scholarly journals Reconfiguring Relational Personhood among Lander Warlpiri

Author(s):  
Petronella Vaarzon-Morel

In recent years many Indigenous communities in central Australia have undergone multiple dramatic changes. Responses to the resulting tensions, conflicts and anxiety illuminate local understandings of personhood. Drawing on long term ethnographic fieldwork with Lander Warlpiri/Anmatyerr Willowra (Northern Territory), this paper discusses how relatedness (involving social obligations and reciprocity) among particular categories of persons was understood and maintained during the 1970s, comparing this with the contemporary period, in which considerable conflict between previously united families has occurred. It considers the implications of these differences for notions of personhood, taking into account the altered material conditions in which people live today, changes in practices such as marriage arrangements and ritual, shifting notions of “property”, and embodied relations to land. Local cultural understandings of relational being are explored through analysis of a myth that was publicly performed by a senior male and recorded by young media trainees, with the intent that the younger generation reflect upon what it is to be a person in Warlpiri/Anmatyerr society today.

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 35-63
Author(s):  
Robert Agres ◽  
Adrienne Dillard ◽  
Kamuela Joseph Nui Enos ◽  
Brent Kakesako ◽  
B. Puni Kekauoha ◽  
...  

This resource paper draws lessons from a twenty-year partnership between the Native Hawaiian community of Papakōlea, the Hawai‘i Alliance for Community-Based Economic Development, and the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Hawai‘i. Key players and co-authors describe five principles for sustained partnerships: (1) building partnerships based upon community values with potential for long-term commitments; (2) privileging indigenous ways of knowing; (3) creating a culture of learning together as a co-learning community; (4) fostering reciprocity and compassion in nurturing relationships; and (5) utilizing empowering methodologies and capacity-building strategies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 212-241
Author(s):  
Mathijs Pelkmans

AbstractMissionaries have flocked to the Kyrgyz Republic ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Evangelical-Pentecostal and Tablighi missions have been particularly active on what they conceive of as a fertile post-atheist frontier. But as these missions project their message of truth onto the frontier, the dangers of the frontier may overwhelm them. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork amongst foreign and local Tablighis and evangelical-Pentecostals, this article formulates an analytic of the frontier that highlights the affective and relational characteristics of missionary activities and their effects. This analytic explains why and how missionaries are attracted to the frontier, as well as some of the successes and failures of their expansionist efforts. In doing so, the article reveals the potency of instability, a feature that is particularly evident in missionary work, but also resonates with other frontier situations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell Craig ◽  
Rawiri Taonui ◽  
Susan Wild ◽  
Lũcia Lima Rodrigues

Purpose This paper aims to highlight the accountability reporting objectives of four Māori-controlled organizations. The examples cited reflect the core values of the indigenous Māori people of New Zealand (Aotearoa) and help demonstrate how these values are manifest in the accountability reporting of Māori-controlled organizations. Design/methodology/approach Narrative sections of ten annual reports of two small and two large Maori organizations, drawn variously from their financial years ending in the calendar years 2009 to 2014, are read closely. These organizations represent diverse tribal and regional associations in terms of size, scope and structure; and in terms of the business, social and cultural activities they pursue. Findings Three core Māori values are identified: spirituality (wairuatanga); intergenerationalism and restoration (whakapapa); and governance, leadership and respect (mana and rangatiratanga). The commitment to these values and the way this commitment is reflected in accountability reports of Maori organizations, is presented. Originality/value The examples provided, and the associated discussion, should help inform reporting initiatives of organizations that are seeking better accountability in terms of their long-term engagement with indigenous communities, the environment and broader society.


2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 709-727
Author(s):  
Maricarmen Hernandez

Why do residents of a contaminated area actively organize to formalize their land tenure and continually invest scarce resources in the fortification of their homes, despite their high-risk locations? Existing research documents the collective struggles of residents of contaminated communities to leave toxic areas or to confront polluting industries. Drawing from long-term ethnographic fieldwork in an informal settlement located next to a highly polluting petrochemical complex in Esmeraldas, Ecuador, this article presents the case of a marginalized community that is not only well-aware of its toxic exposure but also actively organizing and investing time and resources to ensure its permanence in the area. This article shows that the strenuous circumstances under which families moved into the neighborhood after multiple displacements, their continued struggle to remain there along with their longing for housing stability have contributed to their extended exposure to the poisonous toxic externalities of the neighboring petrochemical industry.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 213-237
Author(s):  
Kaisa Kuurne (Ketokivi) ◽  
M. Victoria Gómez

