From Head‐hunter to Organ‐thief: Verisimilitude,Doubt, and Plausible Worlds in Indonesia and Beyond

In the last few years, occult head‐hunters – elusive figures that have haunted communities and the public imagination in Indonesia since at least colonial times – appear to have adopted a novel and troubling tactic. Instead of decapitating their victims and using the heads in construction rituals as they are said to have conventionally done, head‐hunters are now allegedly harvesting their victims’ organs to sell them on the global market of body parts. Based on a comparison of ethnographic material from North Maluku, a province in the eastern part of Indonesia, and news reports in regional and national papers, I trace how accounts about headhunting have morphed with narratives about organ theft. I argue that this plasticity is not a merely a change in symbolic ideas of the occult that reflects changing political and economic realities. Rather, I propose that their turn to organ theft enrols head‐hunters in a contemporary and global ‘travelling package’ that includes and entangles organ trafficking practices, media accounts, political imaginaries, and social anxieties within the same field of reality and possibility, a field of verisimilitude in which fiction and fact, rumour and reality, are fundamentally blurred. The article proposes a ‘more‐than‐representational’ approach to the organ‐stealing head‐hunter that sees him not just as a representation of particular political and historical circumstances but as a co‐producer of these circumstances, of particular political worlds and their attendant scales of anxiety. This approach, I argue, challenges the epistemological distinction between symbolic representation and political reality that informed (but also incommoded) the analyses of headhunting rumours in the 1980s and 1990s – and that continues to inform anthropological analyses of ‘the occult’ more generally.     

The Declaration of Independence: A Global History

Twenty years after the publication of John MacKenzie's Empire of Nature, his characterisation of sport hunting tourism as a symbol of elite and imperial privilege remains strong. Using the example of two white hunters from New Zealand and their trip to Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) in 1926, this article elaborates upon MacKenzie's brief mention of hunters in Africa from cultures other than Britain. In particular, the article argues that ‘home’ hunting cultures—in this case of New Zealand—need to be considered thoroughly when examining meanings of hunting tourism, and, second, that hunting trips could serve a range of purposes beyond the notion of reinforcing colonial rule.     

Arctic trophy hunters,tourism and masculinities, 1827–1914

Trophy hunting in the Arctic happened in an intersection between tourism, expeditions and hunting. This study contributes to a discrete history of masculinity within the context of trophy hunting organized from North Norway and to a broader understanding of Arctic masculinity. As trophy-hunting expeditions are primarily a male, even masculinist, practice, an analysis from a gender perspective is unavoidable. By taking an empirical approach I investigate performances of masculinity in written accounts of Arctic trophy-hunting expeditions from 1827–1914. The use of masculinity as a pivot demonstrates that a modification of the prevailing perception of Arctic masculinity is necessary. While the general understanding is dominated by an emphasis on physical strength, roughness, ingenuity, and self-realization, qualities connected to traditional knowledge of trappers, sailors and explorers, my analysis shows that trophy hunting introduced aristocratic ideals such as gentlemen’s sport, self-discipline, hunting morals, care for nature and knowledge to their home communities. Trophy hunting made possible performances of different forms of masculinity, not only the conquest and mastery of nature, but also the interest in and care for nature. Women accompanied as family members and hunters, and took part in the hunt more than has been commonly noted.     

乡村社区可持续性研究进展与展望

伴随着全球气候变化和粮食危机出现,乡村地区成为可持续性转型研究的新焦点。乡村社区可持续性是可持续发展研究的重要领域,对促进我国乡村振兴、城乡融合和可持续发展具有重大意义。根据世界可持续发展历程,结合国内外研究文献分析,乡村社区可持续研究可以划分为起步、拓展和逐步深化三大阶段。可持续性、脆弱性、韧性是可持续发展理念下演变的不同研究主题,是当前城乡发展研究的三大热点议题。乡村发展多功能、多维度、多主体等趋势下,乡村社区可持续性包含社区生态、社区产业、社区空间、社区规划、社区治理等多维度实施路径。未来的乡村社区可持续性研究,要重视多维度综合的乡村社区可持续性评定、乡村社区风险识别与监测、乡村社区可持续性转型、乡村社区生活质量与乡村吸引力提升和现代化治理等问题的深入探讨。实现中国乡村社区可持续性,应综合考虑较优越的政治背景、较大的地域环境差异等基本特征与现实问题。     

Prey Choice During the South African Middle Stone Age: Avoiding Dangerous Prey or Maximising Returns?

