AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 44, no. 4 (Fall 2005)

THE WAY OF THE BUFFALOES: TRADE AND SACRIFICE IN NORTHERN LAOS

Guido Sprenger
Academia Sinica

This article links buffalo sacrifices among Rmeet (Lamet) in Northern Laos to trade. Buffalo sacrifices for house spirits reintegrate ill persons into a socio-cosmic whole consisting of relations to agnatic kin, ancestors, and spirits. Yet, this sociality is dependent on external forces. Buffaloes are bought rather than raised, and the availability of paid labor and markets interacts with the rituals. But while sacrifice reproduces representations that make up a "social whole," the market operates by a sociality that is less easy to delineate. Thus, when objects are transferred from market to ritual, they acquire new meanings. Buffaloes turn from trade goods into representations of socio-cosmic relatedness. Yet, as a comparison of rural and suburban sacrifices demonstrates, trade patterns directly influence ritual practice. Market exchange is referenced as a model in the ritual. Trade and sacrifice can be seen as types of exchange that are resources for each other but remain separated. (Laos, Lamet, sacrifice, trade, exchange).

FIJIAN MALES AT THE CROSSROADS OF GENDER AND ETHNICITY IN A FIJI SECONDARY SCHOOL

Carmen M. White
Central Michigan University

This article explores how two transgendered Fijian males navigate the intersections of sex, gender, and ethnicity or "race" in a Fiji secondary school. Their experiences illustrate, on the one hand, the negotiability of a transgendered category in Fiji. On the other hand, there is the potential for transgendered identity to open spaces for engagement with nonFijian ethnic markers in the face of essentialist discursive practices on ethnicity. The case study shows the individualized ways that two transgendered males negotiate and challenge notions of Fijian male authenticity. (Transgender, Fijians, ethnicity, Fijian schools).

THE SENSE OF TRANQUILITY: BODILY PRACTICE AND ETHNIC CLASSES IN YUCATÁN

Christine A. Kray
Rochester Institute of Technology

While bodily practice has become a major area of investigation in cultural anthropology, its connection to ethnicity remains to be explored. Among the Yucatec Maya, however, one cultural value, tranquility, is enacted through bodily practices and also serves as an axis for ethnic distinction. Moreover, a specific logic associating tranquility with morality serves as an incisive critique of wealthier Others, all the more important as the Maya are incorporated into the global economy at the bottom of the class hierarchy. An understanding of ethnicity is incomplete without an ethnography of bodily practice and an investigation into how ethnic identity emerges daily in relation to embodied experiences. (Mexico, Maya, ethnicity, social class, embodiment).

GENERATION KU: INDIVIDUALISM AND CHINA'S MILLENNIAL YOUTH

Robert L. Moore
Rollins College

The People's Republic of China is undergoing dramatic changes, most of which have their roots in the government-initiated reforms of the 1980s. However, many of the current changes are being driven by China's younger generation, China's equivalent of America's millennials. One of the most prominent of these changes is a new kind of individualism valued by China's millennial youth. A key indicator of young Chinese attachment to this new individualism is the pervasive use of a new slang term associated with it, ku. Ku is the Chinese version of the American slang term "cool," and like cool, its emergence as a pervasive youth slang term is the verbal icon of a youth rebellion that promises to transform some of the older generation's most enduring cultural values. (China, youth, slang, culture change).