AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 43, no. 2 (Spring 2004)

THE PEOPLE OF THE LOWER ARAFUNDI: TROPICAL FORAGERS OF THE NEW GUINEA RAINFOREST

Paul Roscoe
University of Maine

Borut Telban
Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts

Ethnographic work in the Sepik Basin of New Guinea has been heavily biased toward the region's more dense and culturally elaborated communities. This article uses archival documentation and the results of rapid ethnographic surveys to reconstruct the contact-era ethnography of one of its lesser-known groups, the Lower Arafundi. The Lower Arafundi people were ethnographically significant as foragers of the tropical rainforest, as progenitors of a rock art tradition, and as one of a small circle of human societies that claim not to recognize paternity. (Hunters and gatherers, tropical foragers, New Guinea, Sepik, Lower Arafundi).

DOMESTIC SPACE, HABITUS, AND XHOSA RITUAL BEER-DRINKING

Patrick McAllister
University of Canterbury

Xhosa beer-drinking rituals are structured according to several principles, among which the spatial order of domestic settings features prominently. An analysis of beer-drink rituals, however, requires that abstract notions of how they are structured spatially be understood in conjunction with practice, in which the spatial norms are applied in specific events and vary in meaning according to the particular variant of the ritual. Spatial symbolism also may be manipulated, modified, or subverted, according to specific circumstances affecting the participants. In addition, every beer-drink ritual (and thus the meaning of its spatial symbolism) has to be understood in relation to both previous and forthcoming events. (Xhosa beer-drink rituals, domestic space, habitus).

DISCOURSE SHOPPING IN A DISPUTE OVER LAND IN RURAL INDONESIA

Renske Biezeveld
Erasmus University

In Indonesia, since the time of colonial government, the main source for the determination of land rights has been local, indigenous law. Nonetheless, the state has always attempted to influence the way land is managed. This article traces the changes in justification for this influence, with the example of a conflict over land in a Sumatran village. Every actor in the dispute makes his own choice of argument, and creates his own interpretation of facts, rules, and norms. Not only do legal arguments play a role, but political, cultural, and historical arguments are used. This phenomenon may be called discourse shopping. (Land rights, legal pluralism, Indonesia, dispute settlement, social change).

PRE-FUNERALS IN CONTEMPORARY JAPAN: THE MAKING OF A NEW CEREMONY OF LATER LIFE AMONG AGING JAPANESE

Satsuki Kawano
University of Notre Dame

Managing an increasingly negative view of old age as the time of decline, older persons in Japan have shaped pre-funerals as ceremonies of later life celebrating their agency, self-sufficiency, and personal pleasure in steering their remaining years. Whereas new policies have been employed to handle the growing social and economic stress of eldercare on the nation's shrinking younger population, pre-funerals ceremonially engage Japan's aging society, where longevity is considered not a gift but a burden. Using symbols and practices found in various life-cycle rites in Japan, during pre-funerals aging persons express their gratitude and say goodbye to those close to them. By designing, conducting, and consuming their own pre-funerals, older persons playfully construct an age-specific ideal of independence against a treasured, mainstream value of mutual dependence. (Aging, ceremony, life course, Japan, personhood).

MONEY THAT BURNS LIKE OIL: A SRI LANKAN CULTURAL LOGIC OF MORALITY AND AGENCY

Michele Ruth Gamburd
Portland State University

New labor opportunities have drawn Sri Lankan women to work as domestic servants in the Middle East. Many migrants complain that their remittances "burn like oil," disappearing without a trace. The gendered discourse on burning remittances both draws on and contradicts an older cultural system that fetishizes money. The emerging logic provides symbolic resources for women to spend their remittances on advancements for the nuclear family, distancing themselves from other kin. (Migration, remittances, fetishism, Sri Lanka, Middle East).

NAGOTOOH(GAHNI): THE BONDING BETWEEN MOTHER AND CHILD IN SHOSHONI TRADITION

Drusilla Gould
Idaho State University

Maria Glowacka
Idaho State University

This essay discusses a traditional model of the maternal nurturing of newborn babies in the Shoshoni tradition from a native-language perspective. It examines the 30-day period of confinement called nagotooh(gahni), which was viewed as a symbolic extension of a mother's womb (no'aabi). Nagotooh(gahni) implied behavioral and dietary prescriptions and recommendations that guided a woman during a socially structured transition to motherhood. (Confinement practices, mother-infant interactions, nagotooh(gahni), Shoshoni).