AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 46, no. 1 (Winter 2007)

ICELANDIC CHARITY DONATIONS: RECIPROCITY RECONSIDERED

James G. Rice

This article considers the analytical treatment of charitable donations within the anthropological exchange spectrum. The paper draws upon a multi-year ethno-graphic research project on the work of material aid charities in Reykjavík, Iceland. It explores the giving, receiving, and redistributing of material goods at one particular agency and argues that the donations are not always gifts, or "free gifts," despite the act of giving to charities being framed in the language of gifting. Such donations defy analytical generalization within this complex flow of goods. A close consideration of charitable giving can contribute to understanding how structural inequalities are produced and reproduced within wealthy societies, particularly in terms of how these often magnanimous acts can contribute to the disempowerment and marginalization of those who depend upon such forms of assistance. (Charity giving, exchange, inequality, Reykjavík, Iceland).

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: PENTECOSTALISM IN FIJI

Karen J. Brison

A Fijian Pentecostal church illustrates how Pentecostalism allows indigenous Fijians to construct a distinctly Fijian modernity and simultaneously recast the global and national world in anti-modern terms. Pentecostalism paves the way for a renegotiation of roles within indigenous Fijian society because individualism is set within a worldview emphasizing key indigenous values of faith and service to community. Pentecostalism also constructs an imagined (and a real) world community of Christians in which Fijians and other marginal groups participate on a more equal basis than they do in international economic and political relations. By endorsing values strongly associated with the indigenous community, however, Pentecostalism often prevents questioning ethnic inequalities within the nation of Fiji, despite the fact that Pentecostal churches see themselves as uniting individuals across cultural barriers. (Fiji, Pentecostal Christianity, globalization, modernity).

MONUMENTS OF GRIEF: VILLAGE POLITICS AND MEMORY IN POST-SOCIALIST RURAL CHINA

Ka-ming Wu

A small bridge project in rural China became a corruption scandal and burdened villagers with a huge debt. Seeking reason and justice from government officials, villagers encountered only obfuscation and frustration. At the same time, a void left during the Chinese Cultural Revolution by the destruction of an arch to chastity, a village monument, became a gathering place for mythical legends, stories of loyalty and betrayal, and speculations on the fate of the community. Forced to retain a pre-reform identity of rural residency, yet confronted with a market economy constrained by arbitrary state regulations, the bridge and the lost arch are spaces where villagers reconstruct their memory of Maoist governance, evaluate meanings of political relations, and project their image for fairness and a responsible state. (Chinese village-state relations, political corruption, social memory).

THE RISE OF WIFE SECLUSION IN RURAL SOUTH-CENTRAL NIGER

Kari Bergstrom Henquinet

This article examines the relationship of ideological and material factors in the rise of wife seclusion in two rural towns south of Maradi, Niger. Much of the literature on wife seclusion in Hausaland associates wife seclusion with urban or wealthier households, but it is also practiced in rural households of varying economic status and with differing labor needs. Data examining economic and religious changes as well as the perspectives of residents in two rural towns show that seclusion can be a strategy for achieving prosperity for some and a marker of class or religious status by others. (Niger, seclusion, gender, household economies, social change, Islam).

A UNIQUE CHINESE MEDICINE MARKET IN GUANGXI

Du Liping

The Jingxi medicine market in the far southwestern corner of Guangxi is on the Chinese periphery geographically and culturally. Its isolation limits its scope of commercial transactions, which are conducted primarily for the healthcare of the local community. A dragon boat race is an annual festival element that is synchronized with the market's only day of activity. The market is articulated into a local set of healthcare practices, and it is the market's local community orientation that has enabled it to operate without particular regard to its commercial function over the past centuries. Partly because it is linked more to local folk traditions than to canonical Chinese medicine, the market was little recognized in traditional China. (Medicine market, Chinese periphery, festival elements).