Japanese Journal of Cultural Anthropology
Online ISSN : 2424-0516
Print ISSN : 1349-0648
ISSN-L : 1349-0648
Volume 72, Issue 4
Displaying 1-25 of 25 articles from this issue
  • Article type: Cover
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages Cover1-
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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  • Article type: Cover
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages Cover2-
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages App1-
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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  • Eriko AOKI
    Article type: Article
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 445-465
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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    Communism used to be adhered to by many nation-states as the most scientific theory of utopia. However, in the post-utopian age that came after the end of the Cold War, democracy has taken over as the privileged political concept. Indonesia initiated a free-market policy in the late 1980s, and since the collapse of the anti-communist regime of Suharto in 1998, it has implemented decentralization and democratization. Along with such historical changes, the global market economy has come to influence the country rapidly and widely. This article aims to understand the experiences of the Wolosoko people on Flores Island in eastern Indonesia as a contemporaneous matter with those of other people, including those of former socialist nation-states. It further aims to anthropologically clarify the changes in the Wolosoko lifeworld in the context of the global market economy from a perspective of modern systems. Decentralizaion and democratization in Indonesia were promoted by the central government in the system of global hegemony, not only to make Indonesia suitable for that hegemony, but also to prevent the internal disruption of the Indonesian nation-state. After the Cold War, a regime so despotic and anti-communist as Suharto's lost its entire raison d'etre. For the 32 years of his regime, regions were politically oppressed. Hostility towards the Indonesian state was especially high in those areas where the army violently demolished any opposition. The level of dissatisfaction within the regions whose lucrative natural resources were taken away by the central government grew so much that it could not be ignored. Although decentralization has brought beneficial results to those regions, little change has occurred in places such as Flores, which lack both extreme hostility and natural resources. Globalization and nationalization through decentralization and democratization have not necessarily created preferable conditions for the people of Wolosoko, who have enjoyed indigenous democracy and autonomy due to the relative lack of interference by the colonial government in the past, and the Indonesian central government after independence. The modern historical experiences of the people of Flores have been quite different from those of the Javanese people. While the Javanese were oppressed, they were also enlightened by the colonial government, having produced most of the political elite in the independence movement and in national politics. Although the Wolosoko had been involved in the colonial and national administration to some extent, it was not until the massacre of communists and suspects by the army led by Suharto in 1965 that they felt the state's power. In 1994, for the first time in Wolosolo history, the state appeared as a provider of benefits, providing development funds for undeveloped administrative villages, including those in the central mountainous area of Flores. Under the influence of decentralization, the regional governments in Flores came to treat their local cultures and traditions as important heritages. The traditional village of the Wolosolo is basically composed of its rituals, along with ritual leaders, domains (tana) and the village (i.e., the physical structure). The authority of the village is based on rituals for ancestors and tana (land, domain, earth and world). The lifeworld is embedded in the tana by rituals, metaphor and everyday activities, including cultivation. Bodies and the environment are interwoven with each other. While people once used to depend on swidden agriculture (clearing an area for temporary cultivation by cutting and burning vegetation), wet rice and cash crops became the main products in the 1980s and 1990s. Concurrently, the following changes were also experienced in the lifeworld; some land has become owned, whereas previously only usufruct (the right to use and enjoy the profits and advantages of something

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  • Satoshi NAKAGAWA
    Article type: Article
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 466-484
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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    The aim of this paper is threefold. Firstly, I wish to descibe a brief history of the world from traditionality to modernity by applying the idea of 'disembeddedness' as proposed by Karl Polanyi, not only to the sphere of the economy, but also to the spheres of lifeworld, community and personhood. Secondly, I want to apply a linguistic twist to the discussions of disembeddedness. Finally, I will prove that some of the consequences of modernity are logically wrong. I want to show that we are, as it were, living in an age of fallacy. In the first section, I deal with four kinds of disembeddedness. First, I expound how nature became disembedded from the lifeworld of people. By referring to sevela ethnographic works, I show that people in hunter-gatherer cultures tend to represent human-nature relatedness in terms of personal