Myth, History and Modern Cultural Identity Among Hunter-Gatherers: A Borneo Case

1993 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Sellato
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Tropical Rainforest ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
West Kalimantan ◽  
East Kalimantan

The island of Borneo has maintained until fairly recently a number of tropical rainforest hunting-gathering groups, generally referred to as Punan or Penan (though other local ethnonyms are found). Today, a large proportion of them have switched to a partly settled way of life and some form of agriculture, but even these groups still rely heavily on the forest, collecting jungle products for trade and, often, processing the wild sago palms for their subsistence while collecting. The Bukat, one of these partly settled groups, are found (see Map 1) in Indonesia's West Kalimantan (three hamlets, totalling 300 persons) and East Kalimantan (one hamlet of 150), and in Malaysia's Sarawak (one hamlet of 150).

Marginalisation of the Waata Oromo Hunter–Gatherers of Kenya: Insider and Outsider Perspectives

Africa ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aneesa Kassam ◽  
Ali Balla Bashuna
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
National Parks ◽  
Wildlife Conservation ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Social Activist ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Northern Kenya ◽  
British Colonial

AbstractThis paper examines how the way of life of a little known group of hunter–gatherers, the Waata Oromo, was brought to an end through British colonial wildlife conservation laws and the creation of national parks in Kenya. Through this policy and that of the containment of ethnic groups to ‘tribal reserves’, the Waata lost their place in the regional economic system and suffered loss of cultural identity. It also meant that when Kenya gained independence, the Waata were not recognised as a distinct entity with rights to their own political representation. Instead, they became appendages of the dominant pastoral groups with which they had been associated. They were thus doubly marginalised, in both economic and political terms. The paper describes how this situation has led some Waata in northern Kenya to claim separate ethnic status. It discusses the problem from the point of view of a Waata social activist and of an anthropologist. These two perspectives raise further issues for the etic/emic debate in anthropology.

From Sago to Rice, from Forest to Town: The Consequences of Sedentarization for the Nutritional Ecology of Punan Former Hunter-Gatherers of Borneo

2007 ◽  
Vol 28 (2_suppl2) ◽  
pp. S294-S302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmond Dounias ◽  
Audrey Selzner ◽  
Miyako Koizumi ◽  
Patrice Levang
Keyword(s):  
Nutritional Status ◽  
Physical Fitness ◽  
Upland Rice ◽  
Nutritional Ecology ◽  
Forest Resources ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Proximate Cause ◽  
East Kalimantan ◽  
Dietary Regime

Background The last nomadic peoples of the world are facing strong governmental incentives to renounce their foraging lifestyle. Nevertheless, the shift to a sedentary way of life and the adoption of agriculture do not always result in the promised improvement in diet and health conditions. Objective We compared the dietary regime and nutritional status of three groups of former hunter-gatherers, the Punan of Borneo. All three groups adopted extensive upland rice cultivation almost 6 decades ago, but each has some degree of dependence on agriculture versus forest resources, which varies along a gradient of accessibility of urban facilities. Methods The diet of three distinct Punan groups living in the dipterocarp forest of East Kalimantan was assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively and analyzed in relation to the seasonality of resources and human activities. The physical fitness of the Punan was also estimated from repeated anthropometric measurements. Results The more remote the Punan community was from urban facilities, the more diversified was the diet and the better were its nutritional status and physical fitness. The contribution of forest resources to the dietary regime also decreased with urban proximity. However, the higher dependency on agriculture is not the proximate cause of the deterioration in diet and physical fitness, which is rather due to the transition from the nomadic to the settled way of life. Conclusions The brutal shift in lifestyle among the Punan of Borneo has profoundly affected the integrity of these societies and impacted their social, cultural, symbolic, and political features. In the long run, this may compromise their health status and ecological success.

scholarly journals The Place Of Karakalpak Ethnoculture In The Integration Of Society

2021 ◽  
Vol 03 (04) ◽  
pp. 676-688
Author(s):  
Halima Kadirova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Scientific Article ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global Space ◽  
The People

