Suomen Antropologi Volume 32, 2/2007
Articles
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When is Law and Custom not Customary Law?
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 32(2) SUMMER 2007, pp. 71-84.
Abstract
This study endeavours to re-think debates about the competing values of ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ in Swazi law (and politics) by considering the extent to which the characterisation of the Swazi legal system as ‘dual’ is an apt description of the state of affairs. While the country seems to exhibit a straightforward instance of post-colonial, state-law pluralism, where both a ‘received’ and ‘customary’ code of law obtain, the paper will argue against this assessment. by suggesting that what Swazis term ‘Swazi law and custom’ cannot be equated with what Swazi statute understands as the ‘customary law’, the article hopes to suggest the need for a similar re-consideration of the term ‘tradition’ in Swazi political debate.
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The Political Economy of Enchantment: Formations in the anthropology of tourism
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 32(2) SUMMER 2007, pp. 48-70.
Abstract
The paper presents one view of the state of the art of the anthropology of tourism. It approaches this broad aim by, firstly, looking at the subject’s foundations. The precursors of the field lead us, secondly, to a reading of five seminal ethnographic monographs, written during the course of the past twelve years or so, in which tourism plays a central role. The purpose here is to identify common thematic threads that provide us with the basis upon which to draw the contours of a plausible map of the field. This is followed, thirdly, by looking at a select collection of more recent work in order to trace the ways in which the subject is presently developing and likely to move in the future. The notion that underpins the paper, and which is explored in the opening pages, is enchantment. Following its use by various sociological and anthropological writers (including Weber, Gellner, Bennett, Gell, and others) it is argued both that the tourism industry itself depends in large measure on processes of enchantment and also that the idea is a powerful hermeneutic to frame studies of tourism. however, it is additionally argued that processes of enchantment are always located within political and economic contexts and thus that the fuller definition of the subject matter of the anthropology of tourism is the political-economy of enchantment.
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Roulette Anthropology: The whole beyond holism
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 32(2) SUMMER 2007, pp. 29-47.
Abstract
The paper builds an argument about holism in anthropological theory by drawing an ethnographic contrast between divination and gambling in Cuba. Outlining the contrasting modes of prediction in each case, it is shown that while diviners’ predictions draw on cosmological models of the world, gamblers’ seek to source the cosmos itself. Their concern with going beyond cosmology is bound up with their orientation (obsessive sometimes) towards what they call ‘cábalas’ – attention-grabbing coincidences of everyday life. A similar contrast can be drawn with regard to anthropological notions of ‘holism’. Available versions of holism are ‘cosmological’ inasmuch as they pertain to the role of models in anthropology. nevertheless, anthropologists too are as concerned with accessing the cosmos, allowing ‘the field’ to speak for itself in ethnography.Like gamblers (and unlike colleagues in more disciplined disciplines), anthropologists find that it is only when they stop reasoning in terms of pre-conceived cosmologies that worlds begin to reveal themselves as such. So anthropology goes beyond holism by becoming more holistic than it already thinks it is: from cosmology to the cosmos.
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Cliff-Jumping, World-Shifting and Value-Production: The genesis and cultural transformation of a dangerous new game
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 32(2) SUMMER 2007, pp. 5-28.
Abstract
In recent years, jumping off cliffs in Cornwall, South-West England has emerged as a regularly observable practice, a regional social problem and a nationally newsworthy phenomenon. its rise mirrors the serial invention and sudden appeal of other extreme adventure practices globally and in the UK, instancing, amongst other recreational desires, a growing modern passion for leaping off waterfalls, diving out of planes and jumping at the end of a bungee cord. This account searches for the underlying modern processes of body, landscape and nature which cliff-jumping symptomatically condenses, ethnographically detailing casual, sub-cultural and institutional elaborations of the seascaped practice. The account consolidates the insights of current theory in relation to the latterday outwards quest for ‘experience’, risk and the ‘accelerated sublime’ under modern consumerist conditions whilst also pointing to the powerful convergence of these quests with the perceptibly inward social shift of uncontrollable Nature at large. In this context, forms of the ‘accelerated sublime’ are revealed as playfully symbolic dimensions of a broader socio-cultural strategy to live through the creative embrace of risky flows and structures rather than through their concerted social avoidance.
