Elusive Culture: Schooling, Race, and Identity in Global Times

Elusive Culture: Schooling, Race, and Identity in Global Times. Daniel A. Yon. New York: State University of New York Press, 2000. 175 pp.     

Authenticity,Identity, and Humanity: The Hai‖om San and the State of Namibia

The Hai‖om are the largest and most widely dispersed San population in Namibia. Like many other San peoples in Southern Africa, the Hai‖om were dispossessed, marginalised, and discriminated against by other groups and by the colonial state. In 1949, the South West African administration appointed a Commission for the Preservation of the Bushmen, chaired by a former Stellenbosch University professor, P.J. Schoeman, one of the architects of apartheid in South Africa. When the final report of the Commission was published in 1953, the Hai‖om were ignored, in part because Schoeman did not see them as ‘real' or ‘authentic' Bushmen. The Hai‖om were removed from their ancestral homeland in what was designated as Etosha National Park in 1953–1954. This paper examines the efforts of the Hai‖om to seek land and resource rights and political recognition from the 1980s to the present. The Namibian government appointed a Hai‖om Traditional Authority, David//Khamuxab, in 2004, established a San Development Office in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in 2005, and in 2007 began purchasing commercial farms for purposes of resettlement of Hai‖om. Statements by Namibian government officials underscore the importance of humanity and compassion in the ways in which the Hai‖om San issue has been addressed. It remains to be seen, however, whether the Hai‖om of Etosha will be treated the same way as other Hai‖om and other historically disadvantaged or marginalised communities in Namibia.     

Land,Language and Social Identity in Aboriginal Australia

Views of pre-contact Aboriginal social groupings have ranged from those which posit a linguistically-defined, homogeneous ‘tribe’ to others which, more recently, have asserted that language plays little or no role in Aboriginal constructions of social identity. Given the obvious, different degrees of linguistic diversity in different parts of the continent, it seems of interest to look at native linguistic ideologies and the ways in which notions of language and linguistic difference are integrated with other variables in the construction of social identity. This paper begins to look at differential constructions of social identity in three parts of Australia—Cape Keerweer in Cape York, the Western Desert, and western Roper River and suggests some directions for future research.     

Shifting Places,Contested Spaces: Land and Identity Politics in the Pacific1

This paper considers the contemporary problematics surrounding the identification of persons with land which is one of the central features of Pacific societies. The movements of people and conflicts of control over land and other resources in the context of emergent capitalism have produced these problematics. A local contrast is drawn between the Western and Southern Highlands Provinces in Papua New Guinea in terms of two historical moments: transformations of land into exchange and transformations of exchange into land. These represent different historical responses to capitalist expansion in the ‘coffee-tea belt’ of the Western Highlands and the ‘oil-gas belt’ of the Southern Highlands. The response of the Western Highlanders to their predicaments, couched in terms of Christian ideas, is depicted, and a general suggestion is made that we need a stream of problem-oriented studies focusing on the contradictions between ‘practice’ and ‘custom’ in issues over land in the Pacific, as argued recently also by Anthony Hooper and Gerard Ward; on the changing meanings attributed to money and wealth; and on attempts by people to reassert their local senses of identity, while accommodating themselves to and using the frameworks or the language of outside forces, whether national or global. A new wave of ethnographic writing is needed to encompass the analysis of contemporary complexities of life in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere in the Pacific and of the prevalent symbolism of the millennium or ‘end times’.     

