In hunter-gatherer societies such as the Inuit and the San, hunters are frequently observed giving their food to others voluntarily or in response to demands. Such behavior is called "food sharing". Cultural anthropologists regard food sharing practices as a characteristic of hunter-gatherer societies. Studies of food sharing have emphasized 1) its origins, 2) its effects or functions, 3) its features and forms and 4) changes it experiences. In food sharing studies, many anthropologists, such as Service (1966), regard the food sharing practices of hunter-gatherers as a form of exchange based on "generalized reciprocity", following Sahlins' concept of "reciprocity" (Sahlins 1965). In this paper, I first review several anthropological studies on different forms of food sharing to illustrate some serious limitations to the concept of "reciprocity" as applied to food sharing. I then propose a new typology of food sharing for classification, description, and comparison. Finally, I examine the usefulness of the new typology by analyzing food sharing among two Inuit groups of the Canadian Arctic, one the Akulivik Inuit and the other the Clyde River Inuit. Through the review of prior studies, it is evident that until now various food-sharing behaviors have been categorized under one heading only: food sharing. If we focus on the ways sharing is initiated (by rule, voluntary, or on demand) and the flow of food (transfer, exchange, or re-distribution), we can theoretically show the following nine types of sharing forms: transfer by rule, voluntary transfer, transfer on demand, exchange by rule, voluntary exchange, exchange on demand, re-distribution by rule, voluntary re-distribution and re-distribution on demand. I applied this new typology to the Inuit cases of the Canadian Arctic for description and analysis in this paper. As a result, I found that transfer and re-distribution are more prominent characteristics of Inuit food sharing than exchange. Also, that demand sharing is not emphasized among the Inuit in Canada. I argue that with the nine types of food sharing, we can describe, analyze and compare almost all kinds of food sharing practices in hunter-gatherer societies. Furthermore, this typology may be extended to apply to the study of the sharing of food, money, goods or services in small-scale societies and to the study of food sharing in non-hunter-gather human groups in the world.

View full abstract

There are some difficulties in anthropological studies concerning contemporary social issues such as industry. This is because most anthropologists conceptualize modern societies to be completely different from traditional ones. In this paper, I argue that the same methods of studying traditional livelihoods, such as agriculture, are also applicable to the study of industry. In the first section of the paper, I will review the history of anthropological studies on industry. Anthropologists played an important role in the birth of industry studies in the 1920s by introducing fieldwork methodology and functionalist theory to this field. This school focused on the study of informal relationships on the shop floor and analyzed these relationships to be a small social system called on "informal organization". In the early 1960s, another group influenced by modernization theory started studying the industrialization of developing countries. Then, in the '70s, Marxist approaches that focused on native laborers' xperiences of subordination and exploitation became popular in place of modernization theory. After the '80s, some Marxist studies were combined with postmodernism to from what was called the "cultural critique" school. Studies from this school interpreted cultural representations of industrialization as resistance to capitalist domination. As we have seen above, anthropological studies in industry were conducted from various ideological standpoints. Almost all researchers thought that industrial work would be de-socialized as a consequence of mechanization and rationalization. They separated the technical system of factories from social relations and felt that industrial work would be so de-socialized that social factors would only have a peripheral influence. In contrast with traditional livelihoods, anthropologists considered industrial work a totally de-socialized activity. Although mainstream literature takes such a view point, there are still some minority groups which explore the relationship between social relations and technology. In the influential book titled "Situated Learning", Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger claimed that the social structure of the workplace has a profound influence on the learning process at work. They argued that learning how to work is a part of daily work practice and that this practice is embedded in social relations in the workplace. They claimed that knowledge and skill were not abstract entities independent from human actors but properties of the social structure of the workplace. After Lave and Wenger presented this learning theory, several anthropologists conducted detailed studies about knowledge and skills in industrial work. These studies clarified fundamental roles of social relations in industrial work. First, they argue that the work environment in industry is sometimes highly uncertain so that workers have to cope with unexpected events instead of merely repeating routine work. Secondly, the workers depend mainly on their own experiences in order to cope with uncertainties and these experiences are shared through social relations between colleagues. This shows industrial work is embedded in networks of social relationships as it also is in traditional livelihoods. Based on these facts, I introduce a new approach to the study of industry named "Ecology of Industry". Ecology of industry focuses on the relationships among actors, activities and an industries organizational environment. The primal unit of analysis is a "task". Sometimes people have to cope with uncertainties in their tasks so that they collaborate with colleagues in the workplace. I call this network of collaboration a "unit of coordination". This is formed by various workers usually within but sometimes beyond the formal boundaries of the divisions of labor. The unit of coordination is an ad

