AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 36, no. 4 (Fall 1997)

WOMEN, LAND, AND LABOR: NEGOTIATING CLIENTAGE AND KINSHIP IN A MINANGKABAU PEASANT COMMUNITY

Evelyn Blackwood
Purdue University

One of the central dynamics shaping agrarian change, and one seldom highlighted, is the structure and ideology of kinship and clientage in peasant communities. This article examines the importance of kin ties in the maintenance of nonwage labor relationships in a wet-rice farming community in West Sumatra, Indonesia. In this village patron-client ties are primarily organized on the basis of matrilineal kin ties through and between women. Elite women and their client kin are both bound to and invested in a complex relation of land, labor, and obligations that supports the continued interdependence of landlord/tenant and helps keep agricultural wage labor from becoming the dominant relation of production in the village. (Sharecropping, matriliny, peasants, wage labor, Minangkabau, Sumatra)

KNOW YOUR PLACE: THE ORGANIZATION OF TLINGIT GEOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE

Thomas F. Thornton
University of Alaska Southeast

Tlingit geographic knowledge is organized along two principal axes: social structure and subsistence production. Using the place-name inventory of an 83-year-old Tlingit elder, this essay analyzes how geographic names form an essential part of Tlingit social being and integrate physical and sociological landscapes in practical ways. As potent, mnemonic symbols, Tlingit toponyms reference important social and environmental knowledge and, when strategically deployed in rituals and other communicative acts, function to distinguish and unite social groups in myriad ways. (Tlingit, place names, space, cognition, social identity, ecology)

ETHNIC TOURISM AND THE RENEGOTIATION OF TRADITION IN TANA TORAJA (SULAWESI, INDONESIA)

Kathleen M. Adams
Loyola University of Chicago

This article examines some of the political and symbolic issues inherent in the touristic renegotiation of Torajan ritual and history, chronicling the strategies whereby Torajans attempt to refashion outsider imagery to enhance their own personal standing and position in the Indonesian ethnic hierarchy. The author suggests that the Toraja case challenges the popular assumption that tourism promotion brings a complete loss of agency to indigenous peoples: Torajans not only engage in ingenious political strategies to enhance their group's image, but vigorously contest perceived threats to their identity and power. The author argues that such processes of self-conscious cultural reformulation do not necessarily imply a collapse in meaning or emotive power; rather, the Toraja case lends support to recent calls to rethink the discourse of “authenticity” and “staged authenticity.” (Toraja, tourism, Indonesia, ethnic imagery, invention of tradition)

RELIGIOUS INVOLUTION: SACRED AND SECULAR CONFLICT AMONG SEPHARDIC JEWS IN AUSTRALIA

Naomi Gale
Ashkelon Regional College, Bar-Ilan University

For immigrant Sephardic Jews in Sydney, Australia, a struggle between religious and secular powers is aggravated by the position of the Sephardim as a minority within a minority. (Limitations of functional analysis, religion as a divisive and dysfunctional force)

CHARISMA'S REALM: FANDOM IN JAPAN

Christine Yano
Harvard University

Most studies of Japanese social organization focus upon structural elements of duty and obligation. This study of Japanese fan clubs uses the concept of charisma to analyze the voluntary bonds that connect individuals to one another. The concept of charisma recognizes individual choice, transcendental affect, and the role of the exceptional. Moreover, this study examines charisma within the context of popular music. Charisma here becomes not a mystical enigma, but a manipulable tool of big industry and fan alike. (Japan, consumption, popular culture, charisma)

THE SIBLING PRINCIPLE IN ORONAO' RESIDENCE

Alan Mason
St. Thomas University

Oronao' residence groups are organized in terms of a sibling principle. Although not elaborated in native ideology, the principle appears in the concept of sibling group and associated concepts of residential space and in residential behavior. A comparison with Siriono, Apinayé, and Kalapalo domestic groups suggests a similar sibling-based residential organization without explicit native social thought. Understanding the sibling principle in South America requires a consciousness, which is apparently that of many South American peoples, in which the sibling relationship is fundamental and prior to the relationship of filiation. (Oronao', lowland South America, sibling principle, residence, domestic group organization)