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I Seek (i + seek)
Kinds of I Seek Selected AbstractsDISPLACING VIOLENCE: Making Pentecostal Memory in Postwar Sierra LeoneCULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2007ROSALIND SHAW In this article, I seek to locate the anthropology of social recovery within the work of memory. Following a decade of violent armed conflict in Sierra Leone, displaced youth in a Pentecostal church write and perform plays that are silent on the subject of the war, but renarrate it in the idiom of spiritual warfare against a subterranean demonic realm known as the Underworld. Ideas of the Underworld are part of a local retooling of the Pentecostal deliverance ministry to address Sierra Leone's years of war. Through their struggle against the Underworld, these Pentecostal youth reimagine Sierra Leone's war, reshaping experiences of violence that have shaped them and thereby transforming demonic memory into Pentecostal memory. Just as their own physical displacement is not an entirely negative condition, their displacement of violent memory is enabling rather than repressive. By "forgetting" the war as a direct realist account and reworking it through the lens of the Underworld, they use war itself to re-member their lives. Although they do not lose their memories of terror and violence, they learn to transform these in ways that allow them to create a moral life course in which they are much more than weak dependents. [source] Global Standards, Local Realities: Private Agrifood Governance and the Restructuring of the Kenyan Horticulture IndustryECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2010Stefan Ouma abstract Over the past decade, private food safety and quality standards have become focal points in the supply chain management of large retailers, reshaping governance patterns in global agrifood chains. In this article, I analyze the relationship between private collective standards and the governance of agrifood markets, using the EUREPGAP/GLOBALGAP standard as a vantage point. I discuss the impact of this standard on the organization of supply chains of fresh vegetables in the Kenyan horticulture industry, focusing on the supply chain relationships and practices among exporters and smallholder farmers. In so doing, I seek to highlight the often-contested nature of the implementation of standards in social fields that are marked by different and distributed principles of evaluating quality, production processes, and legitimate actions in the marketplace. I also reconstruct the challenges and opportunities that exporters and farmers are facing with regard to the implementation of and compliance with standards. Finally, I elaborate on the scope for action that producers and policymakers have under these structures to retain sectoral competitiveness in a global economy of qualities. [source] The Quest for Distinction: A Reappraisal of the Rural Labor Process in Kheda District (Gujarat), India,ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2000Vinay Gidwani Abstract: In this article I examine how the rural labor process is constitutive of social identity, particularly status, by harnessing empirical evidence from Kheda District, Gujarat, and other parts of India. Emphasis is on the labor practices of the dominant Lewa Patel caste, and only secondarily on the practices of other caste groups. My central claim is that the labor process is a primary arena in which the quest for social distinction occurs and that the primary source of distinction is the ability to withdraw family labor power from the commoditized labor circuit. In this paper I seek to deepen conventional understandings of the labor process within economic geography, agrarian studies, and mainstream economics. [source] Workers in the New Economy: Transformation as Border CrossingETHOS, Issue 1 2006Valerie Walkerdine In this article, I seek to make an intervention in debates between psycho-logical and postmodern anthropology by engaging with the theme of border crossing. I argue that the theme of the border is one that fundamentally instantiates a separation between interior and exterior with respect to subjectivity, itself a funda-mental transformation and a painful and difficult border. This is related to a Cartesian distinction critiqued in this article. How the distinction between interior and exterior may be transcended is discussed in relation to examples of transformation from the crossing of class borders to the production and regulation of workers in a globalized and neoliberal economy. I begin with reference to postwar transformations of class with its anxious borders and go on to think about changes in the labor market and how these demand huge transformations that tear apart communities, destroy work-places, and sunder the sense of safety and stability that those gave. Advanced liberalism or neoliberalism brings with it a speeding up of the transformations of liberalism in which subjects are constantly invoked as self-contained, with a trans-portable self that