(2021). The Life of a Pest: An Ethnography of Biological Invasion in Mexico. Anthropological Forum. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT This introduction to the special issue Qualifying Sociality through Values interrogates the relationship between sociality and values, two concepts that have gained increasing traction in anthropology, but which have not previously been jointly considered. It presents the twofold agenda of the special issue which is to explore how sociality is valued and how values affect sociality. It opens

ABSTRACT While much theoretical work on value takes point of departure in what adults presumably value, this chapter addresses the valuing work children do. Articulating ideals of ‘being social’ and ‘being oneself’ as good forms of personhood, Danish teachers oblige children to enact a good form of ‘being together as a class’, a sociability considered vital to democratic society. Drawing on discussions

ABSTRACT This article explores how changing environmental conditions and practices connect with shifting forms and valuations of sociality in a Ngaju Dayak village in the radically transformed peatlands of southern Borneo. It proposes that the production of values and social relations is indivisible from the production of a livelihood through material means and dwelling in the local environment. The

ABSTRACT This article uses a myth of the Luangans of Indonesian Borneo to reflect upon the value of sociality and its role in promoting well-being in their healing rituals. In these rituals, sociality with nonhuman beings and between participants is crucial, yet insufficient for, and sometimes at odds with, success. The article describes the multiple modes and valences of this ritual sociality, and

ABSTRACT What can we learn about values and how they shape sociality by looking at a murder? In this article, I look closer at the different and conflicting values involved in the social events leading up to an accidental killing of an outside visitor to a village in the northern highlands of the Philippines. I examine how these values were inherently instable and how this instability contributed to

ABSTRACT This paper explores the concepts of value and sociality in the lives of human subjects living in the village of Ara, South Sulawesi, Indonesia in the 1980s. Every individual engaged in several forms of sociality that were associated with different sets of values. As members of noble houses and kingdoms, they interacted with nonhuman subjects such as ancestor spirits and valued their ascribed

ABSTRACT This afterword to the Qualifying Sociality through Values special issue reflects on the challenge, aptly considered by each contributor, to revamp and rejuvenate the sociality concept in light of the ethical turn. It poses three questions. Firstly, just how important are values for sociality? That is, to what extent is social action really conceived and executed through values? Secondly, how

ABSTRACT This paper is an analysis of organised armed conflict, as occurs among the Huli speaking population of Papua New Guinea’s Hela Province. I argue that Huli warfare is viewed from a Huli perspective in historical terms, and that Huli wars are fundamentally fought over the control and authority over the historical narrative, and therefore the control and authority over resources into the future

(2021). Money Counts: Revisiting Economic Calculation. Anthropological Forum. Ahead of Print.

(2021). Oceans Apart: Greed, Betrayal and Pacific Rugby. Anthropological Forum. Ahead of Print.

(2021). Materializing Difference: Consumer Culture, Politics, and Ethnicity among Romanian Roma. Anthropological Forum. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT This essay serves as an introduction to the articles in this special issue, Stranger Races, dealing with how indigenous peoples use the white Other in constructing their identity. I review key issues in anthropological debates over alterity and relations between former colonisers and indigenous peoples. Addressing the hegemony and power related to constructed identities in postcolonial settings

ABSTRACT Palang is a word used in an ethnic Kantu village in Sekong Province, Lao PDR meaning people of a broadly white appearance. It is similar, in sound and semantic range, to words found in many Asia Pacific languages of indicating the West, Westerners, and things originating in the West. The Kantu palang is furthermore linked to other categories of human difference, including ethnicity, possession

ABSTRACT In Benin, as in many postcolonial settings, views of foreign ‘Others’ figure prominently in local discourses about identity and morality. Most of these characterisations centre on whites or other foreigners, known as Yovó in the Fon language of Southern Benin. While Yovós are stereotypically and disapprovingly believed to hold a distaste for African food and culture, they are praised for their

ABSTRACT While there is much scholarship deconstructing ‘mainstream’ Australian perceptions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, there has been little attention to how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples perceive non-Indigenous Australians. Yet such perceptions are telling of cultural difference and the circulation of power in a neo-colonial state. In this paper, we focus on Bininj/Yol

ABSTRACT In the thought-provoking papers that constitute ‘Stranger Races: Reflections on Alterity in Constructions of the Self’, the authors make clear that our always already social confrontation with alterity is complex, multifaceted and context sensitive. They also make clear that thinking about alterity is a central, if not the central, element of anthropological study, an endeavour that sheds

ABSTRACT Through a study of love magic, this paper examines the ways in which sexual desire is culturally mediated among the Lelet of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. The Lelet regulate sexuality heavily through what Foucault refers to as ‘prescriptive discourses’ which severely constrain expressions of sexuality, especially for women, who are construed as properly lacking sexual desire. While women

(2021). The Alchemy of Meth: A Decomposition. Anthropological Forum. Ahead of Print.

