Kabit,Rimbu and Opa: Modalities of Anganen Sacrifice1

ABSTRACT At the time of colonisation and missionisation that quickly saw their abandonment, the Anganen practised two male exclusive cults in which animals were sacrificed in the hope of influencing powerful spirits. One cult, kabit, was only staged to overcome serious affliction thought to be sent by the spirits to individuals of subclans or women married into them. That is, it was a reaction to spirit power. The other cult, rimbu, while practised in response to widespread problems of humans, pigs and gardens, was also undertaken in the hope of increased health and productivity, and thus a possible action as well as a reaction. The paper describes and compares the cults. One major theme is male empowerment, as rimbu not only underwrites male power over others, it is also about empowerment to act on the world as well. While obviously radically different in many respects, at least in local consciousness, the adoption of opa, the giving of money, produce and labour to the church, has resonance with the pre‐colonial situation. Mostly it is undertaken to please what the Anganen see as a vengeful God based on Old Testament stories. However, on occasions such as the lead up to the yasolu pork distribution, the most prestigious event in Anganen, big men may ostentatiously present large gifts of money to missionaries or men may purchase cattle to slaughter, cook and distribute their meat on the opening of new churches. Both instances are beyond emulation by most in the community and, like rimbu may be, venues for male empowerment.     

Transformations in an early agricultural society: Feasting in the southern Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic

Feasting is a powerful and transformative phenomenon. Societies are both integrated and differentiated through feasting; identities are both enacted and altered; and ideologies are inculcated. This paper uses ethnographic data to establish criteria for the archaeological recognition of prehistoric feasting. These criteria are then used to assess the changing evidence for feasting across the southern Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic (ca. 10,200–7500 BP/9700–6250 cal BC), with the aim of shedding light on changes in social organization across the transition to agriculture.During most of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, the extent and scale of feasting expanded as sociopolitical complexity increased. Towards the end of the period, however, populations dispersed and feasting probably declined. Feasts were simultaneously integrative and competitive, ameliorating scalar stress even as they offered opportunities for individual or household competition. Feasts may also have played a key role in conferring ideological prominence on Neolithic cattle, and perhaps even contributed to their adoption as domesticates.     

Dangerous Visions: the Cassowary as Good to Think and Good to Remember among the Anganen

The cassowary, although no longer a popular animal for possession or gift exchange in contemporary Anganen, is good to think in the Lévi-Straussian sense and good to remember. Its excessive violence may stand for the violence of which men are capable. This is the case for inter-group warfare. It also refers to intra-community hostilities, not sharing cassowary meat being a frequent cause for clan fission and an agonistic exchange called rawa where those conceptualised as brothers engage in the competitive slaughter of, ideally, cassowaries. The article primarily concerns rawa and its extraordinary character. It is typified by paradox and danger despite the displacement of anger from direct attacks on humans to the slaughter of animals. Rawa protagonists throw blood and uncleaned entrails at each other while shouting the vilest of insults in the hope the opponent will eventually not respond and lose the contest. However, while escalation of a dispute to the level of rawa is evidence of failed mediation, this competitive exchange establishes the condition for eventual intervention and, via a communal feast of the slaughtered animals, the resumption of strong community relations, including those between the former protagonists. The final ethnographic section focuses on the fact that warfare and rawa were prohibited by the Australian Administration. Anganen men feel they were disenfranchised by the Administration, in part because they were denied access to the culturally lauded male pursuits of being warriors and rawa men. As such, that cassowaries are thought to have been much more popular in the past is central to my claim they are good to remember.     

Loving Friends: Surviving Widowhood in Late Medieval Westminster

Although medieval moralists routinely warned against women socialising with either men or women, this article argues that friendships were instrumental in helping women survive widowhood. In medieval Europe, widowhood was frequently a time of vulnerability and poverty. Unscrupulous businessmen and other opportunists often preyed upon widows. Looking at the different ways men and women in Westminster made their wills and analysing those chosen to administer them reveals that widows frequently turned to the husbands of their friends to execute their wills and oversee their estates.     