must be produced through the developmental processes of personality and rationality. This self must be carried like a snail carries a shell. It must be coherent yet mutable, fixed yet multiple and flexible. But this view of the subject covers over the many connections that make subjectivity possible. I conclude by ask-ing what it would mean to rethink this issue of the production of safe spaces beyond an essentialist psychological conception of only one mother child space, separated from the social world, as having the power to produce feelings of safety? I end the article with an argument for a relational approach to subjectivity and sociality. [subjectivity, relationality, neoliberalism, workers, class] [source] From Milah (Circumcision) to Milah (Word): Male Identity and Rituals of Childhood in the Jewish Ultraorthodox CommunityETHOS, Issue 2 2003Professor Yoram Bilu In contemporary Jewish ultraorthodox communities, most three-year-old male children undergo a twofold ritual sequence in which the first haircut is associated with entering the world of study. Focusing on the paramount value of holy Torah study and its prerequisites, I seek to decode the psychocultural meanings of the haircutting and school initiation ceremonies and their ceremonial antecedent, circumcision, as markers on the male trajectory from milah (circumcision) to milah (word). The ritual sequence is evaluated comparatively against the widespread conception of manhood as a special-status category of achievement that requires indoctrination and testing. In order to account for the recent proliferation of the rituals, an attempt is made to situate them historically in the current context of contemporary ultraorthodox and Israeli society. [source] Regional Devolution and Regional Economic Success: Myths and Illusions about PowerGEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2006Ray Hudson Abstract The proposition that regional devolution in and of itself will lead to economic success has become deeply embedded in beliefs and policy discourses about the determinants of regional prosperity, and in turn has led to political demands for such devolution. In this paper I seek critically to examine such claims, using the case of the north-east of England as the setting for this examination. The paper begins with some introductory comments on concepts of power, regions, the reorganization of the state and of multi-level governance, and governmentality, which help in understanding the issues surrounding regional devolution. I then examine the ways in which north-east England was politically and socially constructed as a particular type of region, with specific problems, in the 1930s , a move that has had lasting significance up until the present day. Moving on some six decades, I then examine contemporary claims about the relationship between regional devolution and regional economic success, which find fertile ground in the north-east precisely due to its long history of representation as a region with a unified regional interest. I then reflect on the processes of regional planning, regional strategies and regional devolution, and their relationship to regional economic regeneration. A brief conclusion follows, emphasizing that questions remain about the efficacy of the new governmentality and about who would be its main beneficiaries in the region. The extent to which devolution would actually involve transferring power to the region and the capacity of networked forms of power within the region to counter the structural power of capital and shape central state policies remains unclear. [source] RELIGION AND POLITICS: NEW RELIGIOUS SITES AND SPATIAL TRANSGRESSION IN ISRAEL,GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW, Issue 2 2008Noga Collins-Kreiner ABSTRACT. In order to view the establishment of new religions centers and how they are received by local populations, I analyze such basic geographical concepts as scale, space, location, and image. I see how these can alter the perception and further refine the concept of spatial transgression in three case studies in Israel: the building of the Mormon Center in Jerusalem, the establishment of the Bahá,í Gardens in Haifa, and the struggle to build a mosque in Nazareth. In this article I seek to identify the factors influencing the presence or absence of conflict to help explain the different "stories" revealed. The article also constitutes an addition to the literature on Israeli (and Palestinian) religiogeographical controversies by focusing on nonmainstream or nondominant cases and by comparing the relative roles of different factors that shape the success or failure of spatial transgressions in religious geography. [source] Learning to be Palestinian in Athens: constructing national identities in diasporaGLOBAL NETWORKS, Issue 4 2007ELIZABETH MAVROUDI Abstract In this article I focus on constructions of diasporic national identities and the nation as active and strategic processes using the case study of Palestinians in Athens. I seek, thereby, to contribute