Blackfellas and Whitefellas: the Concepts of Domain and Social Closure in the Analysis of Race-Relations

In presenting data on social relations between Aborigines and Whites at a north Australian Aboriginal settlement, this paper develops the concepts of domain and social closure as important in the study of power and race-relations. Previous Australian studies in this area have not treated adequately, the substantive nature and theoretical significance of spatial and social separation between Aborigines and Whites. I argue that Aborigines retain some autonomy within a ‘Blackfella domain’, through effecting a form of exclusionary social closure.     

Divergent modes of address and (re)contextualization in Loma ritual prayer

This article explains the ritual symbolism of a sacrificial rite characteristic of the so-called 'secret societies' of the conflict-ridden Upper Guinea forest and coastal region of West Africa. Whereas the political dimension of these secret societies or cults is relatively well known, very little knowledge exists about the ritual communication with imperceptible beings around which the cults are organized. It appears from the study of Loma ritual prayer that secret mask cults are typical self-referential entities constituted by a symbolism emerging from a reconfiguration in ritual speech of modes of relationships characteristic of the social structure of the Loma of Guinea and Liberia. Against recent anthropological theories of ritual which reject the idea that ritual can be defined as communication of meaning, it is argued that Loma sacrificial prayer conveys an essential 'message' about the secret cult's constitution. In addition to an analysis of the recontextualization of modes of relationships that typifies Loma ritual prayer, the article also pays attention to indexical expressions in prayer which serve to negotiate social relationships and power relations external to the ritual context.     

G//ana territorial organization

This analysis of G//ana territorial organization shows how land rights are acquired and how they affect patterns of land use. Both spatial and social boundaries are discussed. It is shown that the appearance of overlapping spatial boundaries is clarified through a focus on the land rights of individuals and a consideration of historical population movements over the region. The discussion of social boundaries shows that, while interterritorial marriage and mobility networks are extensive, increases in property and food production appear to be associated with a closing of social boundaries (increased social nucleation). This is suggested by greater endogamy and a trend toward patrilineal inheritance of land rights in recent years.     

Webs of Legitimacy and Discredit: Narrative Capital and Politics of Ritual in a Timor-Leste Community

This article explores the interconnections among origin narratives, migration patterns and ritual authority in a Timor-Leste community. By recognising the dimension of rituals as sources of power, we analyse the different ways social actors negotiate their position in social space by either supporting or contesting the legitimacy of the ritual leaders. We suggest how, in a context with historical levels of high migration and immersed in rapid social change, precedence is not only challenged by modern ideals around individual rights and choices, but by the re-interpretation of mythical narratives and the access to ritual performance. The paper provides a discussion of the notion of narrative capital and shows how subordinated classes resulting from development policies from past state regimes articulate new forms of social mobility in the contemporary context of rural Timor-Leste.     

Animal rights activists' representations of animals and animal rights: An exploratory study

Abstract

During the last 30 years, supporters of the animal rights movement have questioned the use of animals for human benefit and have campaigned for improvements in their welfare. In the present study, activists' representations of animals and animal rights were investigated by interviewing 23 participants (from three animal welfare and animal rights organizations) during four focus-group discussions. Results show that the activists' representations were generated from the love/pain thema, which on the one hand showed the compassion and love the activists have for animals, and on the other hand the suffering that animals can endure. Moreover, differences were found in this study in the way that members of the three animal welfare and rights organizations constructed their views of animals. While members of two out of the three organizations aimed to protect abandoned animals, members of the Anti-Vivisection League faced the contradictions within the human–animal relationship and endorsed a more coherent approach to animals. These findings are interpreted in light of previous studies conducted on the animal rights movement and of recent developments in social representation theory.     

Linking Human and Ecosystem Health: The Benefits of Community Involvement in Conservation Groups

This study explored the health, well-being, and social capital benefits gained by community members who are involved in the management of land for conservation in six rural communities across Victoria. A total of 102 people participated in the study (64 males; 38 females) comprising 51 members of a community-based land management group and 51 controls matched by age and gender. Mixed methods were employed, including the use of an adapted version of Buckner’s (1988) Community Cohesion Scale. The results indicate that involvement in the management of land for conservation may contribute to both the health and well-being of members, and to the social capital of the local community. The members of the land management groups rated their general health higher, reported visiting the doctor less often, felt safer in the local community, and utilized the skills that they have acquired in their lifetime more frequently than the control participants. Male members reported the highest level of general health, and the greatest satisfaction with daily activities. Members also reported a greater sense of belonging to the local community and a greater willingness to work toward improving their community than their control counterparts. Of equal importance is evidence that involvement in voluntary conservation work constitutes a means of building social capital in rural communities which may help reduce some of the negative aspects of rural life.     

