Interpreting Ritual as Performance and Theory Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania 2010 Distinguished Lecture

ABSTRACT The paper looks at specific rituals and their relationships with dance in Hawaii, Tonga, Bulgaria, and India. These four short case studies explore the relationship between dance and ritual, in particular how dance is presented as representing the ritual past. I bring ‘structured movement,’ as one of ritual's distinguishing marks, to center stage to explore how ritual movement and dance are related.     

Domestic troubles,national identity discourse,and China's attitude towards the West, 2003–2012

Prior to its recent, much discussed international ‘assertiveness’, China's attitude to the West had deteriorated, as reflected in official discourse of national identity. Drawing from political science and social psychology literature on identity studies, I argue that the discursive pattern of national identity can shift as a function of an elite strategy to exclude internal others through opposition to foreign others. Internally exclusionary nationalism, often employed by elites during major crises, is instrumental to consolidating control and maintaining order. But when targeting internal opponents alone is politically inconvenient or lacks public resonance, elites will accentuate ethnocentric national identity discourse vis‐a‐vis foreign nations in order to reinforce internal battles and divert popular discontent externally. An interpretive analysis of the official texts of Chinese national identity discourse during the Hu Jintao decade, supplemented by quantitative data, shows a significant correlation between the regime's fear of internal instability and bottom‐up political opposition on the one hand and the timing and intensity of ethnocentric identity discourse regarding the West on the other. The party‐state negatively framed the West in order to shift the blame for domestic troubles onto foreigners and discredit internal resistance.     

NGOs as Social Movements: Policy Narratives,Networks and the Performance of Dalit Rights in South India

Donor‐funded development NGOs are sometimes portrayed as co‐opting, privatizing or depoliticizing citizen action or social movements. This much is implied by the term ‘NGOization’. Alternatively, NGOs can be seen as bearers of rights‐based work increasingly threatened by tighter regulation or substitution by corporate social responsibility models of development. This article engages critically with both perspectives. It traces the role of NGOs and their funders in agenda setting, specifically in bringing the previously excluded issue of caste discrimination into development policy discourse in the form of a Dalit‐rights approach in Tamil Nadu, south India. The authors explore the institutional processes of policy making and NGO networking involved, the alliances, entanglements of NGOs and social movements, and the performativity of NGO Dalit rights. But at the same time, the article illustrates how NGO institutional systems have constrained or failed to sustain such identity‐based claims to entitlement. In Nancy Fraser's terms, the article explores success and failure in addressing ‘first‐order’ issues of justice, that is rights to resources (in this case, land), and in tackling ‘second‐order’ injustices concerning the framing of who counts (who can make a claim as a rights holder) and how (by what procedures are claims and contests staged and resolved). This draws attention to the important but fragile achievements of NGOs’ discursive framings that give Dalits the ‘right to have rights’.     

The Dancers Who Became Transformed into Wood: the mai masks of the Iatmul,Papua New Guinea

Borrowing, exchanging, and violent appropriation of ritual artefacts have been actions that have contributed to the development of cultural diversity within a particular frame of variations in the Middle Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. The mai masks of the Iatmul, already mentioned by Bateson, are the well‐documented result of a violent appropriation, as indigenous evidence shows. However, the ‘model’ which served for the mai were ritual dancers captured in the Alexander Mountains. These dancers displayed heavily painted faces (but no masks) and rich body decoration. In the process of making the powerful ‘model’ into one of their own, the Iatmul artists transformed the painted faces into carvings according to their preferred material of artistic expressions, wood, and their predilection for the interplay of elevated and deepened surfaces. As this article shows, the creation of mai as (enlivened) persons needs the establishment of socio‐cosmological relationships in which ancestral spirits and ‘natural’ substances are crucially involved. Thus, apart from sculpting as making, actions of growing are essential for turning the masks into beings endowed with ancestral power.     

Making Skins: Initiation,Sorcery, and Eastern Min Notions of Knowledge

In this paper I consider the Kwermin notion of knowledge as ‘making skin’ of physical experience. The skin is acted upon in women's scarification and male initiations with the aim of instilling dispositions in the novices that are conducive to their becoming competent adult beings in their particular sociocultural environment. The scarification of women's abdominal skin is thought to enhance the fertility of their wombs, whereas the acts upon male novices’ skins in the initiation rituals are focused upon making them fierce warriors, vigorous husbands, and respectful communicators with ancestral spirits. It is argued that through the male initiations the Min reenact their joint origins from the ground at Yam (‘mother’) on Oksapmin land. Contrary to this initiatory emphasis on proper skin‐knowledge as fitness of being, sorcerers, and witches are greatly feared as they wrongfully penetrate the skin, either infusing the victim with suicidal desire or extracting its life‐substance until the victim withers and dies.     