This scientific article highlights the place and role of the Karakalpak ethnic culture in the development and preservation of the identity of the people. The authors analyze the culture and life of the modern Karakalpak family, which inherits to the next generation the traditional way of life associated with national holidays and traditions, dastans performed by Karakalpak bakhshi (singers), legends and legends of the past, told by the older generation. The article argues that social changes in the global space contribute to the emergence of certain changes in the content of cultural identity, language, art, spiritual categories, which are elements of the basis of the national identity of each nation and various ethno-regional units, which further strengthens the study of this issue under the influence of the process of globalization.

The Dynamics of Acculturation Among Older Immigrants in Australia

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (6) ◽  
pp. 424-441
Author(s):  
Shuang Liu ◽  
Sharon Dane ◽  
Cindy Gallois ◽  
Catherine Haslam ◽  
Tran Le Nghi Tran
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Ethnic Culture ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Cultural Backgrounds ◽  
Acculturation Strategies ◽  
Older Immigrants ◽  
The Social ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Over Time

This study explores different acculturation pathways that older immigrants follow, and the social/cultural identities they claim (or do not claim), as they live and age in Australia. Data were collected from 29 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with older immigrants (65+ years) from nine cultural backgrounds. We used participants’ self-defined cultural identity to explore how these cultural identities were enacted in different contexts. Mapping self-defined cultural identity with narratives about what participants do in relation to ethnic and host cultures, we found three dynamic acculturation pathways: (a) identifying with the ethnic culture while embracing aspects of Australian culture, (b) identifying with Australian culture while participating in the ethnic culture, and (c) identifying with both cultures while maintaining the way of life of the ethnic culture. These pathways show that acculturation strategies are not necessarily consistent with self-defined identity, within the same individual or over time. Rather, the participants’ narratives suggest that their life in the settlement country involves ongoing negotiation across people, culture, and relationships. The findings highlight the importance for acculturation research to be situated in the context in which immigrants find themselves, to capture the nuances of these dynamic acculturation experiences.

The Bantu Expansion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koen Bostoen
Keyword(s):  
Late Holocene ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Eastern And Southern Africa

The Bantu Expansion stands for the concurrent dispersal of Bantu languages and Bantu-speaking people from an ancestral homeland situated in the Grassfields region in the borderland between current-day Nigeria and Cameroon. During their initial migration across most of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa, which took place between approximately 5,000 and 1,500 years ago, Bantu speech communities not only introduced new languages in the areas where they immigrated but also new lifestyles, in which initially technological innovations such as pottery making and the use of large stone tools played an important role as did subsequently also farming and metallurgy. Wherever early Bantu speakers started to develop a sedentary way of life, they left an archaeologically visible culture. Once settled, Bantu-speaking newcomers strongly interacted with autochthonous hunter-gatherers, as is still visible in the gene pool and/or the languages of certain present-day Bantu speech communities. The driving forces behind what is the principal linguistic, cultural, and demographic process in Late Holocene Africa are still a matter of debate, but it is increasingly accepted that the climate-induced destruction of the rainforest in West Central Africa around 2,500 years ago gave a boost to the Bantu Expansion.

Going Over: The Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition in North-West Europe

2007 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Northern Spain ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Data Set ◽  
North West ◽  
Southern Scandinavia ◽  
The One ◽  
Early Farmers ◽  
Rich Data

The processes involved in the transformation of society from Mesolithic hunter-gatherers to Neolithic farmers were complex. They involved changes not only in subsistence but also in how people thought about themselves and their worlds, from their pasts to their animals. Two sets of protagonists have often been lined up in the long-running debates about these processes: on the one hand incoming farmers and on the other indigenous hunter-gatherers. Both have found advocates as the dominant force in the transitions to a new way of life. North-west Europe presents a very rich data set for this fundamental change, and research has both extended and deepened our knowledge of regional sequences, from the sixth to the fourth millennia bc. One of the most striking results is the evident diversity from northern Spain to southern Scandinavia. No one region is quite like another; hunter-gatherers and early farmers alike were also varied and the old labels of Mesolithic and Neolithic are increasingly inadequate to capture the diversity of human agency and belief. Surveys of the most recent evidence presented here also strongly suggest a diversity of transformations. Some cases of colonization on the one hand and indigenous adoption on the other can still be argued, but many situations now seem to involve complex fusions and mixtures. This wide-ranging set of papers offers an overview of this fundamental transition.

