AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 46, no. 4 (Fall 2007)

COSTUME, KÓSTYOM, AND DRESS: FORMULATIONS OF BAGÓBO ETHNIC IDENTITY IN SOUTHERN MINDANAO

Cherubim A. Quizon

The Bagóbo, a minority ethnic group in southern Mindanao, the Philippines, think about their traditional cloth and clothing as polysemic symbols of group identity and personhood. The range of meanings connects them to the larger communities of city, region, and nation. The Bagóbo call their ceremonial dress ompák (clothing) when discussing it among themselves but use kóstyom (costume) when talking to non-Bagóbo. The diminished use of such clothing for everyday use, as well as the increased visibility of iconic Mindanao tribal dress in high profile regional cultural festivals are repeated phenomena that the Bagóbo themselves project. The deployment of Bagóbo identity and other marketable ethnicities as spectacle in a regional heritage industry, commonly approached from the lens of political economy, is understood and interpreted in very different ways among the Bagóbo. Kóstyom, a neologism, symbolically and politically links them to the region and nation-state. Ompák, although referring to the same set of textiles, does not suggest performance for others but instead refers to one's existence as a Bagóbo and as a person. The same dress is present among different segments of Bagóbo, such as the neighboring Guiángan and Óbo, who speak different languages (resulting in distinct names for otherwise identical artifacts) but share ceremonial clothing as a resonant idiom for articulating and expressing belonging to the community. (Bagóbo, Mindanao, ethnic identity, aesthetics, textiles and dress).

PERFORMING PIETY AND ISLAMIC MODERNITY IN A TURKISH VILLAGE

Kimberly Hart

In western Turkey, villagers express a vision of Islamic modernity by practicing hayir (good deeds), and spiritual and economic practices which allow for informal redistributions of wealth. These redistributions address anxieties over emerging social and economic inequalities. Since the late 1980s, villagers have experienced economic growth through work in a women's carpet weaving co-operative. This has made life more comfortable, but the villagers worry that it has led to greed and isolation from what they call "humanity." By addressing these concerns with acts of sharing, they perform piety and express love for the community, while also celebrating their newfound prosperity. Connections between spiritual and economic practices show that Islamic capitalism, which takes into account the need for social justice while promoting economic development, is a vision of an ideal Islamic society. Local expressions of spirituality and nationally based political movements are connected in ways which demonstrate that some people are attempting to create an alternative to neoliberal capitalism. (Piety, charity, Turkey, Islam, economic development).

ECOCOSMOLOGIES IN THE MAKING: NEW MINING RITUALS IN TWO PAPUA NEW GUINEA SOCIETIES

Daniele Moretti

Two new kinds of ritual offerings to the spirits of the land emerged among the Urapmin and Hamtai peoples of Papua New Guinea in the contexts of gold prospecting by a large mining multinational and of several decades of indigenous artisanal mining. Although these new rituals have an analogous form, their rationales and objectives are diametrically opposed. One reflects a disenchantment of the landscape that aims to dispossess the spirits of their land and turn the environment from a subject to be reckoned with to an object of subjugation and exploitation, while the other embodies a longing for enhanced reciprocal relations between humans and non-humans modeled on the morality of conjugality and affinity. These differences relate to historical variations in indigenous understandings of what constitutes moral behavior for humans and non-humans, and to the divergent impacts that Christianity and development, or lack thereof, have had on the Urapmin and Hamtai contexts, calling attention thereby to the complex and multidirectional ways in which mining is incorporated into, and transforms, indigenous Melanesian ecocosmologies. (Gold mining, Papua New Guinea, political ecology, religious change, ritual change).

KINSHIP THEORY: A PARADIGM SHIFT

Dwight W. Read

The received view regarding the centrality of kinship terminologies in kinship systems assumes that terminologies are genealogically constrained. This assumption ignores the generative logic of kinship terminologies, hence the need for a new paradigm. It is argued that kinship systems are based on two conceptual systems: the logic of genealogical tracing and the logic of kin-term products. Structural implications of the generative logic of terminological structures are discussed, including the logical basis for the difference between descriptive and classificatory terminologies and transformations that may be made between different kinship terminologies through simple changes in structural equations. Connection between ethnographic observations and structural properties are identified. (Cultural anthropology, kinship, formal models, genealogy).