In discussions of farmers' societies in Asia, analysis has been made of the politics of farmers toward state power in terms of such livelihood strategies as everyday resistance. Meanwhile, farmers' lives nowadays are heavily influenced by commercialization. Therefore, we must form an analytical method to describe that phenomenon, exploring how monetary power affects their lives. Using that perspective, this paper focuses on the activities of a coffee farmers' cooperative in Lao PDR and examines the way in which it forms relationships with the government and among the market actors. An NGO-led cooperative, known as the Jhai coffee farmer's cooperative (JCFC) , was launched in 2005, 20 years after the bankruptcy of an earlier cooperative introduced by the government in the 1980's. An American consultant supported the organization of 11 producer groups based in the village, establishing an organization for them to receive fair trade certification. An English-speaking Lao, a supporter of the NGO, became manager of the cooperative and played a significant but monopolistic role in the trade with foreign buyers. Due to his monopolistic management, JCFC was driven to bankruptcy and absorbed into the new government-led cooperative in 2009. However, even though JCFC went bankrupt, the farmers' representatives were eager to reestablish their own cooperative to be able to continue to sell their products to foreign buyers. For that reason, a Japanese fair-trade company started a program of financial support to reestablish the JCFC, and has been importing its coffee since 2010. Although the coffee trading with the company has got back on track, the number of JCFC members selling their coffee to the company decreased in 2012. The main reason for that was a change in the networks for purchasing the coffee beans, owing to the highly dependent nature of local societal relationships. For example, at KP village, where 53 families belonged to a producers' group, the group representative originally signed contracts with 16 members for a fixed amount of sales at a meeting held the first year. However, only one member was left selling coffee to the company in the third year of the trading. A JCFC representative said that the person had bought the coffee cherries (i.e., the coffee beans) from the KP village farmers, after which he processed all of them himself because he felt the farmers could not meet JCFC's standards. Actually, the standards had become a source of controversy the year before. One member of the KP village group sold his coffee to a middleman after his coffee had been rejected by the JCFC for not meeting its criteria. That demonstrates that the cooperative representatives did not trust the ordinary members' skills in processing coffee. Thus, the 'connection' between the cooperative representatives and the farmers became reorganized into the equivalent of the connection between the middlemen and the farmers. Ironically, such a connection was precisely what the cooperative had tried to eliminate when the JCFC was first established. Elsewhere, ST village also faced difficulties with its group members, but for a different reason from the problem faced by KP village. JCFC issued a regulation stating that members must sell a fixed amount of coffee according to a consensus reached in the group meeting, with advance payments made to help farmers who were having difficulty making ends meet. At the village, where five families belonged to a producers' group in 2010, some members violated that regulation regarding advance payments. They sold all of their coffee to the middleman, without leaving anything for the company despite having had received advance payments for their coffee. Therefore, the group representative excluded those farmers from the group. On the other hand, a rumor started to spread among the villagers that the group

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This paper aims to clarify the way that the meaning of indigenous kinship has changed and reconstituted as it is utilized as a resource in modem elections in the Spiti region of north India. Kinship has supported the functioning of the modem election system. Thus, this paper focuses on kinship to examine new aspects of the overlapping region between the modem political system and indigenous kinship system. Indigenous kinship here does not mean overall kinship, but rather the kind of kinship that involves mutual cooperation in everyday lives. India is said to be "the largest democratic country." Since attaining independence from Britain in 1947, it has maintained a democratic political system despite its various and complex ethnic groups and large economic inequality. However, from the micro point of view, the democratic political system in India has not to become as established as it is in Western countries. On one hand, there is the Western idea of the modern election system, in which votes are based on individuals' intentions. On the other hand, many Asian and African societies are said to conduct elections according to "traditional" political systems, based on ethnic groups, religion, regional ties, or kinship. Such traditional political systems are seen as "backward," losing political significance with the advance of the Western system of voting. However, indigenous systems have changed under the influence of supporting the modern political system, coming to function in an original way. As E. Gellner pointed out, both modern political systems and indigenous cultural systems acquire new meanings and functions through reciprocal influence. In Spiti, the meaning of indigenous kinship has changed and been reorganized as it supports the modern election system, functioning in a particular way. This paper aims to clarify how the meaning of "indigenous kinship" has changed and been reconstituted under the influence of elections in Spiti. In the Spiti Valley, kinship has changed through the implementation of local elections. In the region, the principle of patrilineal descent used to be dominant over many domains, such as marriage and inheritance, until the end of the 19th century. There was a patrilineal descent notion, expressed by the concepts of "bone" and "meat," particular to Tibetan societies. Each patrilineal line of descent had its own "bone" name. However, currently, such the "bone" names have been forgotten, despite inheritance being carried out along patrilineal lines, and patrilocal residence is most common. The influence of patrilineal descent in marriage has also weakened. In contrast to patrilineal descent, nirin has grown in importance as a form of kinship sustaining people's daily lives over a long period. Nirin are kindred in nature, recognized through both patrilineal and matrilineal lines by ego, and also include affinities of especially close relationships. Nirin ties are characterized by boundaries dependent on personal, day-to-day relationships. Thus, a nirin relationship can be established between distant relatives as long as they interact closely. Such nirin relationships are constituted through such actions as exchanging goods, exchanging labor, eating together, helping each other, and visiting each other's house. Those practices constitute a significant base for everyday life. However, ever since 1975, when the local election system was introduced in Spiti by the Indian government, nirin have tended to be utilized politically for election campaigns. India has two national major political parties, both of which are active in Spiti. They contend over the rights of infrastructure panning and the selection of contractors in elections of village chiefs and district government officers. Party members try to acquire votes aggressively using the persuasive power of

