Personal names has have frequently been highlighted by cultural anthropologists, who understand that names - as well as the naming conventions that give rise to them - have important social implications. We can trace the study of personal names to Morgan, who pointed out the significance of names as well as forms of address. Since the 1950's, an anthropological approach to personal names has sought not merely to catalog tangible names or naming conventions, but also to regard them as clues for understanding social structures. Philosophically speaking, Karatani's distinction between singularity and particularity is suggestive. Particularity emerges only through general comparison. For example, the particularity of Japan as a nation-state is evident only when it is juxtaposed with the generality of a nation-state (group, type, or class), which would include such diverse national entities as the United States, Korea, and Papua New Guinea. On the other hand, singularity denotes what is "infungible" or "irreplaceable." Most importantly, Karatani insists that singularity is associated with proper nouns or personal names. He writes, "Singularity shown by a proper noun is not singularity in the sense of the one and only. We do not always use a proper noun when referring to it, even though it is the one and only. The singularity of anything emerges only when we use a proper noun to refer to it." On the other hand, Deguchi, in consideration of Levi-Strauss' argues, that personal names are indicators of a classification. Thus, he insists, "An individual is also part of a class. A personal name is something to classify." In his discussion, personal names do not connote singularity but particularity. Subsequent anthropological arguments focus on the meanings and functions of personal names. However, should we reject Karatani's perspective on singularity? This article explores the essence of personal names among the Aneityum islanders of Vanuatu. Aneityum Island, which has a population of about 900, is located in the southernmost part of Vanuatu. Its inhabitants depend on semi-subsistence agriculture, cultivating taro, yam, and manioc. A person on the island usually has two names: one Christian, and the other a name in the vernacular language. The former is bestowed with relatively few restrictions; however, strict rules govern the use of the other. The population is divided into kinship groups called netec on Aneityum, which form the units of land tenure. A netec has a stock of personal names that only its members can bestow. Other netecs have other stocks of names. Therefore, the netec is a collective holder of personal names. The names of people must not overlap; even though they are the members of the same netec, each person on the island has a different name. In the custom of the Aneityum, each male name is associated with a piece of land with its own netec. When a man is given a certain name, he is entitled to that piece of land. Personal names, then, are like "registration certificates" of land tenure. Therefore, the leaders of a netec have to remember all the personal names, as well as the traditional knowledge of giving names. However, most of that knowledge has already been lost. Since the beginning of contact with the West in the 1850s, Aneityum islanders have forgotten the names belonging to some netecs, whose members now find it difficult to name their offspring. In some cases, new names are created, even though that option breaks traditional rules. According to those rules, names have been bestowed repeatedly through history. The Aneityum people believe that men with the same name have the same personality. Thus, a man can be identified with his namesake from the past. On Aneityum Island, each person is consistently the only one bearing a specific name, because personal names do not overlap at any given

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Focusing on the case of the San in Botswana, this paper aims to elucidate, firstly, the dynamics that underlie the relationships between hunter-gatherer societies and national and international communities, and secondly, the positive and negative impacts of the global indigenous peoples' movement on society. Because of their distinctive culture and lifestyle, hunter-gatherers have long been considered "deviants" in their nation-states. Under that recognition, they have often been encouraged to relocate to government-planned settlements, which display some of the key futures of "total institutions" (Goffman 1962), so as to be integrated into national society. Recently, however, such a regime has been subject to criticism, with the perception that "indigenous peoples" also have the right of self-determination becoming more widely accepted. Today, indigenous groups have become important actors in national and international arenas. The concept of "indigenous peoples" is, however, highly controversial in the African context, as compared with the situation in countries with white-settler communities. There, the long-term and ongoing histories of migration, assimilation, and conquest have resulted in a more varied and multifaceted relationship between the original occupants and incoming groups. Nevertheless, a growing number of marginalized groups, including hunter-gatherers in Africa, have began to use the term "indigenous" to describe their situation so as to draw attention to the particular form of discrimination that they suffer, and to obtain more support from international organisations and NGOs. Today, African indigenous peoples use claims of "indignity" toward the post-colonial government as well. Rather than colonized experiences, the attachment to the land and cultural distinctiveness are considered as common and important indigenous attributes in Africa. In 2006, with the support of the global indigenous peoples' movement, the San in Botswana won the legal right to return to their lands in a game reserve. That ruling was hailed as a landmark for the rights of indigenous peoples in Botswana, where Bantu-speaking agropastoral Tswana groups have become dominant ethnically, and the government had been reluctant to recognize the concept of indigenous rights. However, it was not a simple victory for the San, who have sought to reorganize their traditional way of life by combining it with the new lifestyle introduced by the development program. One of the most serious problems was that the ruling did not obligate the government to provide social services for people living inside the game reserve. Thus, the members of that community face a difficult choice: individuals who want to live within a developed setting must remain in the resettlement site, whereas those who prefer to be in their homeland must give up access to development. The other problem was that the government has given the automatic right of return only to the people who filed the lawsuit. That part of the ruling has created a significant divide within the San community. As a result, the returnees were limited to the individuals named in the lawsuit, as well as those wealthy individuals who were able to arrange their own transport, water, use requirements and other necessities. The San are currently developing new strategies to cope with those new difficulties. They are struggling to convert both the game reserve and the resettlement site into liveable and multifaceted spaces. The returnees have not severed ties with the development program, and have attempted to bring back daily-use equipment, food and water from the resettlement site. On the other hand, those remaining on the resettlement site have created new dwellings in the surrounding bushland, where they can engage primarily in hunting and gathering and live in small groups comprising of