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

View full abstract

This article investigates the correlation between religious innovations and trans-regional communications in West Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most of the recent studies on religious movements in Sub-Saharan Africa have explained these movements as responses to, or symbolic resistance against, the pressure of colonialism and modernization. The main problem with these arguments is that they often assume that local communities were in a harmonious or static state in pre-colonial Africa so that the invasion by Western colonial forces can be set as the "zero point" of socio-religious change for these local communities. But in order to understand the more active or innovative aspects of African religion, it is essential to consider the historical movements and communications of people that crossed borders, which stimulated the continual transformation of indigenous religion. From this point of view, this article investigates the expansion and circulation of savanna-originated spirits or suman shrines in Southern Ghana in relation to the cola trade between Northern and Southern Ghana. The fieldwork for this study was conducted mainly in the Akan based migrant society in the Eastern region and the Northern region of the Republic of Ghana. In Chapter 2, I analyze the contrastive characters of the traditional goddess or obosombaa called Akonodi among Guan and Akan societies in the Eastern region and of one of new spirits or suman called Tigare that originated in the Northern region. Here I note that Akonodi and other traditional gods are basically connected to Southern local communities, their political systems and their ancestor worship, and I contrast that savanna-originated spirits have more independent and mobile characters. Moreover, these new spirits often include North-originated, Islamic characters which are distinguishable especially by the instruments, clothes and languages people use during spirit possession. Also I point out that although there are distinctive differences between these traditional gods and new spirits, they have many similarities in the form of worship and use of symbols. Then, why are these traditional gods and new spirits so different in their origins and basic characters and, at the same time, similar in ritualistic or symbolic aspects? In Chapter 3, I examine the history of wide-ranged enterprises which flourished from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century in Ghana. I focus mainly on the long distance trade between Akan and Hausa traders, the warfare and expansion of the Ashanti Empire, and the migration of cocoa farmers from the Akwapim ridge westward. In order to examine the relation between these political and economic enterprises and the religious movements beyond ethnic and regional boundaries, I first investigate the expansion of new suman or magical elements like Islamic charms and medicines among Akan societies through the markets of long-distance traders and new migrant societies. This process of introduction and expansion of the Islamic magical elements throughout the area was stimulated mainly by the merchants and entrepreneurs who were very active in the periphery of the regional political realm. Second, I investigate the transformation process of suman from savanna-originated magical elements into new forms of personalized Islamic spirits like Tigare or Tongo. This creative transformation of suman was accomplished not only by the scarcity value and the advantage of these new mobile magical elements in comparison to the stable traditional gods, but by assimilation to the authorized symbols and traditional forms of worship in Southern societies. In other words, the process shows the way in which these suman established an original status as new objects of worship in Southern societies through a bonding together with and, yet, differentiation from the traditional gods and ancestor worship. From the

