Animals Old and New. Multiple Perspectives on the Meaning of Beasthood

Caton, Hiram, ed. The Samoa Reader: Anthropologists Take Stock. Lan‐ham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1990. xiii + 351 pp. including references and index. $38.75 cloth, $22.75 paper.

Monberg, Torben. Bellona Island Beliefs and Rituals. Pacific Islands Monograph Series, No. 9. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991. xix + 449 pp. including appendixes, references, and index. $42.00 cloth.

Lindstrom, Lamont. Knowledge and Power in a South Pacific Society. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990. xvi + 224 pp. including references and index. $29.95 cloth, $16.95 paper.     

Early Evidence for Pig and Dog Husbandry from the Neolithic Site of An Son,Southern Vietnam

An Son in southern Vietnam is one of a series of Neolithic (food producing) settlement/cemetery sites in Southeast Asia that appear, archaeologically, shortly before and after 2000 cal. bc . Excavations in 2009 produced a small but important assemblage of vertebrate remains that permit relative comparisons with other zooarchaeological assemblages of similar date in Thailand and northern Vietnam. At An Son, domestic dogs are present from the earliest known phases of occupation with butchery evidence and a high proportion of canid remains, suggesting they were possibly used as a food resource. Suid bones were recovered from the earliest phases of the site excavated, and pig husbandry can be identified from at least 1800 to 1600 cal. bc . There is also evidence for the use of a range of other resources including fishing, hunting and the capturing of turtles. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Archaeology of Smuggling and the Falmouth King’s Pipe

This article demonstrates the potential of an historical archaeology of smuggling and the value of an interdisciplinary approach to the study of smuggling and its prevention. By exploring the previously unstudied history of the King’s Pipe in Falmouth, a large chimney used for the destruction of tobacco, a rare survivor of many that once existed in England’s port cities, it demonstrates that archaeology could transform our understanding of smuggling and its prevention, and more broadly the history of crime and punishment in eighteenth century England.

Field anthropology: application to burial contexts in prehistoric Southeast Asia

The context of burials in archaeological sites, that is whether the body was inhumed, wrapped, or in a coffin, is an aspect of mortuary ritual that has been missing from English-language publications on the subject. This is despite the development and use in France over at least the last two decades of methods of determining the context under the rubric ‘l'Anthropologie de Terrain’, or Field Anthropology. This paper briefly reviews the methods and applies them to prehistoric burial samples from two sites in Southeast Asia. This shows that burials at the Bronze Age site of Ban Lum Khao were either in coffins or wrapped. The practice of coffin burial appears to have been abandoned later, as all burials at the nearby Iron Age site of Noen U-Loke were wrapped.     

Notes Toward a Dissident Theo-Politics

The following essay asks what theo-political grammar might effectively address the growing crisis of democracy in North America. Previous responses to this made by political theology and liberation theology are still rooted in a dialectical mode of analysis, thereby concealing the discursive limitations that constrain possibilities for material progress. As a response, I posit a Dissident Theo-Politics that borrows from post-structuralist thought. This Dissident Theo-Politics recognizes Whiteness to be the central source of meaning in the USA, thus its most important symbol and apex of its theology, that is, a god. Theology considered in this way invites new discursive options that produce different yet non-oppositional ways of engaging the complicated crises in American democracy. The constructive strategy I put forward is a radical democratic friendship based on love (philia) extended disproportionality between those who are perceived as social unequals. Using both Derrida and Ella Baker I argue for radical democratic friendship as a source to inspire insurgent energies to provisionally re-set US socio-political conditions.     

Mutuality, De-Mutualization and Communities: The Implications of Branch Network Rationalization in the British Building Society Industry

The paper examines the withdrawal of branches from local communities by financial institutions. It assesses whether mutually owned building societies are more adept than the former societies that have converted to public limited companies (plcs), or the high street banks, in serving disadvantaged communities. The paper shows that during the mid-1990s: mutual building societies were more likely than former societies that have converted to plcs to maintain their branch network; mutual societies were less likely than banks to withdraw from socially deprived locations and more likely to open branches in such places; differences between mutual societies and convertors are less marked, but mutual institutions appear less likely than convertors to close branches in deprived communities. Among the remaining mutual building societies there are differences of perspective, with more commercially-minded societies less positive than socially-concerned mutuals about the need to maintain or even expand branches in disadvantaged areas.     

ASA 2003: Communitas enters the academy

Fifth Decennial Conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth, University of Manchester, 14-18 July 2003