the process of state formation in Madagascar

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136684/1/ae.1977.4.1.02a00080.pd

The New Ecological Anthropology

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66329/1/aa.1999.101.1.23.pd

Integration, Disintegration, and Reintegration via Advanced Information Technology

American culture is shifting from a mass culture toward increasing specialization and diversification. The growth of communication in cyberspace is consistent with this trend inasmuch as it supports the proliferation of interest and affinity groups. Socioeconomic, demographic, and cultural factors affect access to, use of, and behavior within this communication space. Other forms of regulation of the use of cyberspace include the emerging norms of on-line discussion groups and political attempts to regulate the content of the Internet.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68894/2/10.1177_089443939601400103.pd

Tourism and water inequity in Bali: A social-ecological systems analysis

This paper is a social-ecological systems (SES) analysis of tourism and water inequity in Bali. It uses Elinor Ostrom’s SES model to look at the particular niche of Bali’s tourism and water nexus. Re-analysis of previous qualitative research revealed that the vulnerability of the SES was due to numerous characteristics. In particular, user groups are highly diverse, transient and stratified, thereby inhibiting communication and knowledge sharing. This, in combination with weak governance systems and the economic power of the tourism industry, interact to affect declining water resources and the iniquitous impact of this. Whilst there are obvious indications that Bali’s water resources are over stretched, there is no feedback loop to the institutional structures that would help enable appropriate responses from the user groups or governance system

Beyond a Dichotomy of Perspectives: Understanding Religion on the Basis of Paul Natorp’s Logic of Boundary

Based on Paul Natorp’s (1854–1924) late post-Neo-Kantian “Logic of Boundary” (German: “Grenzlogik”) I will offer a methodically controlled, non-reductionist and equally anti-essentialist reconstruction of the notion of religion. The pre-eminent objective of this reconstructive work is to overcome the well-known epistemological as well as methodological problem of a dichotomy between inside and outside perspectives on the subject of religion. Differently put, the objective consists in an attempt to demonstrate that there actually is “reason in religion” that is intellectually accessible for academic knowledge production. Following Natorp’s splendid formulation I will argue that religion operates neither ‘within’ nor ‘beyond’ the ‘boundary of humanity’ but exactly on [or ‘in’] this boundary. More precisely, I will explicate that religious praxis (including its specific production of knowledge) from Natorp’s standpoint can be understood as the performative realization, and habitual embodiment of the (contextually concrete) boundary of humanity or human reason itself. Due to its principial self-referentiality this boundary carries the crucial sense of a first and last positive and, therefore, both in theoretical terms definitive and in practical terms eminently instructive notion of boundary with no outside. This paradoxically all-enclosing, positive boundary, while explicitly including life’s inevitable negativity but, nonetheless, able to ideally sublate it, is the reason why the practice of religion, as empirical evidence unmistakably documents, can provide an incommensurably fulfilling, significant and meaningful closure with regards to the innermost self-perception of its practitioners (concerning their self-determination or agency)

Expropriated from the hereafter: the fate of the landless in the Southern Highlands of Madagascar

During the period following the abolition of slavery by the French colonial government in 1896, the Southern Highlands of Madagascar was settled by ex-slaves. These early settlers constructed a foundation myth of themselves as tompon-tany, or 'masters of the land', a discourse not only equating land with tombs, kinship and ancestors, but also coupled with a skilful deployment of 'Malagasy customs'. In order to exclude later migrants who also wanted to settle, the 'masters of the land' attempted to establish control over holdings in the area. To this end, and to reinforce their own legitimacy as landholders, the tompon-tany labelled subsequent migrants andevo ('lave' or of 'slave descent') who - as a tombless people - have no rights to land. Because they have neither tombs nor ancestors, the landless andevo are socially ostracised and economically marginalised. As an 'impure people', they are not entitled to a place in the hereafter

Community detection in graphs

The modern science of networks has brought significant advances to our understanding of complex systems. One of the most relevant features of graphs representing real systems is community structure, or clustering, i. e. the organization of vertices in clusters, with many edges joining vertices of the same cluster and comparatively few edges joining vertices of different clusters. Such clusters, or communities, can be considered as fairly independent compartments of a graph, playing a similar role like, e. g., the tissues or the organs in the human body. Detecting communities is of great importance in sociology, biology and computer science, disciplines where systems are often represented as graphs. This problem is very hard and not yet satisfactorily solved, despite the huge effort of a large interdisciplinary community of scientists working on it over the past few years. We will attempt a thorough exposition of the topic, from the definition of the main elements of the problem, to the presentation of most methods developed, with a special focus on techniques designed by statistical physicists, from the discussion of crucial issues like the significance of clustering and how methods should be tested and compared against each other, to the description of applications to real networks.Comment: Review article. 103 pages, 42 figures, 2 tables. Two sections expanded + minor modifications. Three figures + one table + references added. Final version published in Physics Report

The culture history of Madagascar

Madagascar's culture is a unique fusion of elements drawn from the western, northern, and eastern shores of the Indian Ocean, and its past has fascinated many scholars, yet systematic archaeological research is relatively recent on the island. The oldest traces of visitors are from the first century AD. Coastal settlements, with clear evidence of ties to the western Indian Ocean trading network, were established in several places over the next millennium. Important environmental changes of both plant and animal communities are documented over this period, including the extinctions of almost all large animal species. Urban life in Madagascar began with the establishment of the entrepôt of Mahilaka on the northwest coast of the island in the twelfth century. At about the same time, communities with ties to the trade network were established around the island's coasts. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, social hierarchies developed in several regions of the island. During the succeeding two centuries, Madagascar saw the development of state polities.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45256/1/10963_2004_Article_BF00997802.pd