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This article shares our experience of solidarity with clinical psychologists against abuse in Japanese institutions for child protection. In Japan, the number of consultations at child guidance centers has increased 55 times since 1990 (according to the latest report of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare). Despite the highly significant increase over that two-decade period, some sociologists have criticized the abuse discourse, alleging that it shifts people's attention from social conditions to psychological problems. In that context, child protection institutions in Japan have seen the greatest number of children requiring aid. Those children were socially excluded for many reasons, including child abuse and neglect. In recent years, cultural anthropologists have directed their attention toward socially problematic issues under neoliberal policies through the sub-disciplines of applied anthropology, practical anthropology, and public anthropology. For example, some researchers studying social exclusion have become concerned with violence in Japanese institutions for child protection. However, even after many discussions and much research, a viable method is rarely presented for intervening in the chain of three types of two kinds of violence - (covert and overt) violence by staff members toward children, between children, and by children toward staff members. In this paper, the author first outlines the institution of Japanese child protection according to statistical reports and articles from the fields of social welfare, clinical psychology, social anthropology, and sociology. In this research, it was confirmed that the approximately 30,000 children in Japanese child protection institutions were socially excluded not just in their original homes, but also where they live now. In fact, statistics reveal that in some urban areas in Japan, approximately 10% of homeless people had come from child protection institutions. Readers may be surprised to discover that just 0.14% of Japanese children below the age of 18 live in such institutions. Consequently, we focus on the chain of the three types of two kinds of violence (covert and overt) violence in Japanese foster homes, because treating all types of violence is essential both for creating a safe and secure childcare environment and for ending the cycle of social exclusion. Second, the paper discusses how a clinical psychologist, Seiichi Tajima, has been involved in the problem of violence in Japanese child protection institutions. He discerned the problem and began collaborating with field researchers in cultural anthropology, forming solid professional relationships with researchers in several fields, child guidance centers in each prefecture, top management levels of private child protection institutions, and their staff members. The paper discusses how he has worked to develop solutions to violence in such institutions. This author and a partner, Io Hiroyuki, participated in and supported Tajima's project, performing ethnographic fieldwork and sharing weekly feedback reports. In 2006, that research helped initiate and implement the first stage of establishing a safety committee aiming to curtail all types of violence in child protection institutions. By the end of 2006, such safety committees were introduced in 12 institutions and were evaluated positively. Further, since 2009, we have held three national conferences on the safety committees. In 2010, the Child Welfare Act added new conditions, particularly Article 33, Items 10-17, which define abuse in those institutions, including violence between children. Now each municipality must take responsibility for such institutional abuse, with 15 institutions in eight municipalities attempting to prevent violence through safety committees. Finally, we present our way of relating to social exclusion following cultural anthropology under neoliberal policies,

