AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 49, no. 4 (Fall 2010)

FROM RAIDERS TO RUSTLERS: THE FILIAL DISAFFECTION OF A TURKANA AGE-SET

Ian Skoggard
Human Relations Area Files, Yale University

Teferi Abate Adem
Human Relations Area Files, Yale University

Livestock raiding among East African nomadic herders has lately become increasingly violent in some areas, while significantly declining in others. Scholars attribute this change to a combination of causes including colonial encounter, environmental change, political disenfranchisement, penetration of capital markets, and introduction of firearms. This article discusses how these factors altered the age and generational organization of the Turkana giving rise to a permanent group of raiders known as Ngoroko, who are responsible for much of the intra-ethnic violence in the Turkana District today. Like the Suri and the Nyangatom, the Turkana suffer a similar crisis in the traditional authority system that had managed conflict. We broaden the argument to consider changes in the affective structure of Turkana society, especially filial sentiments between generations, due to a collapse in the generational system, and make a general case to consider affect in cultural analyses. (Livestock raiding; pastoral violence; age-set systems; Turkana; affect).

THE CULTURAL LOCALIZATION OF RICE IN THE SOLOMON ISLANDS

Christine Jourdan
Concordia University, Montréal

Introduced over 150 years ago, rice is now a staple food of urban Solomon Islanders. A reanalysis of the localization of rice is at the core of its glocalization in the Solomon Islands. Following a theoretical section on glocalization and neophilia, the article traces the history of rice in Solomon Islands through contact with Europeans. The article pays particular attention to changing foodscapes associated with urbanization and to the economic and symbolic dimensions of food exchange. (Rice, Solomon Islands, glocalization, eating habits, symbolism of food).

SENSE AND SENSIBILITIES: NEGOTIATING MEANINGS WITHIN AGRICULTURE IN NORTHEASTERN MADAGASCAR

Sarah Osterhoudt
Yale University

The agroforestry fields of small-scale farmers in the Mananara region of Northeastern Madagascar are places where materials, meanings, and knowledge overlap. These cultivated landscapes assist individuals to balance the environmental "sense" of scientific epistemologies that emphasize experimentation and development with the more emotive "sensibilities" of tradition, where spirits and ancestors exercise a key role in conceiving worldviews. These two frameworks are epitomized by two Malagasy terms for landscapes -tany (land) and tontolo'ianiana (environment). Each of these carries its own underlying knowledge, meanings, moralities, consciousness, and practices. The sensibilities of tany create landscapes in particular that interact with mundane spaces, while the senses of environment create landscapes in general that emphasize exceptional spaces. Rather than presenting individuals with an either/or choice, the two frameworks create a spectrum of strategies that adapt over time. Examining agroforestry spaces as places where individuals cultivate both material and ideological resources complicates the ethnographic divide between agriculture and forest environments and illustrates the mutually constitutive spaces of nature and culture. (Agriculture, development, morality, epistemology, Madagascar).

RASTAFARIAN REPATRIATES AND THE NEGOTIATION OF PLACE IN GHANA

Carmen M. White
Central Michigan University

For Africans in the Diaspora, Pan-Africanism includes identification with Africa as a spiritual, cultural, and ancestral homeland. Back-to-Africa movements have drawn notions of repatriation to Africa as a unitary Motherland. Yet, repatriation also lays bare the challenges that inhere between envisioning and living Pan-Africanism. Ghana became a significant site for repatriation with the rise of Kwame Nkrumah. For most Ghanaians, the tenets of Pan-Africanism are remote principles that bear little relevance in daily life, in which kinship, linguistic, ethnic, and national affiliations are primary markers of identity. This presents challenges for repatriated Rastafarians from the Caribbean, United States, and Europe, who attempt to establish a home and a place within Ghanaian society while retaining Rastafarian ways of living and spiritual philosophies drawn from a Pan-African ethos. (Rastafarians, Ghana, African diaspora, repatriation).