The ethics of suspicion in the study of religions

In this essay I outline some beliefs and practices among lowland christianised peoples in the Philippines relating primarily to the existence of spirits which are believed to be responsible for causing illness, attending to their imbrication with Catholicism and local cultural notions and practices and post-colonial questions of identity. I sketch three interpretative frameworks that have been brought to bear on these religious beliefs and practices: an anthropological analysis that seeks to explain such beliefs and practices in terms of a cultural logic, a socio-historical account in which resonances are highlighted between such beliefs and the post-colonial question of Filipino identity, and a rationalist account in which the utility of such beliefs is assessed, at all times highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of these different interpretative frameworks vis-à-vis a phenomenological approach. I use the empirical material to demonstrate that the phenomenological commitment to religion as a sui generis phenomenon cannot reasonably be said to constitute a satisfactory theory of context and I argue that the phenomenological epochē is an inadequate response to the problem of representation

Death-scapes in Taipei and Manila: a postmodernnecrography

This paper analyses changing geographies of disposal in the urban centres of Taipei in Taiwan and Manila in the Philippines, specifically shifts from burial to cremation and the extent to which such shifts reflect changing patterns of residence, fraternity, mobility and conceptions of locality in both places. In this essay the term 'postmodern' will refer not to a body of theory but to material transformations in the structuring of the economy and polity marked by migration from rural areas to cities and the production of places and localities where 'traditional' signs of hierarchy, memory and belonging appear to have been abolished. It has been claimed that the analysis of social practices surrounding death 'throws into relief the most important cultural values by which people live their lives and evaluate their experiences' (Huntingdon and Metcalf 1979: 25). However, I shall argue that conventional anthropological approaches to death practices – which tend to focus on ritual rather than the sites of disposal – need radical revision in order to satisfactorily account for the kinds of changes that are specified over the course of this essay. Indeed, the privileged contextual horizon for conventional anthropological and sociological approaches to death, dying and disposal has been the concept of 'culture'. I will argue that the structuring of contemporary death rituals in both Taiwan and the Philippines is not local culture but rather, on the one hand, the modern state that seeks increasingly to intervene and regulate the minutiae of daily life and, on the other, the 'market' which continuously opens up new areas to the grasping hand of capital accumulation

Religion, culture and politics in the Philippines

This essay addresses two questions with regard to the contemporary Philippines: the question of political violence and the question of status and hierarchy or, as some would have it, class. In recent years I have done field work in and around Manila and in the provinces of Laguna and Quezon about the use of amulets or antíng-antíng in martial rituals for making men's bodies invulnerable, and also on practices concerned with the disposal of the dead. I will suggest that the ritual use of amulets through which Filipino men typically seek to protect themselves from violence signifies a generalised fear of violence. I will also suggest that such rituals of invulnerability transform violence, vulnerability and invulnerability into spiritual problems that can only be overcome through spiritual means. This is to be regarded as a problem: political violence in the Philippines will not be stopped by prayer or by a tattoo or a talisman. Secondly, I will argue that if we want to understand Filipino society with its hierarchies and status and class relationships, we can find ready-made 'maps' of such relations in graveyards. In other words, the geography of death provides an important insight into the ordinarily hidden structuring of society in the Philippines. As such, I will argue that the increasing tendency of middle-class or 'C' class Filipinos to choose cremation at death and for the ashes to be stored not in a graveyard but in a columbarium suggests a desire to escape hierarchy, but also the political impotence of the middleclass in that for this class the problem of hierarchy in the Philippines can only be resolved in death: the issue of inequality simply cannot be confronted in reality

Managerial Skill Acquisition and the Theory of Economic Development

Micro level studies in developing countries suggest managerial skills play a key role in the adoption of modern technologies. The human resources literature suggests that managerial skills are difficult to codify and learn formally, but instead tend to be learned on the job. In this paper we present a model of the interactive process between on-the-job managerial skill acquisition and the adoption of modern technology. The environment considered is one where all learning possibilities are internalized in the market, and where managers are complementary inputs to non-managerial workers. The paper illustrates why some countries may adopt modern technologies while others stay backwards. The paper also explains why managers may not want to migrate from rich countries to poor countries as would be needed to generate income convergence.

On the cohomology algebra of some classes of geometrically formal manifolds

We investigate harmonic forms of geometrically formal metrics, which are defined as those having the exterior product of any two harmonic forms still harmonic. We prove that a formal Sasakian metric can exist only on a real cohomology sphere and that holomorphic forms of a formal K\"ahler metric are parallel w.r.t. the Levi-Civita connection. In the general Riemannian case a formal metric with maximal second Betti number is shown to be flat. Finally we prove that a six-dimensional manifold with $b_1 \neq 1, b_2 \geqslant 2$ and not having the cohomology algebra of $\mathbb{T}^3 \times S^3$ carries a symplectic structure as soon as it admits a formal metric.Comment: Final version. Accepted in Proc.London Math.So

The Black Hole Entropy Can Be Smaller than A/4

The coupling of a Nambu-Goto string to gravity allows for Schwarzschild black holes whose entropy to area relation is $S=(A/4)(1-4\mu)$, where $\mu$ is the string tension.Comment: LaTeX, 9 pages, final version to appear in Phys.Lett.

Particle streak velocity field measurements in a two-dimensional mixing layer

Using digital image processing of particle streak photography, the streamwise and perpendicular components of the velocity field were investigated, in the mid‐span plane of a two‐dimensional mixing layer, with a 6:1 velocity ratio. The Reynolds number of the flow, based on the local vorticity thickness and the velocity difference across the layer, ranged from 1360 to 2520, in the plane of observation. The significant result of this experiment was that the region of vorticity bearing fluid is confined to a small fraction of the flow. A second finding, consistent with the small regions of concentrated vorticity, was the observation of instantaneous streamwise velocity reversal, in the laboratory frame, in small regions of the flow