‘Like Playing a Game Where You Don't Know the Rules’: Investing Meaning in Intercultural Cash Transactions Between Tourists and Trobriand Islanders

ABSTRACT

When tourists visit cultural tourism destinations, the primary form of interaction between visitors and local residents is in the exchange of money for material objects and performances. While purchase of cultural commodities in tourism contexts may appear to be simple market transactions, they are often in fact morally fraught sites of ambiguous interaction, invested with disparate meanings by different participants. Drawing on Bloch and Parry's (1989 Bloch, Maurice. 1989. The symbolism of money in Imerina. In Money and the Morality of Exchange, edited by J. Parry & M. Bloch. pp. 165–190. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]) analysis of the symbolism of money and its relationship to culturally constructed ideas about production, consumption, circulation, and exchange, this article examines the conflicting and contested views of cash transactions and other types of exchange in meetings between tourists and Trobriand Islanders in Papua New Guinea. I argue that intercultural exchange in tourism is not necessarily a straightforward commodity exchange, but evokes social relations that are often quite differently conceptualized by the producers and consumers of touristic products.     

Biogeography of the fauna of French Polynesia: diversification within and between a series of hot spot archipelagos

The islands of French Polynesia cover an area the size of Europe, though total land area is smaller than Rhode Island. Each hot spot archipelago (Societies, Marquesas, Australs) is chronologically arranged. With the advent of molecular techniques, relatively precise estimations of timing and source of colonization have become feasible. We compile data for the region, first examining colonization (some lineages dispersed from the west, others from the east). Within archipelagos, blackflies (Simulium) provide the best example of adaptive radiation in the Societies, though a similar radiation occurs in weevils (Rhyncogonus). Both lineages indicate that Tahiti hosts the highest diversity. The more remote Marquesas show clear examples of adaptive radiation in birds, arthropods and snails. The Austral Islands, though generally depauperate, host astonishing diversity on the single island of Rapa, while lineages on other islands are generally widespread but with large genetic distances between islands. More recent human colonization has changed the face of Polynesian biogeography. Molecular markers highlight the rapidity of Polynesian human (plus commensal) migrations and the importance of admixture from other populations during the period of prehistoric human voyages. However, recent increase in traffic has brought many new, invasive species to the region, with the future of the indigenous biota uncertain.     

Toward a comparative socioecology of the genus Macaca: Different dominance styles in rhesus and stumptail monkeys

Captive studies can make a unique contribution to primate socioecology by documenting species-typical social dispositions under controlled conditions. Recent theories seek to connect the dominance relationships, group cohesiveness, and feeding ecology of primates. The present study explores the first two aspects by comparing the social organization of rhesus (Macaca mulatta) and stumptail monkeys (M. arctoides). Data were collected over a period of eight years, with five different methods, on three well-established captive groups in identical environments. The groups were found to share one characteristic: a clear-cut, linear formal dominance hierarchy as expressed in teeth-baring displays. The two main study groups (one of each species) differed significantly, however, with respect to nine of eleven behavioral measures. In addition to a previously reported higher frequency of reconciliation in the stumptail group, this group showed (1) more frequent but less severe aggressive behavior, (2) greater symmetry of contests, (3) greater social tolerance, (4) more nonagonistic approaches, and (5) more allogrooming. The differences can be summarized as a contrast in dominance “style,” with the stumptails having a more relaxed style and placing greater emphasis on social cohesion than the rhesus monkeys. An egalitarian attitude was also reflected in approach behavior: contacts in the rhesus group were mostly initiated by dominants, whereas contacts in the stumptail group were initiated independent of rank. Comparisons with a second rhesus group, and with published reports, suggest that while some of the observed differences are probably representative of the two species, considerable intraspecific variation does exist, and a more comprehensive program of comparative studies is needed.     

散斑壳属部分种内及近似种间的RAPD分析

从100个随机引物中选取重复性好、条带清晰的随机引物分别对针叶树和阔叶树上的34个散斑壳(Lophodermiumspp.)菌株进行RAPD-PCR扩增反应,RAPD分析结果与表型性状表现出良好的一致性,从而表明RAPD技术可以较好的应用于散斑壳属种内及近似种间亲缘关系的分析。通过RAPD分析结果与表型性状的比较和分析,明确了部分表型性状在散斑壳属近似种区分方面的重要性。     

North American Gypsy Terms: A Comment

The author comments on a recent article by Werner Cohn concerning the kinship terms among the North American Gypsies. He suggests that since pašo, meaning wife's sister's husband, is also found among the southern Slavs, it is highly probable that it is from them that the Gypsies took the term .     

Dyadic and triadic reconciliation in pigtail macaques (Macaca nemestrina)

The tendency in primates for former antagonists to approach and affiliate following aggression has been termed reconciliation because the response is thought to resolve social conflicts produced by aggression. In primate societies, however, an aggressive interaction between two individuals often spreads to include other group members, especially the kin of the combatants. If post conflict affiliation resolves aggressive conflicts in a group, then affiliative increases might occur between combatants and the kin of their opponents following aggression as well as between former opponents. This hypothesis was tested in a captive group of 39 pigtail macaques (Macaca nemestrina) by comparing affiliative response frequencies of combatants during the 5 minute period following aggression to affiliative response frequencies during 5 minute baseline periods not preceded by aggressive activity. Following aggression, affiliation rates increased between combatants and their opponents, aggressors and the kin of their opponents, and aggressors and their own kin. Additional analyses showed that aggression among kin was reconciled more often than aggression among nonkin. Recipients of aggression reconciled with their attackers more often than aggressors reconciled with their victims. Animals with similar dominance ranks reconciled proportionately more often than those with large rank disparities and aggressive infractions of a calculated dominance hierarchy were reconciled more often than attacks consistent with the hierarchy. Results suggest that both dyadic and triadic reconciliations occur in M. nemestrina and that compared to other primate species M. nemestrina exhibit a moderate-to-high conciliatory tendency.     

The Traffic in Brides

Petr Lom's film, Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan , offers viewers a striking visual narration of the deeply routinized practices of bride capture in contemporary Central Asia. In this review, I offer historical context eschewed by the film, observing how, contrary to popular belief, bride kidnapping increased under Russian imperial supervision. It later dwindled in the activist Soviet period, but rose again in the relative anarchy of the postsocialist landscape. What the film invites but does not explicitly entertain is a complex arithmetic of culturally coded understandings of volition, personal property, and alliance.     

Capsicum frutescens L. in Southeast and East Asia, and its dispersal routes into Japan

Isozyme analyses were conducted to study the geographic variation ofCapsicum frutescens L. in Southeast and East Asia, and to investigate its dispersal routes into Japan. Eight enzymes (EST, EM, G6PD, GR, ME(A), PGI, PGM, ShDH) were variable among accessions ofC. frutescens in Southeast and East Asia. Accessions from the Ryukyu Islands were closely related to those in Indonesia, whereas accessions from the Bonin Islands showed exactly the same isozyme patterns as those from Indonesia and Northern Thailand. Accessions in the Ryukyu Islands were different from those in the Bonin Islands, suggesting that there may be two independent dispersal routes into Japan. One route was from Indonesia via the Philippines or Taiwan, or directly to the Ryukyu Islands, and another was from Indonesia via the Mariana Islands, or other islands in the Pacific, to the Bonin Islands.