Creating a Living Goddess: Status, Sacrality and Urban Contests of Desire
Sheleyah A. Courtney

127-146

This paper is based on research amongst a community of marginalised Hindu women in the holy city of Varanasi in North India. It focuses on a case study in which an abandoned baby girl, who was found on the banks of the Ganges by one of these women, subsequently could be created as a living goddess. It describes and analyses the manner in which such a religious belief was generated and sustained in this community but, more importantly, how the complex social and psychological processes through which the generation of such a belief enabled many of these marginalised women to sustain a self-understanding-assailed by powerful rival status groups-of being imbued with power (shakti) like their goddess. Further, women were described to me, by men and by women, as being in themselves specific kinds of shaktis. During the course of my field research, it became apparent that the shakti of Hindu females of all ages is understood, at various levels of consciousness, to be an immense and accessible reservoir of power. Hence, this paper explores how shakti offers others opportunities, by annexing it, to fulfill various kinds of desires.

Closing Ranks: Fundamentals in History, Politics and Anthropology
Kirsten Hastrup

147-160

In this presentation, I discuss fundamentalism from a processual perspective, seeking to tease out some general qualities of the processes involved in a return to fundamentals amidst social change. I start with an analysis of the historical dynamics of Icelandic society in the period 1400-1800, showing how the increasing insistence on old patterns and cultural fundamentals contributed to the gradual destruction of a one time flourishing medieval society. This devolution, I suggest, is closely correlated with a process of amplification (Sahlins) of a particular set of values, leading to a loss of flexibility in the response to environmental and other changes. Next follows a discussion of present day concerns with nationalism and other interests in bounding oneself off from the surrounding world, and demanding recognition in return. One of the processes discussed is a process of transvaluation (Tambiah), assimilating particulars to a larger and less context-bound scheme and thereby gradually deepening the cleavage between selves and others, sometimes to the point of epistemological closure (Ignatieff). Finally, one of the anthropological fundamentals, holism, is discussed with a view to reassessing its potential for present-day anthropology. It is argued that through the process of knowing implied in fieldwork, anthropologists arrive at a dual understanding of perceived wholes and creative agents. A new sense of holism may still grant both consistency and uniqueness to the anthropological discipline.

The Never Ending Dance: Islamism, Kemalism and the Power of Self-institution in Turkey
Chris Houston

161-178

Kemalism in Turkey is often presented as an exemplary case of paternalistic and authoritarian modernisation from above, and lauded or condemned for that very reason. Represented in these terms, certain analytic and political binaries are also activated: state versus society; world-view versus life-world; universality versus particularity; inauthenticity versus indigeneity; homogeneity versus heterogeneity/ resistance. By contrast, in this paper I seek to sidestep these organising categories to focus on Kemalism and Islamism as rival forms of the same social imaginary signification, and not as shorthand for these polarities. Using a number of representative texts, I argue that the extravagance of Islamist resistance in Turkey post-1980 brings to light the fantastical power of Kemalism itself, exposed as a project of the triumph of the will. This being the case, what has been written in anthropology about acts of ‘self-institution’? The work of Nigel Rapport and Cornelius Castoriadis emphasises, in different ways, the arbitrariness and gratuity of social creation out of nothing or self-institution. Pierre Bourdieu’s work, on the other hand, is radically contrary to Rapport’s in its structuralist elaboration of agency as guided action. My analysis of processes of change within both the Islamist and Republicansocial movements in Turkey from the early 1990s to the present seeks a temporary rapprochement, at least in this case, between Rapport’s methodological individualism and Bourdieu’s methodological holism.

European Settlement and the Making and Unmaking of Aboriginal Identities
Francesca Merlan

179-195

This paper explores variation and change in Aboriginal people’s connections to places, and place-related identity, as a function of their differential historical relationship to a town. Among Aboriginal people who have lived for some decades in camps around Katherine, Northern Territory, descendants of those who appear to have the most clearly discernable long-term relationship with the area in the vicinity of the town do not relate to places, nor conceptualise them, in stereotypically ‘traditional’ terms. Their relationships to town and nearby places tend to be of an ideologically unelaborated, homely sort. Kinds of territorial relationships their antecedents can be shown to have had to the area have undergone dissolution. The paper seeks to develop discussion of such variation and the historical and sociological processes involved. The Katherine case brings the social and historical significance of ‘towns’ as sites of Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal interrelationship into focus, and also requires a critical view of notions of ‘group’ that have tended to dominate recent public process and understanding in Australia.