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This paper discusses new places where resettled refugees live, in line with this issue's special theme of "on-site." Specifically, it describes the process of the resettlement of Lao refugees in Japan over the past three decades, focusing on their practices of mutual aid, particularly the way such practices are carried out in Kanagawa Prefecture, where most of the refugees have settled. The resettlement of Lao refugees in Japan started in 1979, and lasted until 2005, when the last Indochinese refugees entered the country, at which point Japan had accepted a total of about 1,300 refugees from Laos. When they arrived in Japan for resettlement, the Lao refugees were first accommodated in a "settlement promotion center" to learn the Japanese language and be trained in social skills. However, such training was not enough for many of the resettled refugees to prepare for living in Japanese society. They still practiced individual mutual aid, as well as relying on public support and volunteer activities. Some changes in their situation occurred in the 1990s. The Japanese economy rushed into a deep recession after the collapse of the bubble economy. At that time, one decade had already passed since the first Lao refugees started living in the country, and the various living situations of individual refugees had begun to diverge. In addition, it became harder for them to continue to receive support for problems in their daily life, since the public and voluntary support they had previously received had begun to drop off, given the general resolution of the Indochinese refugee problem. Under such circumstances, some resettled Lao refugees, whose life had been stable before, began to rely more on institutional mutual-aid practices. That situation accelerated the pace of activities by the Lao association in Japan, which had not been very active in the 1980s, and eventually led to the establishment of a Laotian cultural center that also functions as a Buddhist temple. The Lao association of Japan, headquartered in the cultural center/Buddhist temple complex, has continuously pursued activities since the 2000s. At the complex, which is used for the practice of Theravada Buddhism, the association serves to disseminate information among resettled Lao refugees, and gives support to individuals with serious problems. Through those practices and negotiations with Japanese associations, the members of the Lao refugee association have come to look upon the nature of their activities as being based on the traditions of Theravada Buddhism, which differ from the concept of "religion" understood by Japanese people generally. As a result, the Lao association of Japan is now preparing to apply to become an official nonprofit organization (NPO) instead of a religious corporation. Finally, the paper briefly discusses the living practices of the resettled Lao refugees in Japanese society based on the above description, as well in terms of the special theme of this issue.

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Japan has more in-patient days than any other country, as well as the highest number of beds in mental hospitals as a ratio of the total population. People with mental disorders used to be hidden away under the law, either in the medical or welfare system, and suffered from a social stigma. In recent years, however, mental patients have left such isolated medical institutions and started to live among the general community, not as psychiatric patients but as persons whose will is respected and who can get social-welfare support. As that drastic paradigm shift happened rapidly, Japanese institutions for persons with mental illness have come to design various support systems in response. This paper describes the experiences of several schizophrenic persons who utilize a social welfare facility in Hokkaido: Bethel's House in Urakawa, which has developed unique ideas about dealing with schizophrenic symptoms. The members of Bethel's House diagnose their own symptoms on their own terms, and are able to study their physical conditions, sensuous feelings, and mental worlds through their own experiences of living in the community. They carry out that work studies with friends - the other members of Bethel's House - and develop and train skills for communication with their friends and the rest of the real world. The paper looks at the case of a woman at Bethel's House who had difficulty holding down a job because of voices she heard and hallucinatory delusions she saw. She only realized that the voices and hallucinations might be coming from her own mind after talking with the other members of the house. Although she suffered from the voices, she gradually gained skills to communicate with her "friends." The staff members of Bethel's House did not try to ignore the voices, but instead were told to greet them (the "friends" were just the voices that she had heard). The staff members also urged her to try to experiencing talking with her friends using those greetings. Through such daily communications, schizophrenic persons at Bethel's House, such as this woman, learn to have specific physical experiences using their own words, thereby constructing practical communities. We also found that medical institutions and welfare facilities in Japan have kept away schizophrenic experiences, having removed patients from the community in the context of psychiatric treatment, responsible individuals, and human rights. In contrast, Bethel's House lets schizophrenic persons live with their voices and hallucinations, meaning that they live in a continuous world that includes both the hospital and the outside world. On the other hand, some residents in Urakawa Town wanted to exclude Bethel's House from the community because they felt it was accommodating "irresponsible" or "suspicious" persons, or subsidizing non-working people with public monies from the town budget. Although individual daily contact was maintained between Urakawa residents and the members of Bethel's House, those exclusionary attitudes against social institutions meant that Bethel's House has come to function as an asylum for schizophrenic people in such situations, increasing the feeling of isolation in schizophrenic persons' lives, both internally and externally.

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