to debates on national identity, the nation and long-distance nationalism, particularly in relation to those in diaspora with a collective cause to advocate. I explore how first- and second-generation Palestinians in Athens construct and narrate Palestinian national identities, the homeland and political unity. I argue that the need to ,choose' to be Palestinian, often for political reasons, highlights that the nation is not a ,given' entity. This can be a difficult process for those in diaspora to deal with, as there may be tensions between constructions of political unity and attachment to the homeland and feelings of ambivalence and in-between-ness that may be seen as politically counterproductive. However, I stress that ,messy' and contradictory narratives and spatialities of diasporic national identities that come about as a result of cross-border or transnational (dis)connections do not necessarily lead to apathy and, therefore, can be important. [source] Primed for Violence: The Role of Gender Inequality in Predicting Internal ConflictINTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2005M. Caprioli We know, most notably through Ted Gurr's research, that ethnic discrimination can lead to ethnopolitical rebellion,intrastate conflict. I seek to discover what impact, if any, gender inequality has on intrastate conflict. Although democratic peace scholars and others highlight the role of peaceful domestic behavior in predicting state behavior, many scholars have argued that a domestic environment of inequality and violence,structural and cultural violence,results in a greater likelihood of violence at the state and the international level. This project contributes to this line of inquiry and further tests the grievance theory of intrastate conflict by examining the norms of violence that facilitate a call to arms. And in many ways, I provide an alternative explanation for the significance of some of the typical economic measures,the greed theory,based on the link between discrimination, inequality, and violence. I test whether states characterized by higher levels of gender inequality are more likely to experience intrastate conflict. Ultimately, the basic link between gender inequality and intrastate conflict is confirmed,states characterized by gender inequality are more likely to experience intrastate conflict, 1960,2001. [source] Psychoanalytic Sociology and the Interpretation of EmotionJOURNAL FOR THE THEORY OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR, Issue 2 2003Simon Clarke Simon Clarke, Psychoanalytic Sociology and the Interpretation of Emotion, pp. 145,163. In this paper I explore the sociological study of emotion, contrasting constructionist and psychoanalytic accounts of envy as an emotion. I seek not to contra each vis-à-vis the other but to establish some kind of synthesis in a psychoanalytic sociology of emotion. I argue that although the constructionist approach to emotion gives us valuable insights into the social and moral dimensions of human encounters, it is unable to address the level of emotional intensity found for example in murderous rage against ethnic groups, or the emotional and often self destructive elements of terrorism. Psychoanalytic ideas do engage with these dynamics, and as such, a theory that synthesises both the social construction of reality and the psychodynamics of social life is necessary if we are to engage with these destructive emotions. [source] ,Amsterdam is Standing on Norway' Part I: The Alchemy of Capital, Empire and Nature in the Diaspora of Silver, 1545,1648JOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 1 2010JASON W. MOORE In the first of two essays in this Journal, I seek to unify the historical geography of early modern ,European expansion' (Iberia and Latin America) with the environmental history of the ,transition to capitalism' (northwestern Europe). The expansion of Europe's overseas empires and the transitions to capitalism within Europe were differentiated moments within the geographical expansion of commodity production and exchange , what I call the commodity frontier. This essay is developed in two movements. Beginning with a conceptual and methodological recasting of the historical geography of the rise of capitalism, I offer an analytical narrative that follows the early modern diaspora of silver. This account follows the political ecology of silver production and trade from the Andes to Spain in Braudel's ,second' sixteenth century (c. 1545,1648). In highlighting the Ibero-American moment of this process in the present essay, I contend that the spectacular reorganization of Andean space and the progressive dilapidation of Spain's real economy not only signified the rise and demise of a trans-Atlantic, Iberian ecological regime, but also generated the historically necessary conditions for the unprecedented concentration of accumulation and commodity production in the capitalist North Atlantic in the centuries that followed. [source] Beyond ,faith-based medicine' and EBMJOURNAL OF EVALUATION IN