AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 48, no. 1 (Winter 2009)

ETHNOECOLOGY OF THE OZARK HIGHLANDS' AGRICULTURAL ENCOUNTER

Brian C. Campbell
University of Central Arkansas

Throughout the twentieth century, many farm families in the Missouri Ozarks, USA, significantly changed their practices or abandoned agriculture as an occupation altogether. Researchers, farmers, and the general public assume the shift was an inevitable process of increasing economic efficiency. This article utilizes ethnoecology to demonstrate the importance of the overlooked cognitive aspects of agricultural modernization and to elucidate contemporary agricultural heterogeneity in the Ozark Mineral Area of southeast Missouri. Research included two years of participant observation, agro-ecosystem analysis, and ethno-ecological and semi-structured interviews to document Ozark farmers' perceptions of their farming environments and their agroecological practices. While some farmers' perceptions of their farming environments have changed with agricultural modernization, removing traditional morality from agricultural decisions, other farmers maintain traditional practices within their agroecological landscape. (Agricultural modernization, ethnoecology, Ozarks, traditional knowledge).

THE M-SHAPED DILEMMA: LIFE STRATEGIES AND FERTILITY TRENDS AMONG WORKING WOMEN IN CONTEMPORARY JAPAN

Akiko Nosaka
Pacific Lutheran University

This study examines women's fertility and life strategies in relation to older family members in contemporary Japan, a country with extremely low fertility. It focuses on suburban working women of reproductive age who already have at least one child. This study uses data collected in 2007 to investigate how the fertility of these women may be influenced by their mothers and/or mothers-in-law and how they obtain assistance from them. Questionnaire responses from 196 individuals provided quantitative results, which were interpreted with reference to qualitative data from interviews with 56 of these individuals. The quantitative data indicate that the working women's fertility is significantly associated with assistance from their natal mothers, but not their mothers-in-law. Qualitative analyses indicate that assistance from mothers-in-law is also valuable, but may be contingent on how much assistance they get from their natal mothers. These findings provide a new perspective on Japanese fertility and on possible future trends. (Japan, women, fertility, work, intergenerational kin assistance).

MESKHETIAN TURKS AND THE REGIME OF CITIZENSHIP IN RUSSIA

Lisa Koriouchkina
Brown University

An emerging regime of citizenship in Russia is analyzed with ethnographic data on people's responses to the census and by examination of the Russian political imagination manifested in public discourse on ethnic others. Such a framework allows presenting citizenship as a dialectical interplay between various state structures and the subjects of the state (its people). Doing so highlights the paradox of Russia as a country of "immigration and emigrants" and offers an agenda for the study of "social citizenship." (Russia, citizenship, state, Meskhetian Turks, minorities).

THE WEIGHT OF NAMES IN AMERICAN SAMOA

Karen V. Armstrong
University of Helsinki

Across the Samoan islands, a system of chiefs with ranked titles or names organizes political action. At a chiefly installation ceremony that took place in American Samoa in 2006, through a process of intertextual allusion, a brief verbal exchange served to index political alliances and relationships of the longue durée that existed in the Samoan islands before 1900. Old court records reveal how American colonial policies and practices changed the balance between chiefly titles. Today, the repetition of proper names, as tokens, references a mnemonic structure that positions Samoan political actors across time and space. The chiefs of American Samoa are constantly weighing their relationships with independent Samoa and the United States. On the one hand, the chiefs maintain a distinction between their titles and those of independent Samoa, and on the other hand they do not want full incorporation into the United States for fear that their communal land system will be privatized and alienated. The structure of titles and alliances provides a template of possibilities for political actors, but the system seems to turn back to basic principles when faced with uncertainties about island political life. (American Samoa, interdiscursivity, mnemonic structures).

CREDIT, IDENTITY, AND RESILIENCE IN THE BAHAMAS AND BARBADOS

Brent W. Stoffle
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Trevor Purcell
University of South Florida

Richard W. Stoffle
University of Arizona

Kathleen Van Vlack
University of Arizona

Kenra Arnett
College of the Bahamas

Jessica Minnis
College of the Bahamas

People of the Caribbean have maintained social networks that provide security in the face of human and natural perturbations. Rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) constitute one such system, which probably came to much of the Caribbean with African people and persisted through slavery. As a foundation of creole economic systems throughout the Caribbean, ROSCAs are time-tested dimensions of traditional culture and a source of pride and identity. This analysis of the history and contemporary functions of ROSCAs in Barbados and the Bahamas is based on more than a thousand extensive and intensive first-person interviews and surveys. This article argues that ROSCAs continue, much as they did in the past, to provide critical human services, social stability, and a source of African-ancestor identity in these two nations. (Women's power, rotating credit, Bahamas, Barbados).