Equivocal locations: being ‘red’ in ‘Red Bologna’

This article addresses a classic ethnographic problem in the study of Italy: how is it that people can subscribe simultaneously to seemingly contradictory ideologies, such as Catholicism and Communism? It does so by describing examples from Italy's ‘showcase city’ of the left, ‘Red Bologna’, in which to be ‘red’ is ubiquitous but each person's ‘red’ is a different thing: being ‘red’ (differently) is the idiom in which real political distinctions are expressed over issues like religion or immigration. In parallel, I discuss the relationship between the ‘field’ as a location and the ‘field’ as a conceptual topic. My account replicates internal ethnographic differences at the analytical level by highlighting the differences between being left‐wing in Bologna and its meaning as a concept in anthropology. Hence the ‘equivocal location’: a field‐site that is productively different, from what an inexperienced ethnographer expected from it, from conceptual discussions in anthropology, and from itself.     

Managing alterity from within: the ontological turn in anthropology and indigenous efforts to shape shamanism

The ontological turn is gaining momentum among many anthropologists today, evidenced by multiple debates and symposia in recent years addressing the role of ontological approaches within the discipline. Equal to the force of the ontological turn are the growing number of passionate critiques that question everything from the ethnographic and historical integrity of this body of work to its intellectual motivations and political effects. This article commends ontologists for bringing greater attention to the crucial role of spirits in many people's lives and for their efforts to gain deeper understandings of different realities. Yet we also agree with critics in their identification of various troubling tendencies in prominent ontologists’ analyses. We highlight how many of these disturbing inclinations emerge through ontologists’ attempts to connect their ethnographic analyses to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's theory of multinaturalist perspectivism. Finally, we analyse one of the favourite research topics of those associated with the ontological turn – shamanism – in one of the regions most often heralded as an oasis of radical alterity – the Amazon – in a way that specifically aims to avoid the problematic orientations we identify. Specifically, we describe a series of historical changes in the relationships between shamans and indigenous leaders to draw attention to how relationships to shamanic power/knowledge are unevenly distributed, actively debated, and co‐constructed through changing historical and political contexts.     

Conscience claims,metaphysics, and avoiding an LGBT eugenic

Novel assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are poised to present our society with strange new ethical questions, such as whether lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) couples should be allowed to produce children biologically related to both parents, or whether trans‐women who want to experience childbirth should be allowed to receive uterine transplants. Clinicians opposed to offering such technologies to LGBT couples on moral grounds are likely to seek legal shelter through the conscience clauses enshrined in U.S. law. This paper begins by briefly discussing some novel ART on the horizon and noting that it is unclear whether current conscience clauses will permit fertility clinics to deny such services to LGBT individuals. A compromise approach to conscience is any view that sees the value of respecting conscience claims within limits. I describe and critique the constraints proposed in the recent work of Wicclair, NeJaime and Siegel as ultimately begging the question. My purpose is to strengthen their arguments by suggesting that in the controversial situations that elicit claims of conscience, bioethicists should engage with the metaphysical claims in play. I argue that conscience claims against LGBT individuals ought to be constrained because the underlying metaphysic—that God has decreed the LGBT lifestyle to be sinful—is highly implausible from the perspective of a naturalized metaphysic, which ought to be the lens through which we evaluate conscience claims.     

To be Makiran is to see like Mr Parrot: the anthropology of wonder in Solomon Islands

This article lays out a general thesis for the development of a comparative ethnographic approach to the anthropology of wonder. It suggests that wonder is both an index and a mode of challenge to existing ontological premises. Through analytical engagement with the theme of wonder in Western philosophy and the anthropology of ontology, it extends this thesis to include the corollary that different ontological premises give rise to different wonders. Ethnographically, the article supports these claims via analysis of wonder discourses among the Arosi of Solomon Islands. These discourses, it is argued, both respond to and promote ontological transformations in a context where the premises at stake are neither those of the Cartesian dualism commonly ascribed to modernity nor of the relational non‐dualism commonly ascribe to anthropology's ethnographic ‘others’, but of a non‐Cartesian pluralism termed poly‐ontology.     