Drawing on multisited ethnographic fieldwork in two historic, attractive, and socially mixed neighborhoods, Kumpula in Helsinki and Malasaña in Madrid, this paper examines what makes people feel at home (or not) in their neighborhood. Marrying the literatures on social belonging and materiality, we analyze the interactions through which local places, people, and materials become familiar and personal. We identify the house in Kumpula and the plaza in Madrid as “everyday totems” that weave local life and community together. In both neighborhoods, the testimonies of home are accompanied with an attachment to the local totem and related lifestyle, but the house and the plaza generate different everyday politics of belonging. House–based belonging in Kumpula requires resources and long–term engagement that over time contributes to a personal, but rather exclusive web of belonging. Plaza–based belonging in Malasaña is more inclusive and elastic, but joining the web of belonging requires time and sociability.


1977 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Detlev Ipsen

AbstractUsing data from an interview study of 600 Greek, Italian, and Turkish workers and a control sample of 200 Germans that has been conducted in Mannheim in 1975, it is investigated whether the duration of foreign workers’ residence in West Germany correlates with (a) an improvement of their living and work conditions (‚material integration’) and (b) the adoption of bourgeois ideologies (‚ideological integration’) or, rather, the development of class-conscious attitudes. The findings demonstrate that even long-term residence in West Germany does not lead to a notable material or ideological integration of foreign workers: their material conditions remain worse than those of the German lower class; poor material conditions lead to apathetic adaption.


2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Sanders ◽  
Sarah Holcombe

In light of some basic desert demography, this paper examines governance patterns for small desert settlements. It traces policy histories which led to the emergence of highly localised, single settlement governance arrangements during the 1970s and ’80s. It also identifies the many pushes since within the Northern Territory local government system for more regional, multi-settlement governance structures. The paper goes on to examine the history of one such regional, multi-settlement arrangement in central Australia, the Anmatjere Community Government Council established in 1993. The paper details our work with this Council over the last 4 years on ‘issues of importance or concern’ to them. The paper aims to learn from the ACGC experience in order to inform the more radical restructuring of Northern Territory local government currently underway towards larger multi-settlement regionalism. It concludes with four specific lessons, the most important of which is that regionalism must build on single settlement localism.


Author(s):  
Xaydarova Shaxlo Narzullaevna ◽  

The article emphasizes that the social adaptation of orphans and their preparation for family life is one of the most important tasks of the state and society. Today, much attention is paid to the self-realization of the younger generation, its harmonious development in all respects. The fact that a nation perceives itself as a result of such created conditions gives it confidence and gives it a reason to look to a promising future.


Author(s):  
Kaustubh Jain

The debate about developing countries having to choose between economic growth and biodiversity protection has been going on for a long time. This paper sought to add to existing literature written on that topic by exploring the relationship between economic growth and biodiversity loss. It argued that in the long term, developing countries need to protect biodiversity as a prerequisite for economic growth to occur and that the severe impact of biodiversity loss on vulnerable indigenous communities is a reason enough to make the protection of biodiversity a priority. The researcher first identified the primary reasons for why biodiversity occurs, then advocated for the prevention of biodiversity by exploring two impacts of biodiversity loss: the impact on indigenous communities and the impact on economic growth. The paper then briefly also explained the policies that both governments, as well as nongovernment actors, can implement in order to tackle biodiversity loss and protect our environment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-142
Author(s):  
Amy L Allocco

AbstractDrawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Tamil-speaking South India, this article presents one Hindu invitation ritual to return dead relatives known as pūvāṭaikkāri to the world of the living and install them as household deities. This two-day ceremony demonstrates that prevailing scholarly perceptions of death and what follows it in Hindu traditions have constrained our ability to appreciate other models for ritual relationships between the living and the dead. These vernacular rituals call the dead back into the world, convince them to possess a human host, and persuade them to be permanently installed in the family’s domestic shrine so they may protect and sustain living kin. Rather than aiming to irrevocably separate the dead from the living, these rites are instead oriented toward eventual conjunction with the dead and therefore reveal a fundamentally different picture than that articulated in the majority of Hinduism’s sacred texts and scholarly accounts.


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