Biblical Archaeology: a Plea for its Continuation

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to propose a ritualistic reading of Old Testament ritual texts based on the theory of Roy A. Rappaport. ² 2. Rappaport's ritual theory as it is expressed in Rappaport's major work, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). One of Rappaport's more or less overlooked views is that in order to be able to “understand” a certain ritual, one will have to become acquainted with this ritual's liturgical orders, its encoded message. In other words to understand a ritual it is necessary in some way to be informed of this ritual's particular worldview.

As I focus on the ritual texts of the so called P material in the Pentateuch, and in particular on the law of the Nazirite in Numbers 6,1–21, I use this notion of Rappaport's as a hermeneutical key to the reading of the ritual texts.

It is my claim that when we try to answer the questions posed by a ritual text, if we limit our search to the worldview of the ritual in question, we will not only be using an approach which is methodologically sound and appropriate, we will also receive better answers.     

Critique as delight,theory as praxis,mucking in

In this commentary, I call for a regenerative approach to critique, a ‘good judgment’ through which academics might nurture the capacity to name and undermine racist, patriarchal, colonising, and homophobic practices, while working relationally to create new worlds. Drawing from Eva Sedgwick's critique of ‘paranoid theory’ and taking inspiration from post‐colonial, feminist, and anti‐racist social movements and research collectives, I consider what it might mean to be an academic who ‘mucks in’, who is not afraid of putting her hands in the dung, and who moves reflexively towards, rather than away from, difficult questions and risky engagements.     

‘Saving the Amazon’: Conservation,international covetousness,and the politics of research (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Many justifications have been made for ‘saving the Amazon’ from preserving the ‘lungs of the world’ to protecting unknown botanical wonders that might yield cures to deadly diseases. However, Amazonians have responded to these claims with charges of ‘international covetousness’, interpreting such foreign interest as a thinly‐masked desire to take control of the region's natural resources. In this article I examine some of the counter‐claims that have emerged in Brazil that reflect Amazonians’ uneasiness with such foreign interest in the region. Drawing from my own engagement with rural Amazonians, I share their critiques of the deep global inequalities that they see in conservation efforts and international research in Amazonia. To conclude, I discuss the value of ethnography and anthropological inquiry for encouraging grounded views of Amazonia that challenge abstracted notions of the region, including that of the monolithic rainforest in need of ‘saving’.     

ROUTINE MAGIC,MUNDANE RITUAL: TOWARDS A UNIFIED NOTION OF DEPOSITIONAL PRACTICE

This article seeks to advance ongoing discussions within archaeology concerning the relationship between ritual and depositional practices. Previous researchers have argued that ‘structured’ or ‘placed’ deposits are the result of ritual activities, but also that in many societies the disposal of refuse is governed by social ‘rules’. Distinguishing ‘technical’ actions such as rubbish disposal from deliberately ‘placed’ deposits is extremely difficult, however, and reinforces modern dualistic thought. Instead, this article argues that there was a continuum of practices from formal and ritualized events through to small‐scale, informal acts undertaken on a routine basis, including everyday refuse discard. It also questions purely utilitarian interpretations of storage structures. Drawing on ethnographic and ethnohistorical examples, it explores case studies from the later prehistoric and Romano‐British periods of north central England, and concludes by proposing methodologies through which these practices can be explored more fully in the future.     

Secularization,sacralization and the reproduction of sacred space: exploring the industrial use of ancestral temples in rural Wenzhou,China

This paper offers a nuanced understanding of different social groups’ roles in the reproduction of sacred spaces. Drawing on the analysis of the transformation of sacred ancestral temples into private factories in rural Wenzhou, China, it problematizes the underlying division of ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ actors and their opposite roles. It shows how lineage groups and factory owners, in spite of their distinctive social identities, work together and facilitate the secularization and sacralization of temple landscapes. On the one hand, both groups of people deploy discursive strategies and re-interpret the significance of ancestral temples and economic production, thereby rationalizing and prompting the conversion of temple spaces. On the other hand, traditional sacred temples are constantly reproduced through lineages’ ritual performances and factory owners’ worship and daily protection. As such, the roles of lineage communities and factory owners are diverse and change in specific contexts. This paper foregrounds the multiple and flexible agency of different social actors in relation to the production of the complex sacred–secular entanglement, and reflects on the changing traditional cultural landscape in rural China.     