(2020). Monster Anthropology: Ethnographic Explorations of Transforming Social Worlds Through Monsters. Anthropological Forum. Ahead of Print.

(2020). Ceremony Men: Making Ethnography and the Return of the Strehlow Collection. Anthropological Forum. Ahead of Print.

ABSTRACT Bruce Pascoe's book Dark Emu, which has been a publishing phenomenon in Australia, argues that Aboriginal people were not ‘mere’ hunter-gatherers in 1788, but were farming. This article sets the argument of the book within the context of the views of archaeologists and anthropologists, as well as other historians, about Aboriginal agriculture. Some have argued that Aboriginal people were hunter-gatherers

The anthropology of South America has a long tradition of documenting indigenous lifeways that defy categorisation according to Western frameworks. Contributors to anthropology’s recent ‘ontologica...

ABSTRACT To this day, the robed remains of mummified monks are venerated as ‘living Buddhas’ in northeastern Japan. Widely believed to have mummified themselves through strict adherence to ascetic regimen, temple patrons claim that these living Buddhas are capable of transmitting telepathic messages and curing disease, even of saving lives in the real time of disaster. In this article, I examine the

In Arnhem Land, Yolηu people of all ages are mad for mobile phones and buy them ‘all the time’ (96). Phone & Spear is a rich, ambitious book that reports on their relationship to the digital world....

ABSTRACT Tourists to Africa covet close encounters with dangerous wildlife, revelling in the simulation of the primal risks of the savannah, and yet they expect to be kept safe. Similarly, many tourists wish to engage with exotic local people, but in ways that ensure they feel comfortable socially and physically. Safari guides in the Okavango Delta fulfil these desires by facilitating close encounters

ABSTRACT This introduction sets out some of the key themes addressed by the papers in the special issue on ‘Confronting the Naturalness of Disaster in the Pacific’. Disasters are now widely understood not as ‘natural’ phenomena but as events or processes that unfold at the intersection between natural or artificial hazards and human populations. We review some of the effects of the naturalisation of

A book like this one on the Calais ‘Jungle’, the most extraordinary form of informal refugee encampment ever realised in the core of Western Europe, was much needed. Michel Agier adopts an original...

ABSTRACT Museums are our memory banks. They tell us where we have come from. They also allow us to imagine where we are heading. Which is why it should trouble us that there has never been a truly Australian museum. Each of our state and federal museums has been built on Aboriginal collections, and each has been built on distinctly Western or European concepts, values, categories and practices. Some

(2019). Illness, Identity, and Taboo Among Australian Paleo Dieters. Anthropological Forum: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 428-430.

(2019). Acting for Others: Relational Transformations in Papua New Guinea. Anthropological Forum: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 413-415.

(2019). Lost Rambos. Anthropological Forum: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 415-417.

(2019). Correction. Anthropological Forum: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. (vi)-(vi).

(2019). Retraction: Comment on Anthropology: Why it Matters. Anthropological Forum: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 433-433.

ABSTRACT In 2006, the Indonesian state re-recognised Confucianism as an official religion, but this did not have the straightforwardly positive consequences that either Confucianist revivalists or some theorists of recognition might have predicted. Revivalists were often – but not always – gripped by feelings of outrage and moral torment, whilst the pace of the revival itself was very uneven. These

ABSTRACT The establishment and use of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) groups is now the established route towards conservation in large parts of the Pacific, especially in Fiji. One of the main strengths of CBNRM that is often mentioned is its adaptability to different contexts and to changing objectives among stakeholders, an aspect thoroughly tested by events such as ‘natural’

ABSTRACT In many ethnographies, deities reflect social structures, represent power relations, or serve as a resource for individuals. However, believers usually do not doubt the existence of deities and their agency: that is, their ability to act and initiate change. The gap between these points of view narrows in the religious experiences in the Indian Himalayas. There, the local population, who communicate

ABSTRACT Based on long-term doctoral fieldwork on bush fires in New Caledonia, this paper aims to explore the double assumption that bush fires were shaped as a public issue through specific categorisations of human and natural elements, and that this work resulted in negative outcomes as far as the environment is concerned. This paper will address the question of mediation between human agency (colonial

(2019). An Anthropology of Anthropology: Is it Time to Shift Paradigms? Anthropological Forum: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 404-407.

(2019). Desire Work: Ex-Gay and Pentecostal Masculinity in South Africa. Anthropological Forum: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 409-411.

(2019). The Promise of Prosperity: Visions of the Future in Timor-Leste. Anthropological Forum: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 424-426.

(2019). Herlands: Exploring the Women’s Land Movement in the United States. Anthropological Forum: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 422-424.