THE COLLECTIVE RIGHTS IN THE CONDITIONS OF LIBERAL MULTICULTURAL SOCIETIES AND THEIR LEGAL NATURE

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-95
Author(s):  
Борис Молчанов ◽  
Boris Molchanov ◽  
Григорий Стародубцев ◽  
Grigoriy Starodubtsyev ◽  
Жанна Иванова ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
International Law ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Collective Rights ◽  
Language Minorities ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
Individual Human

In article individual human rights on cultural identity, political representation or on participation in the collective or group rights in the sphere of human rights in the liberal states are analyzed. Especially international law gives the collective rights for physical existence, protection against economic and cultural destruction and originality preservation ethnic, religious and language minorities. In detail also the legislation of a number of the states on a combination of the collective and individual rights of the small people for protection of their primordial habitat, a traditional way of life, customs, managing and crafts is in details analysed.

‘They have not progressed enough’: Development's negated identities among two indigenous peoples (orang asli) in Indonesia and Thailand

2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Porath
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Indigenous Identity ◽  
Orang Asli ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
Southern Thailand ◽  
Form Part

This paper is ethnographically concerned with two differentorang aslicommunities: the Meniq living in Southern Thailand and the Orang Sakai in Riau, Indonesia. The focus is on the different discursive rhetorics of development in the two nation-states. These rhetorics have been absorbed by the two indigenous groups to form part of their own modern cultural discourses within their respective countries. These rhetorics of development define the indigenous groups as somewhat lacking in culture and provide them with new understandings of themselves that devalue their customary way of life. The post-development indigenous identity work (such as the development of an ethno-cultural identity) will therefore usually be constructed through these negated developmental foundations.

scholarly journals Foraging potential of underground storage organ plants in the southern Cape, South Africa

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elzanne Singels ◽  
Alastair J Potts ◽  
Karen J Esler ◽  
Richard M Cowling ◽  
Curtis W Marean ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Role ◽  
Soil Surface ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Underground Storage ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Return Rates ◽  
Storage Organs ◽  
Minimal Effort

Underground storage organs (USOs) serve as a staple source of carbohydrates for many hunter-gatherer societies and they feature prominently in discussions of diets of early modern humans. While the way of life of hunter-gatherers in South Africa’s Cape is no longer in existence, there is extensive ethnographic, historical and archaeological evidence of hunter-gatherers’ use of such plants as foodstuffs. This is to be expected, given that the Cape supports the largest concentration of plants with USOs globally. The southern Cape is the location of several Middle Stone Age sites that are highly significant to research on the origins of behaviourally modern humans, and this provided the context for our research. Here we evaluate the foraging potential of USOs by identifying how abundant edible biomass is in a coastal setting of the southern Cape, how easily it is gathered, and how nutritious it is. We staged a range of foraging events to provide an indication of the potential return rates for selected USOs when a forager is likely to be naïve about foraging for them. Nearly all of the sites sampled (83%) contained edible USOs, and the edible biomass can be highly concentrated in space. The edible USO biomass fell within the range of biomass observed in areas supporting extant hunter-gatherer communities. The six USO species we assessed for nutritional content contained between 40-228 calories/100 g. They also grow near the soil surface, mostly in sandy soils, and were gathered with minimal effort. Some 50% of the foraging events conducted yielded enough calories to meet the daily requirements of a hunter-gatherer of small stature within 2 hours. Thus, we demonstrate that USOs are a readily available source of carbohydrates in the southern Cape landscape and that they likely played a critical role in providing food for early humans.

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