Matrilineal Spirits, Descent and Territorial Power in Northern Thailand
Andrew Walker

196-215

This paper examines matrilineal spirits (phii puu nyaa) in northern Thailand based on field research recently undertaken in a village in Chiang Mai province. The paper suggests that the puu nyaa spirits remain locally significant—despite previous statements about their demise—and that matrilineal linkages are ideologically and practically important in the constitution of the groups. Nevertheless, there are alternative points of reference—to fathers, spouses and localities—that can attenuate attachments to matrilineal kin and introduce alternative sources of spiritual power. It becomes clear that phii puu nyaa spirit beliefs and practices are malleable and provide a basis for various orientations to spiritual power. The intermingling of different types of spiritual power is well illustrated by the presence of protective spirits locally referred to as aahak. In local perception, there is a very close relationship between phii puu nyaa and aahak, but the two entities appear to reflect quite different orientations: in simple terms the aahak represent a masculine, territorial and outward looking form of power which is contrasted with the female-focused and lineage-derived potency of the puu nyaa spirits. The paper argues that the outward orientation of the aahak provides some valuable insights into local perceptions of power, demonstrating how the supposedly peripheral and parochial draws regional power into more intimate domains.

Book Review Article: A Study in Neo-conservative Populism: Richard Trudgen’s Why Warriors Lie Down and Die
Martin Mowbray and Kate Senior

216-229

First appearing in 2000, and with 20,000 copies sold as it entered its sixth printing in 2004, Richard Trudgen’s Why Warriors Lie down and Die is a minor publishing phenomenon. Although scholarly forums have generally ignored the book, Christian media outlets, the popular press and neo-conservative political activists have enthusiastically received and promoted it. An examination of the merits of Why Warriors Lie down and Die suggests that its popularity is only partly explained by original observations or insights on the part of the author. The most important explanation, and implication, of the book’s remarkable take-up lies in the opportune way in which it corresponds with now ascendant neo-conservative political perspectives on indigenous policy.

Obituary: George Kingsley Garbett, 1935-2006
Bruce Kapferer

230-232

Letterbox
David Walsh

233-234

Book Reviews

Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Finn Sivert Nielsen A History of Anthropology [James Urry]

235

Hildred Geertz and Ida Bagus Made Togog Tales from a Charmed Life: a Balinese Painter Reminisces [Graeme MacRae]

236

Jean Guiart Une Clé de la Société Canaque: Les Riseaux d’Identité Partagée [Helen Johnson]

238

Ingjerd Hoem Theatre and Political Process: Staging Identities in Tokelau and New Zealand [Kalissa Alexeyeff]

239

Lawrence Kalinoe and James Leach (eds) Rationales of Ownership: Transactions and Claims to Ownership in Contemporary Papua New Guinea [Michael Goddard]

241

Paul Memmott (ed.) Take 2: Housing Designs in Indigenous Australia [Joseph P. Reser]

242

Andrew Metcalfe and Ann GameThe Mystery of Everyday Life [Chris Eipper]

244

Hirokazu Miyazaki The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy and Fijian Knowledge [Robert Norton]

245

Christer Norström ‘They Call for Us.’ Strategies for Securing Autonomy among the Paliyans, Hunter Gathers of the Palni Hills, South India [R. J. Fisher]

247

Marilyn Strathern Commons and Borderlands: Working Papers on Interdisciplinarity, Accountability and the Flow of Knowledge [John Morton]

248

Jennifer Vanderbes Easter Island[Grant McCall] and Jo Anne van Tilburg Among Stone Giants: The Life of Katherine Routledge and her Remarkable Expedition to Easter Island [Grant McCall]

250