Universalising the particular? God and Indigenous spirit beings in East Kimberley

Some Aboriginal discourses in East Kimberley appear to indicate that Indigenous particularities are being universalised by evangelical Christianity. The aim of evangelical Christianity is to bring all peoples under the domain of one God. But counter statements by people of all ages reveal that the Christian universalising project in East Kimberley is an unfinished (and possibly unfinishable) project. Although Indigenous particularities contribute to generational conflict they are not disappearing, while Aboriginal people remain on or near the lands in which their stories are embedded. Locative traditions emphasise genealogical continuities between the living and the dead. Evangelical missionaries, however, direct spirits of the living to heaven and condemn spirits of the dead to follow Satan. One Aboriginal woman has reached a kind of resolution between God and Indigenous spirits: mamu and juwarri (spirits of the dead) are not evil spirits but sinners who will be redeemed in the Last Days. 1     

A review of software tools for spell‐checking taxon names in vegetation databases

Correct spelling of taxon names in vegetation databases is a fundamental prerequisite for many data processing steps. However, manual detection and correction of spelling mistakes is inefficient, prone to errors and non‐reproducible, especially when scanning large databases. Here, I review six software tools that spell‐check taxon names in vegetation databases: (1) the Global Names Resolver, (2) the Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera, (3) the Taxonomic Name Resolution Service and R packages (4) Plantminer, (5) Taxonstand and (6) tpl. In particular, I test their capacity to spell‐check names across the taxonomic ranks and organism groups frequently encountered in vegetation data and challenge their ability to screen names from different geographic regions. Performance by software tools differed widely in these tests. Backed up by multiple reference lists, the Global Names Resolver emerged as the most versatile software tool. All software solutions currently suffer from some minor limitations, including an inability to spell‐check names of hybrid taxa. Furthermore, some spelling mistakes, by their nature, cannot be resolved unambiguously. Given these limitations, taxon names should be spell‐checked with software tools in a semi‐automatic rather than an automatic way.     

The Pope in Mexico: Syncretism in Public Ritual

Pope John Paul II's canonization, in 2002, of Juan Diego, the Indian to whom the Virgin of Guadalupe first appeared, was variously interpreted by sections of Mexican society as an acknowledgement of the indigenous element in Mexican Catholicism and thus a restitution of past wrongs; conversely, as a final domestication of the Indian; and as an evangelical move against a resurgent Latin American Protestantism. The canonization rites were nested within political ceremonies staged, controversially, to anoint a new presidency. This broader political message was in turn challenged in the media and on the streets. In this article, I show how a major public event can articulate the life of a complex, culturally diverse society. I identify a syncretic effect produced by the struggle for ritual control. And I take a comparative view of syncretism, drawing on Javanese ethnography to suggest common mechanisms of meaning making.     

Developments in the synthesis of the antiplatelet and antithrombotic drug (S)‐clopidogrel

S ‐(+)‐Methyl 2‐(2‐chlorophenyl)‐2‐(6,7‐dihydrothieno[3,2‐c ]pyridin‐5(4H )‐yl)acetate, also known as (S )‐clopidogrel, is marketed under the trade names Plavix and Iscover. It is a potent thienopyridine‐class of antithrombotic and antiplatelet drug (antiaggregant). Among the two available stereoisomers of clopidogrel, for pharmaceutical activities only the S ‐enantiomer is applicable, as no antithrombotic activity is observed in the R ‐enantiomer and causes political upheavals and social turmoil in animal experiments. Worldwide sales of Plavix amounted to $6.4 billion yearly, which ranks second. Attributed to the increased demand of (S )‐clopidogrel drug, it provoked the synthetic community to devise facile synthetic approaches. This review aims to summarize the synthetic methods of (S )‐clopidogrel drug reported in the literature. The present review discusses the pros and cons of each synthetic methodology, which would be beneficial to the scientific community for further developments in the synthetic methodologies for (S )‐clopidogrel. In addition, the compilation approach of literature‐reported synthetic strategies of (S )‐clopidogrel in one platform is advantageous, supportive, and crucial for the synthetic community to elect the best synthetic methodology of (S )‐clopidogrel and to create new synthesis ideas.     

