Students of Anth 351 (Ethnography of Melanesia) will be holding a fund-raiser and raffle tomorrow at the Gallery in the SUB from 4:30 to 6:30. The funds raised will go directly to local NGOs involved in relief efforts in Oro province, Papua New Guinea, which was hit by devastating floods about ten days ago resulting in much loss of life and destruction. Two areas where Dr. Bill McKellin and Dr. John Barker work, Uiaku village and Managalase, are especially affected.

For news updates on the disaster and relief efforts, view this Google News feed:
http://news.google.ca/news?hl=en&ned=ca&ie=UTF-8&q=oro+flood&btnG=Search

I’ve put a book on 1-day course reserve for students in ANTH 232, Ancient Latin America, who may be having trouble tracking down archaeological reports for their site or finding that all the reports on their area are signed out.

It’s called “The Carnegie Maya: The Carnegie Institution of Washington Maya Research Program, 1913–1957“, and it reprints “all the archaeological, ethnographic, linguistic, and historical investigations in the Maya region of southern Mexico and northern Central America between 1914 and 1957”. It also includes a searchable CD-ROM with all the reports.

You can check the detailed Table of Contents at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip065/2005037446.html to see if the the structure you are researching is included in this volume. For example, Section 38 on Chichen Itza includes reports such as:

• Report on the Excavations at Chichén Itz , Mexico, 1924 (E.H. Morris)
• Report on the Temple of the Four Lintels (Station 7), 1925. (O. G. Ricketson)
• Report on the Casa Redonda (Station 15), 1929. (H.E.D. Pollock)
• The Caracol, 1931 (K. Ruppert)

A reminder of tomorrow’s Anthropology roundtable discussion :

Ethnographic Methodologies for Justice and Reconciliation in Northern Uganda

1:00 – 2:00 pm Thursday, November 22 in AnSo 203
With the research group from the Liu Institute & Gulu, Uganda

Northern Uganda has experienced 20 years of conflict. 1.7 million people have been displaced into overcrowded and underserved camps. Each week, 1,000 people die of war related causes. The UN Under-secretary General, Jan Egeland recognized northern Uganda as one of the world’s worst, most neglected humanitarian crises. The primary victims of this conflict are civilians. Over 30,000 children as young as six years old have been abducted and forced to commit gross atrocities against thier own communities. If they manage to escape, they return to live in insecure camps. Many experience intense trauma and stigma by their neighbours. The Justice and Reconciliation Project (JRP) is the result of a 2005 research initiative with Ker Kwaro Acholi, the cultural institution representing the Acholi people of northern Uganda. In order to move forward, culturally sensitive healing and reconciliation must begin to take place within Acholi-land. Yet little is known about traditional practices as they are currently being practiced and adapted to current circumstances. The institution of cultural leaders has been weakened over the course of the war, and there is a need to strengthen it by reconnecting to the grass-roots level. The JRP works directly with victims of the conflict in some of the 100 internally displaced persons camps in northern Uganda, providing them with tools for documenting cultural approaches in order to strengthen them. Through Field Reports, dialogues and national and international workshops, we disseminate findings to national and international stakeholders.

See the Justice and Reconciliation Project for more information, including links to publications on this topic.

A reminder of the talk today by Masami Toku, University of California, Chico:

The Power of Girls’ Comics: What can Shojo Manja Tell You?

Shojo Manga “Girl Power” Manga (Japanese comics) has played an important role in Japanese society. Not just tales of love, these illustrated stories empower the girls of Japan and aid them in traversing the intricate societal roles and expectations females face in Japan. Blending ink and storytelling, the Manga can simultaneously be viewed as entertainment, art and a reflective study in pop culture. This presentation on Manga focuses on those published specifically for Shojo (young girls) and the author’s world-touring exhibit featuring a variety of posters, prints and books spanning over 60 years of art and style. While the early Shojo Manga remains timeless in its unique style and storytelling, it is the contemporary Manga and artwork that has transcended borders and has received great interest throughout the world. This presentation will look at the role Shojo Manga has played and continues to play in Japanese society and through reflection of 60 years of artwork, observing how the lives of young girls and women have changed in Japan since the post-war era through today. “Girl Power!” focuses on a period of Japanese history that has seen women’s position in society undergo drastic changes, and that path is documented through Shojo Manga.