Scrutinising prey choice allows the testing of hypotheses on whether the hunting capabilities of Middle Stone Age (MSA) people were as sophisticated as those of Later Stone Age hunter–gatherers. I apply an optimal foraging perspective to investigate whether MSA prey choice was constrained by the danger associated with hunting certain species. Here, I study the relative importance of elands, buffalo and suids. Eland was the most attractive prey to hunter–gatherers because it is large and docile. Buffalo and suids are more aggressive. When additional species to eland needed to be exploited, we would expect unsophisticated hunters to prefer the smaller suids over buffalo. If hunting prowess was sufficient to deal with both buffalo and suids, buffalo should be preferred. Due to their size, exploitation of buffalo would be more profitable than exploitation of suids. I show that, taking environmental circumstances into account, buffalo were preferred to suids, suggesting that MSA people were capable, sophisticated hunters.     

The construction of hunting sceneries: Interactions between humans,animals and landscape in the Antofalla valley,Catamarca, Argentina

Through the history of human occupation in the south-central Andes, the interactions between south-American camelids and human populations were essential in the social reproduction, being hunting one of the appropriation modes of greater long term. In this sense, the way in which encounters between hunters and their preys were materialized becomes a relevant subject in order to understand these interactions. That is why in this paper I pretend to show the way in which the landscape were constructed where the encounters between hunters and their preys were given. For this, I shall focus in the information obtained from the intensive and systematic survey developed in the Antofalla valley, located in the Antofagasta de la Sierra Department, Catamarca Province, Argentina. This information has allowed me to identify a series of structures build with the aim of propitiate the encounter of herds by means of anticipating the movements of the animals, searching to obtain near and fixed targets in order to materialize the attack.     

新疆墨玉县农村劳动力转移调查及动力机制研究

近年来,南疆少数民族农村劳动力转移的规模不断扩大,外出务工收入成为当地农民收入的主要来源之一。本文在分析墨玉县农村劳动力转移现状的基础上根据2007年的抽样调查数据和2002年以来墨玉县经济社会发展的相关数据,采用多层次多因素灰色关联分析和Logistic回归分析,从宏观和微观两个层面上探讨劳动力转移的动力机制。宏观层面上,农村基本经济指标与劳动力转移的关系密切;微观层面影响农村劳动力转移的驱动力按强弱依次为家庭人口数、是否为低收入户、在读学生数、户均可耕地面积等。最后得出结论,新疆少数民族农村劳动力转移的主要驱动力来自农村内部,来自城镇的拉力作用不明显,而受自然条件、经济发展水平和民族观念等因素的影响,劳动力转移的摩擦力较大。     

The effects of ageing and urbanisation on China’s future rural and urban populations

This paper estimates China’s future population and labour force by developing a novel forecasting model for population. It combines information about age-specific parameters on fertility and mortality for both rural and urban areas using information about rural–urban migration and the transformation of rural areas into urban ones. This model takes into account the effects of urbanisation on changes in the age structure of the Chinese population; and provides separate projections on the rural and urban populations. Our findings show that (i) the shares of people aged 65 and over, in China’s rural and urban populations, will double between 2010 and 2030; this implies that the ageing problem in rural areas will continue to be more serious than in urban areas; (ii) the rural labour force will shrink by 45 per cent, between 2010 and 2030, while the urban labour force will grow by 34 per cent; and (iii) China’s urbanisation rate will increase to 71 per cent by 2030.     

Does Diversification Improve Livelihoods? Pastoral Households in Xinjiang,China

Diversification is routinely promoted to improve poor rural peoples’ livelihoods. However, policy recommendations for livelihood diversification based on evidence from crop‐cultivating sedentary rural societies may not work for mobile pastoral communities, where socio‐ecological conditions predetermine livestock herding as the preferred livelihood strategy. Using survey and semi‐structured interview data collected from 159 households in the Altay and Tianshan Mountains of Xinjiang, China, this study applies cluster analysis to identify six distinct groups based on livelihood strategies: pastoralists, agropastoralists, crop farmers, wage labourers, hired herders and mixed smallholders. Although pastoralism is the least diverse of these in terms of sources of income, it is significantly more diverse in ecological dimensions such as spatial movement, land use pattern and livestock portfolio. Patterns of livelihood diversification and their relationship with household incomes indicate that pastoralism, although preferred, is unattainable for 55 per cent of households given their meagre asset endowments and the pressure of government policies toward sedentarization. The results strongly suggest that livelihood diversification does not improve welfare for pastoral households. Future development interventions should promote policies that enable households to regain flexible access to pastures and should aim to correct the imbalance of opportunities that exists in northern Xinjiang.     