We Branded Ourselves Long Ago: Intangible Cultural Property and Commodification of Fijian Firewalking

ABSTRACT The Fijian firewalking ceremony (vilavilairevo), traditionally performed only by members of the Sawau people on the island of Beqa, is a prime example of a propitiation ritual that has become commodified to suit the requirements of tourism. The Sawau ‘gift’ of walking on white‐hot stones introduces another dimension of the gift practice. Although gifts and commodities are often treated as ideal‐type opposites, and a tradition of Melanesian scholarship has focused attention on the inalienability of gifts, I argue that the self‐consciously traditional firewalking practice of Beqa Island, Fiji, is an inalienable sui generis commodity that becomes effective by ‘branding’ Fijian concepts of different places' distinct custodianships. Over the last two centuries, the gift of firewalking has transmuted itself into a sociocultural tool that has consistently indigenized the power of the foreign. The gift of firewalking has allowed its custodians to locally sustain their community, to gain a reach and respect across the nation and beyond, and to intensify the group's social sentiment and social capital.     

Tourist,local, or other?: Greek Canadian women and the heritage fling in Greece

This article examines the romantic and sexual encounters between Greek men and Greek Canadian women vacationing in Greece and addresses how constructions of Greek Canadian female sexuality are related to foreign and local Greek conceptions of femininity during these ‘holiday flings’. Because of their Greek ancestry, Mediterranean ‘looks’, and familiarity with language and culture, Greek Canadian women exhibit ambiguous identities that uphold and cross boundaries between outsiders and insiders. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, I explore the conceptualizations of ancestral and national identity underpinning Greek women's erotic desires for Greek man who embody ethnic authenticity to them. Yet, Greek men thwart these desires when they subvert Canadian women's economic power through challenging their cultural literacy (such as a lack in language skills, etiquette, or sexual knowledge). This article addresses the question of how diasporic women's heterosexuality subjectivities – bound up with hybrid ethnic and national affiliations – take on different meanings across locales and times where transnational sex and romance are everyday occurrences.     

Decolonizing branded peacebuilding: abjected women talk back to the Finnish Women,Peace and Security agenda

This article interrogates the sexual ideology of Finnish peacebuilding, the country's foreign policy brand and the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda by examining the experiences of women ‘written out of history’. Using the method of ‘writing back’ I juxtapose the construction of a gender‐friendly global peacebuilder identity with experiences in Finland after the Lapland War (1944–45) and in post‐conflict Aceh, Indonesia (1976–2005). Although being divided temporarily and geographically, these two contexts form an intimate part of the abjected and invisible part of the Finnish WPS agenda, revealing a number of colonial and violent overtones of postwar reconstruction: economic and political postwar dystopia of Skolt Sámi and neglect of Acehnese women's experiences in branding the peace settlement and its implementation as a success. Jointly they critique and challenge both the gender/women‐friendly peacebuilder identity construction of Finland and locate the sexual ideology of WPS to that of political economy and post‐conflict political, legal and economic reforms. The article illustrates how the Finnish foreign policy brand has constructed the country as a global problem‐solver and peacemaker, drawing on the heteronormative myth of already achieved gender equality on the one hand and, on the other, tamed asexual female subjectivity: the ‘good woman’ as peacebuilder or victim of violence. By drawing attention to violent effects of the global WPS agenda demanding decolonialization, I suggest that the real success of the WPS agenda should be evaluated by those who have been ‘written out’.     

The Poetics of the Crocodile: Changing Cultural Perspectives in Ambonwari

ABSTRACT Ambonwari people from the East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea, had a rich repertoire of song‐dances, each of which was associated with specific events and the birth of something new. Together they represented the entire human life cycle as well as the cosmology at large. Visual, verbal and tactile modalities of singing and dancing were tightly interwoven; images and symbols were enacted by the dancers, in their decoration, arrangement, movements and in the whole ceremony and were firmly situated in their landscape. Accordingly, song‐dances were also an important practice in male initiation ritual. The first song‐dance of the ritual was the crocodile song‐dance. This article analyses different transpositions of images and meanings which can be decoded from the dance, from the objects that were part of the initiation rite, and from the parallelism and rich allegory of verses. These transpositions operate at different levels until they converge upon the existential facts of birth and death. In the new millennium and under the influence of a Catholic charismatic movement, however, Ambonwari broke off their relationships with spirits, abandoned the men's houses and stopped talking about male initiation ritual. Along with other traditional song‐dances the crocodile song‐dance has been taken over by the song‐dances of the Holy Spirit. These changes in social and cultural perspectives, which are still taking place, are at the same time products and producers of the changes in their relationship to ‘space’ and ‘time’ which are at the same time changes in visual and auditory perception and expression of their life‐world. All these changes should not be seen merely in some abstract or symbolic terms but as tangible processes generated by people's action.     