Remembrance of Things Passed: Memory,Body and the Politics of Feasting in New Ireland,Papua New Guinea1

This paper explores the connection between body and memory for the people of the Lelet Plateau of central New Ireland. Through an examination of the processes by which memories of mortuary feasts are created and circulated, I draw attention to the embodied nature of memory as a central facet in the politics of feasting. The approach taken here differs from other prevailing approaches to the body and memory in its exploration of the ways in which memories are created through and within the body, rather than seeing the body, or things representing the body, as signs that are utilised for remembering. In particular, I examine the forms of sorcery which target the participants' bodies, making them experience diarrhoea as a mnemonic process. It is through this that a significant memory of the feast is created, one which stands out notably from numerous other memories, and is the means by which remembrance of the event is transformed into fame for the host.     

Bamboo: Close Friends of Moinba And Lhoba Peoples

Medog,whichmeansflowerpetalsinTibetan.derivesitsnamefromTibetanBuddhistswhorefertothismysteriouspartoftheworldasthelotus-flowerholyland.Surroundedbysnowymountainsonthreesides,MedogisbisectedbytheYarlungZangboRiver,alongwhichwarmcurrentsfromtheBengalGulf…     

友党不友:1947年国民政府改组之政党杯葛

1946年底国民党召开"制宪国大"后,不顾中共与民盟的抵制,于1947年拉拢民社党与青年党两"友党"进行政府改组,组成多党联合执政。民、青两党试图利用此次机会积极参与政治。青年党要求甚多,民社党意见分歧。蒋介石面对政党杯葛,为迅速完成政府改组,被迫多方沟通,妥协退让。国民党虽完成了改组,并继续占据政府主体地位,却不得不分身处理复杂的政党关系。政府改组加剧了国民党内外政党纷争,政局更为不稳,国民党政府进一步走向虚弱。     

Beyond identifying elites: Feasting as a means to understand early Middle Formative society on the Pacific Coast of Mexico

Feasts provide a public forum where social statuses can be affirmed or challenged among pre-state societies. Documenting feasting behavior thus provides insight into the construction of prehistoric political power. This paper presents expected material patterns of feasting by focusing on intra-site variability in food preparation, presentation, and consumption. Expectations are evaluated by comparing ceramic, ground stone, obsidian, and faunal data recovered from Conchas phase (900–800 BCE) elite and village midden deposits at Cuauhtémoc in the Soconusco region of southern Mexico. I argue that elite feasting at Cuauhtémoc created political cohesion between elite and non-elite segments of society during the Conchas phase as a new polity emerged that was more socially stratified and politically hierarchical than anything previously known in the region.     

The Friends and Family Plan: Contact with Gays and Support for Gay Rights

According to both the contact hypothesis and gay rights advocates, coming out to straight friends and family members should increase acceptance of homosexuality and support for gay rights. If lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (LGBs) come out primarily to people they expect to be accepting, however, the repeated finding that people who know LGBs are more likely to support gay rights could be overstating the impact of coming out. Using individual‐level data from 27 national surveys, I find that similar variables predict both knowing LGBs and supporting gay rights, but in different ways. Even after controlling for those demographic, religious, and political variables—and sometimes also for beliefs about whether some people are born gay and whether homosexuality is immoral—people who know LGBs are much more likely to support gay rights. The effect holds for every issue, in every year, for every type of relationship, and for every demographic, religious, and political subgroup.     

Shards of Meaning: Archaeology and the Melanesia-Polynesia Divide

Abstract

Among the many consequences of colonisation in the Pacific were the twin processes of conjunction and separation of indigenous societies following the establishment of colonial boundaries. In the Solomon Islands, both occurred. Particularly in the northwest, earlier connections were reduced (although not eliminated) following the establishment of the British‐German boundary between the British Solomon Islands Protectorate (BSIP) and German (later British) New Guinea. Other parts of the Solomons which had previously had less contact were conjoined into the BSIP, which later became the independent state of the Solomons Islands. I consider some of the outcomes of these processes for New Georgian (Western Solomons) notions of nationhood. I discuss the question of Western sentiments towards the Papua New Guinea island of Bougainville, but focus primarily on New Georgian ambivalence towards union with other parts of the Solomons, particularly Malaita Province.