CLINICAL PRACTICE, Issue 4 2006John De Simone Abstract Rationale, aims and objectives, Longstanding debate on evidence-based medicine (EBM) may have reached a critical saturation point. I briefly report on systematic reviews on the recurring themes in the critical literature. In this context, some criticisms to EBM are substantial and enduring, although convincing arguments to contrast unresolved issues have yet to be produced. Nonetheless, few changes have been adopted and conservative attitudes persist in EBM. Despite its ,success', implementation in practice has been inexorably overshadowed leading to paradoxical shortcomings. This controversial scenario offers a formidable occasion to gain needed insight. The aim of this paper is to attempt a comprehensive analysis by reframing a number of key concerns, while furnishing pragmatic, interdisciplinary solutions for these deep-rooted dilemmas. In the interests of all stakeholders, I seek to promote a concerted effort to resolve conflict and build consensus. Methods, This paper explores a strategically unifying vision of primary care, based on current understanding of practice patterns, having a research-friendly ,common ground' where practitioners' information needs may be met. In addition, an analysis of existing problems identifies underlying ,root causes'. Moreover, I expediently reframe crucial matters by focusing on EBM, more than as a paradigm, as an organisation, hence amenable to a variety of cross-disciplinary analyses and solutions. Finally, recent state-of-the-art reviews on implementation and dissemination research are cited for the pertinent implications for study design and practice. Results, Present policies and influential testimonials on behalf of EBM encounter the pitfalls of hindering learning and progress through defensive attitudes and mechanisms. Current study designs and evaluation criteria must strive to adapt to real-world settings, rather than vice versa. Conclusions, The arguments exposed herein alter the terms of the debate on EBM and may outline a basis for initiatives with conflict-resolution and consensus-building scopes. [source] A CHARIOT FOR THE SHEKHINAH: Identity and the Ideal Life in Sixteenth-Century KabbalahJOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS, Issue 3 2009Eitan P. Fishbane ABSTRACT In this paper, I seek to present the range of issues involved in the efforts of sixteenth-century kabbalists to understand the nature of selfhood, and the paths prescribed for the formation of an ideal life. I reflect on the mystical writings of Moshe Cordovero, Eliyahu de Vidas, and ayyim Vital,probing their conceptions of core identity, the polarity between body and soul, and the ethical guidance for a life well lived. In so doing, I consider the following additional themes, and their relation to the matrix of self-formation and religious identity: reincarnation and rebirth; the virtue of humility and self-effacement; the cultivation of wisdom; ideals of piety and prophetic experience; asceticism; and the spiritual transcendence of desire. In presenting this wide range of constituent themes, I argue that sixteenth-century kabbalists understood the soul to be the ultimate marker of personal identity (nuanced and complicated by the doctrine of reincarnation), and that they formulated a vision of an ideal ethics in which the human being functions as an earthly vessel for the divine presence. What is more, the preparation of that vessel required a degree of humility so extreme that the attainment of ideal personhood ultimately involved the effacement of that very identity. [source] CREATIVE CITIES: CONCEPTUAL ISSUES AND POLICY QUESTIONSJOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2006Allen J. Scott I seek to situate the concept of creative cities within the context of the so-called new economy and to trace out the connections of these phenomena to recent shifts in technologies, structures of production, labor markets, and the dynamics of locational agglomeration. I try to show, in particular, how the structures of the new economy unleash historically specific forms of economic and cultural innovation in modern cities. The argument is concerned passim with policy issues and, above all, with the general possibilities and limitations faced by policymakers in any attempt to build creative cities. The effects of globalization are discussed, with special reference to the prospective emergence of a worldwide network of creative cities bound together in relations of competition and cooperation. In the conclusion, I pinpoint some of the darker dimensions,both actual and potential,of creative cities. [source] THE PUZZLE OF FALLIBLE KNOWLEDGEMETAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 3 2008HAMID VAHID Abstract: Although the fallible/infallible distinction in the theory of knowledge has traditionally been upheld by most epistemologists, almost all contemporary theories of knowledge claim to be fallibilist. Fallibilists have, however, been forced to accommodate knowledge of necessary truths. This