AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 43, no. 4 (Fall 2004)

WEALTH ITEMS IN THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS OF WEST PAPUA

Anton Ploeg
Radboud University, Nijmegen

This article compares the distinctive uses of wealth items among Grand Valley Dani, Western Dani, and Me, the largest ethnic groups in West Papua. The time period covered is primarily from first contact with Europeans to the early 1970s. (Wealth items, inalienability, ancestor cult, exchange).

INTERPRETATIONS OF ELDER SUICIDE, STRESS, AND DEPENDENCY AMONG RURAL JAPANESE

John W. Traphagan
University of Texas at Austin

This article explores ideas expressed by older, rural Japanese to explain suicide among their age peers. It also looks at how older Japanese conceptualize residing with children and grandchildren in terms of dependency and stress. While the multigeneration household often is represented by both young and old in Japan as an ideal living situation for the elderly, many elders also see coresidence as a significant source of stress due to conflicting values held between generations. For many rural elderly, the stress associated with coresidence is viewed as being sufficiently severe to lead some of them to end their lives. Based on conversations held with elders in rural Japan, these themes are contextualized in terms of Japanese concepts of suicide. (Japan, suicide, aging, dependency, stress).

THE ANGOLA PRISON RODEO: INMATE COWBOYS AND INSTITUTIONAL TOURISM

Melissa Schrift
Marquette University

This article examines the Angola prison rodeo as a form of tourist performance and ritual. It argues that the rodeo capitalizes on the public's fascination with criminality through the spectacle of animalistic inmate others subdued by a progressive penal system. The essay introduces the notion of institutional tourism in relation to the politics of representation. (Tourism, performance, prison, spectacle, representation).

PRICKLY PEAR CACTUS AND PASTORALISM IN SOUTHWEST MADAGASCAR

Jeffrey C. Kaufmann
University of Southern Mississippi

Madagascar's Mahafale cattle raisers have adopted several species of the prickly pear cactus (Opuntia) into their subsistence patterns. Their use of Opuntia has had the economic effects of both sedentary and transhumant intensification. It lengthens the stay of pastoralists at their villages and structures the timing of their seasonal migration to distant pastures. (Cactus-plant cattle fodder, pastoralism, sedentarization, Mahafale, Madagascar).

MUCHONGOLO DANCE CONTESTS: DEEP PLAY IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN LOWVELD

Isak Niehaus
University of Pretoria

Jonathan Stadler
University of Pretoria Reproductive Health Research Unit, Johannesburg

This article argues that Geertz's concern with cultural performances as "stories people tell themselves about themselves" continues to be a valid focus of anthropological inquiry. Like Balinese cockfights, muchongolo dancing contests in the Bushbuckridge municipality of South Africa offer metacommentary on everyday life and struggles in the form of a competition. Through the juxtaposition of movements and costumes with the actions of spectators outside the dance arena, and through the lyrics of songs, the dancers enact a confrontation between xintu (the past, tradition) and xilungu (the present, ways of whites). This war of images and words stimulates a critical consciousness about political economic processes that cannot be captured by simplistic labels such as acquiescence and resistance. (Dance, tradition, modernity, Shangaan, South Africa).

THE AESTHETICS OF SPIRITUAL PRACTICE AND THE CREATION OF MORAL AND MUSICAL SUBJECTIVITIES IN ALEPPO, SYRIA

Jonathan H. Shannon
Hunter College, CUNY

This essay analyzes the performance of dhikr (the invocation of God through prayer, song, and movement) in Aleppo, Syria, as an embodied practice mediated by specific repertoires of aesthetic and kinesthetic practices. In dhikr, aesthetic stimuli produce an experience of temporal transformation that participants narrate as "ecstasy." Performing dhikr also conditions a musical self, which in turn allows for the habituation of spiritual states. This suggests the importance of investigating the interface of embodied practices, temporality, and the aesthetics of spiritual practice. (Aesthetics, temporality, music, Islam, Syria).