relationships. Nature is considered to be 'what we are,' and, therefore, considered inseparable from us. It is thanks to Galileo and others that the Western world came to isolate the objectifiable world from the lifeworld. Thus came the disembedding of nature from the lifeworld, with nature becoming a silent physis subjected to mathematicization. Nature is now considered to be 'what we have,' that is, resources lying there to be exploited. The second subsection deals with the disembedding of individuals from the community. As a seminal work by Mauss shows, the western idea of personhood (as a bounded, unique and independent universe, that is, as an individual) is a historical construct. Ethnographic works, such as one by Leenhardt, show that individuals in so-called traditional societies are so conceptualized as to be embedded in communities. Then came the dualism of body and mind propounded by Descartes, in which the physical body came to be disembedded from personhood, and the remaining living aspect of personhood was to be labeled 'mind.' Now, one's mind is regarded as private and inaccessible to others; the body, on the other hand, is a mathematicized entity, there to be exploited, as in organ transplantation. The process of modernization was completed by the final disembedding, that of the economy from society. Works by Polanyi have described the said process well. The second section marks a linguistic turn of the paper, in which each disembedding process is couched in linguistic terms. The disembedding of nature from the lifeworld is shown to be actually a logical separation of primary predicates (describing measureable properties of an object) from secondary predicates (describing humanly appreciated properties of an object). The two terns were originally coined by John Locke, and are used, in that context, with slight modifications. The disembedding of the individual from the community is a separation of I-predicates (predicats which do not refer to social institutions at all) from S-predicats (predicats which refer, in one way or another, to social institutions). Both terms derive from a work on the philosophy of history by Arthur C. Danto. The disembedding of the body from personhood is a separation of M-predicates (predicates that can be applied to all objects, person and non-person) and P-predicates (predicates that can only be applied to person). Those terms come from P. F. Strawson's philosophical work on personhood. Finally, the disembedding process of the economy from society is shown to be a logical separation of what I call 'market-predicates' from 'gift-predicates.' I have thus far introduced four pairs of predicates (primary and secondary, I and S, M and P, and finally, market and gift). Let us call the former of each pair 'small predicates' and the latter 'big predicates.' Now, we can say that disembedding is a separation of small predicates from big predicates. Only at that stage that I can make my intention explicit: by traditionality and

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  • Michiko ISHIZUKA
    Article type: Article
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 485-503
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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    The purpose of this paper is to consider the spatial perspectives of Creole, setting the cultural concept apart from previously established concepts of culture, by focusing on the space of Martinique as a local context in which that new concept has been formed. Creole cultural space is not as closed as a cultural area that merely reproduces the "other." It is a process in which human cultural practices create the "place." Therefore, from the standpoint of decolonization strategies, it rejects the formation of national or state territory. My intention is to investigate how decolonization strategies are related to the spatial specificity of Martinique. First, I will point out that although Creole as a concept of culture has become a significant framework to analyze heterogeneity, plurality, and the de-territoriality of culture in the globalized world of today, it is also important to consider the historical and local contexts of formation of Creole discourse in the 1990s, which was constructed during the decolonization movements of the 1970s and 1980s in Martinique. There, people had suffered from cultural rejection under the dominant universalism of modern Europe. Second, I re-examine the data obtained in my field survey, carried out in the late 1980s, on the cognition of space and spatial behavior of the Martinican people. I consider the interaction between spatial awareness and spatial practices in Martinique chronologically, and show that the avoidance of political separatism strategies in the decolonization movements there was due to the people's cognition of space. Martinican people classify the space of the island into two categories; terre (land ) and mer (sea). Terre is further classified into eleven sub-categories; ville (capital city), bourg (local town), champ (plantation field), campagne (countryside), jaden (peasant's field), fore (forest), fore sauvage (wild forest), montagne (the volcano Pere), morne (hill), fon (valley), and savane (savanna). Mer is classified into two sub-categories; village de pecheurs (fisherman's village) and plage (seaside). Plage is classified into two smaller categories; plage sauvage (sand beach or rocky beach without easy access) and fore mangrove (mangrove forest). The island's boundaries vary between fishermen and non-fishermen. Since the 1980s, the classification of the island's space has been further subdivided: the ville has been differentiated into three categories; ville (central business district), banlieue (suburb), and bidonbille (slum). Two categories are identified in bourg: bourg referes to such places as