has proved to be a daunting task, not least because there is as yet no consensus on how the fallible/infallible divide is to be understood. In this article, after examining and rejecting a number of representative accounts of the notion of fallible knowledge, I argue that the main problems with these accounts actually stem from the very coherence of that notion. I then claim that the distinction is best understood in terms of the externalist/internalist conceptions of knowledge. Finally, I seek to garner some independent support for the proposal by highlighting some of its consequences, including its surprising bearing on certain recent and seemingly distant controversies involving issues in epistemology and philosophy of mind. [source] DENNETT ON THE BASIC ARGUMENTMETAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 4 2005John Martin Fischer Abstract: I argue that Dennett does not adequately support his rejection of the "Basic Argument" for the incompatibility of causal determinism and the sort of free will that involves genuine access to alternative possibilities (sometimes referred to as the "Consequence Argument"). In addition, I seek to highlight the plausibility and importance of the incompatibilist's interpretation of this sort of free will. [source] Willing to Work: Agency and Vulnerability in an Undocumented Immigrant NetworkAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2010Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz ABSTRACT, Restriction-oriented immigration policies and polarizing political debates have intensified the vulnerability of undocumented people in the United States, promoting their "willingness" to do low-wage, low-status work. In this article, I draw on ethnographic research with undocumented immigrants in Chicago to examine the everyday strategies that undocumented workers develop to mediate constraints and enhance their well-being. In particular, I explore how a cohort of undocumented Mexican immigrants cultivates a social identity as "hard workers" to promote their labor and bolster dignity and self-esteem. Much of the existing literature on unauthorized labor migration has focused on the structural conditions that encumber immigrants and constrain their opportunities. By shifting the focus to workers' agency, I seek to complement these analyses and show how undocumented immigrants actively navigate the terrain of work and society in the United States. RESUMEN, La vulnerabilidad de los trabajadores indocumentados en los Estados Unidos ha sido incrementada por políticas inmigratorias restrictivas y debates políticos polarizados que han fomentando la "voluntad" de aceptar trabajos de bajo sueldo y estatus. En este artículo, utilizo investigaciones etnográficas con inmigrantes indocumentados en Chicago para examinar las luchas diarias que se enfrenta este grupo para mejorar sus calidades de vida. En particular, exploro como un grupo de inmigrantes indocumentados mexicanos cultiva una identidad social de "hombres trabajadores" para promover su mercado laboral, asi mejorando su bienestar económico y emocional. La mayoría de la literatura contemporánea sobre la migración indocumentada se ha enfocado en las condiciones estructurales que limitan a los inmigrantes y restringen sus oportunidades. Cambiar el enfoque hacia las acciones diarias de los trabajadores complementa estos estudios, y además demuestra la manera como los inmigrantes indocumentados activamente navegan sobre el terreno del trabajo y sociedad en los Estados Unidos. [source] Hispanic Farmers and Farmworkers: Social Networks, Institutional Exclusion, and Climate Vulnerability in Southeastern ArizonaAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 3 2009Marcela Vásquez-León ABSTRACT In the U.S. Southwest, prolonged drought may force those most dependent on water to abandon their livelihoods. By focusing on Hispanic farmers and farmworkers, in this article I examine how ethnicity and other factors compound risk and create highly vulnerable groups. I use the concept of "social capital" to understand how the critically vulnerable access resources embedded in informal social networks of mutual aid to reduce their vulnerability. By contrasting their situation to that of Anglo farmers, I explore how social networks emerge as a result of diverse socioeconomic and ethnic contexts. Under a more permanent scenario of increased aridity, a better understanding of the risk management mechanisms deployed by vulnerable groups sheds light on how collective approaches build resilience and on the role of policy in promoting or inhibiting these approaches. I seek to contribute to discussions about the importance of sociocultural dynamics and policy decisions to improving society's adaptive capacity. [source] Swinging within the iron cage: Modernity, creativity, and embodied practice in American postsecondary jazz educationAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2010EITAN WILF ABSTRACT In this article, I seek to contribute to the anthropology of embodied practice by asking, what would