"Strong Women" and "Pretty Girls": Self-Provisioning, Gender, and Class Identity in Rural Galicia (Spain)

In this article I examine expressions of class and gender identity in a worker-peasant community in rural Galicia (Spain). While men who have worked for decades in migrant destinations define their own class positionality partly through reference to the unpaid, subsistence work that is performed mainly by women who remain in the community, these same women adeptly "code switch" between "strong woman" and '"pretty girl" demeanors through their work activities, dress, and use of domestic spaces. Using the example of ethnographic data from this one part of rural Europe, 1 argue for the broader importance of anthropologists considering how laboring bodies become gendered; the intersections between gender and class identities; and connections among mixed livelihood strategies, the continuity of self-provisioning activities, and resistance to fully commoditized consumption. [Key words: class and gender identity, Galicia, Spain, unpaid provisioning work, consumption]     

Water, Culture, and Power: Local Struggles in a Global Context

Water, Culture, and Power: Local Struggles in. Global Context. John M. Donahue and Barbara Rose Johnston. eds. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1998.396 pp.     

Global Processes and Local Identity among Mayan Coffee Growers in Chiapas, Mexico

This case study of the organic farmers' cooperative Indigenas de la Sierra Madre de Motozintla (ISMAM) explores the construction of identity as a dialogic process in which external elements are appropriated to permit resistance and creative adaptation to global processes. Building on indigenous Mam respect for nature, ISMAM forges a corporate image that responds to symbolic demands of the alternative marketplace and a self-image reaffirming traditional values in a modern context.     

Socioeconomic Contexts of Primate Conservation: Population,Poverty, Global Economic Demands,and Sustainable Land Use

Recent assessments by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) indicate the existence of about 612 recognized primate species and subspecies (IUCN RedList, 2012), but close to 50% of these taxa are at risk of extinction as a result of human action. In this article, I call attention to underlying regional and global socioeconomic contexts of primate conservation. Using information from FAO and UN databases and other sources, I examine, for the Neotropics, sub‐Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia, trends in forest loss and human demographics and social condition, discuss the impact of global market pressures upon primate habitats, and examine land‐use patterns that may favor primate conservation. Between 1990 and 2010, an estimated 149 million ha of forest were lost in the three regions and additional losses are expected in the future. Global human population will increase from 7 billion in 2012 to 9 billion in 2050. Currently, 2 billion people live in the three primate range regions under high levels of poverty. Large‐scale deforestation is related to global market demands, especially from developed and developing nations, for food (e.g., cattle), domestic animal feed (e.g., soybeans), biofuel‐based crops (e.g., oil palm), and industrial round wood. The growth of protected areas in the three regions has been steady for several decades, but it is not enough to ensure long‐term conservation of many primate taxa. Other conservations tools involving sustainable land use and biodiversity conservation corridors are required at the landscape level. The above assessment can easily be applied at the local level by primatologists, giving more precision to conservation initiatives. Am. J. Primatol. 75:30‐45, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

From Land to Water: the Origin of Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises

Cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) are an order of mammals that originated about 50 million years ago in the Eocene epoch. Even though all modern cetaceans are obligate aquatic mammals, early cetaceans were amphibious, and their ancestors were terrestrial artiodactyls, similar to small deer. The transition from land to water is documented by a series of intermediate fossils, many of which are known from India and Pakistan. We review raoellid artiodactyls, as well as the earliest families of cetaceans: pakicetids, ambulocetids, remingtonocetids, protocetids, and basilosaurids. We focus on the evolution of cetacean organ systems, as these document the transition from land to water in detail.     

San1-mediated quality control: substrate recognition "sans" chaperones

In this issue of Molecular Cell, Rosenbaum et?al. describe a mechanism that allows San1 to selectively detect misfolded proteins for nuclear protein quality control.     

"Race" and the Construction of Human Identity

Race as a mechanism of social stratification and as a form of human identity is a recent concept in human history. Historical records show that neither the idea nor ideologies associated with race existed before the seventeenth century. In the United States, race became the main form of human identity, and it has had a tragic effect on low-status "racial" minorities and on those people who perceive themselves as of "mixed race." We need to research and understand the consequences of race as the premier source of human identity. This paper briefly explores how race became a part of our culture and consciousness and argues that we must disconnect cultural features of identity from biological traits and study how "race" eroded and superseded older forms of human identity. It suggests that "race" ideology is already beginning to disintegrate as a result of twentieth-century changes.