Research Reports
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Tombstones of Fallen Heroes
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 34(3) 2009: 44-55
Abstract
This paper is based on fieldwork which I carried out in Sindh, Pakistan, from December 2007 to February 2008. The main objective of the study was to document and delineate two graveyards and their contents which are located in two different districts of Sindh, one in Thatta and the other in Tando Muhammad Khan. After discussing the origin of the term ‘chaukhandi’ as applied to a type of tombs present in the area I present the two graveyards, discussing the meanings of motifs that decorate the tombstones in both places. I also discuss the role of the tribes associated with these graveyards in the tribal history of Sindh and the battles in which they displayed their heroism.
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Urban Diaspora and the Question of Community
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society Volume 34(3) 2009: 56-67
Abstract
The Bandanese are a community with a distinct language and tradition which point to their origin in Banda, an early base of Dutch colonization in Indonesia. Presently focused in two villages in the Kei Islands, the community has been transforming into a regional, urban diaspora since the 1960s. Field research from March until August 2009 focused on the question of how this community distributes itself regionally and to what extent its ethnic relations are informed by its previous history of travel, migration and displacement. The study reveals that urbanized Bandanese occupy political and economic niches marked by a privileged access to fishing and trade, the backbones of the provincial economy. At the same time, their shared ancestry with local land-owning groups legitimizes their presence in new locations. Differential access to maritime wealth and land give new meaning to the classification of immigrant and autochthonous people, ubiquitous in each island society of Maluku, in which the Bandanese are placed in a mediating position.
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Which Way to the Ballroom?
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 32(2) SUMMER 2007, pp. 110-123.
Abstract
Based on six years of fieldwork on the translocal culture and community of competitive ballroom dance, this report advances a tripartite agenda. First, it shows how the competitive ballroom challenges standard models of location based field ‘sites’. Second, multiple vectors of entry and engagement – as dancer, anthropologist, photographer, and web administrator – are explored, including some of the differences in access, information, and rapport afforded by each role. Third, and finally, this report briefly introduces some of the larger theoretical considerations implicated in exploring competitive ballroom dance as activity, commitment, and practice. taken together, these three vectors describe the multiple avenues along which competitive ballroom life gets lived.
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Friction in a Tourism Contact Zone: Ethnographic field notes from a Malagasy village
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 32(2) SUMMER 2007, pp. 96-109.
Abstract
‘Locality’ as an ontological entity in the madagascan fishing village discussed here, is constituted, challenged and transformed through the relationships, collaborations, and frictions between different social actors in the realms of academic research, environmental conservation work, and local political power. by following the stories that emerge in the course of these connections and juxtapositions, this report describes a social tragedy unfolding on the grounds of different systems of othering and the moral standards thereby implied and legitimated, while demonstrating that the malagasy are not unreflective about this situation. on the contrary, as this report indicates, the malagasy constitute the Western stranger as an other mobilised within different local social, religious and political realms, who may be manipulated in various ways to help solve the environmental, economic and political crisis brought about by the problem of the ‘reversal of the sea’ (coral bleaching).
Essays
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The Ethnographic Novel: Another literary skeleton in the anthropological closet?
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 32(2) SUMMER 2007, pp. 124-134.
Abstract
A number of anthropologists are now engaging in a radical appropriation of literary formats in ethnographic production, though it is a relationship which still lacks systematic theorisation. This paper deals with a subset of these relations, namely anthropologists’ interest in the novel as a format for ethnography. an analysis of the ethnographic novel Madumo, a Man Bewitched (Ashforth 2000) demonstrates that the format allows for a sophisticated approach to the description of context-specific subjectivities, a multi-layered emphasis on reflexivity and an innovative manipulation of literary elements for the purposes of theory making. However, incorrect usage of direct introspection and the impossibility of establishing with certainty the relationship between text and reality can pose serious challenges to its success. These problems are not insurmountable and further experimentation with the ethnographic novel is likely to benefit the ethnographic enterprise and advance theoretical understanding in this under-researched area.