embodied practical mastery that mandates constant differentiation look like, and what would be its cultural and social determinants? In doing so, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork I conducted in a postsecondary jazz school in the United States. Through an exploration of how jazz educators cope with the paradoxical task of training the body and liberating it, I inquire into the challenge of negotiating the tension between the two key modernist ideas of rationalized schooling and Romantic creativity in contemporary institutional contexts. [source] A Note on Scripture in the,Summa theologiaeNEW BLACKFRIARS, Issue 1030 2009Matthew Levering Abstract Beginning with the question of whether Aquinas's,Summa theologiae,inevitably distorts the meaning of biblical texts by removing them from their narrative context, this essay suggests that one way to think about Aquinas's use of Scripture in the,Summa theologiae,is to read together, as an ensemble, the biblical texts that he cites when treating a particular theme. Focusing on his first four questions on the virtue of faith (ST,II-II, qq. 1,4), I argue that Aquinas's selection of biblical texts from across the canonical Scriptures enables him to provide a nuanced biblical perspective on a particular theme even without finding it necessary to quote Scripture in every article. I seek to bring to light the way that the various biblical texts in the question,whose functions within the articles are widely diverse, from providing the hinge for a,responsio,to framing a minor objection,complement and echo one another. [source] Mediating "The Voice of the Spirit": Musical and religious transformations in Nigeria's oil boomAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 2 2010VICKI L. BRENNAN ABSTRACT In this article, I examine a musical recording made by a Yoruba Christian church in the context of Nigeria's oil boom in the 1970s. I focus on the recording as a node of mediation: a site at which multiple forms of mediation converge to bring together institutional orders and individual subjectivities. Those responsible for the recording drew on meaningful cultural forms,in this case, religion, music, and electronic media,to make authoritative claims about morality and experience in the context of profound social change. I seek to understand how religious groups use media to create links between political-economic transformations and individual experience. [Nigeria, Christianity, mediation, music, religious authority, political economy] [source] Friendship, Identity, and Solidarity.RATIO JURIS, Issue 3 2003An Approach to Rights in Plant Closing Cases My focus is on the problem of plant closings, which have become increasingly common as the deindustrialization of America has proceeded since the early 1980s. In a well-known article, Joseph William Singer proposed that workers who sued to keep a plant open in the face of a planned closure might appropriately be regarded as possessing a reliance-based interest in the plant that merited some protection. I seek to extend this sort of argument in two ways. In the first half of the paper, I point to the way in which "tacit obligation" emerges in friendship between persons in the absence of explicit commitments. Employers and employees are of course not as such friends. But I argue that the development of tacit obligations binding friends provides a useful analogy for understanding the growth of similar tacit obligations binding plant owners to workers and local communities. In the second half, I draw on Margaret Radin's work on property and identity to ground a related argument. I suggest that the potential contribution of plants,and the traditions and networks of relationships they help to create and sustain,to the identities of workers and communities provides reason for at least some legal protection of employee and community interests. [source] The Never Ending Dance: Islamism, Kemalism and the Power of Self-institution in TurkeyTHE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2006Chris Houston Kemalism in Turkey is often presented as an exemplary case of paternalistic and authoritarian modernisation from above, and lauded or condemned for that very reason. Represented in these terms, certain analytic and political binaries are also activated: state versus society; world-view versus life-world; universality versus particularity; inauthenticity versus indigeneity; homogeneity versus heterogeneity/resistance. By contrast, in this paper I seek to sidestep these organising categories to focus on Kemalism and Islamism as rival forms of the same social imaginary signification, and not as shorthand for these polarities. Using a number of representative texts, I argue that the extravagance of Islamist resistance in Turkey post-1980 brings to light the fantastical power of Kemalism itself, exposed as a project of the triumph of the will. This being the case, what has been written in anthropology about acts of ,self-institution'? The work of Nigel Rapport and Cornelius Castoriadis emphasises, in