Scripting development through formalization: accounting for the diffusion of village savings and loans associations in Tanzania

Village savings and loan associations (VSLAs) are a form of self-organized savings association which has been successfully promoted by development agencies across the Global South. This article examines the increase in VSLAs in Tanzania through an investigation of the practices through which they are organized. Self-organized savings associations use extreme formalization to enact the social and financial discipline which enables members to count on one another. Anthropological theories of ritual as disciplinary practice shed light on the organizational practices of savings associations and their expansion. Such associations adopt the organizational properties of ritual to generate and sustain autonomous local institutions. Ritualization has added value for systems of financial ordering as a ‘framing’ device through which the financial order of saving can be delineated. Whereas sociological theorizations of institutional diffusion perceive ritualization as empty copying, ethnographically informed anthropological analysis demonstrates the productivity of formalization where detachment from ordinary relations is a sought attribute of organization     

Aboriginal Burning Regimes and Hunting Strategies in Australia’s Western Desert

A large complement of Australia’s biotic web is dependent on a regular regime of burning, much of which is the result of firing by humans. Many researchers have suggested that moderate and repeated burning by Aborigines is a tool designed to enhance hunting efficiency. We present the first test of this with data on contemporary Martu Aboriginal burning and hunting strategies in the arid spinifex savanna of the Western Desert during the cool-dry season (May–August). Our results show a strong positive effect of mosaic burning on the efficiency of hunting burrowed prey (primarily conducted by women), but not larger mobile prey (primarily conducted by men). We suggest that regular anthropogenic disturbance through burning in Australia’s Western Desert may be important for sustaining biodiversity and habitat mosaics, but these effects may be maintained primarily by women’s hunting of burrowed game. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding variability in hunting strategies, issues of conservation, and land management policy for the region.     

Jewish identity and the meaning of community in contemporary Denmark

This article examines social, ritual and political structures in the Jewish Community of Copenhagen, Denmark. This community maintains great vitality despite profound fragmentation in its membership, as well as intensive interaction by its members with non-Jewish culture. It does so by providing flexible contexts for participation by its members, so that Jews with profoundly diverse understandings of group and self can engage with Jewish identity. The community does not foster a single model of ethnic identity, but rather provides a symbolic space within which individual members can construct their own understandings of self and group. Such symbolic spaces may become increasingly essential for ethnic groups in late modern societies, where it has become difficult to maintain the sorts of cultural consensus and separation that have historically grounded ethnic communities.     

As Australia decolonizes: indigenizing settler nationalism and the challenges of settler/indigenous relations

This article explores settler nationalism, focusing in particular upon its relations with indigenous peoples and with ideas of Aboriginality. It is claimed that settler nationalism, as a nationalist form, must be studied in its historical specificity. To this end, the article provides an analysis of historical and contemporary Australian settler nationalism. The central argument is that settler nationalism is driven to give some account of, and to come to terms with, the dispossession of the indigenous. Indigenous claims to land and other indigenous rights in the present undermine, threaten or complicate settler associations with land. The article argues that Aborigines remain as a disturbing problem that settler nationalism must find ways to accommodate. It is argued that a new form of indigenizing settler nationalism provides for one form of such accommodation.     

Negotiating the Ritual and Social Order through Spectacle: The (Re)Production of Macassan/Yol▒u Histories1

Broadly framed in terms of performance theories by Turner and Beeman, this paper weaves together the historical, mythical, ritual and performative aspects of a 1997 encounter in Sulawesi between Yol?u (an Aboriginal people of northern Australia) and Macassans (people from southern Sulawesi, Indonesia). The focus of the paper is an indigenous opera called Trepang, which is based on the centuries‐long history of trading relations and family connections between the two groups, and the way its performance was used by the Yol?u and Macassan cast members to renegotiate their often turbulent shared history, along with the contemporary social and ritual order. In this light, Trepang can be understood as a restorative social process, a means of pursuing a common path and a way of ameliorating the discrepancies of the past—bringing the parties finally together as one. Analysing the social context in which the performance of historical ‘truths’ was negotiated, I unpack key events in the staging of this ‘play within a play’ and demonstrate the need to transgress the dualism of ritual and spectacle.     

