Border historicity and ethnographic rupture: Pirates,Korean Kings and borderlanders in transnational Tsushima Island,Japan

Tsushima’s community festival commemorates Tsushima’s admirable borderland diplomacy in the pre-modern East Asian politics. This indigenous historicization in performance, nevertheless, fails to resonate with ethnographic reality: anthropological fieldwork revealed that local culture differs considerably from postcolonial ritual imaginings and historicity, illuminating a discontinuity between the past performed and the present observed. A rupture exists between borderland imagery as a coherent Japanese state boundary and the ethnographic reality of an uneven liminal frontier between Korea and Japan. In order to make sense of the ethnographic ruptures, this article constructs the border-centric ethnohistory through the lens of and experiences of the border, defying a state-centric past. I de-essentialize border-state relationship, accentuating border spontaneity and contingency between and beyond the power of sovereignty – a paradoxical Janus-faced process of contradiction and negotiation. I argue that it is Tsushima’s historical metamorphosis that stands out in history, not its subjugation to the power of either state.     

Like father,like son: negotiation of masculinity in the ethnographic context in Hong Kong

Feminist geographers have indicated that ethnographic research is an inter-subjective process constructed in relation to the intersection between the gender and other social dimensions of both the researcher and the informants relevant to the field. In particular, the matching and adaptation of masculinities in the research context is a complex methodological issue that receives relatively little attention. Using my fieldwork experience, this article builds on the contribution of feminist geographers to discuss how my masculine self-presentation was negotiated with the research topic, the caring masculinity endorsed among my middle-aged male informants, the sociocultural milieu and my positionalities and bodily representations in producing collaborative ethnographic data. My young age and doctoral student status, combined with my ‘soft and meek’ self-presentation, produced wen masculinity within the Chinese cultural context, which facilitated the paradoxical reception of me as both a son and a consultant in the men's groups. This masculine embodiment not only facilitated our rapport but also signified my cultural competence to participate in decision-making and activist activities in the discussion groups, which brought me to some unexpected research lands. The effect of my masculine embodiment on the ethnographic research process indicates that fieldwork is not only situated in a place but is also itself a space constructed through cultural understanding of social interactions and embodied gender representations.     

The Bond of Civility': Roger Williams on toleration and its limits

In this article, I examine the meaning of the concept of ‘civility’ for Roger Williams and the role it played in his arguments for religious toleration. I place his concern with civility in the broader context of his life and works and show how it differed from the missionary and civilizing efforts of his fellow New English among the American Indians. For Williams, civility represented a standard of inclusion in the civil community that was ‘essentially distinct’ from Christianity, which properly governed membership in the spiritual community of the church. In contrast to recent scholarship that finds in Williams a robust vision of mutual respect and recognition between co-citizens, I argue that civility constituted rather a very low bar of respectful behavior towards others entirely compatible with a lack of respect, disapproval, and even disgust for them and their beliefs. I show further that civility for Williams was consistent with—and partially secured by—a continued commitment on the part of godly citizens to the potential conversion of their neighbors. Williams endorsed this ‘mere’ civility as a necessary and sufficient condition for toleration while also delineating a potentially expansive role for the magistrate in regulating incivility. Contemporary readers of William who conflate civility with other good things, such as mutual respect, recognition, and civic friendship, slide into a position much like that he was trying to refute.     

‘The Bond of Civility’: Roger Williams on toleration and its limits

In this article, I examine the meaning of the concept of ‘civility’ for Roger Williams and the role it played in his arguments for religious toleration. I place his concern with civility in the broader context of his life and works and show how it differed from the missionary and civilizing efforts of his fellow New English among the American Indians. For Williams, civility represented a standard of inclusion in the civil community that was ‘essentially distinct’ from Christianity, which properly governed membership in the spiritual community of the church. In contrast to recent scholarship that finds in Williams a robust vision of mutual respect and recognition between co-citizens, I argue that civility constituted rather a very low bar of respectful behavior towards others entirely compatible with a lack of respect, disapproval, and even disgust for them and their beliefs. I show further that civility for Williams was consistent with—and partially secured by—a continued commitment on the part of godly citizens to the potential conversion of their neighbors. Williams endorsed this ‘mere’ civility as a necessary and sufficient condition for toleration while also delineating a potentially expansive role for the magistrate in regulating incivility. Contemporary readers of William who conflate civility with other good things, such as mutual respect, recognition, and civic friendship, slide into a position much like that he was trying to refute.     

