AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 42, no. 4 (Fall 2003)

WHEN IS A DIVORCE A DIVORCE? DETERMINING INTENTION IN ZANZIBAR'S ISLAMIC COURTS

Erin E. Stiles
Columbia University

Establishing intention in legal acts is a crucial element of judicial reasoning in Zanzibar's Islamic courts. This article explores how Islamic judges determine the validity of divorce-related actions through assessing the intention of the actors involved. Examining two recent cases from a court in rural Zanzibar demonstrates how a judge determines the intention behind actions. The judge considers the range of possible meanings of divorce-related actions in the cultural context of Zanzibar. (Zanzibar, Islam, intention, divorce, judges).

DOMESTICATING THE IMMIGRANT OTHER: JAPANESE MEDIA IMAGES OF NIKKEIJIN RETURN MIGRANTS

Takeyuki "Gaku" Tsuda
University of California at San Diego

The return migration of Latin American nikkeijin to Japan is unprecedented in the country's history. Never has Japan been faced with so many returning Japanese who are so culturally different. Their presence profoundly challenges the country's long-held beliefs about Japanese ethnicity, race, and culture. Although the media are reputed to be the principal agents of social change, their coverage of these nikkeijin immigrants does more to reinforce than challenge traditional Japanese ethnic and cultural assumptions. (Migration, ethnicity, media, Japan).

UNTANGLING CONVERSION: RELIGIOUS CHANGE AND IDENTITY AMONG THE FOREST TOBELO OF INDONESIA

Christopher R. Duncan
University of Missouri-Columbia

In the late 1980s, after decades of refusal, the Forest Tobelo foragers of northeastern Halmahera, Indonesia, converted to Christianity. The version of Christianity they accepted was not the one offered (or imposed) by coastal Tobelo-speaking communities with whom they share kinship and affinal ties, but was brought to the region by the American-based New Tribes Mission. This essay examines the factors and motivations behind this change, and offers an explanation that takes into account local histories, larger political and economic changes, such as deforestation and land encroachment, and the rarely examined topic of missionary methodologies. The Forest Tobelo decision to convert is best understood as an attempt to maintain their distinct identity from coastal communities with whom they have a long history of poor relations; the methods used by the New Tribes Mission made conversion an attractive option at that time. (Christianity, missionaries, Halmahera, conversion motivations).

THE MIXED ECONOMY OF THE SOUTH INDIAN KURUMBAS

George Tharakan C.
University of Hyderabad

This article reports on the Kurumbas, forager-horticulturists of Attappady, India. The concern here is with the relationship between the subsistence economy and social organization in an attempt to explain the persistence of both immediate- and delayed-return systems. The explanation I propose lies in the nature of adaptation to the physical environment and Kurumba relations with tribal and peasant neighbors that affect their subsistence pattern and put them in a state of partial transformation; i.e., suspended between, while participating in, different economic and social arenas. (Social organization, hunter-gatherers, Kurumbas, Attappady).

IMAGINING MODERNITY IN RURAL FIJI

Karen J. Brison
Union College

Understanding ethnic identity in Fiji and elsewhere in the Pacific requires looking at the ways that individuals draw on ideologies to make sense of the particular circumstances of their lives. While national identity in Fiji is often defined in opposition to the West through reference to a romanticized premodern tradition, individual Fijians are more concerned with defining their identity vis-à-vis other villagers. When people justify their position within the indigenous Fijian community, they question and redefine both tradition and modernity. Modernity is experienced individually as contradictions between competing ideologies and local experience through idiosyncratic life circumstances. "Modern" and "traditional" are not opposites but creatively redefined as having much in common. (Fiji, modernity, postcolonialism, ethnic identity, Pacific).

ADOLESCENT AMBIGUITIES AND THE NEGOTIATION OF BELONGING IN THE ANDES

Krista E. Van Vleet
Bowdoin College

Although typically marginal to conceptions of citizenship, children also negotiate their belonging to the nation. This article explores the ways adolescent girls in a rural region of Bolivia use clothing to identify themselves with various collectivities: nation, region, and family. Their consumption and displays of fashion are shaped by national and local discourses of gender, race, and the civilized. Navigating multiple identifications simultaneously, their everyday and ritual practices disrupt assumed oppositions between "Indian" and "Bolivian." (Youth, gender, race, identity, Bolivia).