Quenching the Thirst: The Cost of Water in Fragile Environments

Public policy has often addressed the problems of water supply and sanitation from the supply side to the neglect of demand side aspects in developing countries like India. This policy has not only rendered a large number of projects financially unviable but has also resulted in inadequate coverage of aspects such as population and ecological unsustainability. This article, based on household level information from six villages in a water scarce region of India (Rajasthan state), examines inter- and intra-village variations in water use and the costs, direct and indirect, involved in obtaining water. It also estimates households' willingness and ability to pay for water, using the contingent valuation method (CVM). Using qualitative as well as quantitative methods, it is argued that it is the failure of government policy and of institutions which has led to severe water shortages in harsh environments rather than supply or financial bottlenecks per se. While the estimates of price elasticity of water use indicate the feasibility of water pricing in the rural areas, the willingness to pay estimates question the general assumption that rural households are willing to pay 5 per cent of their income/expenditure for water. Various economic and extra economic factors such as household income, low opportunity costs of women and children, and attitudes towards female labour and public goods are vital in influencing the households' willingness to pay for water.     

Understanding Local Leadership in Building the Capacity of Rural Communities in Australia

Current approaches to rural community development in Australia provide for limited government intervention. Such intervention is usually housed within programmes that seek to build the internal capacity of communities to achieve long term socio‐economic sustainability. A fundamental implementation strategy for capacity building has been developing local leadership. The underlying assumption of this approach is that good leadership will result in existing resources being mobilised for a more sustainable function and new resources attracted. What though is good leadership in terms of building the capacity of rural communities to develop sustainable socio‐economic futures? This paper compares the conceptualisation of leadership within rural development policies and leadership training programmes with the nature of local leadership as it exists in on‐ground community building projects. From an in‐depth review of the role and nature of local leadership within six Australian rural communities it was found that local leadership could result in improved adaptive capacity if the leadership is similar in nature to Burn's (1978 ) transformational model of leadership. Within policy, local leadership was most often conceptualised as being similar to this transformational model. However, rural leadership training programmes tended to conceptualise leadership as a top‐down process, similar to Burn's (1978 ) transactional model. While this study of leadership within rural communities revealed that transactional skills, as taught in leadership training programmes, were important for successful project management, such skills did not necessarily result in improved community adaptive capacity. It is suggested that, while transactional leadership can have an important role in influencing the development of rural communities, greater attention needs to be given to developing strategies to support transformational leadership.     

Past and present marine mammal hunting rates and abundances: dugong (Dugong dugon) evidence from Dabangai Bone Mound,Torres Strait

Dugongs (Dugong dugon) are a key food item and a totemic animal with major spiritual significance for Torres Strait Islanders of northeastern Australia. These marine mammals are officially classed vulnerable to extinction which has placed hunters under considerable internal (cultural) and external (bureaucratic) pressure to lower hunting rates dramatically to sustainable levels. But did Torres Strait Islanders hunt dugongs at much lower rates in the pre-colonial past? Excavation of a ritual dugong bone mound on Mabuyag island revealed the remains of 10,000–11,000 dugongs hunted between c. 1600 and c. 1900AD. The translated hunting rate of 33–37 dugongs per year is surprisingly high and challenging as this single site represents one-third of what conservation biologists argue is the current mean sustainable hunting rate for the entire Torres Strait archipelago. These data suggest that dugong abundance was much higher in the pre-colonial past and that current hunting rates are uncharacteristically unsustainable primarily due to an unprecedented dugong population crash and not increased post-contact hunting rates.     

Ageing and Dependency in India

This paper modifies the measurement of dependency and applies it to the Indian situation at the state level. It is generally believed that the aged are a burden on the family and the nation as they do not contribute to the national income. This is not always true. In India: 40 per cent of those aged 60 and over are working, which rises to 61 per cent in the case of males. On the other hand, there are adults (age group 15–59) who are not working and are dependants. In the measurement of dependency, adjustments for these factors are essential. This study employs three measures of dependency, namely (i) old age economic dependency, (ii) adult dependency and (iii) relative dependency. Based on these dependency ratios, inter-state variations and gender differentials in dependencies have been studied. The study shows that relative dependency of the old age population is lower than the adult population, and the opportunity of harvesting the demographic window is being missed in India.     

Does the Centre Hold? Testing Palma's Proposition (A Comment)

This Comment tests empirically the important proposition made by Palma in this journal (Development and Change, 2011) that deciles 5 to 9 of the income distribution across developing economies have been able to secure and defend a stable share (around 50 per cent) of the total available income, so that changes in income inequality are now a matter of struggle between the top 10 per cent and the bottom 40 per cent of the population, ranked by income. The author finds that the proposition does not hold: changes in top 10 per cent shares are matched by changes in the shares of both the other cohorts.     