churchs, markets, town halls and taxi spots, while bourg-banlieue more generally points to a residential landscape in a rural area. The political and social changes after the transformation of Martinique into a French overseas department in 1946, as well as the decline of the sugar plantation economy since the 1960s, resulted in a remarkable increase of vacant land on the island, particularly in rural areas since the 1980s. Such vacant land has become recognized as terrain abandone (abandoned land) and terrain specule (land for speculations), which has upset people's traditional cognition of space. The paper makes a comparative analysis of the cognitions of space and changes in the real space during three historical stages; (I) from the end of the 15th century to the mid-19th century, (II) from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, and (III) after the mid-20th century until today. That shows that Martinicans' scheme of cognition of space corresponds with the scheme of the first stage, namely, the traditional sugar plantation period. They recognize their island's space as a plantation landscape, even after their emancipation from slavery. Third, I focus on a popular housing space called case, a small wooded removable cabin originating in France and later used

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  • Masanori YOSHIOKA
    Article type: Article
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 504-518
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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    The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the historical process of Luganville, a town in northern Vanuatu, a country in Melanesia. Vanuatu was known as the New Hebrides before it gained independence in 1980, and its capital has been Port Vila both in colonial days and now. Port Vila, located in central Vanuatu, first developed as a colonial town, just as many other urban sites in Oceania. On the other hand, Luganville, which is far away from the capital, has developed quite differently. It originated as a "camp city" constructed by American forces during World War II. When World War II broke out, American forces began to build a base for the Allied forces on the southeastern end of Espiritu Santo Island. That island is situated in the northern part of Vanuatu, and lies nearer than Port Vila to the Solomon Islands, where Japanese forces made their front-line base. The Luganville base, which consisted of many camps, was called a "city" because of its scale as well as its full urban functions. In fact, it had a temporary population of around 100,000, and was well supplied with roads, electrical systems, a water supply, a telephone system and other forms of infrastructure. Since the total population of New Hebrides in those days was under 50,000, one can grasp the hugeness of the camp city. After World War II, all the troops withdrew from the base, resulting in the extinction of the city of 100,000 people. Luganville became quite empty and rapidly became a ghost town. However, after the withdrawal of the troops, a trading company that owned plots of land in the center of the base began to sell them to local residents. Since the urban infrastructure remained, it was not difficult for Luganville to revive its function as a town. First of all, European residents began to inhabit there, and later, the Melanesians did so also. Luganville gradually became a Melanesian town bustling with local life. Although Luganville's population stands at just 11,000 now, it is municipalized and plays an important role as an urban center in Vanuatu along with Port Vila. In this paper, I examine the historical changes of Luganville from the end of 1800s, when people started living there, through the camp city era, and down to the 1970s, when it became a local Melanesian town.
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 519-523
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 524-527
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 527-530
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 530-533
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 533-537
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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  • [in Japanese]
    Article type: Article
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 537-539
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 540-541
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 542-
    Published: March 31, 2008
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 543-545
    Published: March 31, 2008
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 545-
    Published: March 31, 2008
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages 546-547
    Published: March 31, 2008
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages App2-
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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  • Article type: Index
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages i-iv
    Published: March 31, 2008
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages App3-
    Published: March 31, 2008
    Released on J-STAGE: August 21, 2017
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages App4-
    Published: March 31, 2008
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  • Article type: Appendix
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages App5-
    Published: March 31, 2008
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  • Article type: Cover
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages Cover3-
    Published: March 31, 2008
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  • Article type: Cover
    2008Volume 72Issue 4 Pages Cover4-
    Published: March 31, 2008
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