AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 36, no. 2 (Spring 1997)

POLITICAL ECOLOGY AND CONFLICT IN ANKARANA, MADAGASCAR

Lisa L. Gezon
State University of West Georgia

Conflict over issues of land use in northern Madagascar reveals that political control is situational and that rights to resources are ambiguous. In two cases, local farmers, the regional royal indigenous leader, and international conservationists struggled to establish and maintain the ability to use and manage the forested land to the west of the Ankarana massif. Political ecology provides a theoretical framework for exploring the complex political negotiations that are an integral part of all ecological interactions. In recognizing the complexity of such interactions, applied attempts to address issues of environmental degradation and disenfranchisement may also become more effective. (Madagascar, political ecology, conservation, conflict)

POLITICS, GENDER, AND TIME IN MELANESIA AND ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIA

Eric Kline Silverman
DePauw University

This article interprets the symbolism and politics of Iatmul time (Sepik River, Papua New Guinea). Social life is structured by different forms of time (e.g., totemism, myth, Omaha terminologies, ritual). Furthermore, mythic history is a mode of ritual politics. Finally, Iatmul time symbolizes paradoxes of gender. The article concludes by comparing the temporality and gender of Melanesian cosmology with the Aboriginal dreamtime. (Time, politics, gender, Iatmul, Melanesia, Aboriginal Australia)

STREET NAMES AND POLITICAL REGIMES IN AN ANDALUSIAN TOWN

J. Carlos González Faraco
Universidad de Huelva

Michael Dean Murphy
University of Alabama

The installation of each of the three socially transformative regimes of twentieth-century Spain (the Second Republic, the military dictatorship of Francisco Franco, and the restoration of democracy following his death) has been marked by sweeping changes in the street names of the Andalusian town of Almonte. This paper considers how the content of these toponymic changes reflects the goals, tactics, ideology, and ethos of each successive regime as it stipulated a new relationship between the inhabitants and those who govern them; the Second Republic used street names to advance its educational agenda, the dictatorship deployed toponyms to threaten the townspeople, and the socialist democracy fashioned a crafty symbolic compromise aimed at ending the onomastic cycle of victors and vanquished. (Onomastics, street names, political regimes, social identities, Andalusia)

RESIDENCE RULES AND ULTIMOGENITURE IN TLAXCALA AND MESOAMERICA

David Luke Robichaux
Universidad Iberoamericana

The rise of wage labor in rural Tlaxcala, Mexico, created a shorter period of initial virilocal residence and an earlier age at marriage. Along with declining infant mortality rates, these factors led to a rapid increase in population, a larger mean household size, and a higher proportion of extended family domestic groups. But the developmental cycle of domestic groups cannot be explained in economic terms alone. The existence throughout Mesoamerica of the same developmental cycle, characterized by initial virilocal residence and culminating in male ultimogeniture, is a defining trait of the cultural area. (Mesoamerica, domestic groups, residence, ultimogeniture, industrialization)

A NUMERICAL LOOK AT RURAL PORTUGUESE POLITICAL CANDIDATES AND STRATEGIES

Robert Roy Reed
The Ohio State University

This article describes various local-level political strategies employed in rural Portugal since the 1974 revolution, and details some of the complexities consequent to introducing representative government to populations with little experience in public politics. The article also demonstrates how quantitative analysis, done while the researcher is still in the field, can produce distinct advantages for a qualitative study, by helping to establish rapport with field residents and revealing new directions for qualitative research. (Portugal, politics, field methods)


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