The purpose of this paper is to elucidate how patients, families, and doctors associate bodily disorders with establishing relationships at a modern medicine clinic in contemporary Nepal.

Since the 1950's, Nepal has advanced a modern medical policy based on the intention of international donors. However, those policies and projects only had an indirect and partial effect, both locally and temporally. Since the late 1990's, many modern medical practices in the country, including clinical and educational ones, expanded under the leadership of the private sector, a trend that has continued to accelerate from the late 2000's to the present. However, the Nepali government has not been able to manage and regulate such rapidly increasing modern medical facilities. As a result, the facilities have varying quality and size, with medical expenses rising.

Thus, the influence of modern medicine in Nepal has only been rapidly expanding in a neo-liberal socioeconomic situation for a short period of time, meaning that scant anthropological and sociological studies have analyzed the situation. To elucidate Nepal's modern medicine situation, this paper analyzes several cases in a modern clinic with reference to one study on the diabetes and illness narrative, and another one on personhood in South Asia. Previous studies about the illness narrative had progressed in a way that reflects modern medicine as a social or power device. They focused on narratives by individuals and about individual specific experiences involving the body and illness. Studies on personhood in South Asia, meanwhile, have shown that the characteristics of a connected personhood are difficult to separate or distinguish through the cases of various religious and social practices.

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

The aim of this study is to investigate the current worship of an image of the child Jesus in a rural village of Mexico, focusing not only on the rituals but also on the daily practice of caring for the image.

In Mexico, many people are Catholics, with many Catholic images in churches or chapels all over the country. While Catholic festivals are celebrated everywhere throughout the year, devotees also can get their own images, representing God, the Virgin or other saints, to display in their house.

Pre-existing research about Catholic saints in Central America has focused on the social functions that they serve. As emblems of a social group, the saints enable the unification of their group's members. In addition, several researchers have reported that the images of Catholic saints are considered emblems of the comunity, with people carrying the image as they visit nearby comunities, and vice versa, to construct a diplomatic relationship with them. However, researchers have not paid sufficient attention to the relation between the images and their worshippers.

Furthermore, in pre-existing research about the Catholic festivals (fiestas) of Central America, religious images are normally considered symbols bearing some meaning, or as objects conveying a meaning that is imbued unilaterally by humans.

Alfred Gell rejects that epistemological approach, arguing that both people and things are social agents that mediate social relationships by acting. Taking almost the same position, Pinny clarifies that in Hindu rituals, the religious image becomes more powerful through the bodily perfomance of the devotees with it. He says that the devotees in such a relationship are not only agents who empower the image, but are also a recipient of the divine power from the image.

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

This article focuses on the Indonesian Muslim expatriates' halal food practices in the Netherlands. How do they live as minorities? How have they changed their thoughts and perceptions according to the surrounding circumstances and changing times? How do they choose their way of eating?

Like other European societies, the Netherlands is experiencing Islamization that is occurring due to the inflow of Muslim immigrants, and which is happening in the midst of various global trends, such as (1) the increased risk of cross-contamination and adulteration as a result of developments in food-processing technologies and more complicated manufacturing processes involving food additives, (2) the influence of halal certification systems which started in Southeast Asia and spread out to the world, and (3) the global halal food business boom. The settlement of Muslim immigrants within Dutch society has progressed under the immigration integration policy since the 1990's. In the past decade, more and more Turkish and Moroccan butchers are selling fresh halal meat in the Netherlands, and general retailers also started to set up halal sections offering various processed meat products. The number and variety of eateries that explicitly proclaim their halal-ness are increasing, making it easier for Muslim residents to obtain halal food.

Nonetheless, the Netherlands is a non-Muslim country, and can be defined as a marginal area of Islamic society. Meanwhile, some 87 percent of the Indonesian population is Muslim. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world, and is regarded as one of the leading countries in terms of halal certification systems, with halal-certified products commonly distributed throughout the country.