Friday, November 16, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Buchanan B323

A reminder of today’s Anthropology Colloquium by Dr. Ken Ames, Anthropology, Portland State University:

Financing Hunter-Gatherer Complexity: production and elite strategies on the Lower Columbia River

Thursday, November 15
11:30-1:00 pm in AnSo 205

Recent publications written or edited by Dr. Ames and held at UBC Library include:

The Archaeological Society of British Columbia presents a lecture today by David Schaepe of the Dept of Anthropology, UBC:

“Housepits and Households: 3,000 Years of Community Development among the Sto:lo”

Thursday, November 15th at 7:30 pm
Vancouver Museum, Early History Gallery
1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver, BC

“Hundreds of ancient housepit features populate the mainland Gulf of Georgia Region, southwestern B.C. – homeland of the Halkomelem-speaking Stó:lō (‘People of the River’). Archaeologists have documented housepits in the region for over 60 years, yet little remains known about their range of shapes and sizes, how these feature are arranged within settlements, or how such settlements have changed through time. Building on work from the collaborative Fraser Valley Project, this presentation describes current research exploring 114 housepit features from 11 different settlements located between the Central Fraser Valley and lower Fraser Canyon. These results provide insight into the formation of Stó:lō pithouses, households, and community organization over the last 3,000 years (ca. 500 B.C. – 1850 A.D)”.

We now have online access to an eBook that may be useful for students in Dr. Blake’s ANTH 232 class (Ancient Latin America) who are in the midst of the Andean Archaeology section of the course. “Andean Archaeology III” is the third volume in the Andean Archaeology series by William Isbell and Helaine Silverman.

From the dustjacket:

“The book focuses on the marked cultural differences between the northern and southern regions of the Central Andes, and considers the conditions under which these differences evolved, grew pronounced, and diminished.”

Since the book is online as part of SpringerLink, you can all access it without coming to the library (make sure you have set up the VPN.) To read the book, click here or on the book title above.

Table of Contents

Part I: Introduction:

Regional Patterns.

Part II: The North

America’s First City? The Case of Late Archaic Caral.

Religious Warfare at Chankillo.

The Vicus-Mochica Relationship.

Competitive Feasting, Religious Pluralism and Decentralized Power in the Late Moche Period.

Northern Exposures: Recuay-Cajamarca Boundaries and Interaction.

Chimu Craft Specialization and Political Economy: A View from the Provinces.

Part III: The South

Early Village Society in the Formative Period in the Southern Lake Titicaca Basin.

The Emergence of Complex Society in the Titicaca Basin: The View from the North.

Redefining Plant Use at the Formative Site of Chiripa in the Southern Titicaca Basin.

Ritual and Society in Early Intermediate Period Ayacucho: A View from the Site of Nawinpukyo.

Missing Links, Imaginary Links: Staff God Imagery in the South Andean Past.

Water, Blood and Semen: Signs of Life and Fertility in Nasca Art.

Burial Patterns and Sociopolitical Organization in Nasca 5 Society.

When and Where Did the Nasca Proliferous Style Emerge?

Violence and Rural Lifeways at Two Peripheral Wari Sites in the Majes Valley of Southern Peru.

Suspension Bridges of the Inca Empire.

Part IV: Conclusion

Rethinking the Central Andean Co-Tradition.

Note: We also have all three print volumes in the Andean Archaeology series in Koerner at call number F2229.A555 2002.

