Kanengamah and Pohnpei's Politics of Concealment

Kanengamah is an abstract quality and a manner of behaving fundamental to social life on Pohnpei, in Micronesia's Eastern Caroline Islands. It entails the habit of concealment; most social interactions are conditioned by the expectation that all parties are engaged in dissembling. Kanengamah enables Pohnpeians simultaneously to exalt their leaders and to remain remarkably free from their authority. As a consequence, "hierarchical" and "egalitarian" social forms are interdependent rather than mutually exclusive categories.     

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.     

Spiritual Aroma: Religion and Politics

Anthropological studies of religion have been largely concerned with belief, with ritual, and with the general integrative significance of religious institutions for society. But many issues in the power relations of religious affiliation are still not clear. The political implications of religion involve grave practical as well as theoretical problems. Abstractly, religion and politics are often conceived as opposed; concretely, they interact. While religion can be a powerful political instrument, it can also adapt to political ends and generate its own political structures. In contrast to the broadly affirmative role assigned by anthropologists to religion in society is Karl Marx's thesis of religion as political ideology. Reasons for granting some validity to this position but also for questioning its basic assumptions are given. The whole analysis is illustrated by a wide range of examples, from Polynesian ethnography to the history of Christianity and of Islam, and the situation of religion in modem socialist states .     

Against Culture: Development, Politics, and Religion in Indian Alaska

Against Culture: Development, Politics, and Religion in Indian Alaska. Kirk Dombrowski. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. 247 pp.     

Knowing and Being Known. Approaching Australian Indigenous Tourism Through Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal Politics of Knowing

Based on ethnographic research conducted with Bardi and Jawi people, two Indigenous groups from the Northwestern Kimberley region of Western Australia, the aim of this paper is to approach the complexities related to Indigenous tourism in Australia through the politics of knowing and not-knowing as embodied by Indigenous tour guides and non-Indigenous tourists. It examines the notion of knowing (or not-knowing) and its usages by Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the context of their tourist encounter. ‘Knowing’ represents an important aspect through which Aboriginal people and their non-Indigenous guests negotiate their interactions. In particular, the paper shows how Indigenous and non-Indigenous expectations from tourism lead actors to adopt divergent positions and to assert renewed claims in relation to knowledge or knowing, casting new light on issues of self-representation and empowerment in the domain of Indigenous tourism.     

Death,Funerals and Emotion in an Australian Aboriginal Community

This paper discusses emotions as intersubjective states that develop in the interactions between individuals. Central to the discussion is the funeral of an Aboriginal elder in Cape York Peninsula, Australia. The actions of certain of her kin are described, and demonstrate their concern to bridge the gap between the loss of such elders and the uncertainties of a future without their guidance. Funerals are clearly events marking the social change associated with death and allow for intense expressions of grief, but they are also part of the trajectory of everyday life. In the social context discussed, beliefs about intersubjectivity between the spirits of the dead and their living kin inform all spheres of action, including the economic, and require observance of the cultural value of ‘respect’. Understanding emotions as interactive states engaged in such locally significant events sheds light on the relationship between them and collective political aspirations.     

Anthropology,Politics and the Changing World of Aboriginal Australians

Essentialism has become a fundament of Aboriginal activism in modern Australia, with the result that informed, first-hand empirical observations of anthropologists who chronicle the deterioration of life in many Australian Aboriginal communities tend not to be taken seriously simply because their authors are not ethnically ‘Aboriginal’. This problem has contributed to a relative absence of analysis of the economic history of Aboriginal Australians, fostering instead an approach that prioritises the political and cultural rights of indigenous people above the kinds of life-enhancing circumstances that are necessary for them to participate in the economy and create wealth. This kind of essentialism has also resulted in a disregard for the rights of indigenous people as individuals, rather than as communities seeking self-determination, especially with regard to the rights of women and children. The work of Professor Ronald M. Berndt and Dr Catherine Berndt should serve as an example for today's anthropologists in encouraging broader expert participation in debates on indigenous disadvantage, despite the threat of admonishment or criticism by Aboriginal rights activists wielding the weapon of racial priority or essentialism.     

Myth and Ontology in Aboriginal Australian Society

Time Before Morning: Art and Myth of the Australian Aborigines . Louis A. Allen .
Australian Aboriginal Mythology . L. R. Hiatt , ed.
The Australian Aborigines: A Portrait of Their Society . Kenneth Maddock .     

The Neural Correlates of Identity Faking and Concealment: An fMRI Study

The neural basis of self and identity has received extensive research. However, most of these existing studies have focused on situations where the internal representation of the self is consistent with the external one. The present study used fMRI methodology to examine the neural correlates of two different types of identity conflict: identity faking and concealment. Participants were presented with a sequence of names and asked to either conceal their own identity or fake another one. The results revealed that the right insular cortex and bilaterally inferior frontal gyrus were more active for identity concealment compared to the control condition, whereas identity faking elicited a significantly larger percentage signal increase than the control condition in the right superior frontal gyrus, left calcarine, and right caudate. These results suggest that different neural systems associated with both identity processing and deception were involved in identity concealment and faking.     

Religion and Identity: The Role of Ideological,Social, and Spiritual Contexts

Existing research demonstrates a positive relation between religion and identity among adolescents. A conceptual framework is presented suggesting that religion provides a distinct setting for identity exploration and commitment through offering ideological, social, and spiritual contexts. It is then suggested that the religious context promotes a sense of identity that transcends the self and promotes a concern for the social good and that religious institutions provide unique settings for adolescent identity formation. In addition to the potential developmental benefits of religion, negative consequences on identity development are considered. Finally, recommendations for empirical study are suggested.     

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.     

Rituals of Gender Identity: Markers of Siberian Khanty Ethnicity, Status, and Belief

Siberian Khanty (Ostiak) menstrual taboos and related rituals of birth, naming, and marriage are analyzed, in order to explore cross-cultural theories of menstrual restriction, gender stratification, and female conservatism. Emphasis is placed on Mary Douglas's idea that conflicting norms of male dominance and female independence can encourage pollution beliefs. The importance of ancestresses, female shamans, and postmenopausal women in Khanty ritual indicates that there is no male monopoly on concepts of culture, power, the sacred and the "public." Khanty ideas about women, changing with Russian influence, are discussed in terms of slowly shifting definitions of "self and ethnicity. Data result from 13 months in the Soviet Union, including a summer ethnographic expedition to the Northern Ob River . [symbolic anthropology, pollution beliefs, gender stratification, ethnicity, Siberian Khanty (Ostiak)]     

Modern Mesoamerica: The Politics of Identity

Politics and Privilege in a Mexican City. Richard R. Fagen and William S. Tuohy
Being Indian in Hueyapan: A Study of Forced Identity in Contemporary Mexico. Judith Friedlander .
Panajachel: A Guatemalan Town in Thirty-Year Perspective. Robert E. Hinshaw .
Población y sociedad: Cuatro comunidades del Acolhuacan. Marisol Pérez Lizaur .
Princes of the Earth: Subcultural Diversity in a Mexican Municipality. Barbara Luise Margolies .
Servants of the Saints: The Social and Cultural Identity of a Tarascan Community in Mexico.