Material Poetics of a Malay House

Anita Lundberg                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

1-16

Material objects call to us and structure our being. They are not passive, while we are active¾rather, they embroil us in their lives as much as we engage them. Hence, sociality is not solely a human function but necessarily involves environments and artefacts. The notion of material poetics is, in this sense, a mutually shaping matrix that affects social life and thought. This philosophy is explored through an encounter with a Malay house. The house is in many ways liminal¾a place in which thought and image dwells. It is traditional, yet unique; it holds and expresses history, yet that history is elsewhere and legendary; is Malay but with Chinese decorations, which articulate hybridity; is specifically local, yet involved in national and international flows. It embraces both oscillation and direction. The house is made of wood. This paper takes up this element, showing how the wood not only shelters, but also leads us to venture out to a garden of trees and a dream of jungles where encounters with things, stories and myths subvert our normal categories and expectations. The house leads us places and clears things for us, leading us into a new social field.  

Enchanted Landscapes: Sensuous Awareness as Mystical Practice among Sufis of North India

Arthur Saniotis                                                                                                                     

17-26

Sufi studies in India have become increasingly popular in the last fifteen years, which has provided insight into Sufi thought and practice. However, many of these studies tend to deal with political and social issues in relation to Sufi movements and shrine culture. My analysis presents an innovative way of understanding how Sufis experience sacred landscapes, and differs markedly from other studies on Indian Sufism. My aim is to analyse how Sufis at the Nizamuddin shrine sensuously engage with the sacred landscape.

Autoethnographic Challenges: Confronting Self, Field and Home

Lejla Voloder                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

27-40

Anthropologists working at ‘home’ or in realms of the familiar often share a considerable sense of connection with participants. In these contexts, the researcher’s potential position as an ‘insider’ offers particular opportunities for utilising self as a key resource. Through my own fieldwork at ‘home’ in Melbourne as an ‘insider’ among Bosnian migrants, I was confronted with the challenge of using my self to understand others’ experiences. In this paper I discuss the autoethnographic process and consider how its application enabled me to consciously understand my own experiences and utilise my experiential self to inform my study.

Urban Space and the Mediation of Political Action in Nepal: Local Television, Ritual Processions and Political Violence as Technologies of Enchantment  

Michael Wilmore                                                                                                                                                                                 

41-56

This paper examines how political identities in the town of Tansen in the central western district of Palpa, Nepal, are mediated by contrasting forms of cultural and material practice: religious and secular processions and programs made by a local, cable-television production organisation. These practices and their materiality are conceptualised as ‘technologies of enchantment’ (Gell 1992) through which political culture is made manifest in urban space. Paradigmatically ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ technologies are juxtaposed in order to analyse the different ways that political action is embodied within the community. The loss of life in Tansen and the destruction of buildings associated with these practices in the course of the 10-year Maoist insurgency provide a tragic confirmation of the conclusions reached in this paper.

SOAPBOX FORUM: ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Introduction

Kay Milton                                                                                                                                  

57

Global Warming as a By-product of the Capitalist Treadmill of Production and Consumption: The Need for an Alternative Global System

Hans Baer                                                                                                                          

58-61

Anthropology and Global Warming: The Need for Environmental Engagement

Simon Batterby                                                                                                    

62-67

Apocalypse on You: Millenarian Frenzy in Debates on Global Warming 

Megan Jennaway                                                                                                                      

68-72

Fear For the Future  

Kay Milton                                                                                                                             

73-76

Fire, Flood, Fish and the Uncertainty Paradox

Monica Minnegal and Peter Dwyer                                                                                                       

77-80

Love in the Time of Extinctions

Deborah Bird Rose                                                                                                                                        

81-83

Climate Change, Global Warming and Too Much Sorry Business

Sandy Toussaint                                                                                                                                     

84-88

Book Review Essay
The Practice and the Symbolism of the ‘Race Power’: Rethinking the 1967 Referendum.

Tim Rowse                                                                                                                                         

89-93

Book Reviews

Warwick Anderson. Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race and Hygiene in the Philippines. [Raul Pertierra]        

94

Patrice Bidou, Jacques Galinier and Bernard Juillerat (eds). Anthropologie et psychanalyse: Regards croisés.[Annette Hamilton]            

95

Denise Brennan. What’s Love Got to Do With It? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic. [Rosemary Wiss]     

98

Rae Bridgman. StreetCities: Rehousing the Homeless. [Anthony Marcus]                                                    

100

Alex Butler. Feminism, Nationalism and Exiled Tibetan Women.[Ram Bahadur Chhetri]                           

102

Ian Condry. Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. [Ian Maxwell

103

Jennifer Deger. Shimmering Screens: Making Media in an Aboriginal Community.  [Phillipa Deveson]       

105

Jean Guiart. Les Mélanesians devant l’économie de marché: Du milieu de XIXe siècle a la fin du millénaire. [Helen Johnson]                                                                  

107

Maria Heimer and Stig Thøgersen (eds). Doing Fieldwork in China. [Pál Nyírí 

109

Robert K. Hitchcock, Kazunoba Ikeya, Megan Biesele and Richard B. Lee (eds). Updating the San: Image and Reality of an African People in the 21st Century. [Christer Norström]                                              

111

Charles J-H Macdonald. Uncultural Behaviour: An Anthropological Investigation of Suicide in the Southern Philippines. [Eduardo F. Ugarte]                                                                               

112

David Mosse. Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice.[Emma Kowal]                                                                                                         

114

Louise Purbrick. The Wedding Present: Domestic Life Beyond Consumption [Sophie Chevalier]                         

116

Michael Roberts. Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period 1590s to 1815. [Chris Speldewinde]                                                                                    

117

Jennifer Shennen and Makin Corrie Tekenimatang (eds). One and a Half Pacific Islands: Stories the Banaban People Tell of Themselves. [John Connell]                                                                  

119

Linda Stone and Paul F. Lurquin. Genes, Culture and Human Evolution: A Synthesis. [Ben Marwick]      

119

Reed L. Wadly (ed.). Histories of the Borneo Environment: Economic, Political and Social Dimensions of Change and Continuity. [Jennifer Alexander]                                                       

121