Agnes C.P. Watt and Melanesian Personhood

Abstract

Analyses of Melanesian personhood recently have taken the person to be ‘dividual’, partible or fractal – different in significant ways from the Western monadic, coherent and unitary individual. Melanesian persons, however, have experienced global forces for more than two hundred years, and these encounters certainly modified personal practice. Published letters of Agnes C.P. Watt – who with husband William served as a Presbyterian missionary at Kwamera and Port Resolution, Tanna (New Hebrides, today Vanuatu), from 1869 to her death in 1894 – offer insight into Islander personhood during the first decades of foreign settlement of that island. Christian missionisation, spreading mobility, commodity exchange and increasing numbers of Western persons themselves were reworking Tannese partible, relational personhood. Agnes's dissenting and communitarian womanhood complicated her own Victorian personhood. In particular, her letters document personal innovations in naming practice, mobility, respect, character building and spirituality.     

Pain,Personhood and the Collective: Dalit Life Narratives

Dalit life narratives have gained prominence in the last two decades in line with the increasing visibility of Dalits in the Indian public sphere and their vociferous demands for a more just political and social order. This can be productively situated not just in the contemporary global context of the proliferation of narratives and testimonios of human rights violations in other parts of the world, but also in the context of an emerging conversation on the nature of “Dalit personhood” in the Indian public sphere, a category infinitely more complex than legal subjectivity and abstract citizenship. The Dalit narratives analysed here are rich illustrations of this double movement: they witness on behalf of a suffering community and keep alive the singular, non-universal nature of Dalit pain through an aesthetic that is not wholly translatable into the lexicon of rights and justice. By invoking the historical and rhetorical force of two prose fictional genres, the Bildungsroman and the picaresque, the analysis has sought to recast the testimonio less as a proxy for the legal witnessing and amelioration of Dalit pain than as a rich and expressive medium of Dalit personhood. This way of reading Dalit lives accords India's ex-untouchables a stature beyond that of victims at the mercy of the capricious sentimentality of upper-caste solidarity.     

Hospitality workers and the relational spaces of labor (im)mobility

ABSTRACT

Building on the recent interest among labor geographers for workers’ ability to strategize around their mobility, and tourism researchers’ longstanding examination of mobile tourism workers, this paper explores the mobility agency of differently positioned hospitality workers. The findings suggest that workers are not always ‘strategic’ in relation to labor mobility, and that labor mobility and career paths must be recognized as fragmented, happenstance and erratic. Furthermore, this article argues for an approach to the study of mobile tourism workers that takes the relational as well as temporal aspects into account. This endeavor is in particular guided by the notion of stories-so-far and the understanding of people as both being and becoming. The empirical basis of this paper consists of 22 interviews with hospitality workers in four hotel workplaces in Sweden; the luxury city hotel, the suburban chain hotel, the city chain hotel and the seasonal hotel. Ultimately, I suggest that the multifaceted complex of considerations which workers negotiate, could be conceptualized as the relational spaces of labor (im)mobility.     

Seeking Personhood: Anthropological Accounts and Local Concepts in Mount Hagen,Papua New Guinea

Terms such as person, self, and individual have been deployed with varying success either as a set or separately to encompass cross-cultural contexts of human action and experience. The difficulties involved in using these terms as tools of cross-cultural analysis suggest that a concentration on indigenous terms and their applications is preferable. In the Mount Hagen area of Papua New Guinea the most significant organizing concept in this domain is that of noman, variously glossed as mind, consciousness, intention, will, social sentiment, and understanding. The idea of the noman is thus an ontology in and of action that engages personhood with history and biography in contemporary lives among the Hagen or Melpa people. The noman is seen as in a continuous process of differentiation and change over a lifetime, and it encompasses ideas of process, incompletion/completion, relationality, individuality, character, creativity, and identity. Two different life-history narratives are used to show how people seek their personhood over time. We interpret their narratives as stories of how they attempt to achieve ‘a strong noman’. They monitor their own successes and failures in contexts of change and turbulence in their lives with reference to their overall wishes and ideals, and this corresponds to an assessment of the state of their noman.     