The place of politics: powerful speech and women speakers in everyday Pa'ikwené (Palikur) life

This article focuses on the practice of female scolding in a community of Pa'ikwené (or Palikur), a native Amazonian people (French Guyana and Brazil), in order to explore ideas about power and speech and the phenomenon of political speaking. The article takes issue with claims that politics are to be equated specifically with the formal public arena, and that political discourse is the exclusive province and prerogative both of leaders and of men, whether institutionally 'authorized' or not. It is argued, on the contrary, that the everyday speech of common villagers, in this case women, is among other things integrally political, and no more powerless in effect than the so-called 'empty' speech of Amerindian chiefs postulated by Clastres. It is further proposed that Pa'ikwené women's scolding not only embodies their own power but also regenerates symmetrical gender relations, and thus the polity itself.     

‘Our bones are made of Iron’: the political ecology of Garhwali women's activism

In the Garhwal Himalaya of India's Uttarakhand State, a series of social movements emerged in the late 2000s to contest hydroelectric dams on a tributary of the sacred River Ganga. Within these opposition movements, men often took high‐profile leadership roles whereas women from a range of socio‐economic backgrounds formed the overwhelming base of participation at meetings, assemblies, and rallies. This article draws from event‐based participation and semi‐structured interviews to explore the diverse concerns that women gave to explain their engagements with opposition efforts. I counter essentialist frames and employ a feminist political ecology approach to argue that the gendered dynamics are attributable to historical, cultural, religious, and political‐economic influences. The article contributes to anthropologies of gender, environment, and social movements by taking an approach focused on disparities of practice and power that helps situate Garhwali women's roles in development contestations.     

Agriculture erases climate‐driven β‐diversity in Neotropical bird communities

Earth is experiencing multiple global changes that will, together, determine the fate of many species. Yet, how biological communities respond to concurrent stressors at local‐to‐regional scales remains largely unknown. In particular, understanding how local habitat conversion interacts with regional climate change to shape patterns in β‐diversity—differences among sites in their species compositions—is critical to forecast communities in the Anthropocene. Here, we study patterns in bird β‐diversity across land‐use and precipitation gradients in Costa Rica. We mapped forest cover, modeled regional precipitation, and collected data on bird community composition, vegetation structure, and tree diversity across 120 sites on 20 farms to answer three questions. First, do bird communities respond more strongly to changes in land use or climate in northwest Costa Rica? Second, does habitat conversion eliminate β‐diversity across climate gradients? Third, does regional climate control how communities respond to habitat conversion and, if so, how? After correcting for imperfect detection, we found that local land‐use determined community shifts along the climate gradient. In forests, bird communities were distinct between sites that differed in vegetation structure or precipitation. In agriculture, however, vegetation structure was more uniform, contributing to 7%–11% less bird turnover than in forests. In addition, bird responses to agriculture and climate were linked: agricultural communities across the precipitation gradient shared more species with dry than wet forest communities. These findings suggest that habitat conversion and anticipated climate drying will act together to exacerbate biotic homogenization.     

Cation–π, amino–π, π–π, and H‐bond interactions stabilize antigen–antibody interfaces

The identification of immunogenic regions on the surface of antigens, which are able to stimulate an immune response, is a major challenge for the design of new vaccines. Computational immunology aims at predicting such regions—in particular B‐cell epitopes—but is far from being reliably applicable on a large scale. To gain understanding into the factors that contribute to the antigen–antibody affinity and specificity, we perform a detailed analysis of the amino acid composition and secondary structure of antigen and antibody surfaces, and of the interactions that stabilize the complexes, in comparison with the composition and interactions observed in other heterodimeric protein interfaces. We make a distinction between linear and conformational B‐cell epitopes, according to whether they consist of successive residues along the polypeptide chain or not. The antigen–antibody interfaces were shown to differ from other protein–protein interfaces by their smaller size, their secondary structure with less helices and more loops, and the interactions that stabilize them: more H‐bond, cation–π, amino–π, and π–π interactions, and less hydrophobic packing; linear and conformational epitopes can clearly be distinguished. Often, chains of successive interactions, called cation/amino–π and π–π chains, are formed. The amino acid composition differs significantly between the interfaces: antigen–antibody interfaces are less aliphatic and more charged, polar and aromatic than other heterodimeric protein interfaces. Moreover, paratopes and epitopes—albeit to a lesser extent—have amino acid compositions that are distinct from general protein surfaces. This specificity holds promise for improving B‐cell epitope prediction. Proteins 2014; 82:1734–1746. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

