Argonauts of the Western Pacific

The introductory chapter, entitled 'The Subject, Method and Scope of this Enquiry,' details how anthropology is to be pursued as a science and advocates the method of participant observation

A nyugat-csendes-óceáni térség argonautái

A déltengeri szigetvilág tengerpart mentén élő népei hozzáértő tengerészek és kereskedők – vagy legalábbis azok voltak, mielőtt kihaltak. Néhányan közülük kiváló minőségű, hatalmas tengerjáró kenufajtákat fejlesztettek ki, melyekkel könnyen vállalkozhattak távoli kereskedelmi expedíciókra vagy akár háborús hódításokra is. A pápua-melanéziai népek, melyek Új-Guinea tengerpartján és a part menti szigeteken élnek, nem jelentenek ez alól kivételt: jobbára mindannyian merész tengerészek, szorgalmas kézművesek és ügyes kereskedők. A fontos használati tárgyak – például az agyagedények, kőszerszámok, kenuk, finoman megmunkált kosarak, értékes díszítések – gyártási központjai a lakosok készségeitől, az áthagyományozott törzsi szokásoktól és a környék sajátos anyagi erőforrásaitól függően a térségben szétszórtan helyezkednek el, ezért ezeket a tárgyakat kereskedelmi célból nagy távolságokra, néha több száz mérföldre is elszállítják

The Challenges of Pluralism: Locating Religion in a World of Diversity

This is a postprint (author's final draft) version of an article published in the journal Social Compass in 2010. The final version of this article may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0037768610362406 (login may be required). The version made available in OpenBU was supplied by the author.The author argues that religious pluralism is the normal state of affairs. Religion itself is multi-dimensional, and the several dimensions of religious and spiritual experience can be combined in myriad ways across individual lives. Preliminary findings from new research are presented, detailing modes of spiritual discourse that include mystery, majesty, meaning, moral compassion, and social connection. These dimensions find expression across multiple social institutions. In addition, religion is multi-traditional and organized by plural producers of the goods and services and events that embody and transform religious tradition. Finally, it is argued that religious pluralism must be studied in terms of the structures of power and privilege that allow some religious ideas to be given free voice, but limit the practice of other religious rituals or the gathering of dissident religious communities

Welfare and education in British colonial Africa, 1918–1945

The relevance of historical research for an explanation of the roots of contemporary educational policy and its relationship to notions of equity, democracy and development has been sadly neglected in recent years. This means that policy makers have forfeited the advantages of reflecting on the traditions and experience of past endeavors and examining them critically for potential understandings of present and future policy making. The aim of this paper was to direct the attention of researchers to the complexities and multifaceted nature of educational policy development in inter-war era (1918–1945), with specific reference to British colonial Africa and South Africa. It will also hopefully provide a set of elementary tools for all of those interested in educational policy-making strategies that seek to promote meaningful social, economic and political change in an age of uncertainty

Translating environments

Far from being inert materials activated by human ingenuity, natural resources come to be made and unmade through ongoing processes of translation, through which they acquire new potentialities and meanings. In this introduction, we review the key concept of translation for anthropology and explore some of its multiple analytical possibilities in the context of human-environment relations. Based on insights offered by the articles in this collection, we propose a twofold definition of environments as both translating subjects and objects of translation. In grounding our analytical definition, we focus on the enactment of material transformations (as the result of both relations of mutual determination with humans and processes of objectification of the environment), the implications of incommensurability and erasure in processes of (attempted) translation, and the indeterminacy that accompanies (re)configurations of materials, relations and values

Negotiating Closed Doors and Constraining Deadlines: The Potential of Visual Ethnography to Effectually Explore Private and Public Spaces of Motherhood and Parenting

Pregnancy and motherhood are increasingly subjected to surveillance, by medical professionals, the media and the general public; and discourses of ideal parenting are propagated alongside an admonishment of the perceived ‘failing’ maternal subject. However, despite this scrutiny, the mundane activities of parenting are often impervious to ethnographic forms of inquiry. Challenges for ethnographic researchers include the restrictions of becoming immersed in the private space of the home where parenting occurs, and an institutional structure that discourages exploratory and long-term fieldwork. This paper draws on four studies, involving 34 participants, which explored their journeys into the space of parenthood and their everyday experiences. The studies all employed forms of visual ethnography including artefacts, photo-elicitation, timelines, collage and sandboxing. The paper argues that visual methodologies can enable access to unseen aspects of parenting, and engender forms of temporal extension, which can help researchers to disrupt the restrictions of tightly time bounded projects