The Other Side of the Gift: Soliciting in Java

The paper inquiries into some of the hidden dimensions of anthropological considerations of the gift and giving, making the case for a new approach to value transfers. Such approach is delineated through critical engagement both with Mauss’s original work on the subject and the work of others scholars, in particular Strathern’s new Melanesian ethnography and Derrida’s deconstructive readings. In addition, by means of drawing upon ethnographic material from Muslim practices undertaken in Java, Indonesia, the paper highlights the importance of soliciting as an alternative concept for thinking about value transfers, stressing, in particular, the significance of activities of taking for a new and different perspective on the complexities that permeate the social

Everyday economics: ideas new and old from lay theories of economic life

This project explores divergences and parallels between lay theories of economic life as experienced and developed in two virtual worlds – Final Fantasy XI (FFXI) and Second Life (SL) – and academic theories from sociology and anthropology as well as economics. My intent is not a critique of economics, but a suggestion that other economic sociologies are possible, and to provide points of departure and ideas for such alternative configurations. Exploration of lay theories is organised around four key conceptual categories – value, exchange, money and markets – which were suggested by participants' accounts and economic organisation within each field site. Respondents' theories offer polyphonic, heteroglossic approaches to economic life that sometimes diverge substantially from academic conceptualisations. Lay theories examined in this research emphasising plurality and multiplicity – especially with respect to monies – going so far as to suggest a radical reorganisation of economies based on monies rather than markets. When lay theories from each category are pieced together, they reveal a social imaginary of boundless abundance, strong reliance upon practices as ways of knowing about and theorising economic life, and strange parellels with studies of “primitive” cultures. This dissertation is based on comparative ethnographies of two disparate virtual worlds, FFXI and SL, which offer different slant-wise views of contemporary capitalist, consumer societies. Final Fantasy XI is a proprietary massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) created, owned and maintained by Square-Enix, while Second Life (SL) is a free-form, nonproprietary, three-dimensional virtual world created and maintained in a laissezfaire fashion by Linden Lab. Fieldwork consisted of participant observation, one-on-one interviews, group interviews with FFXI respondents and analysis of fan-made media and corporate texts

Dramatistic User Experience Design: The Usability Testing of an e-Government System in A Non-Western Setting

This dissertation investigates rhetorical situatedness as a factor that culturally designates users’ motives in adopting a new technology. The application of Kenneth Burke’s dramatism extends the discussion about the situation where an interaction takes place to include acting and meaning-making in Non-Western settings as contextual and situated. This expansion is essential to reinforce the understanding of how cultural contexts impact users’ motives, specifically users from Non-Western settings, to adopt a technology. The traditional Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research stresses mechanical and technical aspects between a user (agent) and a technology device (agency) in order to reduce user errors. This approach isolates the rhetorical situation of interaction in a computer interface, thus eliding the cultural situatedness by regarding the situation as something fixed, such as in a laboratory. Adding a cultural context provides a fuller picture of this interaction. Using a civic records online system called e-Lampid, which is administered by Surabaya City Government in Indonesia as a case study, I discover five elements of situatedness that contribute significantly to weave acting and meaning-making into a culturally informed interaction. User motives are shaped by internal and external situations that are collective, local, and both onsite and off. Dramatism is a tool for analysis and production that prioritizes cultural awareness. Dramatistic User Experience (UX) design offers analytical, comprehensive, and systematic perspectives on the design process. Dramatistic UX integrates three different approaches: usability testing, rhetorical awareness of situations, and needs analysis. The synergy of dramatism, user experience, and design thinking provides a holistic approach to construct a rhetorically grounded and culturally contingent user experience design

Critical Veganism: A Posthuman Understanding of ‘Becoming With’ Others

This thesis lays the groundwork for a critical vegan orientation to posthuman communication research. Critical veganism attempts to do the least amount of harm to nonhuman beings, a shift that decenters the human in scholarship and focuses on the material realities of nonhuman beings. This orientation helps create a praxis for posthuman research that is in line with a new materialist approach to ontology, is anti-capitalist, and strives to do the least harm. Previous research methods tend to be anthropocentric in nature, thus leaving out nonhuman experiences from communication research. Using both autoethnography and multi-species ethnography as my methods, I apply a critical vegan orientation in ways that reimagine research methods from a posthuman perspective. The first application uses performative autoethnography to explore the inherently political and embodied nature of leaving animals off my plate in Evangelical Christian social contexts. The second application of critical veganism uses both autoethnography and multi-species ethnography to examine photos of cats that my sister and I took along the Camino de Santiago. These photos helped to open up the perspectives of other human pilgrims around us to the nonhuman beings sharing the Camino space. A critical vegan orientation better suits communication scholarship, urging us not only to include nonhuman others in our research, but to continue the conversation about best practices for doing so