‘Not anymore,not yet’: Australian–Hungarians rediscover the ‘old‐new’ Hungary

This article examines the return visits of Australian‐Hungarians to their homeland after 1989 and the different types of homecoming experiences after an extended period of separation. The focus of the paper is returnees’ perceptions of changes to Hungary or lack thereof. I analyse the distinction between the ‘desired/nostalgic past’, which Hungarian returnees nurtured during the decades of separation and expected to rediscover upon return, and the ‘disdained past’ of the Communist dictatorship, which they had fled and hoped never to encounter again. The findings demonstrate that people interpret both past and present in relation to hopes, expectations and disappointments situated within particular nationalist imaginaries, political projects and ideological prisms. This allows us to analyse the nexus between local, national and diasporic belonging through post‐socialist identities, orientations toward democracy and understandings of ‘nation’.     

Why Eberl is wrong. Reflections on the beginning of personhood

In a paper published in Bioethics, Jason Eberl has argued that early embryos are not persons and should not be granted the status possessed by them. Eberl bases this position upon the following claims: (1) The early embryo has a passive potentiality for development into a person. (2) The early embryo has not established both 'unique genetic identity' and 'ongoing ontological identity', which are necessary conditions for ensoulment. (3) The early embryo has a low probability of developing into a more developed embryo. This paper examines these claims. I argue against (1) that a plausible view is that the early embryo has an active potentiality to grow into a more developed embryo. Against (2), I argue that neither 'unique genetic identity' nor 'ongoing ontological identity' are necessary conditions for ensoulment, and that 'ongoing ontological identity' is established between early embryos and more developed embryos. Against (3), I argue that the fact that the early embryo has a low probability of developing into a more developed embryo, if true, does not warrant the conclusion that the early embryo is not a person. If Eberl is right that the human soul is that which organises the activities of a human being and that ensouled humans are persons, embryos are persons from conception.     

Working out abjection in the Panapompom bêche‐de‐mer fishery: Race,economic change and the future in Papua New Guinea1

This is a paper about how men from Panapompom, an island in Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea (PNG), understand how they relate to white people and imagine the future. Until recently, men from Panapompom understood themselves to be engaged in a project of ‘development’, in which they would become more and more similar to white people. This was a desirable future. However, changes in the way Panapompom men work for money have resulted in a very different imagination of the future—one in which Panapompom people are not getting whiter, but blacker, and hence more and more excluded from the lives to which they aspire. Men now dive for bêche‐de‐mer, work which they regard as being particularly hard and dangerous. Diving has profound effects on the skin, blackening and hardening it, leading Panapompom men to liken themselves to the machines that create the wealth that white people use. These ‘mechanising’ effects that diving has on the black body lead men to see white people as the sole beneficiaries of the bêche‐de‐mer industry, and black people as mere tools or extensions. For bêche‐de‐mer divers, value and desired forms of life are lodged in Australia, Europe or America, while they find themselves excluded from this future by their growing blackness.     

“Prolonged grief disorder” and “persistent complex bereavement disorder”, but not “complicated grief”, are one and the same diagnostic entity: an analysis of data from the Yale Bereavement Study

There exists a general consensus that prolonged grief disorder (PGD), or some variant of PGD, represents a distinct mental disorder worthy of diagnosis and treatment. Nevertheless, confusion remains over whether different names and proposed symptom criteria for this disorder identify the same or different diagnostic entities. This study aimed to determine whether PGD, complicated grief (CG), and persistent complex bereavement disorder (PCBD) as described by the DSM‐5 are substantively or merely semantically different diagnostic entities. Data were derived from the Yale Bereavement Study, a longitudinal community‐based study of bereaved individuals funded by the US National Institute of Mental Health, designed explicitly to evaluate diagnostic criteria for disordered grief. The results suggested that the difference between PGD and PCBD is only semantic. The level of agreement between the original PGD test, a new version of the PGD test proposed for ICD‐11 and the PCBD test was high (pairwise kappa coefficients = 0.80‐0.84). Their estimates of rate of disorder in this community sample were similarly low (～10%). Their levels of diagnostic specificity were comparably high (95.0‐98.3%). Their predictive validity was comparable. In contrast, the test for CG had only moderate agreement with those for PGD and PCBD; its estimate of rate of disorder was three‐fold higher (～30%); its diagnostic specificity was poorer, and it had no predictive validity. We conclude that PGD, PCBD and proposed ICD‐11, but not CG, symptom‐diagnostic tests identify a single diagnostic entity. Ultimately, brief symptom‐diagnostic tests, such as the one proposed here for ICD‐11, may have the greatest clinical utility.     

