Households and Families of the Longhouse Iroquois at Six Nations Reserve

Households and Families of the Longhouse Iroquois at Six Nations Reserve . Merlin G. Myers. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. 258 pp.     

Leftamap Kastom: The Political History of Tradition on Tanna,Vanuatu

The history of evaluation and definition of kastom on Tanna exemplifies its utility in attempts to reformulate social groups by reworking group charter myths, and its manipulation in political events by rival organizations seeking a customary legitimacy. On Tanna, where political prestige and authority depend heavily on the control and communication of knowledge, kastom knowledge as political capital enjoys enhanced status following the rehabilitation of kastom at the national level. Pro-kastom groups on Tanna, such as the John Frum cultists, have benefited from this positive evaluation of kastom, but some anomalies and sources of conflict remain in the fusion of kastom with Christianity and modernism. People argue over their respective domains and the fields of their application. Alternate definitions and uses of kastom invoke disunity and political competition at the local level, in contrast to national emphases on kastom as symbol of political unity and shared identity.     

The Gender/Sexuality Reader: Culture, History, Political Economy

The Gender/Sexuality Reader: Culture, History, Political Economy. Roger N. Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo. eds. New York; Routledge, 1997. 574 pp.     

The Law of the Land: A Review Article

This is a review article of the book Native Title Corporations: A Legal and Anthropological Analysis from the point of view of anthropology. I begin by highlighting the development of Anglo‐Australian social anthropology from such figures as Radcliffe‐Brown and Fortes, who were heavily influenced by regulatory and normative models from the domain of legal and judicial scholarship and speculate on the contemporary conditions by which this original social anthropological metaphor has apparently achieved a new literalisation. I criticise the legalistic appropriation of anthropological and ethnographic methodology that this book makes explicit, and finally, I express scepticism for the future success of the prescribed body corporate, as described in the Native Title Act (1993), as a model for the possession, transmission and elaboration of indigenous rights to country.