MIGRANTS AS BROKERS OF FOOD HERITAGE MAKING: A CASE STUDY OF THE BARIO FOOD AND CULTURAL FESTIVAL IN BORNEO, SARAWAK, MALAYSIA

The communities’ ability to control heritage has been questioned and analysed in a broader perspective of socio-cultural cohesion and power. However, a research gap exists regarding the capabilities developed by the indigenous communities to collectively empower themselves by appropriating external resources such as research and development projects. To address this gap, we investigate the Kelabit socio-political configuration related to food heritage through the lens of the anthropology of brokers. The empirical basis of this contribution includes participant observation of the 11th edition of the Bario Food and Cultural Festival (Borneo, Sarawak, Malaysia) as well as semi-structured interviews with the Kelabit community members – local, diaspora and counter diaspora – and representatives of tourism and heritage. Overall, our findings unveil networked food heritage practices with outside agents and notably national and global academic institutions. Consequently, the analysis reveals the trans-identity capabilities of the Kelabit migrants in interfacing the local community with a range of stakeholders - and more specifically research networks – thereby adopting the role of cultural brokers. In doing so, the Kelabit people contribute to the intricate co-production of the definition of the Kelabit food heritage.

Protected Area Rangers as Cultural Brokers? Implications for Wildlife Crime Prevention in Viet Nam

The scope, scale, and socio-environmental impacts of wildlife crime pose diverse risks to people, animals, and environments. With direct knowledge of the persistence and dynamics of wildlife crime, protected area rangers can be both an essential source of information on, and front-line authority for, preventing wildlife crime. Beyond patrol and crime scene data collected by rangers, solutions to wildlife crime could be better built off the knowledge and situational awareness of rangers, in particular rangers' relationships with local communities and their unique ability to engage them. Rangers are often embedded in the communities surrounding the conserved areas which they are charged with protecting, which presents both challenges and opportunities for their work on wildlife crime prevention. Cultural brokerage refers to the process by which intermediaries, like rangers, facilitate interactions between other relevant stakeholders that are separate yet proximate to one another, or that lack access to, or trust in, one another. Cultural brokers can function as gatekeepers, representatives, liaisons, coordinators, or iterant brokers; these forms vary by how information flows and how closely aligned the broker is to particular stakeholders. The objectives of this paper are to use the example of protected area rangers in Viet Nam to (a) characterize rangers' cultural brokerage of resources, information, and relationships and (b) discuss ranger-identified obstacles to the prevention of wildlife crime as an example of brokered knowledge. Using in-depth face-to-face interviews with rangers and other protected area staff (N = 31, 71% rangers) in Pu Mat National Park, 2018, we found that rangers regularly shift between forms of cultural brokerage. We offer a typology of the diverse forms of cultural brokerage that characterize rangers' relationships with communities and other stakeholders. We then discuss ranger-identified obstacles to wildlife protection as an example of brokered knowledge. These results have implications for designing interventions to address wildlife crime that both improve community-ranger interactions and increase the efficiency of wildlife crime prevention.

Cultural brokers in mental health care in Sri Lanka’s North

This article engages in an anthropological analysis of brokerage to investigate the role of community support officers (CSOs) and mental health clinicians working on implementing post conflict reconstruction and reconciliation projects in Jaffna, in the North of Sri Lanka. I propose that CSOs and mental health clinicians become cultural brokers in health care by operating beyond the universal clinical assumptions associated with mental illness and distress, navigating the space and interrelationship between community-based local voices, national health priorities and the translocal agendas of the global mental health framework. The CSOs and mental health clinicians’ scope of authority, the complexity of their social and cultural activities along with their agentive capacity in representing marginalised voices enables them to facilitate, be responsible for and actively influence the process of intermediation and translation; in other words, they engage in brokerage. This article provides insights into the socio-cultural matrix of mental distress and suffering in post-conflict affected communities in the North of Sri Lanka and builds on brokerage theory to recognise evolving social and political landscapes in translocal mental health diagnosis and treatment.

