AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 40, no. 4 (Fall 2001)

NEGOTIATING THE “GOOD DEATH”: JAPANESE AMBIVALENCE ABOUT NEW WAYS TO DIE

Susan Orpett Long
John Carroll University

New technologies and new interpretations of the relation between the individual and society in postindustrial countries have led to an expanded set of options for how to die, including hospice, euthanasia, and physician-assisted suicide. This study claims that the ambivalence among ordinary people toward these new ways to die is best understood through the thick description of in-depth ethnographic research. In Japan, inconsistencies in policies, mixed cultural messages, and personal experience all contribute to ambivalence about what constitutes a good death. While bioethics attempts to label such ambivalence as confusion or cultural lag, this article argues that it must be seen in the context of the negotiation of social roles and relationships. Data are drawn from a qualitative study, based on observation and interviews, of end-of-life decision-making conducted in urban Japan in 1996. (Good death, hospice, euthanasia, bioethics, Japan)

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CONDITIONS OF RELIGIOUS CONVERSION IN COLONIAL SOUTHWEST TANZANIA, 1891-1939

Wolfgang Gabbert
Freie Universität Berlin

Starting from a discussion of theoretical approaches to conversion to Christianity, this article discusses the mission of the Protestant Moravian Church among the Nyakyusa of southwestern Tanzania. It shows that the missionaries' success did not depend on the alleged greater rationality of a world religion, nor was it simply a result of colonial domination. It depended on the ability of the missions to address existing inequalities and tensions within Nyakyusa society. Beyond this, the response to Christianity differed widely according to age and gender. (Colonialism, Christian missions, conversion, Nyakyusa, Tanzania)

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY THROUGH CEREMONIAL LANGUAGE IN RURAL FIJI

Karen J. Brison
Union College

This article re-examines the sevusevu, a ceremonial presentation of kava in Fiji, in light of recent literature on globalization. Scholars have traced the sevusevu to Fijian assumptions about the polity and about the cosmos and have argued that sevusevu reproduce assumptions about rank and are used to negotiate relative status. This essay argues that such concerns are now secondary to using sevusevu to define a meaningful place for rural Fijians in national and international contexts through asserting that their tradition is more valuable than money. (Fiji, political language, formal speech, kava, ethnicity, globalization)

IN THE RUSTIC KITCHEN: REAL TALK AND RECIPROCITY

Tracey Heatherington
Queen's University Belfast

The evaluation of social communication in the town of Orgosolo is implicitly engaged with definitively “Sardinian” and “traditional” practices of hospitality. Sensually rooted in meaningful material culture, these practices enwrap participants in a moral world within which positive reciprocity and co-operation can be presumed as normative. Both language and everyday sociality in Orgosolo operate symbolically to transform verbal exchange so that the processes involved in making words fit for social consumption largely mimic the rigorous local standards of authenticity applied to baking bread or roasting meat. Townspeople highlight their own regional and national marginality by affirming their ideas of “real talk” in contrast to the untrustworthy discourses of bureaucrats and party politicians. By cultivating hospitality as a sphere of political expression, they attempt to subvert cultural constructions of their backwardness and legitimize the authority of their own informal discourses. (Italy, Sardinia, politics of hospitality, authenticity, the senses)

RETHINKING COUSIN MARRIAGE IN RURAL CHINA

Zhaoxiong Qin
Kobe City University of Foreign Studies

This article considers cousin marriage rules among affines in rural Chinese culture, based on research in Hubei Province. After close evaluation of some of the existing studies, it concludes that arguments based on the Lévi-Strauss model of generalized exchange have not proven to be satisfactory. A patrilineal perspective more adequately clarifies the reasons for the disapproval of FZD marriage and informs the basic principle underlying all patterns of cousin marriage. (Rural China, cousin marriage, patrlineal perspective, general exchange)

JOKING, GENDER, POWER, AND PROFESSIONALISM AMONG JAPANESE INN WORKERS

Mitsuhiro Yoshida
Kanda University of International Studies

Female workers at a Japanese inn express their identity and pride through joking about their work experience and private lives. Their joking is a discourse that reflects yet resists their employment conditions and social relations. (Japan, joking behavior, power relations, gender)