AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 36, no. 1 (Winter 1997)

THE MATRIFOCAL FAMILY IN IBERIA: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL COMPARED

Jan Brøgger
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU

David D. Gilmore
State University of New York, Stony Brook

Although matrifocality has faded somewhat as a topic in cultural anthropology, interest in the concept has revived in Mediterranean studies. Recent work in the northwest corner of Iberia (north/central Portugal and Spanish Galicia) reveals a highly matrifocal family structure. This anomalous pattern seems linked in some yet-undefined way with a prevailing emphasis on female dominance in this part of the Mediterranean world. Yet in the rest of the Iberian peninsula matrifocal families do not correlate with female power; in fact, the opposite is true. For example, in southern Spain, matrifocality coexists with male dominance and machismo within an honor-and-shame value system. This paper compares a village in central Portugal with one in Andalusia in an attempt to gain insight into this Iberian conundrum. (Matrifocality, gender, family, Iberia, honor and shame)

PROGRESSIVE THEOLOGY AND POPULAR RELIGIOSITY IN OAXACA, MEXICO

Kristin Norget
McGill University

This article examines the relationship between popular religiosity and the renovation movement taking place within the Catholic Church (the New Evangelization) in the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca. A discussion of the interaction between official church discourse and everyday religious behavior reveals Oaxacan popular religiosity, despite some interdependence between the two forms, as a largely autonomous field of belief and practice. In the current context of transformations within the Mexican Catholic Church, popular Catholicism in Oaxaca is addressed as the site of a struggle between a liberation theology-influenced church reform movement and a form of religiosity containing its own logic and resistance to change. (Mexico, popular religion, progressive Catholicism, religious movements, liberation theology)

SANCTITY AND SANCTION IN COMMUNAL RITUAL: A RECONSIDERATION OF SHINTO FESTIVAL PROCESSIONS

Scott Schnell
The University of Iowa

Japanese society is characterized by an emphasis on harmony and self-restraint as guiding principles of daily interaction. As a consequence, alcohol is often considered a necessary catalyst for promoting the open expression of alternative viewpoints, though only in certain culturally prescribed contexts. A Shinto festival procession provides one such context. The bearers of a large, sanctified object "purify" themselves with liberal amounts of sake, and their intoxicated condition combines with the sheer bulk of the object to lend an ominous uncertainty to its movement. Since the object is perceived as being controlled by the will of the deity, however, no one can be held responsible for any damages incurred during the procession. This type of ritual may thus be considered an instrument of social sanction, affording the people a means of enforcing compliance with accepted norms or seeking retribution for perceived injustices. (Japan, Shinto festival processions, matsuri, alcohol consumption, informal social sanctions, ritual liminality)

ETHNOGRAPHIC NOTES ON CONCEPTIONS AND DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL POWER IN UPPER BURMA (PRIOR TO THE 1962 MILITARY COUP)

Melford E. Spiro
University of California, San Diego

This article describes the conceptions of governmental power held by Burmese villagers in Upper Burma, and the degree to which their conceptions correspond to the behavior of government officials at the township and district levels. The ethnographic present is Burma prior to the 1962 military coup. (Burmese villages, political power, government officials)

SKILL, DEPENDENCY, AND DIFFERENTIATION: ARTISANS AND AGENTS IN THE LUCKNOW EMBROIDERY INDUSTRY

Clare M. Wilkinson-Weber
Washington State University Vancouver

Female embroiderers in the chikan garment industry of Lucknow are homeworkers whose employment opportunities and wages are adversely affected by the restrictions of purdah and widely held opinions of the lowliness of women's work. They are recruited by agents who extract a portion of the piece wage as their profit. Most agents are men. Some, though, are women with moderate to high skills in embroidery. The dependence of embroidery workers upon female agents calls into question whether gender can be a basis for solidarity and action. (India, Lucknow, artisans, class, women embroiderers)