Matrilineal Spirits,Descent and Territorial Power in Northern Thailand

This paper examines matrilineal spirits (phii puu nyaa) in northern Thailand based on field research recently undertaken in a village in Chiang Mai province. The paper suggests that the puu nyaa spirits remain locally significant—despite previous statements about their demise—and that matrilineal linkages are ideologically and practically important in the constitution of the groups. Nevertheless, there are alternative points of reference—to fathers, spouses and localities—that can attenuate attachments to matrilineal kin and introduce alternative sources of spiritual power. It becomes clear that phii puu nyaa spirit beliefs and practices are malleable and provide a basis for various orientations to spiritual power. The intermingling of different types of spiritual power is well illustrated by the presence of protective spirits locally referred to as aahak. In local perception, there is a very close relationship between phii puu nyaa and aahak, but the two entities appear to reflect quite different orientations: in simple terms the aahak represent a masculine, territorial and outward looking form of power which is contrasted with the female‐focused and lineage‐derived potency of the puu nyaa spirits. The paper argues that the outward orientation of the aahak provides some valuable insights into local perceptions of power, demonstrating how the supposedly peripheral and parochial draws regional power into more intimate domains.     

Making the Baruya great again: From glorified great men to modern suffering subjects?

This paper explores avenues for prestige‐making now available to and championed by the Baruya, the archetypal ‘Great Man’ people of Papua New Guinea, who I recently studied following previous work by Maurice Godelier. Amid critiques by Robbins and Ortner of anthropologists’ drive to document and empathise with “suffering subjects”, I suggest that being ‘left behind’ and ‘forgotten’ is an important part of Baruya social life that reinterprets previous ways of ‘making great men.’ Baruya exposure to material and institutional modernity remains very limited. Local rhetorics of being ‘last place’ (las ples) are both concomitant and discordant with Baruya assumptions and assertions of being ‘the greatest people’ of their region. Unable to revive traditional contexts for producing great men through warriorship, shamanism, cassowary hunting, and salt‐making, Baruya turn to the very modernity they cannot quite reach for their own pursuit of masculinity and prestige—which paradoxically now lies within domains also open to women. Desirous to both establish continuity with their glorified past and to depart from it, Baruya's local modernity itself constrains their newly‐shaped desire for prestige—and dramatically changes gender relations in the process. Though the concrete impossibility to ‘be great’ reinforces Baruya perceptions of enduring what we might call a ‘suffering slot’, the larger issue is how concrete experiences sediment into socio‐cultural change over time. This process is informed by a tension between a quest for modernity and its larger failure, resulting in a drive to reignite longer standing values of morality, spirituality, and ultimately, greatmanship.     

Dignity and indignation: bridging morality and political economy in contemporary Spain

In the current Spanish conjuncture, characterized by political and economic crisis and the rapid impoverishment of the working classes, we have seen the emergence of moral discourses around indignation and the demand of dignity. While these moral exhortations have rightly been scrutinized with skepticism from Marxist positions for their lack of attention to political economic structures, this paper discusses whether we can find in them elements for what Gavin Smith calls a “revindicative politics,” able to transcend the frame of reference of the society of capital. Exploring the notion of dignity both in the Indignados movement and in my own ethnographic field site of Southern Catalonia—a region where claims to dignity have saturated the sphere of the political for decades—I suggest that the demand for dignity should be understood as an expression of what Ernst Bloch called “nonsynchronous contradictions,” being not entirely reducible to the contemporary workings of capitalist accumulation. Dignity points toward unsettled memories and unfulfilled pasts as well as to a rejection of servile relations and the desire to make sense of oneself outside of the morality of capital. Understanding this demand for dignity forces Marxist anthropologists to look at capital from the “margins,” challenging its centrality. In so doing it also invites us to refine and invigorate our critique of political economy.