A reminder of today’s talk by Dr. Alexia Bloch, Department of Anthropology, UBC:

Post-Soviet Mistresses and the Turkish State:Negotiating Intimacy, Kinship, and Labor Migration in a Time of Transnationalism

Wednesday, Nov 14, 2007 at 12:00 noon
Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies
1896 East Mall (show me a map)

Abstract:
While historically the Soviet Union had elaborate trade, cultural, and political exchanges with nearby regions, from the 1930s to late 1980s these connections were extremely limited and average citizens were not permitted across the “closed” borders. With the breakdown of the Soviet Union, this radically changed and now more than 15 years later extensive labor migration out of the region both challenges border control efforts and creates new economic and socio-cultural configurations, including in regard to structures of kinship and intimacy. This paper, grounded in ethnographic research (2002-2007), examines how post-Soviet women employed as domestic workers and shop assistants in Istanbul are part of a growing post-Soviet population of undocumented workers who maintain ties to home– frequently in Moldova and Ukraine–but also build long-term strategic kinship relations as wives and mistresses of Turkish men. The paper argues how the strategic kinship and intimacy employed by women who have lived and worked in Istanbul for as long as a decade can be seen as facilitated by a Turkish state that provides laborers with few means of regularizing their status. Many levels of society, including the state, are complicit in maintaining a marginal status for post-Soviet labor migrant women, since their inexpensive labor is directly linked to the expansion of key economic sectors such tourism and textile manufacturing, and, through their domestic service, to the participation of middle-class Turkish women in the paid labor force. The strategic forms of intimacy­as long-term mistresses­that are employed by Post-Soviet women demonstrate the ways in which “kinship” is, as Michael Herzfeld has recently written (2007), not a fixed system, but “. . . deeply embedded in the life cycle” (2007:320). In the case of post-Soviet women, labor migration has come to define a normative aspect of one stage in the life cycle, mid-life. Overall, this paper argues that post-Soviet migrants’ efforts to “make kinship” reflect a global pattern whereby transnational flows of women’s labor are contingent upon gender regimes in receiving countries, but are also part of a “global national hierarchy” which enables particular constellations of intimate relations.

Bio:
Alexia Bloch’s current research concerns emerging capitalism and the transformation of gender relations in regions of the former Soviet Union. In particular, over the past five years she has conducted ethnographic research on women labor migrants moving between areas of the former Soviet Union and centers of global capital such as Istanbul, Turkey. Her publications include articles in the journals Canadian Woman Studies and Cultural Anthropology, as well as book chapters in volumes focused on issues of trafficking and international migration. She is also the author of two monographs– Red Ties and Residential Schools: Indigenous Siberians in a Post-Soviet State (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); and The Museum at the End of the World: Encounters in the Russian Far East (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). Alexia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology.

You’ve likely heard about RefWorks, the online citation management tool that allows you to save references for your research paper from online databases such as AnthropologyPlus and Google Scholar, and then formats your paper in the citation style of your choice. Perhaps you’ve had a chance to get started with RefWorks, but need some help in using its many features.

This Wednesday is your chance to find out more! Come to Koerner Library for a RefWorks session from 1:30-3:30pm.

Register for the session here.

A reminder of today’s Anthropology colloquium by Dr. David Mosse, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, School of Oriental and African Studies (London):

The appearance of identity politics in a south Indian village

A view on the shifting meaning of caste and its rise as an idiom of rights from a return visit to a fieldwork village after 23 years.

Thursday, November 8, 11:30-1:00 pm
Room 120 C. K. Choi Building, Institute of Asian Research

Dr. Mosse is the author and editor of a number of publications, including most recently:

• Development brokers and translators : the ethnography of aid and agencies / edited by David Lewis and David Mosse. 2006.
• Aid effect : giving and governing in international development / edited by David Mosse and David Lewis. 2005.
• Cultivating development : an ethnography of aid policy and practice / David Mosse. 2005.

Co-sponsored by the Centre for Indian and South Asian Research, Institute for Asian Research