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

With an increasing awareness of the global halal market, both Muslim and non-Muslim service providers have started to adopt strategies targeting Muslim consumers in recent years. This paper briefly reviews the development of halal certification in Taiwan and its domestic and international background chronologically, specifying two epochs that bring convergence and diversification among actors, certification, and information about the halal industry. In addition, by comparing the requirements and conditions for 'Muslim restaurant (MR)' and 'Muslim-friendly restaurant (MFR)' certification, this paper explores the basic concepts of halal certification in the Taiwanese context. It empirically describes the practices of certification bodies, a semigovernment organization, and service providers, and discusses the overlaps and gaps between qingzhen, halal, and Muslim-friendly concepts and practices in Taiwan, focusing on the process of implementing halal certification for products, restaurants, and services, in addition to the food choices of Hui Muslims. It suggests that halal certification has been expanded to the global market through collaboration between Muslim and non-Muslim actors with domestic and international interests, and furthermore that halal certification connects and differentiates between 'us' and 'others.'

In Taiwan, the term qingzhen as equivalent to the term halal was first used in the mid-2000s. Hui people rarely use the word 'halal' or the phonetic equivalents of the original Arabic term such as hala (哈拉), rather prefer to use qingzhen, meaning 'Islam,' 'Islamic,' or 'Muslim,' before halal certification. The use of the terms qingzhen and halal has been negotiated through the institutionalization of halal food management.

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

The main purposes of this paper are to explore the possibility of halal industry studies and to suggest some relevant anthropological approaches, with a special focus on its audit culture aspect.

Firstly, the halal industry is a generic term covering a wide range of industries prepared to sell and provide whatever commodities and services Muslims are assumed to need and consume. Whereas the concept of halal is based on the religious values and norms of Islam, the halal industry is generally characterized by the fact that it involves non-Muslims as well as Muslims, both as producers and consumers. The halal industry is anthropologically interesting chiefly because it is where Muslims and non-Muslims interact with each other, with a focus on the Islamic value system of halal (what is permitted by Allah) and haram (what is forbidden by Allah). It is also noteworthy because a series of such sociocultural contexts seems to be bringing about a sort of transformation in the meanings of the daily commodities produced and consumed by the people concerned, their daily acts and behaviors throughout the processes of production, distribution and consumption, and ultimately the economic paradigm shift and world-view change centered on the people's daily lifestyle as well. There is a strong need, therefore, to apply a holistic and integrated approach to the halal industry and halal behaviors in general, through a broad perspective covering the economic and sociocultural processes of production, distribution and consumption.

Secondly, the products and services provided by the halal industry worldwide are generally authorized by a halal certification and audit system organized and managed by certain certification bodies. The relationship between the halalness of products and services on one hand, and its certification provided through some audit system on the other, tends to be propagated as inseparable like the two wheels of a cart.

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

This study proposes a new methodology in anthropological practice, to be described as the "global needs-sharing approach between the parties concerned" (henceforth "the approach"). It connects multiple remote points on earth without depending on the asymmetrical dichotomy between the investigator and informant, the donor and recipient, and so forth. The author explores the possibilities and potential of the methodology by examining the case of the project-ethnography known as the "e-satoyama project" (or simply "esp"), implemented from 2015 among undergraduate students in Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan and Narok County in Kenya. The project centered on the keyword satoyama, a Japanese term for "the area in which humans and nature interact."

First, the author positions the approach with respect to preceding academic arguments in related disciplines on fieldwork and ethnography. He conflates four arguments on ethnographic methods through a critical examination of the following: (1) the critique of ethnography after the so-called "writing culture shock," (2) the tōjisha (Japanese for "the parties concerned") research movement in Japanese sociology and disability studies, (3) ulti-sited ethnography, and (4) participatory development studies. Second, the author illustrates the methodology through the e-satoyama project. Finally, the traits of the methodology are presented through reflections on the activities carried out in the project over the last four years.

The outcome of the project has been published in the form of sightseeing maps and field guidebooks on wild animals, both in printed and online formats, to advocate the needs shared with the local people. The publication, which can be considered an "ethnographic leaflet," is designed as a significant product within a certain context relevant to the local communities, and is not intended to be a universal academic ethnography. Therefore, the ethnographic leaflet is not merely a leaflet version of the academic ethnography, but a form of "situated product" sharing the same meaning as "situated learning."

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)