Global Ethnographic » Articles

Opening the lunchbox: Distinction From the School Playground

geadmin — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:00:18 +0000

Through an ethnographic investigation of school lunchboxes, this paper explores how health, gender, class and ethnicity are understood through children’s interactions. It examines the way children construct, affirm and/or challenge social distinctions and issues of inclusion/exclusion by looking at the contents, concepts, narrative and activities related to the consumption and sharing of their lunch food at a primary school in Wellington, New Zealand. Literature dedicated to social class (Bourdieu 1984) and ethnic identity (Rikoon 1982; Stern 1977) has documented the relationship between group identities and food items or cooking methods, analyzing how food is creatively used to reaffirm unity and belonging within minority groups (Camp 1989; Kalcik 1984). In contrast to this approach, I review the role of food as a “safe space” (Mercon 2008) where diversity may be allowed to symbolically exist for the purpose of affirming the unity of the nation state, while ultimately silencing deeper social differences. I assess the discourses, behaviours and symbolisms at stake in scenarios where food consumption takes place with individuals from different ethnic, gender, religious identities and socio-economic backgrounds as well as the way that children are socialized to understand and enact distinction through food. This reveals children’s notions of their own identity and their perceptions of other’s identities, and questions the assumption that food, identity and social cohesion are conceptually linked.

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Intracultural Dynamics of Capoeira Training in Brazil

geadmin — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 18:00:06 +0000

Class was in session. I was playing the atabaque drum—a freestanding upright leatherhead drum with a wooden body and a metal stand. To my right was a group of student musicians who, on their respective instruments, were each playing rhythms to accompany the other students performing Capoeira movement. Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian form of fight-dancing that incorporates music, dance and martial arts. In each of the three styles of Capoeira—Angola, Regional and Contemporañea—practitioners must learn both the instruments and the movements. Practitioners also learn a repertoire of songs that evoke imaginations of Capoeira’s past.

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Fiji’s Red Wave Art Movement

geadmin — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 08:15:08 +0000

This paper draws on anthropological fieldwork conducted at the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture between 2004 and 2008. It describes the formation of the Oceania Centre and discusses certain “Red Wave” artists. In illustrating how their style of art is learned and produced, the paper considers the shared stylistic repertoires thought to define such “collective” Oceanic art. When it discovers that senior artists experience a process of “individualization” seemingly counter to the principles of the Centre, the paper turns to investigate the origin of these stylistic differences between the artists. It concludes by discussing the function of style itself, finding that stylistic differentiation emerges not to threaten the stability of “the collective” but rather to produce for artists and audiences alike new social and symbolic connections and relations.

Keywords:

art anthropology, Red Wave art, the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture, style,
collectivity, Fiji, Oceanic identity

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Reconstructing Minority Identities in 21st Century Japan

geadmin2 — Sat, 22 May 2010 09:41:01 +0000

In 1968, Shintaro Ishihara (now the governor of Tokyo) stated, ‘there is no other country like Japan, people who are virtually mono-ethnic, who speak the same language which is like no other country’s and which has a unique culture’(Oguma 1995:358). 40 years later, similar statement was still repeated by Taro Aso (then the foreign minister of Japan) who maintained Japan is ‘one nation, one civilization, one language, one culture, and one race[1].”

[1] (The Japan Times 2005, Oct. 18). Aso then became Prime Minister in September, 2008.

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Global Ethnographic » Articles

Opening the lunchbox: Distinction From the School Playground

Intracultural Dynamics of Capoeira Training in Brazil

Fiji’s Red Wave Art Movement

Keywords:

art anthropology, Red Wave art, the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture, style, collectivity, Fiji, Oceanic identity

Reconstructing Minority Identities in 21st Century Japan

art anthropology, Red Wave art, the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture, style,
collectivity, Fiji, Oceanic identity