Embodied negotiations: identity,space and livelihood after trade zones in the Dominican Republic

In this article, I analyze socio-spatial processes of subject-making at the center of the restructuring of export industries. To do so, I develop the concept of ‘embodied negotiations’ to explain the spatial and corporeal experience of trade zone workers reproduced as migrants with the collapse of garment exports in the Dominican Republic. Drawing on ethnographic research, I examine ‘rural return’ as both a livelihood strategy and a discourse shaped by inter-related gender and racial ideologies of labor as well as the uneven transnationalization of rural and urban localities. I show how the negotiation of social position by subjects marked by race, gender and class is always also a negotiation of spatial position in and between localities structured through raced, gendered and class relations. Men's efforts to remain in urban areas as a form of social ‘whitening’ are compared to women's resistance to rural return as an attempt to stay in circulation as paid labor. Overall, I argue that feminist research on global production should be ‘spatialized’ by attending to livelihoods and practices of subject-making that emerge in parallel to export restructuring.     

Geography and Global Change Science: Relationships Necessary,Absent, and Possible

Initiated by geoscientists, the growing debate about the Anthropocene, ‘planetary boundaries’ and global ‘tipping points’ is a significant opportunity for geographers to reconfigure two things: one is the internal relationships among their discipline's many and varied perspectives (topical, philosophical, and methodological) on the real; the other the discipline's actual and perceived contributions to important issues in the wider society. Yet, without concerted effort and struggle, the opportunity is likely to be used in a ‘safe’ and rather predictable way by only a sub‐set of human‐environment geographers. The socio‐environmental challenges of a post‐Holocene world invite old narratives about Geography's holistic intellectual contributions to be reprised in the present. These narratives speak well to many geoscientists, social scientists, and decision‐makers outside Geography. However, they risk perpetuating an emaciated conception of reality wherein Earth systems and social systems are seen as knowable and manageable if the ‘right’ ensemble of expertise is achieved. I argue that we need to get out from under the shadow of these long‐standing narratives. Using suggestive examples, I make the case for forms of inquiry across the human‐physical ‘divide’ that eschew ontological monism and that serve to reveal the many legitimate cognitive, moral, and aesthetic framings of Earth present and future. Geography is unusual in that the potential for these forms of inquiry to become normalised is high compared with other subjects. This potential will only be taken advantage of if certain human‐environment geographers unaccustomed to engaging the world of geoscience and environmental policy change their modus operandi.     

Invisible Children fades away: What it means for the future of youth activism

The global reach of Invisible Children's viral video KONY 2012 supposedly established the efficacy of ‘spectacular humanitarianism’: sympathetic spectatorship of suffering others through the mediatization, commodification, and depoliticization of Western humanitarian action. However, their ‘brand’ of activism ultimately proved unsustainable, as Invisible Children announced in late 2014 that it was phasing out operations. Here I consider how Invisible Children, as a quintessential spectacular humanitarian movement, has shaped youth activists' subjectivities in the global North. Drawing on activism, media, and humanitarian studies critiques, as well as interviews with recent Invisible Children interns, I argue that though Invisible Children's approach can attract and launch young people into social activism, it can also hinder growth beyond the problematic confines of a spectacular humanitarian approach which reproduces, rather than transforms, global power relations. However, young activists can and do go on to cultivate a more critical and self‐reflexive approach to global social activism.     

Seeing into hearts and minds: Part 1. The Pentagon's quest for a ‘social radar’ (Respond to this article at https://www.therai.org.uk/publications/anthropology-today/debate)

In this two‐part article, explored are the many funded programmes by which security agencies and private companies mine ‘big data’ and attempt to measure the sociocultural and psychological states of whole populations. How is failure or success measured? What kinds of new institutions/practices might these give rise to? Part 1 ‘The Pentagon's quest for a “social radar”’, published in this issue, comes to terms with today's many sociocultural modelling and forecasting efforts, looks in detail at one company in particular, and ends up reviewing the role of anthropologists in their development and critique. Part 2 ‘“Big data”, algorithms, and computational counterinsurgency’, to be published in a future issue, will analyze the rise of ‘predictive policing’ and its Pentagon connections, reviews two programmes, and poses these in the context of scientists' concerns over artificial intelligence and long‐term human survival.     

Third Wave Evangelism and the Politics of the Global in Papua New Guinea: Spiritual Warfare and the Recreation of Place in Telefolmin

Third Wave pentecostalist theology envisages a global struggle against satanic forces as ‘spiritual warfare.’ Here I examine an instance of spiritual warfare that targeted the village of Telefolip as part of a national campaign. Embracing evangelical doctrines of the dependence of ‘physical development’ on ‘spiritual development,’ villagers burned ancestral relics and purport to have found ‘uranium gas’ on the site of a former spirit house. This discovery is held to be full of promise for the future: as a valuable (if imaginary) resource in Israel's struggles, uranium gas offers villagers wealth and a means of asserting local centrality in global terms. I conclude by arguing that an understanding of the conjunction of spiritual warfare's aims with villagers' hopes for a place in the world beyond the village is crucial to analyzing the dynamics of pentecostalist world‐breaking and world‐making.