Stealing the Water of Life: The Historicity of Contemporary Social Relationships

Pacific anthropology has predominantly concentrated on documenting the pre‐contact past or an acculturated present. This article explores an alternative focus on contemporary relationships, seen as both exhibiting historicity and agentive power. The control over scarce but vitally important resources, such as land and water, is the responsibility of the village leadership in the Tokelau atolls. The regulation of social behaviour establishes fecundity and agency in a manner that lends order to the universe. However, the achievement of a position of command, in particular over rights to land, is dependent upon knowledge of the past and of genealogical connections in the present. Claims to positions are commonly challenged, and this dynamic of contested ascendancy means that the past is always significantly present, although in different shapes.     

Khazaria and the Terek (Landscape and Ethnos,II.)

The author analyzes a functional relationship between the historical fate of the Khazar people of the Caspian steppe and changes in the landscape produced by an alternation of wet and dry cycles and changes of the Caspian Sea level. A previous article of this series appeared in Soviet Geography, June 1964.     

The way we wear makes the difference: residue analysis applied to Mesolithic personal ornaments from Hohlenstein-Stadel (Germany)

Research conducted by Newell et al. (1990) has lead to propose that during the Mesolithic, the Upper Danube region was inhabited by a “Fish Teeth Band”, characterized by the use of carp fish teeth and exogenous fossil shells as ornaments. However, technological data on these personal ornaments drastically lacked and especially for the fish teeth associated to the Mesolithic burial of Hohlenstein-Stadel that remained completely undescribed until now. The aim of this paper is to establish how the carp teeth from Hohlenstein-Stadel were modified and worn before being deposited in the burial. High-resolution microscopic analysis identifies use-wear traces and a red compound adhering to the surface of the teeth. Structural and elemental analysis of the residue combining light and scanning electron microscopy, infrared spectroscopy, and Raman analysis identify a suspension technique that uses an adhesive composed of an organic binder mixed with charcoal and minerals including hematite, dolomite, and quartz. Ethnological inquiry reveals that this system of suspension, commonly used in traditional societies, is for the first time documented, at Hohlenstein-Stadel, in an archaeological context.     

On the legitimacy of cultural policies: analysing Québec’s cultural policy with the Economies of Worth

This paper explores the question of the legitimation of cultural policies by examining the case of the Canadian French-speaking province, Québec, where the consensus over the legitimacy and the purpose of a cultural policy was not easily reached. To understand the evolution of the justifications for state intervention in this field, we have analysed three major policy statements issued by the government of Québec as well as the criticisms levelled at the moment of their publication using the analytic framework the Economies of Worth. Developed by French sociologist Luc Boltanski and economist Laurent Thévenot, this framework conceptualises different regimes of justification that can be retraced in cultural policy statements. We explore more particularly the concept of ‘compromise’ which enables us to understand why cultural policies have difficulty achieving consensus. This paper thus aims at assessing the heuristic value of this interpretative device for cultural policy analysis.     

Cutting the cake: the Congress of Vienna in British,French and German political caricature

Although the Congress of Vienna was not a main topic for political caricature, it was anything but ignored. During the first five months of 1815, while monarchs and diplomats were deliberating on Europe’s future, caricaturists in Great Britain, France and the German-speaking states depicted the Congress as a major or minor subject in 20 satirical prints. Together these caricatures provide a multi-perspectival view of the way contemporaries assessed the diplomatic deliberations taking place in Vienna. To obtain an insight into this important part of contemporary public opinion on the Congress, the corpus of graphic satire was submitted to close scrutiny in two ways. Firstly, a context analysis ascertained the artists who produced them; how the prints were published and brought to public attention; and for what audiences they were intended. Secondly, a content analysis explored the political messages that the caricatures on the Vienna Congress tried to convey and the persuasive techniques that were applied to visualise these points of view. Notwithstanding different national origins and opposite political views, the message is a negative one: the satires denounce the territorial greed of the Great Powers and their disregard for the demands and aspirations of the peoples they seek to incorporate.     

Radio awards and the dialogic contestation of Indonesian journalism1

Reformasi-style radio journalism in Indonesia has been shaped by a desire to be dialogical and to involve the audience as producers or engaged consumers of current affairs. This is a break from the monologism of the New Order's official culture which excluded any serious audience participation. This article focuses on two competitions used by radio institutions for exploring different ‘dialogical’ strategies – the Balinese commercial radio station Global FM awards to listeners of ‘Social Empowerment Personality’ and that of the best radio news programme organised by the German NGO Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (FNS).