农村居民闲暇生活特征研究——以湖南省为例

2001年4月至8月抽取湖南省浏阳市、华容县、新宁县、凤凰县和资兴市等五个代表样地的农村居民共1300人(户),对农村居民的闲暇生活和旅游活动进行了详细调查。结果表明,湖南省农村居民闲暇在时间和空间分布上存在一定的规律,闲暇生活也表现出较为显著的特征,总体上休闲方式多样,但闲暇质量不高而且单一,并受经济和区位的影响。旅游活动已渐入农村,并将成为农村居民闲暇的重要组成。     

理性的追求：抗战前浙江农民经营副业管窥

中国农民千百年来的生存之道是＂安全第一＂。抗战前浙江农民以种粮为主业,收入有限而支出庞大,必须寻求副业收入加以平衡。显然副业已成为浙江农民生存的＂安全阀＂,他们根据市场的刺激和机会理性地配置副业资源来寻求最大收益,以保证安全的最大化。但随着三十年代以降影响市场景气指数的各种不利因素的叠加,副业衰落,＂安全阀＂失效,农民生活恶化,农村经济破产。     

Sea bird fowling in southern Patagonia: a contribution to understanding the nomadic round of the Canoeros Indians

As well as providing data on meat yield, avian remains can be expected to give information on seasonality, an important parameter for understanding prehistoric hunting economies. An archaeological survey conducted in the Skyring Sea (Province of Magellan, Chile) between 1992 and 1994 provided bird bone assemblages that have been analysed with this aim in mind, of which 12 are discussed here. Cormorants and steamer ducks constitute 97 per cent of the specimens identified. The proportions of avian remains are compared with the mammals remains, and mostly show a predominance of the former. The status and seasonal distribution of animal resources are discussed in order to understand the motivation for such a specialization on bird hunting, when mammals (Artiodactyls and Pinnipeds) can bring a much higher yield of meat. This nomadic marine economy can best be understood when comparisons are made with other sites from the same cultural area. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Geographic information system‐based evaluation of spatial accessibility to maternal health facilities in Siaya County,Kenya

Maternal mortality is a major problem in middle‐income and low‐income countries, and the availability and accessibility of healthcare facilities offering safe delivery is important in averting maternal deaths. Siaya County, in Kenya, has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country—far more than the national average. This study aimed to evaluate geographic access to health facilities offering delivery services in Siaya County. A mixed‐methods approach incorporating geographic information system analysis and individual data from semi‐structured interviews was used to derive travel time maps to facilities using different travel scenarios: AccessMod5 and ArcGIS were used for these tasks. The derived maps were then linked to georeferenced household survey data in a multilevel logistic regression model in R to predict the probability of expectant women delivering in a health facility. Based on the derived travel times, 26 per cent (13,140) and 67 per cent (32,074) of the estimated 46,332 pregnant women could reach any facility within one and two hours, respectively, while walking with the percentage falling to seven per cent (3,415) and 20 per cent (8,845) when considering referral facilities. Motorised transport significantly increased coverage. The findings revealed that the predicted probability of a pregnant woman delivering in a health facility ranged between 0.14 and 0.86. Significant differences existed in access levels with transportation‐based interventions significantly increasing coverage. The derived maps can help health policy planners identify underserved areas and monitor future reductions in inequalities. This work has theoretical implications for conceptualising healthcare accessibility besides advancing the literature on mixed methodologies.     

Explaining perceptions of a technological environmental hazard using comparative analysis

This study addresses one of the main research problems in the area of environmental hazard risk—to explain why perception of threat from the same hazard varies between groups. We argue that the cultural theory of risk, explicitly place-contingent ways of life and worldviews that support those ways of life, goes a long way towards explaining risk perception differences in the communities of Kinuso, Fort Assiniboine and Barrhead Alberta. Fifty-five in-depth interviews were conducted within these communities; three of the four communities are closest to the Alberta Special (hazardous) Waste Treatment Facility. A regional donut pattern of interviewee concern is partially explained as differential attachment to ways of life like farming, tourism and hunting for the concerned and amenity-proximate rural living for the unconcerned. These relationships are further supported by worldviews like distrust and sensitivity to equity for the concerned and the price of progress for the unconcerned. Though this study is not about siting process per se, detailed conversations about the siting process indicate that the perceptions of risk (as concern) in the operational phase of this hazard were solidified early on and are likely difficult to change.     

延安市农民收入可持续增长机制探析

近年来,延安市农民人均纯收入一直低于全国平均水平,城乡居民收入差距也不断扩大。为改变这一局面,延安市政府实施了生态移民工程,进行了农业产业结构调整。这些措施在一定程度上改善了农民的生活水平,但是,制约农民收入增长的根本性障碍仍然存在。只有促进高附加值农业的可持续发展、鼓励农村剩余劳动力的外出就业和使农村非农产业实现较快发展,才能建立起农民收入的可持续增长机制。