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This paper describes the institutionalization of the social organization "ton" as a place of education among children's peer groups of the Malinke in West Africa, using the analysis of identity categorization. The ton used to be places of education where "adults instruct ton members about general social rules" [Meillassoux 1968]. However, at present, most ton members are unmarried persons, even down to the age of five. Therefore, most ton organizations are children's peer groups, with no more adults as educators. Nevertheless, people still refer to ton as "the place of children's education (denmis〓n mara y〓r〓)," even today. This paper clarifies who does what to whom in the ton to make it a place of education. It analyzes the categorization of "child/adult (denmis〓n/m〓k〓r〓ba) " identities that frequently appear in ton meetings, by referring to the idea of "membership categorization device" (Harvey Sacks). Section II of the paper explains childhood in the Malinke and "children's ton," with field research conducted in a rural farming village in southwestern Mali. In the past, circumcision was considered to have provided an important opportunity enabling the shift from childhood to adolescence. Adults told the subjects of circumcision, usually young children, about the history of their village and the social norms by isolation from the village. However, infants are now the subjects of circumcision, and are no longer isolated from the village when the act occurs. Its function as a rite of passage is now assumed to have been lost, with the boundaries of childhood to adulthood having become more ambiguous. The age organization "kare" has also declined, no longer functioning as a framework of age recognition within peer groups for young persons of the village. Meanwhile, the number of children's ton-which retains the continuity of the traditional ton as far as its organizational principles and activities are concerned-has rapidly increased since the late 1990's. In 1994, there were only seven ton associations in the research village, but that number had increased to 49 by 2010. The main activities of a children's ton include doing communal work, having meetings, playing football, and having parties. The workforce of the children's ton has become very important, particularly in carrying out farming and making bricks to build huts in the village. Adults, including the parents of ton members, interact with a children's ton by requesting it to do collective work, later remunerating the children for the work. However, adults rarely get involved in a ton's activities, such as in its collective work and meetings. Therefore, despite the fact that a children's ton has clear links to the community, mainly in the form of collective work, it is not under the supervision of the adults. Section III of the paper analyzes the talks in ton meetings by focusing on the categorization of "child/ adult" identities among the ton members. One's identity as a "child," as categorized by an "adult," generally appears with negative predicates, such as being lazy or unable to pay fines. However, if the "adult" attributes an unreasonable predicate to the "child," the two discuss the matter and negotiate with each other. At the same time, having the identity of a "child" does not only connote negative predicates and subordinate meanings to the "adult" identity. The "child" has appeared as a category that also takes on positive predicates such as entitlements making the ton well-organized, and rights that deter the "adults" from making mistakes. On the other hand, the "adult" may appear as a category with the obligation to ensure that the ton is not taken for granted. In that way, the

