AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 38, no. 4 (Fall 1999)

TOLAI SORCERY AND CHANGE

A. L. Epstein
University of Sussex

Despite the considerable literature on the Tolai that has been produced by modern anthropologists as well as earlier ethnographers, we still lack a contemporary account of their notions of sorcery and its practice. This article is an attempt to plug this gap. Of all the ethnic groups in Papua New Guinea, the Tolai have had the longest and closest experience of the wider society that came into being with the onset of colonial rule. Over the past hundred years and more, the Tolai have seen momentous changes that have touched almost every aspect of their society and culture. Since, as with so many other tribal societies, magic was such a central feature of their world-view, the question arises of how the traditional belief in and practice of sorcery have been affected by their changed circumstances. This is the question that the article seeks to address. (Witchcraft, sorcery, social change, Tolai)

CAJUN MARDI GRAS: CULTURAL OBJECTIFICATION AND SYMBOLIC APPROPRIATION IN A FRENCH TRADITION

Rocky L. Sexton
Augustana College

Rural Louisiana Mardi Gras is viewed as a Cajun-French custom although it was once shared by a diverse Louisiana French population. This transformation occurred during a late-twentieth-century ethnic revival which objectified and symbolically appropriated local culture as Cajun. This Cajunization process was aided by external influences such as scholarly literature and the media which identified local culture and French Louisiana in general as Cajun. Despite a recent Afro-French ethnic movement, which also claims ownership or co-ownership of local culture, rural Mardi Gras is still identified as a Cajun cultural institution and the celebration unifies a diverse Cajun-French population. (Cajun, Mardi Gras, ethnic revival, symbolic appropriation, cultural objectification)

STREET TACTICS: CATHOLIC RITUAL AND THE SENSES OF THE PAST IN CENTRAL SARDINIA

Tracey Heatherington
Harvard University

Contesting versions of local history in a small Sardinian town are made to seem real, natural, and legitimate through appeals to the senses. Catholic ritual processions fill the streets of Orgosolo with an ordered and persuasive multisensory vision of the past. Some nonpracticing Catholics collaborate to transform these historical representations, privileging the meaning-laden sensations connected to a past which is not necessarily religious, but emphatically local and unique. Others, particularly young men, offer disruptive sensations to the eye, ear, and nose to make symbolic and social space for their own engagement with history. (Space and place, gender, religion, representation of history)

CARNIVAL ON THE CLIPBOARD: AN ETHNOLOGICAL STUDY OF NEW ORLEANS MARDI GRAS

William Jankowiak
University of Nevada Las Vegas

C. Todd White
University of Southern California

Ethnological methods determined that New Orleans Mardi Gras is a time for socializing with friends and family, as opposed to an opportunity to engage strangers in acts of fellowship or communitas. People prefer to be wild or silly within the confines of their own group. Outside of costumed performers or those engaged in ritualistic bead exchanges, the norms of pedestrian behavior are maintained. This study is methodologically innovative as it is the first to obtain a nonfestival baseline in order to distinguish standard, culturally appropriate behavior from that which results from a change in the normative order. Moreover, it is the first to identify the interpersonal contexts in which behavior is inverted, intensified, or remains neutral in street interactions among strangers. (Carnival, communitas, ritual, New Orleans)

KIMONO AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF GENDERED AND CULTURAL IDENTITIES

Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni
Tel-Aviv University

This article argues that the distinction between Japanese and Western attire is a part of the process of the construction of gendered and cultural identities in modern Japan. Kimono in modern Japan has been invented as national attire and as a marked feminine costume. Women have become models of Japanese femininity, as contrasted with men, who have been given the role of models for rational action and achievement. The article follows this dynamic process in modern Japan, and more particularly analyzes the process of producing young women for their coming-of-age ceremony. (Japan, kimono, gender, cultural identities)

WARFARE, POLITICAL LEADERSHIP, AND STATE FORMATION: THE CASE OF THE ZULU KINGDOM, 1808-1879

Mathieu Deflem
Purdue University

The origin and evolution of the nineteenth-century Zulu Kingdom are used to examine two competing state formation theories: Robert Carneiro's circumscription theory and Elman Service's theory of institutionalized leadership. Both theories partly clarify Zulu political developments: Carneiro's explains the origin and territorial expansion of the Zulu empire, while Service's can account for the beginning differentiation of political roles in the Zulu state. Two alternative explanations of the causes of Zulu state formation are discussed to integrate the diverging theoretical perspectives of Carneiro and Service. First, the role of the Zulu king, Shaka, should be considered politically relevant only inasmuch as Shaka's wars of conquest were instrumental for the unification of the Zulu Kingdom. Second, further developments in Zulu politics involved limited structural change from dispersed tribes to a unified military state. The analysis of political formations, including their origin and further transformation, should not be conducted in unilinear evolutionary terms, but from a multidimensional processual perspective. (State formation, circumscription theory, institutionalized leadership, Zulu Kingdom)