Untangling creativity and art for policy purposes: ethnographic insights on Manchester International Festival and Manchester Day Parade

This paper draws on anthropological fieldwork of a civic parade in Manchester from 2010 to 2012 to argue for engaging with creativity as a process rather than an attribute of a particular sector or individual. It shows how the focus on funding and supporting ‘creative industries’ defined as ‘cinema, television, music, literature, performing arts, heritage and related areas’ actually excludes and diminishes the potential for others to engage with ideas and creative processes. Two major events in Manchester’s cultural calendar – Procession by artist Jeremy Deller, produced by Manchester International Festival and Manchester Day Parade, a council-led civic celebration – both combined community groups with artist input to put large-scale structures and people on the city’s streets. In this ethnographic analysis, I argue that the ‘creativity’ sought from these artists is their adaptive and productive approach to making ideas tangible. By focusing on creativity as a process rather than a character trait, there is even greater potential for stimulating a ‘creative’ city.     

Fitzroy's fighting Fuegians: Comparison of palaeopathological and ethnographic indications of fighting behaviour in an extinct human population

The Selk'nam were an indigenous population of Tierra del Fuego that are now extinct. Contemporary accounts, including those of Robert Fitzroy and Charles Darwin, attest to their prodigious size and strength. These accounts and others record that the Selk'nam were enthusiastic wrestlers and fought till one or other of the opponents could no longer continue. Presented here is a case of traumatic injury to the ulnae and radii of a Selk'nam male that is concomitant with injuries sustained during such activity and as such would provide intriguing evidence of this practice in the skeletal record of an extinct human population. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Maps, Fields, and Boundary Cairns: Demarcation and Resistance in Colonial Cyprus

An important component of the administration and control of a colony by an external power is the demarcation and classification of the land and its people. This was certainly the case in Cyprus under British colonial rule (1878–1960), as three case studies demonstrate: the topographical survey of the island by H. H. Kitchener in 1878–83; the cadastral survey of 1909–29; and the work of the Forest Delimitation Commission from 1881 to 1896. This was not achieved without resistance on a variety of levels. Ironically, part of the opposition came from the structure of the colonial demarcation and classification project itself.     

Jute cultivation in the Lower Amazon, 1940–1990: an ethnographic account from Santarém, Pará, Brazil

The Amazon region has long been a place of economic booms and busts. Much attention in the historical literature on Amazonia has focused on the largest and most famous regional economic boom, the Rubber Boom, a period of sustained economic prosperity for some from 1860 to 1920. Other ‘booms’ have occurred in the region as well and this paper describes and discusses one of those others. The paper demonstrates how an export economy in a global periphery (coffee in Brazil) affected economic development in a periphery of that same country and makes a methodological contribution by demonstrating how ethnographic research can contribute to an understanding of a historical period when the paper trail is weak.Jute, a fiber crop, dominated agricultural production along the Amazon River floodplain in the reach between Manaus and Santarém, Brazil, from the late 1930s until the early 1990s. The crop was introduced to the region by Japanese immigrants in order to supply the demand for jute sacking in the south of Brazil where such sacks were used to package commodities, especially coffee. Local smallholder cultivators grew and processed jute, production being mediated initially through Japanese middlemen, later by Brazilians. Poor fiber quality, several external shocks, including the removal of tariffs on imported jute, and especially changes in commodity packaging such as bulk handling and the use of synthetic sacks instead of jute sacks for the transport of coffee beans, the Amazonian jute market collapsed in the early 1990s. Despite its collapse, the legacy of the boom is still evident in the physical and social landscapes in the region.     