Feasting, Craft Specialization, and the Ritual Mode of Production in Small-Scale Societies

Economic intensification has been documented in a diversity of small-scale societies. The existing archaeological theory concerning such intensification has tended to privilege economic and political explanations and largely ignores social action and ritual performance as motivations for economic change. In this article, 1 use both ethnographic and archaeological data to argue that ceremonial feasting and the need for socially valued goods, which are critical for ritual performance and necessary for a variety of social transactions, create the demand that underwrites and sustains economic intensification in small-scale societies. Food for large-scale feasts is acquired through the intensification of food production and procurement targeted specifically for feasting, rather than from the surplus available from routine subsistence production. Large-scale demands for socially valued goods tend to result in specialization on the production of "extraordinary" material culture, which is characterized by two modes of circulation, in networks of social obligations or as offerings in sacred locations. [Key words.craft specialization, exchange, feasting, ritual]     

Ritualized submission and the reduction of aggression in an invertebrate

Ritualized behaviors that signify acceptance of a dominance relationship and reduce aggression between rivals are a common feature of vertebrate social behavior. Although some invertebrates, including crayfish, lobsters, and ants, display dominance postures, more complex dominance rituals and their effects on fitness have not been reported. We found that crayfish display such a complex ritual, when two males engaged in pseudocopulatory behavior to signify their dominance relationship. This was followed by a reduction in aggression and an increased likelihood of the subordinate's survival. Pseudocopulation was initiated by the eventual dominant and could be accepted or refused by the eventual subordinate. The frequency of aggressive behavior declined significantly during the first hour in all pairs that pseudocopulated but remained high in pairs that did not. Whereas all the subordinate members of pairs that pseudocopulated survived the initial 24 hr of pairing, half of subordinates that did not pseudocopulate were killed during that time. This differential mortality indicates that the reduction of aggression induced by the pseudocopulatory ritual directly enhances the differential survival of male crayfish that engage in this behavior.     

Social inequality and signaling in a costly ritual

Evolutionary perspectives suggest that participation in collective rituals may serve important communicative functions by signaling practitioners' commitment to the community and its values. While previous research has examined the effects of ritual signals at the individual and collective level, there has been limited attention directed to the impact of socio-environmental factors on the quality of ritual signaling. We examined this impact in the context of the Thaipusam Kavadi, a collective ritual performed by Tamil Hindus worldwide that involves body piercings and other costly activities. We show that participants' relative position in the social hierarchy systematically affects the form of ritual signaling. Specifically, we found that low-status participants are more likely to engage in signaling modalities that require somatic and opportunity costs in the form of body piercings and cumulative effort, while high-status individuals are more likely to use financial capital, in the form of more elaborate material offerings to the deity. Moreover, signaling in each particular modality is stronger among individuals who participate in more public (but not private) rituals, corresponding to their long-term commitment to the community. In sum, our results demonstrate that social hierarchies exact unequal requirements on ritual participants, who in turn modify their signaling strategies accordingly.     

Transforming Institutions among Pastoralists: Inequality and Land Privatization

This article analyzes how a community of Samburu pastoralists in Kenya transformed their land tenure system from communal to private ownership. It demonstrates the dynamic nature of institutional change processes by examining exogenous and endogenous factors that created conditions conducive to change. Inequalities and conflicting interests among different social groups provided impetus for change as well as ammunition to attack or defend common property. Privatization emerged from conflict among social groups, predicated on the relative power positions of the parties—positions that shifted over time in response to strategic actions of individuals and groups. In turn, the adoption of private property altered social relationships, creating new norms regarding land ownership, individual rights, and authority. [Keywords: institutions, Africa, pastoralism, property rights, social norms]     

Crania with mutilated facial skeletons: A new ritual treatment in an early Pre-Pottery Neolithic B cranial cache at Tell Qarassa North (South Syria)

The removal of crania from burials, their ritual use and their disposal, generally in cranial caches, are the most particular characteristics of the funerary ritual in the transition to the Neolithic in the Near East. Despite the importance of this ritual, detailed studies of cranial caches are rare. This funerary ritual has traditionally been interpreted as a form of ancestor‐veneration. However, this study of the cranial caches found at the site of Tell Qarassa North, South Syria, dated in the second half of the ninth millennium BC, questions this interpretation. The 12 crania, found in two groups arranged in two circles on the floor of a room, belonged to male individuals, apart from one child and one preadolescent. In 10 of the 11 cases, the facial skeletons were deliberately mutilated. In the context of the Pre‐Pottery Neolithic B, when the symbolism of the human face played a vital role in ritual practice, this mutilation of the facial skeleton could be interpreted as an act of hostility. In the absence of indicators of social stratification or signs of violence that might indicate more coercive forms of society, the veneration of ancestors has been explained as a mechanism for social cohesion, which would have been necessary in a context of rapid growth in the population of settlements. However, data on the negative nature of some funerary rites, of punishment or indifference rather than veneration, should make us question an over‐idealized view of the first Neolithic societies. Am J Phys Anthropol 149:205–216, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