Ethnography and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge

Professor Nicolas Peterson is a central figure in the anthropology of Aboriginal Australia. This volume honours his anthropological body of work, his commitment to ethnographic fieldwork as a source of knowledge, his exemplary mentorship of generations of younger scholars and his generosity in facilitating the progress of others. The diverse collection produced by former students, current colleagues and long-term peers provides reflections on his legacy as well as fresh anthropological insights from Australia and the wider Asia-Pacific region. Inspired by Nicolas Peterson’s work in Aboriginal Australia and his broad ranging contributions to anthropology over several decades, the contributors to this volume celebrate the variety of his ethnographic interests. Individual chapters address, revisit, expand on, and ethnographically re-examine his work about ritual, material culture, the moral domestic economy, land and ecology. The volume also pays homage to Nicolas Peterson’s ability to provide focused research with long-term impact, exemplified by a series of papers engaging with his work on demand sharing and the applied policy domai

Exploring 'Unseen' Social Capital in Community Participation

This book argues that using social capital to eradicate poverty is less likely to succeed because the mainstream neoinstitutional approach mistakenly assumes that social capital necessarily benefits poor people. This inadequacy calls for a re-assessment of human motivations, institutional dynamics and structural complexity in social capital building. Using ethnographic and participatory methods, this book calls for an exploration of 'unseen' social capital which is intended to challenge the mainstream understanding of 'seen' social capital. As such this book is useful to policy makers and practitioners

Comendo (com) piranhas : aproximações indômitas da domesticação

Este artigo parte de uma inquietação etnográfica sobre a comensalidade e o convívio entre dois predadores nos lagos amazônicos – piranhas e pescadores. Deste ponto de partida será discutida a noção de domesticação, primeiro com um comentário sobre a tendência de reafirmação do termo na antropologia social e em seguida revisitando duas abordagens: a de Jean-Pierre Digard (e outros autores franceses) e a de Tim Ingold, ambos tendo feito uso desta noção como modo de tratamento dos variados sentidos e formas das relações entre humanos e animais. O artigo trata então da noção de domesticação enquanto forma de explicitar questões e dilemas contemporâneos como natureza e cultura, humano e animal, sujeito e objeto. Concluo com uma reflexão sobre as ideias de predação e domesticação para compreender a relação entre piranhas e pescadores.In this article I begin by describing my sense of ethnographic unease concerning the commensality and the conviviality of two predators in Amazonian lakes – piranhas and fishermen. From this starting point I then discuss the notion of domestication, commenting on the current tendency to reaffirm use of the term in social anthropology and revisiting two approaches: that of Jean-Pierre Digard (and other French authors) and that of Tim Ingold, both of whom make use of this notion in their ethnographic explorations of the relation between humans and animals. The article then returns to explore the potential of the notion of domestication for making explicit contemporary questions and dilemmas such as nature and culture, human and animal, subject and object. I conclude with a reflection on the ideas of domestication and predation in the relationship between piranhas and fishermen

Civic Duty, Moral Responsibility, and Reciprocity

This paper, which is based on ethnographic field research, analyses the system of resident-volunteers in the neighbourhoods of Beijing. Between co-optation networks, surveillance missions, ritualised practices, and ordinary exchanges of sociability amongst neighbours, volunteering is an interesting form of citizen participation in urban China. The volunteer networks are made up of inhabitants who are selected and involved through the norms of civic duty, personal acquaintance, moral obligation, or persuasion, in order to contribute to the production of local public order. Finally, this specific form of voluntarism reveals, from the perspective of retired people, how shared socio-political practices are created and perpetuated within an institutional volunteering system

Perceptions and Precarity of the Urban Poor in Kampala, Uganda

This thesis analyzes the ways residents of Kampala, Uganda perceive each other based on socio-economic status. I focus on the slum areas of Namuwongo as a microcosm of the stratified city. As in most postcolonial cities, Kampala presents vast stratification between those living in relative comfort and those in the slums. Focusing primarily on widowed single mothers living in precarious conditions in the slums, I compare their self-perceptions and strategies for survival with the perceptions of middle-class Kampala residents who view the slums, and people living in urban poverty, from outside the community. I frame my interpretation in terms of Uganda’s adoption of a neoliberal development model that includes perceptions of poverty in terms of personal responsibility and failure, or deservingness and reciprocity. I also examine how the slums are represented in government census data and by non-governmental organizations. I argue that traditional neoliberal ideologies do not manifest themselves in the daily lives of the urban poor. However, those neoliberal ideologies can be found in the perceptions those residing outside the slum have of the poor as well as in the erasure of the poor from government census data. The power structures in place in Kampala ensure that those who embrace the neoliberal ideas of personal responsibility are the ones who make and enforce the polices that most affect the urban poor

Subjective Lives and Economic Transformations in Mongolia: Life in the Gap

Almost 10 years ago the mineral-rich country of Mongolia experienced very rapid economic growth, fuelled by China’s need for coal and copper. New subjects, buildings, and businesses flourished, and future dreams were imagined and hoped for. This period of growth is, however, now over. Mongolia is instead facing high levels of public and private debt, conflicts over land and sovereignty, and a changed political climate that threatens its fragile democratic institutions. Subjective Lives and Economic Transformations in Mongolia details this complex story through the intimate lives of five women. Building on long-term friendships, which span over 20 years, Rebecca documents their personal journeys in an ever-shifting landscape. She reveals how these women use experiences of living a ‘life in the gap’ to survive the hard reality between desired outcomes and their actual daily lives. In doing so, she offers a completely different picture from that presented by economists and statisticians of what it is like to live in this fluctuating extractive economy