AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 44, no. 1 (Winter 2005)

THE ARTICULATION OF CULTURE, AGRICULTURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT OF CHINESE IN NORTHERN THAILAND

Huang Shu-min
Iowa State University

The Yunnan Chinese who settled in northern Thailand's Golden Triangle after 1964 used their traditional knowledge of hill farming and crop diversity, plus their extensive ethnic networks based on multi-layered Chinese identity, to establish viable communities in a mountainous region. By focusing on producing cash crops such as lychee nuts, tangerines, ginger roots, and bamboo shoots, they established a sustainable rural livelihood that is environmentally friendly, economically profitable, and socio-culturally self-renewing. This study addresses issues of sustainable agriculture and livelihood. (Sustainable agriculture, The Golden Triangle, Thailand, Chinese diaspora).

WALKING STREETS, TALKING HISTORY: THE MAKING OF ODESSA

Tanya Richardson
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology

Through walking streets and talking history, the members of the My Odessa club sense their city as place. History is encountered in buildings, ruins, monuments, and stories as both a diffuse feeling and a dialogic process. The walkers' practice of exploring nooks and crannies of the city and speaking with local residents is informed by a "large family" form of sociality, and a notion of Odessa as court-yard where space is conceived as communal. In walking the city, participants subvert and recreate aspects of Soviet and post-Soviet urban space and generate a sense of their city as distinct from a national space. (Space and place, sensing history, postsocialist transformation).

COSMOLOGY, RESOURCES, AND LANDSCAPE: AGENCIES OF THE DEAD AND THE LIVING IN DUNA, PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Pamela J. Stewart
University of Pittsburgh

Andrew Strathern
University of Pittsburgh

Among the Duna people of Papua New Guinea, ideas about the dead and the living are intertwined through cosmological perceptions of, and ritual interactions with, the landscape. These ideas change to accommodate and deal with new issues that arise. Malu (narratives of origins) link kin with land and to spirit figures. In the context of colonial and post-colonial mining for minerals and drilling for oil, malu have been reformulated as a way of claiming compensation from mining companies. Central to the Duna perspective is the notion that the agencies and substances of the dead and the living are interlinked. An act of suicide may lead to demands for compensation as a result of the suicide being caused by "shaming": the agency of the dead person therefore lives on. In images of this sort, the connection between the living and the dead is vividly portrayed. (Agency, ancestors, compensation, cosmology).

RACE AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY IN NEPAL

Susan Hangen
Ramapo College

While many anthropological studies on race have focused on dominant uses of race, race can be a powerful form of oppositional identity. Subaltern people may assert racial identities for political mobilization. This article investigates why a small political party that sought to mobilize Nepal's ethnic groups chose to redefine them as members of the Mongol race. By tracing the historical and contemporary meanings of race and other discourses of identity in Nepal, the article analyzes the meanings of this construction of race, and shows how using race appeared to be an effective political strategy. (Race, strategic essentialism, identity politics, Nepal).

TEMPLE-BUILDING AND HERITAGE IN CHINA

Selina Ching Chan
Hong Kong Shue Yan College

Building Huang Da Xian temples in Jinhua, in the Lower Yangtze Delta, is a "heritage" process, an interpretation, manipulation, and invention of the past for present and future interests. Local memories of the saint Huang Da Xian were awakened by Hong Kong pilgrims, and the subsequent construction of temples enacted the politics of nationalism with a transnational connection. The process of remembering the saint and constructing temples creates, mediates, and invents relationships between the locals in Jinhua and Chinese living in mainland China and elsewhere. The multiple meanings of temple- building are examined for mainland Chinese, Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the nation state. While the mainlanders treat new temples as places to perform religious activities, attract tourists, and develop the local economy, temple construction for the overseas Chinese is a nostalgic search for authenticity and roots. The state has utilized Huang Da Xian as a symbol of nationalism to reinforce a Chinese identity among mainlanders and all other Chinese. (Temple, heritage, tourism, religion, Wong Tai Sin).

CO-WIFE CONFLICT AND CO-OPERATION

William Jankowiak
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Monika Sudakov
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Benjamin C. Wilreker
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Conventional wisdom holds that the polygynous family system is as sexually and emotionally satisfying as a monogamous one. Ethnographic accounts of 69 polygynous systems, however, provide compelling evidence that the majority of co-wives in a polygynous family prefer pragmatic co-operation with one another while maintaining a respectful distance. Moreover, there often is a deep-seated feeling of angst that arises over competing for access to their mutual husband. Co-wife conflict in the early years of marriage is pervasive, and often marked by outbursts of verbal or physical violence. Co-wife conflict may be mitigated by social institutions, such as sororal polygyny and some form of "social security" or health care. Material wealth may be divided more or less equally, but as a husband's sexual attention (a primary source for increased fertility) and affection cannot always be equitably distributed, there is ongoing and contentious rivalry among co-wives. (Co-wife conflict, jealousy, co-operation, pair bond).