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This paper reports the findings of field studies in China, Vietnam, and Australia into the gods worshiped by the Hoa Nung people. The Hoa Nung are a group of ethnic Chinese who migrated from southern China in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and settled in Hai Ninh province (the present Quang Ninh province), northern Vietnam. The settlement’s central religious facility in Ha Coi (the present Quang Ha) was the temple of the Goddess of Mercy, Wu Guo Guan Yin Miao (Mieu Quan Am Ho Quoc). In 1954, when the communist government led by Ho Chi Minh occupied their autonomous region, the Hoa Nung undertook a massive migration from northern to southern Vietnam. During this migration, the temple gods also migrated to the south. In addition to many places in southern Vietnam, branches of worship were also established in Australia after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Politicians that have been important to the people in the borderland between China and Vietnam throughout history are included among the gods.

In Turkey where secularism is one of the most important constitutive principles of the state, an “Islamic party” that insists on the introduction of Islamic jurisprudence or the establishment of some sort of Islamic state cannot legally exist. Why then, has a series of political parties, from the National Order Party to the Welfare Party, been regarded as “Islamic” and banned despite their official stance of defending secularism? An analysis of the nature of secularism in Turkey and the parties’ programs and discourse suggests that the conflict is not just over secularism, but rather over the state ideology of modernization as Westernization. Westernizing and secularizing policies, implemented from above under military tutelage, have led to the establishment of vested interests related to both political and economic power, which are an outgrowth of and intertwined with the cultural bias that regards what is Western and secular as superior and “progressive.” In consequence, the “Islamic parties” in Turkey have emerged as forces confronting the repressive secularist regime and its vested interests.

This study examines contractual enforcement in the Bolga basket industry, an export-oriented handicraft industry in northeastern Ghana. Recent consumer preference trends in developed countries, such as appreciation of handicraft and ethical product, have stimulated Bolga basket exports. Wholesale companies and local intermediaries enter into binding contracts on production terms to meet changing demands of quality and quantity in the target markets. To enforce these contracts, intermediaries have developed pseudo-contractual relationships, locally called “contracts,” with basket weavers.

However, a close investigation of these transactions reveals that weavers often fail to keep their advanced agreement (e.g., delivery deadlines). Intermediaries are on the weaker side of the bargain and, being from the same community, cannot resort to sanctions, such as transaction termination, to deter default. Instead, they de-emphasize weavers’ obligations and enter “contracts” with as many weavers as possible to offset the losses from defaulters. To develop long-term relationships, they rearrange the production terms, taking weavers’ diversified livelihood strategies and mindset into account. Furthermore, they repeatedly negotiate with weavers, evoking reciprocal cooperation and/or shared experiences of “working together” for the agreements to be fulfilled.

In conclusion, by defining trust as an expectation of another person’s goodwill under uncertainty, this study argues that the marketing cycle of Bolga baskets functions when intermediaries transform sanction- and obligation-based contractual relationships with companies into relationships of trust with weavers, based on acceptance of uncertainty and risk negotiation.