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This paper discusses the basic structure of religious practices at a Chinese temple in Singapore, paying particular attention to the relationship between the secular caretaker known as the "chairman" with the religious professionals, Daoist priests, and Tang-ki spirit mediums. The paper begins its discussion with the assumption that the Daoist priests and Tang-ki spirit mediums are equivalent to priests and spirit mediums as technical terms. Max Weber understood and compared various types of priests and spirit mediums as practitioners in this world. J.M. Atkinson also compared the two, characterizing priests as liturgy-centered religious professionals while describing spirit mediums as more performance-centered. Despite its binary structure, Kokan Sasaki looked upon it as having three elements: the divine king, priests, and spirit mediums. Masakazu Tanaka's work in Sri Lanka-observing a secular caretaker within the priest and spirit-medium framework-focused on the struggle for power within the temple, also pointing out the subordinate nature of spirit mediums to priests in rituals. In the studies about the religious professionals in Singapore, Vivienne Wee, Sasaki and I described the action of the Tang-ki spirit-mediums as being interdependent with the worshippers, depending on the circumstances. Stephan Feuchtwang analyzed rituals in China, and pointed out that priest rituals were not merely communicative but also consequential, as they were performative. In religious festivals, a deity represents the liturgical community chosen for its efficacious protection. The implicit judgment of the conduct of its selected leader and god is played out. If, over a period of many years, the god is no longer considered to be efficaciously responsive, it will be abandoned or augmented by the choice of another god. Consequently, worshippers seek an accurate response from the gods whenever they make a vow. Alan Elliott and Leon Comber, meanwhile, paid attention to both religious professionals and supporters in the temple. Elliott demonstrated how a seance in the temple consisted of three elements: namely, the Tang-ki spirit mediums, the supporters, and the lay worshippers. However, he failed to examine the reciprocal relationship among the three. Comber regarded the Tang-ki spirit mediums as the most important religious professionals, as they give direct advice to worshippers. More recently, Khun Eng Kuah-Pearce looked at the streamlining of supporter's groups in temple. For example, the chairman changed the administrative method in the 1990s and later, referring the matter to a temple committee. The wishes of the committee members and worshippers relating to the administration of the temple are thus no longer disregarded. The paper also focuses on the triadic relation among the chairman, Daoist priests and Tang-ki spirit mediums, investigating whether or not the relationship between the priests and spirit-mediums is complementary. To that end, Chapter 2 introduces a general view of temple worship to help enhance the readers' understanding of Chinese religion. It includes explanations of various religious professionals, as well as the membership makeup of the temple, the types of supernatural beings, and the membership makeup of the temple board. The topic of the case study, temple A in Singapore, is taken up. The chapter also includes a history of the temple, the Daoist priests, Tang-ki spiri-mediums, the temple's administrative system, and former villagers. Chapter 3 goes on to investigate annual rituals held at the temple. The first is the New Year ritual, which is supervised only by the spirit mediums, and is concerned with relatively inferior supernatural beings. The second is the Hungry Ghost Festival, in which the priests manage the worship ritual for supernatural beings from the underworld cooperatively with the spirit mediums, but without the

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In this paper, I propose that the mother/daughter relationship is constituted through material objects in the patrilineal kinship system, especially after the daughter's separation from her natal family. The case study presented in this paper deals with Miao women and their ethnic costumes in southwest China, as well as focusing on changes that have taken place since the 1990's regarding a bride's move from the natal to marital house. This paper also considers a woman's changing affiliation from the natal to marital family in marriages with a patrilocal residence. In conclusion, I suggest that mother/daughter relationships, mediated by clothes among the Miao, can be characterized as "sympathetic" ties, which are defined as the ties between a parent and child who are separated from each other but are formed by the notion of sharing body parts or a soul, which can be understood as a relationship of "sympathetic magic" (Akitoshi Shimizu) . However, I also suggest that "sympathetic" relationships are formed not only by composite parts of a person, but also by such material objects as the mother's handcrafted costumes. Until the 1980's, the Miao maintained a custom, zuo jia, in which a bride continued to live in her natal house, even after her wedding, until pregnancy or maturity. During that period, the status of the bride was liminal, and her affiliation was ambiguous. After living in the natal house for a few years, a bride would start to live in her marital house with her costumes, typically indicating the start of her affiliation with her marital family. In the field site, L. village, zuo jia has not been practiced among the Miao since the 1990's. Nowadays, the bride's residence in her husband's house and her pregnancy begin immediately after her wedding. The major change since the 1990's is that a married woman keeps her costumes with her mother in her natal house until her mother's death or her own second childbirth. As a reason for this change, the mothers cite the fear that their daughters' marital family might rob them of their (or their daughters') costumes, with the purpose of keeping the daughters in the marital house and thereby preventing divorce. Although there are few cases where that has actually happened, that reason is commonly mentioned in L. village. To understand this further, we must trace the historical changes in the value of the costumes. From the time of the previous Republic of China to the 1970's, most Miao women wore their ethnic costumes every day, but after the 1980's, China's economic reforms and development, together with changes in the form of farm management, led to the popularity of a more elaborate type of women's jacket that is worn only during rituals and festivals. At the same time, Han-style clothes began to penetrate and substitute for the Miao's everyday clothes. Due to such changes, the costumes owned by many Miao today have become prestige goods. The increased value of costumes for many Miao has had an effect on the daughter's or the daughter-in-law's affiliation. It is important to stress that most costumes in the natal house today are produced by the mother. Since the 1990's, most village women have been educated in junior high school, after which they leave for work in China's coastal area. That has meant that they have no time to learn to make costumes until they get pregnant. Now, increasingly, mothers make costumes for their daughters. Although Miao women refer to the costumes in the natal house as "the daughter's," the mothers also say that the clothes have not been handed over to their daughters yet. The costumes' ownership is thus ambiguous at this point. I asked some women, aged between 20 and 50, why they keep their costumes in their natal houses. From their

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