Ethnology

Meteor Beliefs Project Belarussian meteor folk-beliefs

by Tsimafei Avilin

Folk-beliefs from Belarus are given and discussed, concerning the supposed divinatory properties of meteors, often... more Folk-beliefs from Belarus are given and discussed, concerning the supposed divinatory properties of meteors, often relating to birth and death, and the powers thought resident in meteorites.

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/2006JIMO...34..119A/0000119.000.html

Tra nemici e bambini. Note di una ricerca in corso sul comando kalapalo (Alto Xingu, Mato Grosso, Brasile)

by Antonio Guerreiro Júnior

Stuedahl, Dagny 2009:Digital Cultural Heritage Engagement - A New Research Field for Ethnology. Ethnologia Scandinavica 2009 ;Volum 39. pp. 67-81

by dagny stuedahl

Clinicopathologic study of odontogenic keratocysts in Singapore and Malaysia

by Chai Wen Lin

This was a retrospective study of odontogenic keratocysts in people from the Singapore-Malaysian region. The purpose... more This was a retrospective study of odontogenic keratocysts in people from the Singapore-Malaysian region. The purpose of this study was to present the clinicopathologic features of odontogenic keratocysts in the Oriental population and to compare these data with those from other reported studies. Biopsy records from 1981 to 1992 of 61 cases of odontogenic keratocysts from patients in Malaysia and Singapore showed that 42.6% of patients were female and 57.4% of patients were male. Among patients with cysts, 75.4% were Chinese, 6.6% were Malays, 9.8% were Indians and 8.2% were other ethnic groups. The mean age of these patients was 26.98 +/- 15.38 years with a peak incidence occurring in the second to fourth decades. The location of the lesions was more often in the mandible (65.5%) than the maxilla (31.0%). There was a marked predilection for lesions to occur in the posterior mandible. Histologically, 90.2% of the cysts were lined with a para-keratinized stratified squamous epithelium while only 3.3% of the cysts were lined with orthokeratinized stratified squamous epithelium. Mixed para-keratinized and orthokeratinized epithelial linings were observed in 4 cases (6.5%). The cyst linings were mainly uninflamed (95.1%). Inflammation of the cyst wall was found in 42 cases (68.8%). Twelve (19.7%) cases contained keratin in the lumen. A satellite cyst was observed in only 6 cases (9.8%). In conclusion, most clinical and histological features seen in this study were similar to those found for Caucasians. The only clinical feature that was different was the peak age incidence, that ranged from the second to fourth decades, with an absence of a second peak. Odontogenic keratocysts presenting at the site of the dentigerous cyst were observed in 7 cases (11.5%).

SW: Kroppslinjer - Kön, transsexualism och kropp i berättelser om könskorrigering. ENG:Bodylines - Gender, transsexualism and embodiment in narratives on gender correction

by Signe Bremer

Doctoral thesis. ISBN: 978-91-7061-099-8

The aim with this dissertation is to analyse the construction and challenge of body and personhood in transsexual... more The aim with this dissertation is to analyse the construction and challenge of body and personhood in transsexual persons narratives on gender correction, as well as what these narratives tells of the terms through which human bodies become intelligible and recognised as possible persons. The analysis focus on the human body as a lived socially produced materiality, yet also a dynamic material actor of flesh and blood. Questions raised are: What consequences does the Swedish act for declaration of sex in certain cases have on transsexual person’s life situation? How do material bodies matter in the processes where psychiatrists decide a person as transsexual or not? What does narratives on lived gender corrective time courses tell on resistance to prevailing conditions of transsexual personhood? The study is based on in-depth interviews with transsexual persons, autobiographical blogs, texts written by informants, internet posts, e-mails, photographs and fieldwork notes.

The dissertation shows that original bodies play an important role in the psychiatric assessment that decides who will be granted the diagnose transsexualism. Current health care logic stresses that a Swedish citizen should be unequivocally materialized as one or the other sex. Therefore, transsexual women must reject their penis and no transsexual men get to keep their ovaries. By contrast, aversion towards penis does not count for all transsexual women. Also some transsexual men wish to give birth. Moreover, the gender corrective health care system does not only make transsexuals lives more liveable. It also functions as an oppressive gender conservative biopolitical system that often leads to experiences of life as less liveable. Those who qualify for gender correction are legally acknowledged as the gender they recognise themselves to be. Nonetheless legal recognition is conditioned by loss. Any Swedish citizen who aims for a new legally defined sex must submit to enforced bodily surgery, renunciation of reproduction, and if married divorce. Prevailing conditions of gender correction means that many transsexual’s turns to internet. Internet serves as an important political platform where persons and groups can resist the meanings that medical doctors and Swedish society assigns transsexual bodies and lives.

Ancestrais e suas sombras: uma etnografia da chefia kalapalo e seu ritual mortuário

by Antonio Guerreiro Júnior

Tese de doutorado defendida no Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social da Universidade de Brasília.

Appearances can be captive

by Guilherme Falleiros

Paper presented at the ASA 2009, Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth meeting in Bristol.

This communication is about a field experience involving Central Brazil's Xavante performances of... more This communication is about a field experience involving Central Brazil's Xavante performances of "tradition" to Japanese visitors and the participation of this researcher in them.

It comments about the visit of a group of Japanese medicine students to watch rituals and do health examinations on the Xavante people from the Abelhinha village; the preparations for the rituals; the painting of this researcher as a "Xavante"; the games, dances and singing showed as difference markers - and also other performances not noted as such (like pranks) - by the Xavante and the Japanese students. It also talks about the gift giving at the encounter.

Tradition and "tradition" (between quotes, as Manuela Carneiro da Cunha could say) were pulled together at once by the Xavante.

