Chronicle of an early demise,surname extinction in the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries

It has been amply demonstrated that individuals' reproductive capability is the key explanatory phenomenon for understanding onomastic disappearance during the early modern period. This article analyzes the evolution and consequences of surname extinction in a specific population: Catalonia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this article two aspects are examined. First, the observed disappearance of surnames is estimated through historical data collected in the Llibres d'Esposalles (Marriage Books) from 1481 to 1600 at Barcelona Cathedral. Second, the estimated natural extinction of those surnames registered in 1481 is forecast by applying a statistical branching process.     

‘Assisting you to become a local’: NGOs and constructed foreign spouses in Eastern Taiwan

As social and cultural contexts change and globalization spreads, the number of transnational-marriage migrants mainly from Southeast Asia has increased in Taiwan. Using institutional ethnography, this article investigates the roles of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and projects aimed at helping foreign spouses to adapt to their new life. I mainly elaborate that NGOs emerge as important actors in assisting and empowering transnational spouses to ‘become locals’. In empowerment projects, foreign spouses are given a voice to elaborate themselves. However, this article elaborates that these projects are a scheme of education to shape each such migrant into a proper ‘Taiwanese wife/mother/daughter-in-law’. Also, these projects particularly promote ‘exoticism’ of migrants and become key sources of how local people understand the images of ‘foreign spouses’. As a result, though NGOs play positive roles in empowering foreign spouses, we need to be aware that NGOs’ efforts may ironically become a mechanism to strengthen transnational spouses’ gender roles and cultural stereotypes.     

The Common Good,Pluralism and the Small Church

Abstract

This paper discusses the understanding of “Common Good” that has been used by the Church of England, especially over the last five years. It suggests that its implicit universalism and identification of Christian morality with the ethical norms for the nation is premised on an understanding of the role of the Church which is no longer realistic. After a brief discussion of the latest statistics for church attendance and a comparison with other national churches in Northern Europe, I suggest that the Church of England is a “small church” and even that Christians constitute a religious minority. This means that the pursuit of the “Common Good” as defined by the church may simply be a piece of nostalgic longing for the time of the “big church.” The recent exclusions for the churches on same-sex marriage legislation indicate that the gap between most of the churches and the wider society. Rather than defining the common good, I suggest that in a pluralist society the churches which recognize their limited role will need to build alliances and common causes with other groups, both religious and secular.     

‘And now imagine her or him as a slave,a pitiful slave with no rights’: child forced labourers in the culture of remembrance of the USSR and post-Soviet Ukraine

This article examines the various components of the image of Soviet children, who were deported to Nazi Germany during the Second World War to perform forced labour, within the culture of remembrance of the USSR and post-Soviet Ukraine. In her analysis, the author emphasises that throughout the Soviet period the topic of forced labour had mostly instrumental significance and was used for a variety of propaganda tasks: during the war, to mobilise the population to struggle against the enemy; in its aftermath, to underscore and contrast the essence and policies of the post-war Western ‘democracies’ and the USSR; and, from the late 1960s, to accuse capitalist countries, above all the Federal Republic of Germany, of preparing for undertakings such as a new war or an arms race. With the collapse of the USSR, the Ostarbeiters' ‘territory of memory’ enlarged dramatically. In the new climate of democratic transformation, there were socio-legal initiatives which aimed to regulate the status of forced labourers, and the first steps were taken towards institutionalising Ostarbeiter associations. This, in turn, facilitated the process of analysing the construction and presentation of the image of the child Ostarbeiter on the level of state-legal regulation, institutional support, public interest and scholarly research that is taking place in contemporary Ukraine.     

Emigrated neuroscientists from Berlin to North America

ABSTRACT

The highest number of German scholars and physicians, forced by the National Socialist regime to emigrate for “race” or political reasons, were from Berlin. Language and medical exams were requested differently in their new host country—the United States—leading to a concentration of immigrants in the New York and Boston areas. Very early Emergency Committees in Aid of German Scholars and Physicians were established. Undergraduate students (like F. A. Freyhan, H. Lehmann, and H.-L. Teuber) from Berlin seemed to integrate easily, in contrast to colleagues of more advanced age. Some of the former chiefs and senior assistants of Berlin’s neurological departments could achieve a successful resettlement (C. E. Benda, E. Haase, C. F. List, and F. Quadfasel) and some a minor degree of success (F. H. Lewy and K. Goldstein). A group of neuropsychiatrists from Bonhoeffer’s staff at the Berlin Charité Hospital could rely on the forceful intercession of their former chief. The impact of the émigré colleagues on North American neuroscience is traced in some cases. Apart from the influential field of psychoanalysis, a more diffuse infiltration of German and European neuropsychiatry may be assumed. The contribution to the postwar blossoming of neuropsychology by the émigré neuroscientists K. Goldstein, F. Quadfasel, and H.-L. Teuber is demonstrated in this article.     