Oxygen Isotopes and Human Residential Mobility in Central Western Argentina

Stable oxygen isotopes (δ¹⁸O) from human bone apatite from central western Argentina (30º–37ºS latitude) were analysed to understand changes in human residential mobility during the Late Holocene. This region contains evidence for the use of domesticated plants over the last 2000 years (Zea mays, Cucurbita sp. and Phaseolus sp., among others), and previous models of prehistoric occupation have suggested a distinct change in mobility and population movement associated with their incorporation. The importance of these domesticates also seems to have varied geographically, being greater in the northern part of the region and declining as one moves south toward the limit with Patagonia. Expectations about patterns of residential mobility have varied accordingly. To better evaluate these models, we analysed carbonate δ¹⁸O from the bone apatite of 71 individuals with radiocarbon dates spanning the last 6000 years. Given the existing evidence, we expected to see temporal and geographic differences in their oxygen isotope values associated with changes in residential mobility and the incorporation of different sources of drinking water available within the region. These expectations were not met. Significant variations were seen across all samples compared, both temporal and geographic, with no discernible differences among them. The data suggest that populations throughout the area were all highly mobile, and that this did not change with the incorporation of domesticates. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Proust: identity,time and the postmodern condition

The self as the identification of the self with itself is a product of the dynamic transformation of European culture beginning in the Renaissance. The self, or absolute ego, was an outgrowth of the consciously rationalist spirit. However, modernity's Faustian drive was conscious paradoxically without being self conscious of itself or its cultural creations. Modernism deconstructed the values and assumptions of modernity. A casualty was the problematization of the self that had been banished and/or erased by formalism, structuralism and deconstruction.

The modernist self erases the absolute ego reconstructing it with a rich, complex, narrative idea of a self‐conscious relational self encompassing memory, repression, autobiography and history.

This paper explores the modernist conception of self in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Proust demolishes the absolute ego in favor of the paradoxical self which knows itself only in relation to otherness actualized in persons and culture in the sacred time of existence.     

Substitute or addition to hypermobile lifestyles? Second home mobility and Finnish CO2 emissions

Tourism produces an increasing share in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These are mostly derived from transport emissions, and long-haul air travel in particular. Short-haul domestic tourism is believed by some to be a potential substitute for long-haul tourism. Using the example of Finland this paper examines the extent to which domestic second home tourism can substitute for other leisure trips and therefore contribute to reductions of travel-generated GHG emissions. Survey data are used to evaluate the CO₂ emissions caused by travel to domestic second homes, and to create statistical models that verify if the owners of domestic second homes travel to other leisure destinations less frequently than others, and if they cause less emissions by their leisure mobility than others with comparable economic and demographic background. We find that although the owners and users of domestic second homes travel for other leisure purposes less frequently than others, this does not mean their leisure mobility generates less emissions. Overall, owners of second homes produce significantly more CO₂ by their leisure mobility than non-owners. The use of second homes does not seem to be a substitute for high emission long-haul travels, but rather a part of an overall highly mobile leisure lifestyle. It is therefore necessary to better understand and influence the entire range of individual mobility behaviours in order to reduce travel-related GHG emissions.     

Being Mesolithic in Life and Death

Fifty years ago, approaches to Mesolithic identity were limited to ideas of ‘Man the Hunter’ and ‘Woman the Gatherer’, while evidence of non-normative practice was ascribed to ‘shamans’ and to ‘ritual’, and that was that. As post-processual critiques have touched Mesolithic studies, however, this has changed. In the first decade of the 21st century a strong body of work on Mesolithic identity in life, as well as death, has enabled us to think beyond modern Western categories to interpret identity in the Mesolithic. These studies have addressed the nature of personhood and relational identities, the body, and the relationship between human and other-than-human persons. Our paper reviews these changing approaches, offering a series of case studies from a range of different sites that illustrate how identity is formed and transformed through engagements with landscapes, materials, and both living and dead persons. These are then developed to advocate an assemblage approach to identity in the Mesolithic.     

Between crime and colony: interrogating (im)mobilities aboard the convict ship

Recent literature in carceral geography has attended to the importance of mobilities in interrogating the experience and control of spaces of imprisonment, detention and confinement. Scholars have explored the paradoxical nature of incarcerated experience as individuals oscillate between moments of fixity and motion as they are transported to/from carceral environments. This paper draws upon the convict ship – an example yet to gain attention within these emerging discussions – which is both an exemplar of this paradox and a lens through which to complicate understandings of carceral (im)mobilities. The ship is a space of macro-movement from point A to B, whilst simultaneously a site of apparent confinement for those aboard who are unable to move beyond its physical parameters. Yet, we contend that all manner of mobilities permeate the internal space of the ship. Accordingly, we challenge the binary thinking that separates moments of fixity from motion and explore the constituent parts that shape movement. In paying attention to movements in motion on the ship, we argue that studies of carceral mobility must attend to both methods of moving in the space between points A and B; as micro, embodied and intimate (im)mobilities are also played out within large-scale regimes of movement.     

