Anthropology in the middle east

Canfield, Robert L., ed. Turko‐Persia in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xiv + 256 pp. including references and index. $54.50 cloth.

Caton, Steven C. "Peaks of Yemen I Summon”: Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemen Tribe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. xv + 351 pp. including notes, appendices, bibliography, and index. $34.95.

Khoury, Philip S. and Joseph Kostiner, eds. Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990 xv + 351 pp. including collected references and index. $45.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.     

Pig domestication and husbandry practices in the middle Neolithic of the Wei River Valley,northwest China: evidence from linear enamel hypoplasia

Linear enamel hypoplasia is a physical deficiency occurring during the process of enamel formation and it is visible on the crowns of mammal teeth. It can be used to trace physical stresses during life. In this study, linear enamel hypoplasia in samples of pigs from three Neolithic sites in the Wei River valley (China) were recorded and analysed, to investigate the status of pigs at these sites, their living conditions, and furthermore to explore husbandry strategies for pigs during the Neolithic in the valley. The results suggest a domesticated status for pigs in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age. Also the frequency of LEH occurrence for the pigs corroborates a presumed intensification processes of pig husbandry, and the presence of environmental fluctuations during the period are considered. Some evidence also points to the fact that for pig, spring farrowing was the most common reproductive strategy in the Neolithic and early Bronze Age in this region.     

The ‘voices’ of children: de‐centring empowering research relations

This paper examines some problematic methodological and ethical issues associated with in‐depth qualitative research with children. The discussion has wider resonance for qualitative studies of young people in ‘rural’ contexts. Particular ethical issues arise when researching with children, which are underpinned by children's relative powerlessness in society. With this in mind, the paper considers substantive strategies to promote ‘empowering research relations’, drawing upon an empirical study with children in primary school spaces. Re‐theorisations of identities and power as fractured, dynamic and contextual, suggest that research is comprised of specific moments or ‘research performances’. It is argued that developing empowering research relations involves negotiating such performances in ways that contest, or transform, dominant societal relations between children and adults. In this paper, I consider some of the specific, embodied performances involved in my research, to expose some of the complexities of power relations and negotiations within space. Bringing to light particular moments emphasises that power relations between children and adults are not reducible to the powerless and the powerful. It is also demonstrated that research performances are influenced and constrained by expectations placed upon adult and child practices in society and institutional spaces, and by researchers' own unconscious reproduction of dominant identities.     

Economic development,marine protected areas and gendered access to fishing resources in a Polynesian lagoon

This study examines the potential socio-spatial impacts of a new series of marine protected areas (MPAs) on fishers in Moorea, French Polynesia. The establishment of the MPAs is contextualized within recent and historical processes of economic development and theories of women in development and gender, culture and development. Seventy adults from three neighborhoods in Moorea were interviewed. Analysis of the data provides new information about the characteristics of fishing in Moorea. Unlike most fishing cultures and communities throughout the Pacific Islands, men and women in Moorea have similar, as opposed to segregated, spatial patterns of fishing activities and fishing methods. The study also points out the potential negative impacts of the MPAs on both men and women, particularly younger and lower-income fishers.     

Gender and the ��virtue of violence��: Creating a new vision of political engagement through the 1911 revolution

In this article, we explore the way men and women used the idea of violence to transform their broader political roles in their desired new Republic. We argue that the espousal of violence, whether or not actually undertaken, became an important part of the accoutrements of progressive political forces in China at this time. Violent action was perceived as virtuous rather than villainous among reformers and radicals in the late Qing and early Republic. We demonstrate that the impact and significance of this turn to violence differed for men and for women. For men, the ability and willingness to take violent action symbolized a break with the effete literati of the imperial past by their envisaging of a muscular Confucianism; for women, it provided a platform on which their claims to equal citizenship with men could be performed. The gendered nature of the virtue of violence within this rapidly changing political context produced unexpected results for both male and female political aspirants.