different ways, the arbitrariness and gratuity of social creation out of nothing or self-institution. Pierre Bourdieu's work, on the other hand, is radically contrary to Rapport's in its structuralist elaboration of agency as guided action. My analysis of processes of change within both the Islamist and Republican social movements in Turkey from the early 1990s to the present seeks a temporary rapprochement, at least in this case, between Rapport's methodological individualism and Bourdieu's methodological holism. [source] KIERKEGAARD, INDIRECT COMMUNICATION, AND AMBIGUITYTHE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 1 2009JAMIE TURNBULL Notoriously, Kierkegaard claims his project to be one of indirect communication. This paper considers the idea that Kierkegaard's distinction between direct and indirect communication is to be accounted for in terms of ambiguity. I begin by outlining the different claims Kierkegaard makes about his method, before examining the textual evidence for attributing such a distinction to him. I then turn to the work of Edward Mooney, who claims that the distinction between direct and indirect communication is to be drawn in just this way. I argue that Mooney misinterprets the type of ambiguity Kierkegaard holds to be involved in indirect communication, and consequently ends up with an unsatisfactory account of Kierkegaard's method. Finally I seek to cast doubt on the very idea that ambiguity might do justice to the claims Kierkegaard makes about his project, and suggest that what is required to do so is a theological interpretation of his work. [source] Building a house society: the reorganization of Maori communities around meeting housesTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 2 2010Jeffrey Sissons In this article I seek to re-conceptualize New Zealand Maori society as a house society and describe the way in which meeting houses participated in the transformation of this society during the period 1880-1950. After noting some central confusions in the anthropological literature on Maori descent groups, I consider the value of Lévi-Strauss's notion of the ,house' for understanding Maori social organization. Then, drawing upon the results of my fieldwork in one Maori community and published surveys of meeting house construction more generally, I describe a process through which Maori society became progressively more house-based. I conclude by noting that the centrality of the house as an ideological form in Maori society assumes an association between hosting and social worth, an association that may well be fundamental to house societies in general. Résumé L'auteur cherche ici à reconceptualiser la société maorie de Nouvelle-Zélande comme une sociétéà maisons et à décrire la manière dont les maisons de réunion ont participéà la transformation de cette société dans la période comprise entre 1880 et 1950. Après avoir relevé quelques confusions importantes sur les groupes de descendance maoris dans la littérature anthropologique, il examine la valeur de la notion de « maison » selon Lévi-Strauss pour la compréhension de l'organisation sociale des Maoris. Il décrit ensuite, à partir des résultats d'un travail de terrain dans une communauté maorie et d'études publiées sur la construction de maisons de réunion en général, un processus au fil duquel la société maorie s'est progressivement attachée davantage à ces maisons. Pour finir, il note que le rôle central de la maison comme forme idéologique dans la société maorie suppose une association entre hébergement et valeur sociale, association qui est peut-être fondamentale dans les sociétés à maisons en général. [source] An anti-history of a non-people: Kurds, colonialism, and nationalism in the history of anthropologyTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 1 2009Christopher Houston In this article I seek to contest certain aspects of the 1960s revisionist history of the discipline of anthropology, narratives that can be accused ironically of an autocentric overestimation of the power of the imperial West in their very uncovering of its more or less hidden influence over the genre of ethnography and anthropological practice. Taking as my focus in this regard the case of the anthropology of the Kurds, I suggest that not only have Western ethnographic texts been relatively un-influential in the wider scheme of discourse about Kurds, but also that the recent decision of Kurdish publishing houses in Istanbul to translate and re-publish them indicates where in the present many Kurds feel an active ,colonial project' is continuing. The role and development of anthropology in Turkey, then, complicate this by now decades-old examination of the embeddedness of ethnographic discourse in Western modernist projects of political transformation. Résumé L'auteur de cet article cherche à contester certains aspects de l'histoire révisionniste de la discipline anthropologique qui avait cours dans les années 1960 et que l'on peut accuser, avec ironie, d'une surestimation autocentrée de la puissance