most of China. However, the rituals pertaining to death, such as in funerals and annual ancestor worship, vary from place to place. For decades, the state has made tremendous efforts to reform and standardise funerals consistent with its path to modernization by insisting on more socialist practices rather than those that are perceived as ‘superstitious’ and ‘irrational’, such as burning paper and incense or performing rituals. I argue that despite regulating the use of funeral materials or memorial types, the state has failed to reform the essence of death rituals, that is, the duty of filial piety and people's conception of the afterlife. In addition, funerals and other rituals related to death contribute to individual's social reputation.     

Rust disease (Melampsora epited) of willow (Salix spp.) grown as short rotation coppice (SRC) in inter- and intra-species mixtures

Twenty inter‐ and intra‐species genotypes of willows (Salix spp.) were grown in large mono‐plots and incorporated into five, 10,15 and 20–way mixtures. In each growing season from 1996 to 2001 the level of rust disease caused by Melampsora epitea was recorded on each genotype where it was growing as a mono‐plot or as part of a mixture. Three genotypes, S. schwerinii×viminalis×dasyclados’V7531′, S. schwerinii×aquatica‘V7533’ and S. viminalis‘Gigantea’ remained virtually rust free through the six yr of the trial. It is, however, argued that there are benefits of including such genotypes in a mixture in order to reduce the risk of them developing rust susceptibility. S. burjatica‘Germany’, S. dasyclados×aquatica‘V7511’ and S. dasyclados×caprea‘V794’ were severely affected by rust, although levels tended to be less when included in mixtures. The levels of rust on S. mollissima‐undulata‘SQ83’ were much higher in the first three‐year harvest cycle than during the second cycle. On a number of genotypes, e.g. S. burjatica‘Germany’ and S. dasyclados×aquatica‘V7511’ rust was more severe on the regrowth from freshly coppiced stools.     

The maverick dialogics of religious rivalry in Sri Lanka: inspiration and contestation in a new messianic Buddhist movement

A strand of Sri Lankan Buddhist revivalism that emerged in 2008 offers an unconventional rejoinder to evangelical efforts to intensify conversions. Pentecostals assert that Christ offers instantaneous salvation whereas Theravāda Buddhism demands slow passage through many lifetimes of suffering. In contrast to concomitant political efforts to curb conversions, one maverick Buddhist monk implicitly responded to such competitive theological provocations by enlisting devotees to engage in ritual and moral cultivation to foreshorten the far‐future arrival of the messianic Bodhisatva Maitreya. Neither derivative, nor ‘syncretic’, the maverick's efforts to fortify Buddhism are nevertheless dialogically responsive to multiple sources of religious competition. Following the traffic of aspiration, contestation, and charismatic affinity between Buddhism and rival religiosities, on one side, and within Buddhism, on the other, the ethnography discloses a multi‐religious milieu. Within it, several competing religiosities stir the anxieties of Sinhala Buddhist nationalists. Old and new rivalries pose constraints, even as they provide fodder for religious innovation.     

Ghar ki tension: domesticity and distress in India's aspiring middle class

Tension is a polysemic term used across South Asia to describe the strains and scrapes of life, like ‘worry’ or ‘stress’ in Euro-American discourse. Yet in the formerly agro-pastoralist and upwardly mobile Gaddi community of Himalayan India, it is used by women with the qualifying ghar ki – ‘household’ – to indicate a deeper disruption to bodily humours, intimate relations, and household materiality. This article takes ghar ki tension, with a particular focus on the layered qualifier ghar, as a window into the precarity of middle-class domestic life as it is experienced in the bodies of the women who pursue it. Rather than focusing on the communicative functions of women's distress within the household, this article looks to the relational, affective, and material ways in which women see their bodies and houses as mutually constituted and disrupted. This approach reveals how women's domestic labour is both a source of dignity and a burden. This burden is experienced in ghar ki tension, in bodily symptoms of overheating, and visits from supernatural beings. This article suggests that ghar ki tension might offer a novel way of looking at distress as the psychic and embodied cost of upward social mobility beyond the Gaddi context.     

Performance of Galia-type melons grafted on to Cucurbita rootstock in Monosporascus cannonballus-infested and non-infested soils

Galia‐type melons grafted on to the Cucurbita rootstock‘TZ 148’and non‐grafted controls were evaluated for vegetative development under greenhouse conditions. In general, the development of grafted and non‐grafted plants was similar within a cultivar. The horticultural and pathological performances of the Galia‐type melons ‘Carrera’, ‘NUN‐5554’, ‘6003’ and ‘Arava’ were evaluated in experiments conducted in non‐infested and Monosporascus‐infested soils. In non‐infested soil, grafted and non‐grafted ‘Carrera’, ‘NUN‐5554’ and ‘Arava’ had the same yields. The yield of grafted ‘6003’ was significantly higher than that of its non‐grafted control. Responses of grafted and non‐grafted Galia‐type melons to Monosporascus cannonballus were evaluated and compared in the spring and autumn growing seasons. Significant differences in disease incidence were found among cultivars, between grafted and non‐grafted plants, and between growing seasons. Disease reduction and the beneficial effect of grafting on yield were more pronounced in the spring. The results indicate that Galia‐type melons can be grafted successfully, but the cultivation of the grafted plants should be adapted to each growing area and season.     

Nature De-naturalised: Modes of Relation with the Environment among the Drung of Northwest Yunnan (China)

ABSTRACT

This article is about the ways the Drung (Dulong), a minority inhabiting a remote mountainous valley of Northwest Yunnan province (China), view the ‘natural world’ as part of a cosmological order in which human society is integrated. The article explores the principles of differentiation that preside over the modes of relation between the diverse components of this world, by paying close attention to subsistence activities. Until recently, the Drung people practised swidden agriculture, and hunting and collecting remained important secondary sources of food. These activities imply specific relationships with natural forces, deities and spirits, which constitute a socio-cultural means of accessing natural resources and obtaining prosperity, or ‘good fortune’. Four mutually non-exclusive modalities of transaction with these entities are identified, which capture the variability of peoples’ attitudes toward natural resources and ideas of social reproduction. Recent socio-economic reforms that have brought traditional cultivation to an end, threatening Drung people’s livelihood and culture, seem to influence the dominance of a certain modality of economic transaction.