Consuming and living the corner shop: belonging,remembering, socialising

This paper presents findings from an ethnographic case study in Germany investigating the relationship between shopkeepers and customers of small grocery stores owned by immigrants. The focus is on social practices within the shops and how those engaged in these activities make sense of them. Shops become meaningful through shared practices that revolve around selling and buying. However, this process is complex and not without conflict. Moving through the themes of belonging, remembering and socialising, I will show how the everyday lifeworlds of customers and shopkeepers, including their aspirations, expectations and uncertainties, intersect and how the shop emerges as a meaningful space through negotiation. Rather than looking at cultural differences alone, it is concluded that there can be significant other ways to understand multicultural places by focusing on the multiple ways that consumers engage with so-called ‘ethnic’ enterprises.     

War,Modernity, and Motion in the Edison Films of 1898

This essay examines films created by the Edison Company of the US military campaign in the Caribbean in 1898 and their projection and reception in Vaudeville theaters and other similar venues in the larger urban areas of the US. Through an analysis of these films in regards to their production and reception contexts, it discusses relationships between entertainment, nationalism, and colonialism in this early cinema. Features foregrounding technology, production capacity, tourism, and military campaigns in tropical settings are examined in order to explore the blurred boundaries between journalism and entertainment in the context and how specifically the technology of the incipient cinema shaped these perceptions. The venues, in which they were exhibited, situated these war films within larger variety shows including oddities, acrobats, skits, and musical entertainment, together with technological exhibitions involving devices revered for both their destructive and constructive capabilities. It considers, furthermore, how tourism and the possibilities for travel related to the war shaped entertainment and dialogued with public desires regarding American empire and the roles of the Caribbean and, by relation, Latin America in these scenarios. The essay seeks to underscore, finally, how these films, and the war that they attempt to depict, resonated deeply with a type of audience and a corresponding mode of spectatorship that would come to expect an entertaining dimension in journalism.     

Commuting,exercise and sport: an ethnography of long-distance bike commuting

The uniqueness of this article is that it deals with long-distance bike commuting in pro-cycling Copenhagen and its environs. Informed by practice theory and sensuous studies of urban and sport practices, I discuss the ‘things and environments’, ‘meanings’ and ‘competences and biological bodies’ that typify long-distance commuter cycling. This article develops cycling literature and the ‘mobilities paradigm’ in the following ways: by outlining a practice approach to cycling; challenging the idea that commuter cycling is only for short distances; undermining the distinction between utility and sport cycling; and lastly by connecting the ‘mobilities paradigm’ with literature on active travel and sport studies.     

Death,Passion and Politics: The Power of Grief and the Charisma of Loss

Caves used in antiquity had multiple functions and often long use histories. While many were employed for shelter, some became ritual sites. Revitalized interest in caves in Mesoamerica combines archaeology, ethnography, ethnohistory, epigraphy, and osteology. The current, general anthropological study of caves offers exceptional insights into early Mesoamerican customs, ceremonies, and beliefs, and indicates that caves played a significant role in religion. The evidence suggests that some caves were perceived as vital aspects of a sacred landscape and connections to the supernatural underworld. Continuity of indigenous ritual practices associated with caves remains to the present.     

Parenting,care and the family car

This paper draws on driving ethnographies conducted with heterosexual parents in a regional centre in New South Wales, Australia, to illustrate the doing of family care in the mobile space of the car. Our analysis employs a narrative ethnography used by geographers working in materialist more-than-human feminist perspectives. In doing so, we advance writing in the gendered geographies of care and car dependency by exploring mothers’ and fathers’ involvement in driving their children. We engage with work which challenges the epistemological and ontological orthodoxies that once dominated transport and family studies in order to better tackle car dependency in the Anthropocene by understanding how parents ‘do’ family somewhere-on-the-move. Parents’ care for and about kin is lived and felt through the sociality of driving somewhere together. We conclude with insights for theory and policy.     