When ‘street-level bureaucrats’ act as cultural brokers: The normative dilemmas and personal commitment of government officials in southern Ethiopia

Following the implementation of ethnic federalism in 1995, for the first time, government officials have been appointed from among the various ethnic groups rather than being only drawn from the central Ethiopian highlands. As such, they carry the responsibility of mediating and translating between two rather different worlds and value systems: those of the state and state law and those of the local population, many of whom continue to widely apply customary law. Many of these native government officials find themselves in a normative dilemma, as they have to balance the, often contradictory, expectations of the government and the local population.

ANALISIS RESEPSI TRADISI SEMUTAN DI DESA KALIBANGER TEMANGGUNG JAWA TENGAH

<p class="06IsiAbstrak">Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengungkap sebuah praktik tradisi Semutan di Desa Kalibanger Temanggung melalui tiga kegelisahan akademik berupa: <em>Pertama, </em>Apa dan bagaimana prosesi tradisi Semutan di Kalibanger? <em>Kedua, </em> Apakah motivasi masyarakat mengadakan tradisi Semutan serta pengaruhnya dalam keberagamaan masyarakat desa Kalibanger? dan <em>Ketiga, </em>Bagaimana analisis Resepsi terhadap tradisi Semutan? Metode penelitian ini menggunakan observasi, wawancara dan dokumentasi. Analisis data digunakan teori <em>Mind and Directing Practices </em>Barbara Meltcalf dan teori resepsi Ahmad Rafiq. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa: <em>Pertama, </em>tradisi Semutan merupakan tradisi gotong royong warga Kalibanger untuk membongkar rumah warga sebelum dibangun suatu bangunan baru tanpa disertai ritual keagamaan khusus. <em>Kedua, </em>dua unsur yang memotivasi warga Kalibanger adalah (1) mind: hadis-hadis gotong royong (2) <em>directing </em>practices: cara hidup Rasulullah saw dan serta tradisi Sambatan sebelumnya di pulau Jawa. <em>Ketiga, </em>analisis resepsi terhadap tradisi Semutan di Kalibanger meliputi (1) eksegesis yang berasal dari para <em>Cultural Broker </em>dan buku HPT jilid 3 Muhammadiyah (2) estetis, tradisi Semutan digolongkan sebagai resepsi Estetis makro dikarenakan tidak selalu suatu agen <em>Living </em>Hadis menyadari kehadiran hadis sebagai motivasi utama sebuah tradisi (3) fungsional, warga menerapkan nilai-nilai akhlak gotong royong dari Mudin dengan melestarikan Semutan tanpa ritual khusus seperti kepercayaan pada nenek moyang ataupun hal mistis lain.</p><p class="06IsiAbstrak">[<strong><span lang="EN-ID">Reception Analysis of Semutan Tradition in Kalibanger Village, Temanggung, Central Java. </span></strong><span>This study aims to uncover a practice of the Semutan tradition in Kalibanger Temanggung Village through three academic anxiety, namely: First, what and how is the procession of the Semutan tradition in Kalibanger? Second, what is the motivation of the community to hold the Semutan tradition and its influence on the diversity of the Kalibanger village community? and Third, How is Reception's analysis of the Semutan tradition?. This research method uses observation, interviews and documentation. Data analysis used the Mind and Directing Practices theory of Barbara Meltcalf and Ahmad Rafiq's reception theory. The results of the study show that: First, the Semutan tradition is a tradition of mutual assistance for the residents of Kalibanger to dismantle the residents' houses before the construction of a new building without any special religious rituals. Second, the two elements that motivate the residents of Kalibanger are (1) mind: the traditions of mutual cooperation (2) directing practices: the way of life of the Prophet Muhammad and the previous Sambatan tradition on the island of Java. Third, the reception analysis of the Semutan tradition in Kalibanger includes (1) exegesis from Cultural Brokers and HPT volume 3 Muhammadiyah book (2) aesthetically, the Semutan tradition is classified as a macro aesthetic reception because not always an agent of Living Hadith is aware of the presence of hadith as the main motivation for a tradition (3) functional, citizens apply the moral values of mutual cooperation from Mudin by preserving Semutan without special rituals such as belief on ancestors or other mystical things.</span>]</p>

From the Train Yard to the Auction House Connecting the Graffiti Subculture to the Art Market

