I ka Piko,To the Summit: Resistance from the Mountain to the Sea

This paper focuses on Mauna Kea, the highest mountain in Hawai?i, and uses it as a case example for examining articulations of place and space, or how areas can be understood, read, and interpreted to push particular agendas. Furthermore, it comments on the often-conflicting expressions of belonging and possession, how they are enacted and embodied both on and off the mountain, and how they have been used in contemporary discourse regarding the sacred. Finally, it offers insight into how resistance efforts may be grounded and motivated by connections to place.     

Packaging of Identity and Identifiable Packages: A study of women–commodity negotiation through product packaging

In the age of post-Fordist flexible production, a consumer realizes her/his identity in part through the act of consumption. The visual aspect of commodity–consumer negotiation acquires importance, as commodities must be visually differentiated to attract the gaze of a particular consuming group. The act of visual differentiation is achieved through symbolic packaging, which creates a cognitive link between commodity and consumer. I draw from Baudrillard, who states that in postmodern consumption the sign value of products becomes more important than their actual usefulness (use value). Baudrillard, however, overlooks the importance of gender, race and space in this visual mediation. Through an empirical study of the packaging of women's skin and hair products in two different stores catering to two different income groups in Worcester, Massachusetts, I indicate how gendered identities that are created are complex, porous and materially rooted in space. The geographic situatedness of the exercise checks overgeneralizations allowing it to be studied as an object–subject mediation in a particular spatial context.     

Dangerous Places and Wild Spaces: Creating Meaning with Materials and Space at Contemporary Maya Shrines on El Duende Mountain

Ethnoarchaeological observations at Maya shrines on a sacred mountain suggest that three potent material strategies imbue ritual practices with different social meanings: 1) the use of different types of materials as offerings in various rites, 2) the ways in which the physical conditions of an offering are altered during deposition, and 3) the choice of location where the offering is deposited within the site relative to a ceremonial focal point. Through these strategies, individuals creatively negotiate limited access to material resources and assign diverse meanings to the material culture, practices, and places of ritual. Materials that represent commoners' rituals may primarily consist of quotidian items that are transformed in meaning by how and where they are deposited into an archaeological context.     

Sacred Geography,Antiquarianism and Visual Erudition: Benito Arias Montano and the Maps in the Antwerp Polyglot Bible

The final volume of the Polyglot Bible, edited by Benito Arias Montano and printed in Antwerp by Christophe Plantin, was published in 1571–1572. Forming part of the Bible's Apparatus, the volume contains a number of essays, illustrations and maps by Montano relating to questions raised by the biblical text. Montano's maps were a product of his philological training in Oriental languages and exegesis, his profound interest in antiquarianism and geography and his practice of visualizing and tabulating knowledge. He designed his maps both as study aids and as devotional‐meditative devices. Moreover, the maps reflect his wider philosophical outlook, according to which Holy Scripture contains the foundations of all natural philosophy. Montano's case encourages us to re‐examine early modern Geographia sacra in the light of the broader scholarly trends of the period.     

《寻羊冒险记》的艺术开拓——村上春树小说论

《寻羊冒险记》是村上春树青春三部曲的压轴之作,为作家带来了不可动摇的文坛地位。《且听风吟》和《1973年的弹子球》先后奠定了村上小说文本的语言风格,这部作品则在语言的叙事性与作品的故事性有机结合的领域,显示了作家的艺术开拓与创造精神。“羊”所体现的象征意义尤为读者和批评界所称道。     

明代以来朱元璋出生地"二说"始末考述

朱元璋的出生地,近年来出现了凤阳、盱眙二说。其实,早在朱元璋在世时,凤阳说是唯一一说。永乐以后,围绕朱元璋出生前后所发生的圣瑞之象,在社会上被炒作得越发神奇,在以讹传讹的过程中,泗州盱眙地方官员采用编纂地方志等方式,将这些圣瑞之象拉入盱眙县,从而产生盱眙说。盱眙说从产生之日起,一直是作为社会上流传的小道而存在,而凤阳说在明清两代一直是全社会及史学界的共识。近年来,盱眙说再次抬头,向凤阳说挑战。     

The Hindu nationalist reinterpretation of pilgrimage in India: the limits of Yatra politics

ABSTRACT. Victor Turner's anthropological reading of pilgrimages in terms of communitas is of utmost relevance in the case of Hinduism: indeed, Hindu pilgrimages produce a relative and temporal obliteration of social cleavages – particularly caste divisions – allowing the emergence of a sense of group belonging. Moreover, the geography of pilgrimage sites maps out the sacred land, marking the area of extension of Hindu civilisation in space. Hindu nationalists have tried to exploit this particular alchemy to offer an ethnic definition of the nation (and its territory) and thereby gather a following by lending some of their demonstrations the appearance of a pilgrimage. This approach asserted itself in the early 1980s thanks to the Ekatmata Yatra (Unity March) in 1983, and was confirmed in 1990 during the Rath Yatra (Chariot festival). Nevertheless, the instrumentalist interpretation of such movements comes up against an issue that is already at the core of subaltern studies' historiography, i.e. that masses do not always mobilise for the reasons put forth by political leaders. More specifically, if women march massively in the streets during these Yatra pilgrimages, it is both because they feel concerned by the reason for demonstrations and because these demonstrations have legitimised their entry into the public space, which still remains relatively closed to them.     

Human corpse manipulation and the body as symbol: A case study from the Eastern Pampa–Patagonia transition (Argentina) during the Final Late Holocene

Human body manipulation and secondary burials are widespread funerary practices in many areas of the world. The archaeology of the Pampas and North-Eastern Patagonia, Argentina, is no exception. In this paper, archaeological case studies from the lower basin of the Colorado River during the Final Late Holocene (ca. 1000–250 years BP) are presented and discussed. Secondary burials were recovered that indicated an intentional manipulation of bodies. Evidences of cut marks and the coloring of bone surfaces were recorded. The bundles were composed of individuals of both sexes and diverse age categories. The Pampean region and North-Eastern Patagonia witnessed significant hunter–gatherer population dynamics during the last 1000 years BP. Climatic, ecologic, demographic, and economic explanations have been proposed as the background to these changes. In this paper, it is argued that accompanying these factors, as part of a broader socio-cultural scenario, were significant social interaction networks and processes of social complementarity between groups. In this context, it is proposed that the complexity observed in relation to the handling of bodies is part of a worldview in which the body was seen as material culture – as a symbol – that played an important role for the community in group identity maintenance in a cultural context undergoing significant organizational changes.