Emberá indigenous tourism and the trap of authenticity: beyond in-authenticity and invention.

Prompted by tourist commentary that describes an Emberá community in Panama as “inauthentic” or “invented,” I examine the limitations of these concepts when used to refer to cultural practices of indigenous communities. To escape from a limiting, singular vision of authenticity, I argue, attention should be paid to the multiple and overlapping meanings of the authentic as these are negotiated in particular contexts. In the case of Emberá indigenous tourism, the tourists’ search for an authenticity uncorrupted by modernity inspires indigenous articulations of the authentic related to diverse sets of cultural practices not only in the past, but also in the present. Acknowledging this complexity can set us free from the trap of a singularly conceived authenticity

“Oceania as Peril and Promise: Towards a Worlded Vision of Transpacific Ecopoetics”

Excerpt from Oceanic Archives, Indigenous Epistempologies, and Transpacific American Studies, edited by Yuan Shu, Otto Heim, and Kendall Johnso

Editorial Introduction: The utility and futility of 'the nation' in histories of Aotearoa New Zealand.

An introduction is presented which discusses articles in the issue on New Zealand history, including one on interracial rape and sexual violence in the 1860s, one on postcolonial methodology and the historical concept of the British World, and one on Whanganui Māori claims to the Whanganui River

El Otro Encuentro: Gigi Oltavaro-Hormillosa’s Neo-Queer Precolonial Imagining

This essay examines the performance and video art piece Cosmic Blood, by Gigi Otalvaro-Hormillosa, a queer Colombian and Filipina American artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. It argues that Cosmic Blood is a performative intervention into dominant modes of reading the racialized and gendered Filipina body, as well as a critique of absolutist notions of national and ethnic belonging. Cosmic Blood challenges the inherent heteronormativity and masculinism of dominant notions of nation and kinship, accomplishing this imaginative intervention by its retroping of the past through a lens of queer desire. Within Otalvaro-Hormillosa’s retelling of the moment of first contact, queer bodily desire is the locus of power relations between colonizer and colonized. In this vision of the past, the figure of the Filipina is presented as a desiring subject, resisting the overdetermined tropes of woman as nation, territory, and land that are both a legacy of colonization, and a persistent narrative within contemporary articulations of national and diasporic belonging. In doing so, Cosmic Blood presents a possibility for forms of belonging that exceed the absolutism of race, ethnicity, and nation, while also imagining a utopian vision of the future that critiques the material conditions of the present

Continuity and Change in World Bank Development Discourses and the Rhetoric Role of Accounting

Purpose ? The paper traces how the World Bank has utilised accounting rhetoric/languages in articulating development discourses at different stages of global capitalism through the case study of development projects in Sri Lanka and published development reports. Design/methodology/approach ? Multiple methods are employed including archival research and interviews. In-depth interviews were organised with village level development project participants. Development reports published by the World Bank (1978-2006) are closely examined. Findings ? Development projects in Sri Lanka and development reports show that ideological shifts brought about the changes in accounting rhetoric in development discourses. The paper further shows that the articulations and re-articulations of development discourse have yet to grasp the real complexity of the local problems in those villages in Sri Lanka. The mere focus on management styles (albeit important) driven by the ideology of the aid agencies seems to bring little reward to villagers and, indeed, the policy makers. Research limitations/implications ? This study focuses on the effectiveness of development projects and shows how culture and values in a traditional local setting are in conflict with rational ideas imported from a different setting. This finding has policy implications for the economic development programmes often prescribed by the aid agencies without considering the local context. Originality/value ? The paper adds to the literature on the use of accounting languages in development discourses, especially in the context of Less Developed Countries (LDCs). It will be of great value to researchers and practitioners seeking to gain a better understanding of reforms driven by a particular set of accounting technology in distant places

A kapwa-infused paradigm in teaching Catholic theology/catechesis in a multireligious classroom in the Philippines

The increasing religious diversity in educational space has raised a legitimate question on how Catholic theology/ catechesis must be taught in Philippine Catholic universities given the institutional mandate to educate students “into the faith of the Church through teaching of Christian doctrine in an organic and systematic way” (Wuerl, 2013, 1). On this note, the paper makes reference to “centered plural- ism” (CP), a positional posture espoused by Georgetown University in dealing with this predicament. In an attempt to (re) appropriate CP into local context, there is a need to explore the Filipino conception of self/others as enveloped within the indigenous concept of kapwa. Hereon, the paper finds that CP is not just feasibly suitable in local context but with kapwa's more inclusive description of the relationship of self and others, a CP‐based teaching paradigm in theology/ catechesis is a promising project in the educational scene of the Philippines

Education and articulation: Laclau and Mouffe’s radical democracy in school

This paper outlines a theory of radical democratic education by addressing a key concept in Laclau and Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: articulation. Through their concept of articulation, Laclau and Mouffe attempt to liberate Gramsci’s theory of hegemony from Marxist economism, and adapt it to a political sphere inhabited by a plurality of struggles and agents none of which is predominant. However, while for Gramsci the political process of hegemony formation has an explicit educational dimension, Laclau and Mouffe ignore this dimension altogether. My discussion starts with elaborating the concept of articulation and analysing it in terms of three dimensions: performance, connection and transformation. I then address the role of education in Gramsci’s politics, in which the figure of the intellectual is central, and argue that radical democratic education requires renouncing that figure. In the final section, I offer a theory of such education, in which both teacher and students articulate their political differences and identities

Economic development and Indigenous Australia: contestations over property, institutions and ideology

Economic development for remote Indigenous communities cannot be understood unless the relative importance of customary activity, potentially enhanced by native title legal rights in resources, is recognised. The present article uses a three‐sector hybrid economy framework, rather than the usual two‐sector private (or market) and public (or state) model to more accurately depict the Indigenous economy. Examples are provided of the actual and potential significance of the customary sector of the hybrid economy. Focusing on the concepts of property and institutions, it is demonstrated that significant local, regional, and national benefits are generated by the Indigenous hybrid economy. A role is foreshadowed for resource economists and the New Institutional Economics in quantifying these benefits, including positive externalities, so that they might be more actively supported by the state.International Development, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,