AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 43, no. 3 (Summer 2004)

BATTLEFIELD PILGRIMS AT GETTYSBURG NATIONAL MILITARY PARK

John B. Gatewood
Lehigh University

Catherine M. Cameron
Cedar Crest College

Historic battlefields provoke a broad range of responses from visitors. This article reports on the reasons people give for visiting Gettysburg National Military Park and the perceptions and images they have of the park. The meanings that Gettysburg has for people are varied and in some cases highly affective. The research provides empirical support for the suggestion of other studies that sometimes battlefield visitors begin as tourists, but then are transformed into pilgrims. (Battlefield tourism, pilgrimage, historic sites).

THE DEFENSE OF MAIQUILLAHUE BAY: KNOWLEDGE, FAITH, AND IDENTITY IN AN ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICT

Juan Carlos Skewes
Universidad Austral de Chile

Debbie Guerra
Centro de Estudios y Acción de Género

After two years of active resistance, in 1998, the people of Mehuín in southern Chile succeeded in stopping the construction of a pipeline that would have spewed industrial waste from the largest pulp mill under construction in South America into Maiquillahue Bay. This article analyzes the power of the Defense Committee of Mehuín's discourse in mobilizing the people. The outcome of this conflict illustrates the committee's ability to connect the pipeline's threat with local transcendental meanings, while scientifically explaining the pipeline's ecological impact. Thus, residents could make sense of the danger in the context of their culture, be motivated to defend the bay, and also have their understanding of nature transformed. The case suggests that local communities may engage in a symbiotic and scientifically informed relation to nature and become wardens of their environment. (Environmental conflict, Chile, scientific and religious knowledge, political ecology).

SCATTERING ASHES OF THE FAMILY DEAD: MEMORIAL ACTIVITY AMONG THE BEREAVED IN CONTEMPORARY JAPAN

Satsuki Kawano
University of Guelph

Challenging the normative practice of interment, scattering ashes emerged as a new ritual in Japan during the 1990s. Both sensational and controversial, the practice has met with cries of protest and enthusiastic support. As an expression of their respect and affection, people in Japan are expected to venerate the family dead at a family altar and a family grave. Because maintaining the grave evokes the cherished notion of filial piety, some regard scattering ashes as a threat to memorial tradition. But the bereaved who scatter their kin's ashes continue to memorialize their kin by selectively altering certain aspects of memorial activity. They create personally significant ways to honor their loved ones. Scattering ashes, characterized by innovation and flexibility, has increased the range of memorial practices in Japan. (Japan, memorials, ritual change, ancestor worship).

GENESIS IN BULI: CHRISTIANITY, BLOOD, AND VERNACULAR MODERNITY ON AN INDONESIAN ISLAND

Nils Bubandt
University of Aarhus

Christianity and local ontology in the North Malukan village of Buli intersect in surprising ways that upset conventional ideas about tradition and modernity. The poetics and cultural politics of blood, as these emerge in an idiosyncratic telling of Genesis, attest to a paradoxical modernity. In this ambivalent modern imaginary, traditional ontology frequently structures pretensions to being modern, while modern sensibilities form the basis of ostensibly traditional assertions. Attending to the discursive and ontological aspects of blood in Buli therefore provides a way of analyzing the entangled imaginaries of modernity and tradition in a marginalized Indonesian community, and by extension a way of bringing the debates about invented traditions and alternative modernities into constructive conversation. (Symbolism and politics of blood, alternative modernities, objectified tradition).

WALKING IN THE SPIRIT OF BLOOD: MORAL IDENTITY AMONG BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIANS

James S. Bielo
Michigan State University

The proliferation of small groups within American Protestantism, in particular those devoted to Bible study, raises questions about the collective construction of meaning in congregational life. Using discourse as an analytical tool, this article explores the meaning of moral identity as constructed in three Protestant groups in the southern United States. Discursive participants relied on three strategies for building a concept of the moral self: positioning the heart at the center of moral identity; describing what it means to be born again; and describing three moral "others." (Discourse, moral identity, born-again Christianity).