Various cultural intermediaries have become involved in connecting graffiti writing to the art market. Through this case study, I shed light on the division of intermediation labour in the commercialization process of artworks stemming from subcultures in a global art market. Since the early 1970s, an international network of cultural brokers has gradually been set up in a frontier zone between art collectors and graffiti writers. Interviews, documentary sources and participative observation as an insider made it possible to identify these intermediaries and their specific roles and resources. My investigation sheds light on three historical phases of intermediation: from the first initiatives in New York in the 1970s to thematic auctions in French between 2006 and 2017. The first two phases ended in commercial and critical failure, first in American galleries and then in European museums, but the third phase led to economic success on the secondary art market, followed by public institutions’ validation. Three types of intermediaries are distinguished: commissioned experts from graffiti subculture, who select and encourage graffiti writers to produce marketable works; entrepreneurs, who seek to create a niche in the art market and promote a flattering image of graffiti art collectors, a group to which they often also belong; established auctioneers, who mobilize influential art buyers and encourage their favourable reception of graffiti artworks in order to expand their business. Whether they collaborate or compete with each other, these cultural intermediaries have complementary roles and resources linked to their social trajectories. However, they reap unequal benefits from their activities, whose impact on subcultural practices is finally discussed.

Theologians as Cultural Brokers: Transatlantic Translation of Ideas during the Emergence of Liberation Theology

The paper sheds light on the transatlantic theological discourse during the emergence of liberation theology. It conceptualizes this discourse as a transatlantic communication process reframing it as a transfer and translation of ideas and concepts. Starting from this perspective, I prove the assumption that the transatlantic theological discourse reflected a Latin American claim to academic equity and I show that European reactions to liberation theology implied answers to that claim. As the focus is on the relationship between Latin America and Europe, the article illustrates the significant role of relationships marked by different forms of dependency (economic, political, intellectual) in the development of liberation theology. Furthermore, the paper argues that for a deeper understanding, it is misleading to speak about Latin American theologians on the one hand and European theologians on the other hand, as if it was about clear-cut groups with homogenous motivations, positions, and goals. On the contrary, there were advocates and opponents of liberation theology on both sides of the Atlantic who moreover formed transatlantic alliances. The paper calls those theologians cultural brokers, since they communicated and mediated across the Atlantic.

The Somali-diaspora experience: a focus on Somali children as cultural brokers, and as ambassadors of language and culture

This paper examines the Somali-Canadian Diaspora experience, and in particular, focuses on the role children in immigrant families play as cultural brokers and as ambassadors of language and culture. Utilizing the literature on language acquisition, this paper’s aim is to include the Somali-Canadian Diaspora’s voice into the vast literature that exists, which examines the importance of bilingual children, who assist their families in integrating and settling in a host nation. The second component of this paper examines the role language has on identity, and utilizing cultural brokers’ language acquisition, investigates how cultural brokers’ identity is formed by their bilingualism. The paper posed two research questions: 1. In what ways do cultural brokers play a role as ambassadors of language and culture to assist their families in navigating the challenges of a new country? 2. In what ways do the cultural brokers’ bilingual abilities inform their identity? Keywords: Cultural Broker, Bilingual child, Acculturation, Familism, Biculturalism, Hyphen-identity, Somali-Diaspora

The Somali-diaspora experience: a focus on Somali children as cultural brokers, and as ambassadors of language and culture

This paper examines the Somali-Canadian Diaspora experience, and in particular, focuses on the role children in immigrant families play as cultural brokers and as ambassadors of language and culture. Utilizing the literature on language acquisition, this paper’s aim is to include the Somali-Canadian Diaspora’s voice into the vast literature that exists, which examines the importance of bilingual children, who assist their families in integrating and settling in a host nation. The second component of this paper examines the role language has on identity, and utilizing cultural brokers’ language acquisition, investigates how cultural brokers’ identity is formed by their bilingualism. The paper posed two research questions: 1. In what ways do cultural brokers play a role as ambassadors of language and culture to assist their families in navigating the challenges of a new country? 2. In what ways do the cultural brokers’ bilingual abilities inform their identity? Keywords: Cultural Broker, Bilingual child, Acculturation, Familism, Biculturalism, Hyphen-identity, Somali-Diaspora