AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 36, no. 3 (Summer 1997)

THE TRIUMPH OF CONJUGALITY: STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF FAMILY RELATIONS IN A CHINESE VILLAGE

Yunxiang Yan
University of California, Los Angeles

This article examines the increasing importance of the conjugal relationship in a north China village. The traditional Chinese family is characterized by the centrality of the parent-son relationship in family life and its superiority over all other family relations. Such a configuration has been altered in the 1990s: the horizontal, conjugal tie has become both the central axis of family relations and the foundation of the family ideal shared by most villagers. This transformation results from a series of social changes under socialism, whereby several generations of villagers have gradually redefined the family ideal and adjusted their behavior patterns accordingly. This study also explores the full complexity of the family institution in contemporary rural China. It is indeed a vehicle for the performance of public functions, but it is also a private haven where the private lives of individuals unfold. (Rural China, conjugality, private life, family politics, intergenerational relations, social change)

SICKNESS, HEALING, AND RELIGIOUS VOCATION: ALTERNATIVE CHOICES AT A THERAVĀDA BUDDHIST NUNNERY

Nirmala S. Salgado
Augustana College, Rock Island

This essay examines alternative religious vocations and choices of cures that are open to women in the Sri Lankan Buddhist context. The focus of the investigation is a Theravāda Buddhist hermitage that was studied over an eleven-year period. The article presents case histories of nuns who are representative of the individuals living at the hermitage, and demonstrates how the illnesses they suffer concurrently with their ecstatic trances (interpreted as spirit possession) receive meaning and can be cured within the framework of Buddhist asceticism in Sri Lanka. (Sri Lanka, gender, possession, nuns, ecstasy, asceticism, Theravāda Buddhism, sickness, healing, trance)

CLASS AND ETHNICITY IN MEXICO: SOMATIC AND RACIAL CONSIDERATIONS

Hugo G. Nutini
University of Pittsburgh

Based on research conducted during the past twenty years on superordinate stratification in Mexico City and the class system of several cities, this article has three goals. First, it establishes the historical origins of ethnic categories that began strictly as racial categories in the sixteenth century. Second, it describes the main ethnic sectors of contemporary Mexican society, their class composition, and the principles of social mobility. Third, it analyzes interclass and interethnic relations and the cultural and racial perceptions they engender. The generalizations of (1) apply to the entire country, whereas those of (2) and (3) characterize central Mexico (from Oaxaca to Jalisco and from coast to coast). (Social stratification, ethnicity, racism, social mobility, Mexico)

CONSUMING RURAL JAPAN: THE MARKETING OF TRADITION AND NOSTALGIA IN THE JAPANESE TRAVEL INDUSTRY

Millie Creighton
University of British Columbia

The Japanese travel and tourism industries reflect contradictions between goals to internationalize and fears about vanishing Japanese cultural traditions. This article discusses the nostalgia underlying the popularity of domestic tourism to rural areas in search of reunion with Japanese identity. It explores furusato (home village) imagery in travel advertising and in movies depicting travel in terms of its appeal to contemporary feelings of “homelessness” among many urban Japanese. It also discusses the impact of nostalgia tourism on remote areas recently transformed into popular travel destinations. It explores the decontextualization of place in simulated experiences of rural areas such as local place fairs hosted by city department stores, and various other consumer offerings of pseudotravel experiences for busy urbanites. (Japan, consumerism, tourism, advertising, department stores, topophilia, place consciousness)

COPING WITH CRISIS: COSTA RICAN HOUSEHOLDS AND THE INTERNATIONAL COFFEE MARKET

Deborah Sick
McGill University

To support themselves through coffee production, family farmers must make intricate and informed decisions often based on factors beyond their control. The booms and busts of the world coffee market are not new to Costa Rican coffee farmers, but with the failure in 1989 of the International Coffee Organization (ICO) to reach a new agreement, coffee-producing households must again cope with low coffee prices. In Pérez Zeledón farming families must also contend with an expanding population, scarcity of land, and difficulties in marketing alternative crops. To survive, they have combined coffee production with wage labor, household microenterprises, temporary migration, and higher education. Rather than foreshadowing the demise of the family farm, such flexibility can allow small farmers to persist. But to do so they require the continued support of the state. (Costa Rica, households, economic strategies, coffee)