Xavante tradition might be exactly about relating to others. While they act as the others would expect, they also capture the "other", only to recreate more difference towards other "others".

By painting this researcher, calling me to take part on one collective shamanic dance, offering me one of the very gifts that the Japanese students brought to the Xavante themselves, washing me in the river and so on, the Xavante played a small part of the long (and maybe never ending) process of transforming "the other" into "the same".

The "Western" (or "Oriental"?) medicine enters this relation as something to be captured too, which does not eliminate the Xavante medicine. The coexistence between "the other" and "the same" would be a constant part of the Xavante tradition.

Antropologie Europas. Völker, Typen und Gene vom Neandertaler bis zur Gegenwart. Andreas Vonderach, Ares Verlag, Graz 2008

by Interdisciplinaria Archaeologica IANSA

Dragana Stojanovic - Suštinski činioci koji omogućavaju kontinuitet održavanja običaja svadbe kao obreda prelaza kroz XX i početak XXI veka

by Dragana Stojanovic

published in Zbornik Visoke škole strukovnih studija za obrazovanje vaspitača u Kikindi br. 2, Garmond, Novo Miloševo, Kikinda, 2011, 181-193.

‘Cuir Dhachaidh E’ (‘Send It Home’): The Gifts of the Little People, the Bob of Fettercairn and the aesthetics of a tale and a tune

by Tiber Falzett

2012 [Forthcoming]. In Proceedings of Rannsachadh na Gàidhlig 6. Eds. Colm Ó Baoill and Nancy McGuire.

My research on the nature of Scottish Gaelic performance culture has focused mainly around seanchas or discourse on... more My research on the nature of Scottish Gaelic performance culture has focused mainly around seanchas or discourse on tradition and the semiotics of words contained in such discourse (Falzett 2007-2010; 2010; 2012).  However, as John Shaw has argued, much can be learned by applying such contextual knowledge from the field to the analysis of verbal art forms (i.e. songs, stories, etc.) themselves: “Ideally, informants’ perceptions may eventually be correlated with analysis of texts—permitted variants and other materials—to form a coherent description” (1992/1993: 40). Therefore, this paper hopes to provide insights regarding the dynamic relationships between language and music in varied performative contexts of Scottish Gaelic cultural expression. This will be done by examining the role of ‘genre reinforcement’ (Shaw 1992/3: 38-40) in two Scottish Gaelic versions of ATU  503 (The Gifts of the Little People): one from Kate Dix of Berneray, Uist and the other from Donald (Danny) Cameron of Malden, Massachusetts, who grew up in Beaver Meadow, Antigonish County on the Nova Scotia mainland. In turn, the association of these two versions to the dance-tune ‘The Bob of Fettercairn’ and a related port-à-beul  version of it, beginning with the phrase “Cuir dhachaidh e,” will form the basis of our examination here.

The second part of this paper looks more abstractly at the symbolic nature of the narrative and examines the language contained within various Scottish Gaelic recitations of it. The Gifts of the Little People is well attested throughout the Gaelic-speaking regions of Scotland, Ireland and Nova Scotia. Lillis Ó Laoire’s (2009) groundbreaking discussions on the semiotic significance of this popular narrative have elucidated our understanding of its relevance to the inner mechanics of Gaelic aesthetic criteria and modes of transmission. Following Ó Laoire’s approach, the narrative’s aesthetic symbolism will be further explored through the lenses of emerging theoretical trends in the study of metaphor and other tropes from various scholarly disciplines, including cognitive linguistics and anthropology. This will incorporate a discussion concerning embodied understandings of abstract thought as demonstrated by the seemingly intangible nature of the aural and its ability to be made sense of through its associations with more concrete forms of sensory-motor experience, including vision, motion, and taste.

Esteio de gente: reflexões sobre assimetria e parentesco a partir de depoimentos de chefes kalapalo

by Antonio Guerreiro Júnior

Assimetria e coletivização: notas sobre chefes e caraíbas na política Kalapalo (Alto Xingu, MT)

by Antonio Guerreiro Júnior

A Necessary Shift: Paradigmatic Oscillation in Public Anthropology

by Matthew Nelson

Published in 'Popular Anthropology'
2009

Considerations on the system and the origins of terms for the cardinal points in the Dolgan language

by Marek Stachowski

Call for Book Chapters- Fieldwork Experiences in Turkey

by Rabia Harmansah

Non-human agency, radical ontology and tourism realities

by Carina Ren

Published in Annals of Tourism Research 2011

Using insights from actor-network theory, this article introduces the notions of non-human agency and radical ontology... more Using insights from actor-network theory, this article introduces the notions of non-human agency and radical ontology to the realm of tourism research. Drawing from fieldwork at a Polish tourist destination, the article demonstrates how a rather unlikely destination actor, the oscypek cheese, is enacted in different versions as it engages with tourism, tradition, craftsmanship, hygiene and legislation. It is described how four versions of the
cheese impact the destination by producing, shaping and altering destination realities and how reality-shaping requirements, possibilities and controversies are constantly negotiated
and altered through the linkage of multiple actors, discourses and practices. It is argued that actor-network theory may help to elucidate this working of non-human actors and the subsequent
enactment of multiple tourism realities. Keywords: Actor-network theory, non-human actors, radical ontology, enactment.

A current bibliography of Turkic etymologies 3 (1998-1999 et addenda)

by Marek Stachowski

Turco-Samoiedica

by Marek Stachowski

Über jakutische Glossen im Werk von W. Sieroszewski

by Marek Stachowski

Siberian languages in contact, 2: The nonal counting system in Siberia and Russian devjanosto ‘90’

by Marek Stachowski