ABSTRACT Ways of Baloma is a deliberate attempt to move Anthropology as a discipline by means of a new account of a classic locale for the practice. How does it manage this purpose? This essay evaluates Mosko’s attempt from the perspective of another ethnographer with long-term ethnographic research in the Kula Ring. Paradoxes abound in the book and are featured in this review. For while Malinowski’s

ABSTRACT Oceanic people and places are increasingly labelled as either ‘resilient’ or ‘vulnerable’ to disasters and climate change. Resilience is often described in disaster discourse as a strategy designed to overcome vulnerability by helping communities to ‘bounce back’ in the wake of ‘natural’ disasters. Using ethnographic research conducted with Community Disaster and Climate Change Committees

ABSTRACT Climatic anomalies associated with El Niño bring prolonged droughts and night-time frosts that devastate subsistence gardens in the Papua New Guinea highlands. As a customary process of adaptation to the subsequent food insecurity caused by crop-destroying frosts, people migrate to lower altitude areas where kin and friends provide sustenance and social support. However, with increasing economic

ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine the disconnect between government and NGO responses to Cyclone Pam, and previous healthy food initiatives in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Decades of nutrition education programs across Vanuatu have urged families to limit their consumption of tinned meat and imported food in favour of locally grown fruits and vegetables. These dietary guidelines call on families to watch their

ABSTRACT This paper outlines some of the ways Mengen speakers have positioned Ulawun volcano, its inhabitants and outputs as beneficial features of daily life. By way of contrast, volcanology and more recent disaster planning discourses in Papua New Guinea, have often positioned Ulawun as a hazard that creates potential dangers and risks. The paper explores how these two distinct orientations to Ulawun’s

ABSTRACT Tongoa was one of the worst-hit islands in Vanuatu when it was struck on 13 March 2015 by Cyclone Pam, the most severe climatic event recorded in the South Pacific for several decades. Nearly all of the buildings on Tongoa were damaged by winds and flooding. However, exceptional this cyclone might have been, such disruptive events are frequent and widespread on Tongoa Island: landslides, volcanic

ABSTRACT Culture, by its very nature, is always at risk of change – whether through transformation, destruction or redefinition. So how might culture be said to be particularly at risk in the context of ‘natural’ disasters, and how are disasters ‘naturalised’ or incorporated under the terms of different cultural regimes? An earlier focus on the impacts to built or tangible heritage is increasingly

ABSTRACT The 1913 volcanic eruption on the island of Ambrym (Vanuatu) struck both groups composing the island’s population at the time, the Islanders and the British Presbyterians who had come to ‘civilise’ them. Through the lens of Peirce’s semiosis, particularly his notion of the ‘indexical sign’, this article examines the chronological development of the two groups’ divergent, and also at times

ABSTRACT International practices of disaster preparedness presume human agency, particularly at the household level, as an important pre-emptive response to anticipated natural hazards. Our analysis of Fijian responses to Tropical Cyclone Winston indicates that preparedness is also regarded as important by cyclone survivors but has a moral dimension that can be used to assign blame to underprepared

(2019). An Australian Indigenous Diaspora: Warlpiri Matriarchs and the Refashioning of Tradition. Anthropological Forum: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 430-432.

(2019). Anthropology: Why It Matters. Anthropological Forum: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 397-399.

ABSTRACT The article is divided into two parts. In the first, I explore what is known about the precontact history of Collingwood Bay based on archaeological, linguistic, and oral evidence. While much must be left to speculation, the evidence strongly suggests that the Bay has long been a meeting point between Austronesian and Papuan peoples. The second and longer part of the paper attends to the political

ABSTRACT In this paper, I use pig-killings as an entry for understanding the transformation that has taken place with respect to hierarchy and egalitarianism in Vanuatu. In the early twentieth century accounts by John Layard there is a thorough description of the cosmological and spiritual meaning of pig-killings in the manly hierarchy of these islands. The entire society was consumed in a sacrificial

(2019). Skin, kin and clan: the dynamics of social categories in indigenous Australia. Anthropological Forum: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 419-422.

ABSTRACT The current collection of articles includes a discussion of Austronesian peoples living in modern nations situated in East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and Melanesia. It thus crosses many long-established boundaries in area studies which tend to develop their own theoretical dialects. While there are many valid reasons for these theoretical discussions, a shift in focus from geographically

ABSTRACT Hierarchy is often discussed in anthropology in terms of models that are specific to, and to an extent determinant of particular cultures. For example, the contrast between Big Man and Chief drawn by Sahlins not only appears as an emanation of distinction between two cultural orders in his account, but also as being a fundamental determinant of that cultural distinction. Likewise, the Dumontian

(2019). An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular. Anthropological Forum: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 417-419.

ABSTRACT In the southern highlands of Madagascar, Betsileo free descendants strictly avoid marrying descendants of slaves, whom they regard as ‘unclean people’. A close examination of the history of a slave descent group shows that the most serious difficulty faced by former slaves after abolition was not access to land but ritual uncleanliness, which prevented intermarriage with free people and led