de l'Occident impérial alors même qu'elle démasquait l'influence plus ou moins voilée de celui-ci sur l'ethnographie et la pratique anthropologique. Centrant son approche sur le cas de l'anthropologie des Kurdes, l'auteur suggère que non seulement les textes ethnographiques occidentaux ont eu relativement peu d'influence sur le discours général concernant les Kurdes, mais que la récente décision des maisons d'éditions kurdes d'Istanbul de traduire et de republier ces ouvrages indique dans quel domaine beaucoup de Kurdes sentent aujourd'hui encore un «projet colonial»à l',uvre. Le rôle et le développement de l'anthropologie en Turquie vient encore compliquer le problème, avec des dizaines d'années d'étude de l'inclusion du discours ethnographique dans les projets modernistes occidentaux de transformation politique. [source] The centre cannot hold: tales of hierarchy and poetic composition from modern RajasthanTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 2 2004Jeffrey G. Snodgrass In this article I examine Bhat myths and legends concerning kings and bards. Bhats are low-status praise-singers from the Indian state of Rajasthan. In exploring these tales, I examine my informants' ideas about an issue which has long been seen as a central conundrum of Indian caste theory: how best to characterize the status of those with priestly standing in relation to those classed as warriors and kings. In their stories, Bhats demonstrate the ways in which high-caste persons such as kings are utterly dependent on bardic services , thus rendering performers like themselves central, and kings peripheral. With respect to the debate about whether kings or priests rank first in South Asian schemes of rank and primacy, Bhats themselves think in terms of a third class of persons: bards. Further, I suggest that, in arguing for the social centrality of linguistically talented bards, my informants display a consciousness that is particularly attuned to the discursive construction of social hierarchies. Finally, I seek to explain why Bhats, who are bards of former untouchables now living in an ostensibly modern, casteless democracy, still speak so persistently of kings and royal bardship. My answer to this is that, in fabricating fictive royal bardic identities, present-day Bhats are able to appropriate roles and statuses now abandoned by the former elite bards of post-Independence Rajasthan. [source] Legal Consciousness: Some ObservationsTHE MODERN LAW REVIEW, Issue 6 2004Dave Cowan This article argues that US studies of ,legal consciousness' have much to offer UK socio-legal studies. It is, perhaps, surprising that so little attention has been paid to this set of understandings. I seek to rectify that imbalance in the transatlantic relationship by outlining legal consciousness and its critiques. I then draw on homelessness applicant interview data to discuss their ,legal consciousness', illustrating the importance of the value of dignity; how they make sense of their decisions; and the spaces in which legal consciousness may be produced. The study is a limited examination, but it enables us to question the assertion that welfare applicants ,know the law' and (ab-)use it. [source] A NEW DEFENCE OF ANSELMIAN THEISMTHE PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 233 2008Yujin Nagasawa Anselmian theists, for whom God is the being than which no greater can be thought, usually infer that he is an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent being. Critics have attacked these claims by numerous distinct arguments, such as the paradox of the stone, the argument from God's inability to sin, and the argument from evil. Anselmian theists have responded to these arguments by constructing an independent response to each. This way of defending Anselmian theism is uneconomical. I seek to establish a new defence which undercuts almost all the existing arguments against Anselmian theism at once. In developing this defence, I consider the possibility that the Anselmian God is not an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent being. [source] UNDERSTANDING HUME'S NATURAL HISTORY OF RELIGIONTHE PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 227 2007P.J.E. Kail Hume's ,Natural History of Religion' offers a naturalized account of the causes of religious thought, an investigation into its ,origins' rather than its ,foundation in reason'. Hume thinks that if we consider only the causes of religious belief, we are provided with a reason to suspend the belief. I seek to explain why this is so, and what role the argument plays in Hume's wider campaign against the rational acceptability of religious belief. In particular, I argue that the work threatens a form of fideism which maintains that it is rationally permissible to maintain religious belief in the absence of evidence or of arguments in its favour. I also discuss the ,argument from common consent', and the relative superiority of Hume's account of the origins of religious belief. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||