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Community Boundaries (community + boundary)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%

Selected Abstracts

Reclaiming Sacred Sparks: Linguistic Syncretism and Gendered Language Shift among Hasidic Jews in New York

JOURNAL OF LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2007
Ayala Fader
In this article I examine the relationship between linguistic boundaries and community boundaries, shaped by religious beliefs about gender and difference. I focus on gendered language shift and syncretic registers of Yiddish and English among Hasidic Jews in New York. Hasidic Jews, an example of a nonliberal (fundamentalist) urban religious community, claimed essentialized gender and ethno-religious identities by using syncretic language practices. Syncretism was a resource which allowed believers to participate in secular modernity while rejecting any aspect which threatened their way of life. This has implications for those who study syncretic languages and simultaneities as well as social reproduction and change in nonliberal religious communities. [source]

Biogeography of the livebearing fish Poecilia gillii in Costa Rica: are phylogeographical breaks congruent with fish community boundaries?

MOLECULAR ECOLOGY, Issue 19 2009
JARED B. LEE
Abstract One of the original goals of phylogeography was to use genetic data to identify historical events that might contribute to breaks among communities. In this study, we examine the phylogeography of a common livebearing fish (Poecilia gillii) from Costa Rica. Our goal was to determine if phylogeographical breaks in this species were congruent with previously defined boundaries among four fish community provinces. We hypothesized that if abiotic factors influence both community boundaries and genetic structuring in P. gillii then we might find four clades within our focal species that were geographically separated along community boundary lines. Similarly, we expected to find most of the genetic variation in P. gillii partitioned among these four geographical regions. We generated DNA sequence data (mitochondrial cytochrome b and nuclear S7 small ribosomal subunit) for 260 individuals from 42 populations distributed across Costa Rica. We analysed these data using phylogenetic (parsimony and likelihood) and coalescent approaches to estimate phylogenetic relationships among haplotypes, patterns of gene flow and effective population size. Contrary to our expectations, we did not find four monophyletic groups that mapped cleanly to our geographical community provinces. However, one of our clades was restricted to a single province, suggesting that common earth history events could be responsible for both genetic structuring in P. gillii and fish community composition in this area. However, our results show a complex pattern of gene flow throughout other regions in Costa Rica where genetic structuring is not predicted by community province boundaries. [source]

Rethinking Indigenous Place: Igorot Identity and Locality in the Philippines

THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2006
Deirdre McKay
Spanish and American colonisers ascribed the identity ,Igorot' to the peoples of the northern Philippine mountains, positioning them in the ,tribal slot', somewhere between ordinary peasants and ,backward' primitives. From this marginal position, contemporary Igorot communities have been comparatively successful in formalising their entitlements to land and resources in their dealings with the Philippine State. This success depends on a discourse tying indigenous or ,tribal' culture to particular places. Colonial and, now, local anthropology has been recruited to this process through the mapping of community boundaries. This has allowed groups to secure official status as ,cultural communities' and gain legal recognition of their ancestral domains. Ironically, even as ancestral domains are recognised, the municipalities that hold such domains have ceased to be bounded containers for Igorot localities, if they ever were. Participation in global indigenous networks, circular migration, and ongoing relations with emigrants overseas blur the spatial, temporal, and social boundaries of Igorot communities. Transnational flows of people, information, and value are recruited to support the essentialised versions of indigenous identity necessary for negotiations with the state. Here, I show how the specific history of the Igorot ,tribal slot' enables communities to perform essentialised indigeneity and simultaneously enact highly translocal modes of cultural reproduction. [source]