Singing about the Land among the Biangai

This paper examines Biangai (Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea) expressions and transformations of environmental imaginaries through women's mourning songs (yongo ingi) and the songs of string bands. Biangai personhood, once intimately connected to garden lands and trees, hunting and forest paths, is increasingly influenced by global capitalism. Through their songs, they betray an increased tension between acting as an individual person and acting in terms of kin based relationality. While yongo ingi still memorialize the social spaces and land rights of the deceased, they also express conflicts in Biangai engagement with gold mining. Biangai string bands emerged just prior to Papua New Guinea's Independence in 1975, with the first band recording and releasing a national cassette in 1982. Dominated by young men, they depict the intersection of local music with a Melanesian modernity composed of compensation payments, gold mining, love, travel, and marketing. Both yongo ingi and string bands inform each other and provide insight into how local music engages images of both global economy and global ecology. By examining the uses, meanings, and performative contexts of these songs, this paper contributes to our understanding of the role of such expressive forms in connecting persons and their environment.     

Children's interdependent mobility: compositions,collaborations and compromises

This paper discusses findings from Australian research that used a qualitative and participatory methods approach to understand how children develop and negotiate their everyday mobility. Children's mobility negotiations are discussed in reference to interactions with parents, peers and places; journeys in relation to their multi-modality, compositionality and temporality; and mobility formations in terms of ‘companionship’ – travel companions, companion devices and ambient companions. Children's mobility is characterised by interdependencies that both enable and configure this mobility. Three themes – compositions, collaborations and compromises – are used to detail and describe some of the ways these interdependencies take shape and unfold.     

‘No One Knows What He is Until He is Told’: Audience and Personhood in a Colonial African Diary

ABSTRACT

This article explores questions of audience and personhood in the diary of Akinpelu Obisesan, a Yoruba man who lived in colonial Nigeria. In particular, it examines how Obisesan wrote between the genres of autobiography and biography so as to generate a sphere for self-fashioning in the colonial context. After introducing Obisesan and exploring briefly the relationship between autobiography, diary writing and the self, I show how Obisesan’s diary narrated a deeply relational form of personhood, which he both generated as a writer and consumed as a reader. The article analyses this narrative, exploring how Obisesan constituted various real and imagined audiences for his diary, while simultaneously claiming his privacy and ‘archiving himself’ into a tin trunk. In the final section of the article, I present a close reading of sections of the 1927 diary, to show how, when writing his diary, Obisesan projected multiple audiences into his text. He used these audiences as a foil for enhancing his own sense of self, thus constituting his personhood and legitimating his precarious social position in colonial society.     

Embodiment,linguistics, space: American Sign Language meets geography

ABSTRACT

The relational turn in geography has led to an understanding of space and place as actively produced agents in people’s everyday lives. Geographers have also long recognized the importance of language in understanding the social and relational nature of space. The study of American Sign Language (ASL) presents a unique opportunity to examine how language use and language creation influence the production of linguistic space. For users of ASL, space is incredibly significant. Because of the visual and spatial nature of ASL, the space surrounding a signer’s body is important not only for the signer to communicate, but also for others involved in the conversation to participate. Environments created during conversations in ASL reflect the cultural and linguistic perception of the American Deaf community. By taking a critical perspective on the production of space, it will be shown that those who use ASL, through the medium of bodily performance, create linguistic, and communication spaces that are dynamic and visual. The embodied language of ASL and the Deaf community is a perspective geographers have yet to address.     

Bridewealth a Pardon: New Relationships and Restoration of Good Daughters

Bridewealth is recognized as vital in the reproduction and reconfiguration of Pacific environments and women play an integral role in this process. In contemporary Papua New Guinea (PNG), bridewealth is reconfigured by kin to acknowledge the considered actions of women as they enter into relationships with men. This paper will explore how women's choices impact and influence their experience of these exchanges and determine the role of women and their kin as they undertake these practices. Here I aim to understand how the social relatedness that frames bridewealth exchanges enables the practices of bridewealth to be used as a tool for recognition of women's choices, autonomy and personhood. Although women enter into relationships without initial kin approval, bridewealth practices converge ultimately with a women's autonomous choice of husband. Wardlow suggests (2006:86) 'bridewealth confers value and dignity on female gender', and going beyond her observation, I show that bridewealth has been useful in achieving this in regard to managing and supporting social, kin and affinal relationships. This article will explore two cases, to identify what each tells us about women's ability to act in ways that are beneficial to them and important to kin. I show how moral evaluations frame (pasin) and recognize (luksave) kin and social relationships that ultimately constitute their personhood.     

The class route to nationhood: China,Vietnam, Norway,Cyprus – and France*

ABSTRACT. This essay explores the proposition that China and Vietnam represent a fourth class route to modern nationhood, in addition to the ethnic (German), civic (French) and plural (American) routes. Nation‐states emerging along the class route are characterised by an exclusive membership based on social class rather than just ethnicity, living under the same laws or participation in liberation from foreign rule. The essay compares China's and Vietnam's class‐based nationalism with the more inclusive labour movement nationalisms of Norway and Cyprus. Then it explains how the class route differs from the French civic route. In the conclusion, the author concedes that the Chinese and Vietnamese class route is perhaps a detour rather than a route of its own, since it leads to inevitable tension between the divisive history of how the nation was formed and the need of its later leaders to include and represent the same social classes that were originally excluded. These leaders and their national storytellers are forced to undertake a redefinition of the national self as ethnic, civic and/or plural in an attempt to recreate national legitimacy, often in competition with more radically nationalist opposition groups.     

