The Gender of the Cosmos: Totemism,Society and Embodiment in the Sepik River

This article contributes to recent research on the foundations of society in Melanesia, both in terms of local representation and actual social practice, as well as body imagery and gender. I have three interrelated objectives. First, I present new data on the symbolism and politics of Eastern Iatmul cosmology and totemism (Sepik River, Papua New Guinea). Second, I engage Harrison's distinction between magical and material, or realist and nominalist, polities in Melanesia. Eastern Iatmul society is represented by totemic names and categories. Yet society also requires human agents to embody named entities: men rarely assert the existence of cosmological categories that are divorced entirely from the realm of human action. This is a key difference between Eastern Iatmul and other Sepik societies such as Manambu. Finally, I argue that there is a symbolic homology between the gendered human body, the body politic and the cosmos, an important perspective that has been lacking in Melanesian comparative studies. Totemism for Eastern Iatmul is largely a realm of male ritual-politics. Nevertheless, an idiom of maternal fertility and reproduction is salient in the local cosmology. For this reason, the gender of the cosmos, to invoke Marilyn Strathern, is androgynous.     

Scientific Information, Elite Attitudes, and the Public Debate Over Food Safety

Why do consumers often react with alarm to food technologies (such as irradiation, genetic engineering, artificial hormones, and chemical pesticides) that scientists regard as essentially safe? We examine the attitudes toward food safety of three types of elites who serve as providers of scientific information regarding food safety to the United States public. Previous research suggests that journalists are likely to exaggerate risks associated with emerging food technologies, while minimizing risks associated with natural pathogens. This bias is hypothesized to be political in origin. By and large, our sample of newspaper editors was only slightly more concerned than were United States government policymakers and a sample of scientists. The expected pattern of alarm occurs clearly only in the case of irradiation. In addition, modest correlations of ideology to safety assessments were found for all three types of elites.     

Book Reviews

Semboja and Therkildsen, eds. Service Provision under Stress in East Africa: The State, NGOs and People's Organisations in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda
Cowen and Shenton Doctrines of Development
Taylor The Way the Modern World Works: World Hegemony to World Impasse