Fixing value: history,ethnography, and material ontologies of deservingness in a Philadelphia repair shop

This article draws on labor history and science and technology studies to propose a method, and to provide an example, of historical analysis that is responsive to the conceptual categories that arise out of ethnographic accounts of individuals’ lived experiences. Using an ‘ontological tool-box’, this article follows various enactments of consumer appliances and, along with them, ideas of what it is to be a productive worker in a small appliance repair shop and across the practices of certain institutions of disciplinary power. Through an ethnographic and ontological analysis of repair in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington, this article reveals that, rather than being inevitable or essential, all the categories used to organize our world, whether referent to identities or objects, are both constituted by and constitutive of a complex set of social relations and ideological priorities, which even historians are implicated in reproducing.     

Between ideology and practice,national conflict and anti‐imperialist struggle: the National Liberation League in Palestine

This paper focuses on the National Liberation League (NLL), a Palestinian Arab communist movement which operated in Palestine between the years 1943–1948. The paper examines its short‐lived history in light of the relevant three contexts in which it operated: the local Palestinian national context; the regional context of communist activity in the Middle East and the external‐internationalist context of the Soviet Union. The paper further discusses the activities of the NLL during the period of the 1948 War in Palestine, as well as in the first period of military rule, imposed on the Palestinian citizens of Israel. An analysis of the NLL during the late Mandatory period and the early years of the State of Israel allows a close examination of the ways by which concepts of identity, nationalism, class and ethnicity were conceptualised, debated and contested during times of a national conflict and anti‐imperial struggle and brings to the fore tensions between ideology and practice, nationalism and internationalism. The NLL offers an important opportunity to look into the complex matrix of communist movements that combine anti‐imperial struggles with struggles for national liberation in the context of a national conflict and to examine their dilemmas and what may seem as internal contradictions.     

Quantitative analysis of two low-cost aerial photography platforms: A case study of the site of Zagora,Andros, Greece

Aerial photography provides a valuable recording method for archaeological sites and is often underutilized. In the past, aerial photographic platforms were expensive and often required highly specialized equipment. However, with new technology a variety of different platforms are now available. This paper will analyze two low cost aerial photographic platforms used at the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens/University of Sydney's project at Zagora, on the island of Andros, Greece. Over two years, both kites and drones were used with relative success. Through a review of the application of both systems on the project, along with a quantitative analysis of the cost, transportability, operation and quality of photographs, the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms will be discussed.     

Archaeological,Historical, and Ethnographic Approaches to the Study of Sewn Boats: past,present, and future

Sewn‐plank vessels have been a pervasive form of ship construction since antiquity. This paper provides an introductory overview of the current state of the field of sewn‐plank studies, with a particular focus on the Indian Ocean. It describes the basic function of sewn‐plank techniques, and then discusses textual references and historical approaches to the topic. The relevant archaeological evidence is reviewed, and prior ethnographic work relating to the topic is outlined. It summarizes numerous experimental sewn‐plank reconstructions that have been undertaken and concludes with a discussion of the current directions of the field and suggestions for the future.     

Power,Humanitarianism and the Global Liberal Order: Abolition and the Barbary Corsairs in the Vienna Congress System

Although the convergence has been little noted, for several years after Napoleon's defeat in 1814, the moves to extend abolition of the African slave trade internationally following Britain's unilateral declaration in 1807 were joined with efforts to interdict the taking of European captives by the Barbary corsairs of the Ottoman Empire's North African Regencies. Examining the conjunction of the two campaigns consequently deepens our understanding of the development of each. At the same time, study of the combined negotiations and lobbying efforts sheds significant light on several important developments in international history during the congress era, including the extension of a liberal order of political economy and diplomacy beyond Europe, the universalization of humanitarian norms, the internationalization of humanitarian interventions and the emergence of new institutions of collective security following the Vienna settlement of 1815. Analysis of the politics surrounding abolition and Barbary also illuminates the nature of the relationship between power, ideas and institutions in the nineteenth-century international system.