Black Geographies of Respite: Relief,Recuperation, and Resonance at Florida A&M University

In this article, I argue that places of respite provide relief from the burdens of oppressive articulations and experiences of society and space and are produced through three general practices: relief as a practice that mitigates psychological and physical burdens of oppression; recuperation as a form of (self-)care that can help heal harms; and affirmative resonance as a practice of counter-storytelling that challenges hegemonic social narratives and internalises affirmative narratives for marginalised peoples. Through a case study with members of the Marching 100 at Florida A&M University (FAMU), I demonstrate how these relational practices produce FAMU as a multiscalar place of respite for black students. Finally, I claim that places of respite, produced through a black sense of place, offer scholars interested in affirmative black geographies an ontological object produced by (and productive of) visions and practices of black life and produced for the celebration and protection of black lives.     

Transition Urbanism and the Contested Politics of Ethical Place Making

Abstract: This paper explores the contested construction of more relational urban imaginaries within a movement that is simultaneously committed to enhanced systems of care for distant places/others, and intensified regimes of (re)localisation. Transition Culture initiatives explore ‘how to prepare for a carbon constrained, energy lean world’ and stem from a concern for a post peak‐oil global future. While the radical political openness of Transition Culture is in keeping with the vision of a more diverse polity imagined by advocates of relational space (for instance Amin, 2004), we argue that this openness is predicated upon an apolitical pragmatism that masks latent tensions between an environmentally benign localism and an ethics of care at‐a‐distance. If a transitional ethics of space occupies the uncertain ground between a relational and territorial geographical imagination, the Transition Culture movement provides a rich context within which to explore the ethical conundrums that stem from different tactics of place‐making.     

Models of disability,ideas of justice,and the challenge of full participation

The definitions of disability adopted in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) necessitate an important change in the way disability is assessed and introduce a new idea of justice in relation to persons with disabilities. The article starts by reviewing the various ‘models of disability’ prevailing in the past and the respective ideas of justice underlying them. The charity model, for instance, was rooted in ideas of divine justice and human beneficence, where care for the disabled led in practice to their being segregated from the rest of society, while the medical model saw justice in terms of treatments or compensations for individual pathologies rather than of positive enablement for active living. The CRPD overturns these models and the related conceptions of justice by emphasising society's obligations towards persons with disabilities and, above all, their human right to full inclusion and participation in society. The key concepts are empowerment and capability. In Italy these concepts and this new conception of justice have started to be applied by the Osservatorio nazionale sulla condizione delle persone con disabilità, the body created to monitor the effective application of the CRPD in Italy, and they are included in the two-year action programme on disability, approved by the Italian government in October 2013.     

Philosophy,Eros, Judaism

Abstract

A careful reading of Caritas in Veritate shows it to be framed and permeated by two principles. The first is that human persons in their consciences and deeds are the principal agents of economic and political life, whether directly in interpersonal relations or mediated through their work in and for institutions. The second is that human persons as citizens are best prepared to promote “integral human development” and “the common good” when they are urged on by charity or love that is lived in truth. In these respects Caritas in Veritate is a clear continuation of the line of thought that Benedict developed in his earlier encyclicals Deus Caritas Est and Spe Salvi, and before that in his theological writings as Joseph Ratzinger. Benedict's work thus underscores the need modern societies and political communities have for charity, and thus for faith and for hope. We explicate this aspect of Benedict's political vision throughout this essay, anticipating and beginning to respond to some objections to the thesis that politics even in a secular age requires theological virtues to flourish.     

Children, ‘healthy’ food,school and family: the ‘[n]ot really’ outcome of school food messages

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on a multi-method study with 50 families in Victoria, Australia. Primary school children were asked about food knowledge from school and whether they felt motivated to bring knowledge home. Generally, children and parents felt school food messages are unclear, contradictory and not relevant to them and this reduced the likelihood of messages coming home from school. We identify a critical difference in how families thought about healthy eating and food practices at home and the framework of school messages. Families focused on children’s eating in a pragmatic way, infused with nurturance as well as concern. We argue their practices can be viewed as a form of relational consumption (Lindsay and Maher 2013. Consuming Families: Buying, Making, Producing Family Life in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Routledge.) where food is part of the everyday exchange of love and care. A disjunction exists between familial relational approaches and the regulatory framework of school food messages that impacts how messages move between these spaces. Attention to relational aspects of food consumption at school might allow for a more valuable exchange between family and schools that supports family endeavours to feed children well.