媒人现象的社会作用及其演变

媒人是历史发展中的特殊民俗现象,也是一种特定的文化符号。媒人随一夫一妻制的聘娶婚的出现而出现,在防止男女乱性、保障婚姻安全、完善规范礼法等方面起着积极的历史作用。媒人不仅不会退出历史舞台,相反,在新的历史时期,媒人的社会作用将更加彰显。     

Brideprice and Prejudice: An Audio-Visual Ethnography on Marriage and Modernity in Mt Hagen,Papua New Guinea

The relationship between bridewealth and women's autonomy is not only discussed amongst anthropologists, development practitioners and other scholars but also amongst brides themselves. Women continue to embrace such marital exchanges, despite their knowledge of ‘modern’ development discourse about the constraints of the practice on women's status and its links to gender-based violence. This paper provides a visual exploration of contemporary brideprice practices and women's autonomy in Mt Hagen. We draw on scenes from our ethnographic film (An Extraordinary Wedding: Marriage and Modernity in Highlands PNG) to explore deliberations and developments that occurred in the case of a particular marriage that took place in 2012. We argue that the institution of brideprice has the potential to enhance the visibility of some women and the importance of their contribution to their own and husbands' kin groups. Despite current tensions regarding brideprice, it can serve as an avenue for the enhancement of women's political participation. The particular brideprice exchange featured in our film, raised concerns for the participants, which we consider in terms of three questions: Does brideprice commodify women? Does it play a role in gender-based violence? Is it inimical to aspirations for modernist individuality? We discuss the importance of bekim (‘return gift’) and suggest that this practice challenges the notion of brideprice as a commodity transaction. We argue that, while there may be an association between brideprice and gender-based violence, brideprice, in and of itself, is not causative of violence. The marriage represented in the film, and discussed in this paper, reveals the creativity of participants in adjusting the values inherent in the customary practice of brideprice to their contemporary aspirations.     

Girl soldiers with Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda fighting for survival: experiences of young women abducted by LRA

For this study the narratives of 16 young women who had served as child soldiers with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda were collected. They had spent between 2 months and 16 years in captivity before managing to escape. All of them spent time at the Gulu Support the Children Organization Rehabilitation centre, from which 12 had moved back into their communities. The narratives start with their capture, the time with the LRA, the escape and the returning and reintegrating. Even though the narratives included appalling stories about the time in captivity, the participants expressed hope for the future and focused on giving their children a good start in life. We used Antonovsky’s theories about ‘sense of coherence’ coupled with resilience theory to discern the factors that helped these young women cope. The participants all managed to leave captivity. We have no comparative information about those who are still in captivity.     

Counter-narratives of coping and becoming: Karen refugee women’s inside/outside figured worlds

The purpose of our research is to understand the socially and culturally constructed architecture within which refugee women produce and negotiate identity. This ethnographic case study discusses findings from data collected through participant observation and informal interviews in two refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border. As Karen refugee women described their positionality within and negotiation between the socially constructed Inside and Outside Figured Worlds of the refugee camp, they depict the negotiation of a hybrid Third Space. Created at the intersection of the refugee camp structures that dominate individual agency and the discourses of gender and displacement that influence the social practices of women, this third space is characterized by the response strategies Karen women engage to support individual, family, and community health. Within the transformational spaces that refugee women constructed, the processes of coping and becoming reflected the relationship between structure and agency. Within these intersections a woman could express her resistance to a system that in its design represented a majority she was not a part of. As Karen refugee women moved to redesign their position within these systems, shifts in meaning of cultural norms resulted, inclusive of those that influence or define the role of women.     

“The Joy of Normal Living” as the Promise of Happiness for Japanese Women and their Families

“The Joy of Normal Living” is at once the motto and the ideology of Kurihara Harumi, Japan’s best-known charisma housewife and icon of domesticity. This article looks at the relationship between “normal living” and the promise of happiness, as formulated in postwar Japan. Beginning with the government’s promotion, in the early postwar period, of the idea of akarui seikatsu (bright new life) as related to the typical suburban middle-class family of salaryman husband and full-time housewife, the article goes on to look at the cultural idea of “being happy as a woman” in contemporary Japan. Based on in-depth interviews with full-time housewives, and an analysis of popular women’s magazines, this article seeks to decipher what constitutes the idea of happiness for these women and for their generation.