The political economy of dive tourism: precarity at the periphery in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Using a critical political economy approach and the concept of labour precarity, the international dive tourism industry in Sabah, Malaysia and its workers’ vulnerabilities are interrogated. Fieldwork data highlights dive tourism's socio-economic impacts and the precarity of labour within the international tourism sector and also critiques it as a development strategy for a peripheral region. The paper challenges the optimistic views of labour precarity found in the existing political economy literature. Rather than identifying labour empowerment, evidence demonstrates significant worker vulnerability, uncertainty, and contingency – especially among ethnic minorities – resulting from Malaysia's state-led rentier economy.     

ETHICS AT HOME – A NON-CONFERENCE REPORT

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting, San Francisco, 17–21 November 2004     

The Direct Historical Approach, Analogical Reasoning, and Theory in Americanist Archaeology

Prior to the early 1950s, Americanist archaeologists, given their interest in chronology, routinely searched for direct historical connections between ethnographically documented cultures and archaeological cultures. In those instances where clear evolutionary connections existed between ethnographic and prehistoric cultures, the ethnic affinities of the latter could be assessed, chronologies of prehistoric cultures could be built, and ethnographic descendant cultures could be used as analogs of prehistoric ancestral cultures. The latter became known as specific historical analogy, and it stands in contrast to general comparative analogy, in which no detectable evolutionary connection exists between archaeological subjects and ethnographic sources. The theory underpinning the use of specific historical analogs is Darwinian evolutionism, or descent with modification; thus similarities between ethnographic sources and archaeological subjects are homologous. By midcentury, with the problem of chronology behind them, archaeologists began to address anthropological concerns. Darwinian evolutionism was replaced by the theory of orthogenesis as an explanation of culture change, and concomitantly specific historical analogy was replaced by general comparative analogy, in which similarities between ethnographic sources and archaeological subjects are the result of convergence. For over a century anthropologists and archaeologists have mixed elements of the two theories.     

What's nature got to do with it? A situated historical perspective on socio-natural commodities

Nature(s) have been commodified since the early days of capitalism, but through processes and socio-natural relationships mediated by their times, histories and localities. While the conditions under which nature's commodities are being trademarked today may be new, their potential for commodification is not. Commodifications of nature should not come as a surprise to environmental social scientists and activists. In this article, I argue that commodification of ‘nature's products, places and processes’ produces new sorts of socio-natures. Situated histories of rubber are particularly relevant because, like carbon, ecosystem services and other recently commodified natures, rubber sits comfortably on the line between a fictitious commodity and a commodity produced explicitly for market: the latex alone has almost no use value, and to give it any exchange value, it requires processing. Yet analytically, it is still considered a ‘natural commodity’, different from ‘synthetic rubber’ and other tradable tree latexes in qualities and socio-natural characteristics. However, it is the social relations constituting rubber's production and trade in various rainforest and agro-forestry environments that have given it a positive or negative connotation, rather than its natural properties or the ecological contexts within which it has been produced. By situating rubber in three of its globally important temporal and spatial contexts, I show how it has been subjected to fairy-tale-like stories that masked and naturalized its commodity lives of the moment. Understanding how history is told or remains untold is thus an essential part of the politics of knowledge production, but also of human experience and mobilization for change. It should be part of any political ecology analysis.     

Ectopic paragonimiasis from 400-year-old female mummy of Korea

Of the parasite eggs discovered in ancient samples from Korean archaeological sites, Paragonimus spp. are of particular importance in that they are regarded as one of the most insidious trematode infection sources. Although their infection prevalence decreased rapidly in the early 20th century, archaeoparasitological studies on the species are still required, as historical knowledge of paragonimiasis remains far from comprehensive. Fortunately, we recently were given a chance to examine a medieval Korean mummy in a good state of preservation. Using morphological techniques, we discovered evidence of ectopic paragonimiasis in the sample from the 17th-century female. When the ITS 2 gene was extracted, amplified and sequenced from Paragonimus eggs, it showed 100% homology to the sequences of modern Paragonimus westermani reported from Korea and Japan, forming a cluster distinct from South Asian P. westermani. Our report is the first-ever analysis of ancient Paragonimus DNA from any archaeological field in the world. The ectopic paragonimiasis diagnosis made in this study, especially involving the liver sample, also is the first of its kind in archaeoparasitology.