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

View full abstract

The goal of this paper is to examine the use of "comparison" in contemporary anthropology by analyzing the main features of comparative studies by mid-twentieth-century American anthropologists, which have been considered as old-fashioned since the recent decline of the classic anthropological paradigm that culture does exist and should be grasped in its totality. No anthropologists would deny that comparison is the most basic analytical tool of the discpline. Since the literary turn of anthropology, however, the plan to explicate the particularity and/or universality of human culture by comparative method has tended to be abandoned. In fact, few anthropologists dare to publish world-wide comparative studies while the ethnographic study of a particular culture is in fashion. However, the point that particularity and universality of culture are two sides of the same coin is often forgotten. Now is the time to re-evaluate the use of the comparative method in anthropology. When culture is divided into various items and their functional relations are to be sought by comparative method, as most twentieth-century comparativists did, the project inevitably faces the difficulty that there are too many variables (i.e. items of comparison). In order to avoid this difficulty, some American anthropologists contrived new comparative methods. When a comparativist takes a single variable as independent and the other variables as dependent on it, as White did in his neo-evolutionalist works, the project leads to mere reductionism. If such a reductionist approach is not to be adopted, comparison should be made by controlling the number of variables. The control of variables is realized in two ways: by focusing on a specific cultural institution, as George P. Murdock did in his cross-cultural survey on kinship; or by making a comparison within a limited geographical area, as Margaret Mead did in her studies of three Sepik societies in New Guinea, and Fred Eggan proposed in his presidential paper to the American Anthropological Association. Eggan called the latter method a "controlled comparison", and proposed that American cultural anthropology should borrow the methods and techniques of British social anthropology in order to conduct adequate comparative studies. Close examination of the recent theoretical disscussions on 1) how the unit of comparison should be identified, and 2) how an item of culture can be established cross-culturally, makes it clear that all ethnographers answer these two questions before processing field data. There has been no agreement among anthropologists on the definition of the unit of comparison (i.e. the ethnic unit). The comparability of the ethnic units and their historical independence have been questioned since Francis Gallon criticized Edward B. Tylor's comparative studies on evolution more than a hundred years ago. The final and fatal attack on the problem of identification of ethnic units came from post-modern anthropologists who regard culture as a mere construct of anthropologists. The comparability of cultural items has also been questioned by two influential anthropologists, Rodney Needham and David M. Schneider, both of whom made a fundamental criticism on kinship studies. They argued that there is no such thing as kinship. In order for anthropologists to continue to make comparative studies of "kinship", Needham proposed a more formal analysis, while Schneider suggested that the students of kinship should treat its constructs, which originated from European culture, as a working hypothesis, not as a universal fact. The bottomline is that the comparability of cultural items must be under continuous scrutinization. These valid criticisms on the unit and item of comparison oblige all ethnographers to stop at the entrance into comparative studies. A controlled comparison must be made on the spot before processing

(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

View full abstract

Comparison was for a long time the mainstream in Anthropological studies. However, concept comparison appears to be out of fashion after the critical, self-inspection of scientificism and objectivism fromthe1960s, and the power of anthropological writings from the 1980s.

The main targets of critiques in the 1960s were the scientific, cross-cultural comparisons in anthropology, exemplified by the comparative sociology work done by A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, and the "complete-universe statistical" comparison, or Human Relations Area Files by George P. Murdock.

On the other hand,comparisons done in the French structuralist method. such as Dumont's suggestions, are thought provoking, Dumont insisted one should consider value-ideas in the comparative study. Furthermore,the comparative method of Dumont as well as Levi-Strauss clearly commands respect in the face of the dominance and modem universalism of the Western world.

When doing comparisons, researchers need to realize that universalism has been forced in the non-Western world through the civilization process mainly under the Christian universalistic influence. On this basis the genealogy of "religion" in the European Christian world, and the definition of the religions in the non-Western world, need to be re-evaluated.

The new concept of comparison, where we are conscious of the limitations of "forced" universalism, might open a new criticism of western-centricism and a new field of anthropology.

View full abstract

The aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to reconsider Geertz's paper "Religion as a Cultural System" and Asad's critique upon it in a new light, and, by so doing, (2) to find a way out from the theoretical impasse supposedly resulting from this type of debate, and, at the same time, find a new possible vehicle for anthropological comparison. Asad's criticism can be summarized as accusing Geertz's paper of being ethnocentric; Asad argues how Geertz's definition of religion was influenced by Geertz's own culture-bound idea of religion, that is, Christianity after the reformation. To defend Geertz's paper from this criticism, I argue that his paper should be read in the light of Rorty's idea of "anti anti-ethnocentrism". An anti anti-ethnocentrist is, in short, a person who is well aware of their own ethnocentrism and, instead of throwing away their ethnocentrism as Geertz would insist, tries to elaborate, as well as enhance, their ethnocentric view point so as to be able to accommodate other positions. This is not straightforward ethnocentrism (as anti anti-relativism is not straightforward relativism), so it is not, conceivably at least, totally incompatible with Geertz's professed view of "anti anti-relativism". In this new light, Geertz is portrayed as trying to "explicate" (a la R. Carnap) what he has as a stereotype (a la H. Putnam) for the concept of "religion". Thus reinterpreted, the debate presents itself as a totally different phenomenon -a dialogue (or "conversation", if I may use Rorty's favourite metaphor). Their dialogue goes back and forth between experience-near concepts such as "pain", "suffering" and "discipline" and an experience-distant one, that is, "religion", and by so doing, the two dialogue participants make use of various ethnographic facts from various places and times in order to explicate their own ethnocentric stereotypes for the concept of religion, thus providing more and more opportunities to further each other's positions. The dialogue is, I contend, an ideal vehicle for anthropologists to use for "comparison".

View full abstract