“They Burn Brightly,But Only for a Short Time”: The Role of Social Workers in Companion Animal Grief and Loss

The human–animal bond is a relational theory which describes the dynamic between humans and nonhuman animals that satisfies needs in each for companionship and emotional support, framing companion animals as valued family members. Social workers have historically ignored the central role companion animals play in the lives of their clients, adopting an anthropocentric view underpinned by human rights and social justice. However, the need for companion animal-inclusive practice features in recent social work literature. As companion animals are intricately woven into the lives of their guardians, it follows that their inevitable death brings a profound sense of loss and thus an opportunity for social work intervention. The aim of this research was to see if there was a role for social work practitioners to support grieving animal companion guardians. Qualitative thematic analysis was performed on 218 candid online responses to an article on the topic of losing a companion animal, from which four major themes were identified: strength of the bond, anthropocentrically disenfranchised grief, anticipatory grief in the context of euthanasia, and the need for professional support. This analysis demonstrates the strength of the human– animal bond, illustrates how the dominant anthropocentric hegemony disenfranchises this variety of grief and loss, describes the experience of anticipatory grief in the context of euthanasia, and identifies the need for professional support. Implications for social work practice are identified, with opportunities for social workers to exchange their anthropocentric approach for a biocentric view, provide support to veterinarians and other professionals, and to work toward challenging the social constructs, which disenfranchise companion animal loss.     

When the Tutelary Spirit Objected: Conflict and Possession among the Using of East Java,Indonesia

This article discusses a case of possession in East Java that took place in the context of an important customary ritual, the seblang dance. In the course of this ritual, villagers meet their obligations to the spirits of fertility that allowed them to use the land on which their village and fields are located. Considerable stress was caused by a potential dancer who, perhaps for religious reasons, declined to dance although she had been specifically chosen by the spirits. This was an unheard of situation, and was feared to put the welfare of the community at risk. Further stress was caused by perceived interference by government officials whose rejection of an alternate dancer for aesthetic reasons caused the village’s tutelary spirit to become angry, jeopardising the presentation of the ritual and thereby the welfare of the community. After two and a half hours of negotiation, during which narratives reflecting both tradition and the current situation were constructed and reconstructed, the village head resolved the immediate problem by appealing to the spirit’s civic position, though leaving the door open for further problems in the future.     

Discursive Formation,Ethnographic Encounter,Photographic Evidence: The Centenary of Durkheim's Basic Forms of Religious Life and the Anthropological Study of Australian Aboriginal Religion in His Time

Historical research on the work of Émile Durkheim has often been confined to textual analysis aiming to reconstruct his research in the context of anthropological discourses at the turn of the 20th century. As radical changes in the visual culture of the late 19th century shaped the formation of anthropology as an academic discipline, the ambition of this article is to elaborate the ways Durkheim's use of ethnographic data and visual material formed the foundation of the theoretical and methodological design of his approach to religion. By tracing features in his Basic Forms that emphasize visual material and prioritize religious practice, I submit that the photographic evidence given in Spencer and Gillen's account of Aboriginal religion allowed Durkheim to theorize religion primarily through ritual. Photography, as a visual means of representation, enhanced the study of religion by focusing on ritual without necessarily demanding consideration of its mythical narratives and cosmological accounts. Based on a thorough analysis of his Basic Forms, this article argues that Durkheim used the photographs of the Aborigines of Central Australia systematically and that this use of photographs consequently guided his ethnographic depiction and his selection of theoretical concepts and methodological procedures.     

Social Geomatics: Participatory Forest Mapping to Mediate Resource Conflict in the Bolivian Amazon

This paper describes a participatory mapping method field tested with agro-extractive settlements in the Bolivian Amazon. A regional transition from customary to formal property rights resulting from sweeping 1996 land tenure reforms has led to confusion and conflicts over resource rights, a problem compounded by recent high market prices for Brazil nuts. In response to community requests to clarify resource rights to Brazil nut trees, CIFOR offered to train community members to map trees, trails and other key features themselves. This experience indicates that local residents can map their resources in an effective and efficient way and in the process gather necessary information to mediate competing claims, demonstrate their legitimate resource claims to external stakeholders and make management decisions. We argue that maps and properties are more likely to be seen as legitimate reflections of de facto rights if local stakeholders are involved as a group from the outset.