Too educated for love? Women and the marriage market in Indonesia

Indonesia is among the shrinking number of Asian countries demographers identify as following a pattern of “universal marriage,” defined as a country in which fewer than 4% of women over the age of 40 have never married (G. Jones 2004). The marital imperative weighs particularly heavily on young women. Those who reach the age of 25 without finding a partner are considered to be “unmarketable” and placed in the category of “old maid.” Women who put off marriage to pursue an education are in an especially precarious position; since most Indonesian men look to marry “down” with regard to age and education, educated women face the challenge of finding someone who is an appropriate match in a narrowing field of candidates. They also face the perception held by at least some men, that educated women will assume a dominant position within the family. This paper presents the life stories of four educated Javanese women and examines the hurdles they face in finding and securing a marital partner. Although young Indonesians have embraced the idea of romantic love as the proper foundation for a modern, companionate marriage, and it is widely accepted that youth should make their own choice of “soul mate” (jodoh), educated women are finding it increasingly difficult to meet their match.Accepted manuscrip

Science Teachers’ Views of Science and Religion vs. the Islamic Perspective: Conflicting or Compatible?

publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticleThis paper reports a study that explores Egyptian science teachers' views on religion and science within the context of Islam. It also highlights an ontological and epistemological consideration of these views, particularly the ways through which Egyptian Muslim teachers understand such a relationship with reference to the Qur'anic/Islamic attitude toward science and knowledge. The study built upon Barbour's categorization scheme to guide the data collection and analysis and to guide the interpretation of the teachers' responses in the interviews. Informed by a multigrounded theory of the teachers' views of science and religion, and using Roth and Alexander's analytical framework to interpret how teachers accommodate the relationship between science and religion within their belief system, the findings suggest that participants' views of the relationship between science and a specific religion (Islam) confirmed the centrality of teachers' personal religious beliefs to their own thoughts and views concerning issues of both science and Islam. This centralization, in some cases, appeared to lead teachers to hold a conflicting relationship, hence to a creation of a false contradiction between science and Islam. Therefore, it could be concluded that teachers' personal Islamic-religious beliefs inform their beliefs about the nature of science and its purpose

Relational economies, social embeddedness and valuing labour in Agrarian change: An example from the developing world.

A relatively neglected area of research on agrarian and economic change is the role of indigenous concepts of labour value in the transition from subsistence to market production. In West New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea, the presence of a migrant population on an oil palm land settlement scheme (LSS) in close proximity to village-based oil palm growers, provided an opportunity to examine changing notions of labour value through the lens of smallholder productivity. Voluntary settlers on the LSS are experiencing population pressure and are highly dependent on oil palm for their livelihoods. In contrast, customary landowners in village settings produce oil palm in a situation of relative land abundance. By examining differences in how these two groups practise and value commodity production, the paper makes four key points. First, concepts of labour value are not static and involve struggles over how labour value is defined. Second, the transition to market-based notions of labour value can undermine labour’s social value with a consequent weakening of social relationships within and between families. Third, Theories of Value developed in western contexts and used to frame development policies and projects in the developing world are often inappropriate and even harmful to the welfare of communities that have different registers of value. Fourth, in response to Point 3, and following Rigg (2007), there is a need for ‘theorising upwards’ using empirical data from the developing world to inform theory rather than applying to the developing world models of sociality and economy developed in western contexts

Impaired extinction of learned fear in rats selectively bred for high anxiety – evidence of altered neuronal processing in prefrontal-amygdala pathways

The impaired extinction of acquired fear is a core symptom of anxiety disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, phobias or panic disorder, and is known to be particularly resistant to existing pharmacotherapy. We provide here evidence that a similar relationship between trait anxiety and resistance to extinction of fear memory can be mimicked in a psychopathologic animal model. Wistar rat lines selectively bred for high (HAB) or low (LAB) anxiety-related behaviour were tested in a classical cued fear conditioning task utilizing freezing responses as a measure of fear. Fear acquisition was similar in both lines. In the extinction trial, however, HAB rats showed a marked deficit in the attenuation of freezing responses to repeated auditory conditioned stimulus presentations as compared with LAB rats, which exhibited rapid extinction. To gain information concerning the putatively altered neuronal processing associated with the differential behavioural response between HAB and LAB rats, c-Fos expression was investigated in the main prefrontal-amygdala pathways important for cued fear extinction. HAB compared to LAB rats showed an attenuated c-Fos response to repeated conditioned stimulus presentations in infralimbic and cingulate cortices, as well as in the lateral amygdala, but facilitated the c-Fos response in the medial part of the central amygdala. In conclusion, the present results support the notion that impaired extinction in high anxiety rats is accompanied by an aberrant activation profile in extinction-relevant prefrontal-amygdala circuits. Thus, HAB rats may represent a clinically relevant model to study the mechanisms and potential targets to accelerate delayed extinction processes in subjects with enhanced trait anxiety

‘Gatekeepers’ of Islamic financial circuits: Analysing urban geographies of the global Shari’a elite

This paper analyses the importance of 'Shari'a scholars' in the Islamic Financial Services (IFS) sector, which has been a growing global practice since the 1970s. Based on Shari'a Law, IFS firms provide banking, finance and insurance respecting faith-based prohibitions on interest, speculation and risk taking. Although IFS firms operate across a variety of scales and involve a range of actors, this paper focuses on the transnational capacities of Shari'a experts employed by IFS firms. These scholars use their extensive knowledge of Shari'a Law to assess the 'Islamic' character of a firm's operations, and assist the development of Shari'a-compliant products. As they embody necessary entry-points into Islamic circuits of knowledge and authority, members of what we dub the 'global Shari'a elite' can be regarded as 'gatekeepers' of Islamic financial circuits. Drawing on a comprehensive data source we present a geographical analysis of Shari'a board membership, nationality and educational background of 253 Shari'a scholars. The results show that the global Shari'a elite connects a limited number of IFS hubs (e. g. Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, Kuwait City, Manama, and London) to knowledge and authority networks falling outside 'mainstream' business and service spheres

Competitive Tendering In The Netherlands: Central Planning Or Functional Specifications?

Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies. Faculty of Economics and Business. The University of Sydne

From West Indies to East Indies: Archipelagic Interchanges

In this paper, I work to rethink notions of comparison and area studies by viewing my ethnographic work in Indonesia through the lens of theories developed by anthropologists working in the Caribbean region. In bringing 'East Indies' and 'West Indies' together in this way, I explore the possibility of reconfigured networks of citation, collaboration and interchange that might help anthropology respond in new ways to contemporary dynamics of globalisation. © 2006 Copyright Discipline of Anthropology and Sociology, The University of Western Australia