Talking Tools, Suffering Servants, and Defecating Men: The Power of Storytelling in Maithil Women’s Tales

What can we learn about the way that folk storytelling operates for tellers and audience members by examining the telling of stories by characters within such narratives? I examine Maithil women’s folktales in which stories of women’s suffering at the hands of other women are first suppressed and later overheard by men who have the power to alleviate such suffering. Maithil women are pitted against one another in their pursuit of security and resources in the context of patrilineal formations. The solidarities such women nonetheless form—in part through sharing stories and keeping each other’s secrets—serve to mitigate their suffering and maintain a counter-system of ideational patterns and practices.

'Listen, Rama’s Wife!’: Maithil Women’s Perspectives and Practices in the Festival of Sāmā-Cakevā

As a female-only festival in a significantly gender-segregated society, sāmā cakevā provides a window into Maithil women’s understandings of their society and the sacred, cultural subjectivities, moral frameworks, and projects of self-construction. The festival reminds us that to read male-female relations under patriarchal social formations as a dichotomy between the empowered and the disempowered ignores the porous boundaries between the two in which negotiations and tradeoffs create a symbiotic reliance. Specifically, the festival names two oppositional camps—the male world of law and the female world of relationships—and then creates a male character, the brother, who moves between the two, loyal to each, betraying, in a sense, each, but demonstrating, by his movements, the currents and avenues of power. This article makes available to other scholars of South Asian culture and society an extended description and analysis of this distinctive festival, while also contributing to the scholarly discussion of women’s expressive traditions.

The Politics of Purchasing Power: Feminist Tourism and Women's Development in Nepal

My purpose in this essay is to explore how ideas about women and development are created and circulated at the moment of consumption of wares produced at a women's development project in Nepal. I analyze the project as an example of the ways that women's development is an object of material and discursive consumption. Artifacts produced and sold by Nepali women, and purchased by tourists from the "first world," become part of an international exchange of power, money, and meaning. Based on a survey of consumers and ethnographic observations, I conclude that feminist tourists forge relations with disempowered "Others" through the pleasurable activity of an alienated market transaction. Consumers of crafts produced at a women's development project assume a position of empowerment and enlightenment, ready to help out their "women" counterparts through their support of an enterprise with circular logic: within the industry of development (although not necessarily for feminist tourists themselves), at least one of the central projects of development is the development project itself. At the same time, feminist tourists locate themselves outside the oppressive structures and ideologies affecting their "third-world sisters." This is a relation of sympathy and imagined empathy, with no sense of differential location within systems of oppression. They fail to examine or articulate the global link between their own purchasing power and local living conditions of Maithil women; the connection is effectively built out of the discourse.

Culture's Calling: Mobile Phones, Gender, and the Making of an African Migrant Village in Lisbon

In this article, I explore how immigrants from the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau living in Portugal use mobile phones in their daily lives in Lisbon. Whereas one might assume that mobile phones and other new information technologies facilitate transnational communication between Africa and Portugal, the ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted in Lisbon from 1999 to 2003 revealed a different scenario. Instead, mobile phones as imagined and used by the Guinean immigrants I met in Lisbon revealed less about transnationalism and globalization than they did about constructing community and identity in a new locale. As Guinean immigrants in Portugal reconfigured their relationship to their former colonizers and struggled to make their way in a new, multicultural Europe, they used their mobile phones to engage local networks, shape local identities, and transform Lisbon's sprawl into an African migrant village. Here, I highlight the gendered dimensions of this process and contend that Guinean men's and women's varied uses of mobile phones in Lisbon underscore contrasting experiences of migration, mobility, and belonging.

Transnationalism and Identity: the Concept of Community in Ghanaian Literature and Contemporary Ghanaian Culture

In my thesis, I use anthropology, literature, and adinkra, an indigenous art, to study Ghanaian concepts of community from an interactive standpoint. While each of these disciplines has individually been used to study the concept of community, the three have not previously been discussed in relation to one another. I explore the major findings of each field—mainly that in anthropology, transnational informants find communities upheld; in literature, transnational characters find the opposite; and in adinkra, there are elements of both continuity and dissolution—to discuss Ghanaian constructs of community in the transnational world. Throughout time, there have always been transnational individuals and concepts, but as globalization continues, transnationalism has become an ever-more vital topic, and combined with the common anthropological discussion of tradition and modernity, its influence on developing countries, like Ghana, is significant. Therefore, in my thesis, I explore how differing conceptions of community present themselves in each discipline, and how those divergences create a new understanding of place and identity.

Transnational Marriage: Modern Imaginings, Relational Realignments, and Persistent Inequalities

In the context of shifting cultural anchors as well as unstable global economic conditions, new practices of intimacy and sexuality may become tactics in an individual’s negotiation of conflicting desires and potentials. This article offers reflection on the interface between global forces, powerful transcultural narratives, and state policies, on the one hand, and local, even individual, constructions and tactics in regard to sexuality, marriage, migration, and work, on the other. The article focuses on the life trajectory of Gudiya, an ambitious young Hindu woman who started out life with little social capital and few economic resources in a dusty corner of what was then the tiny kingdom of Nepal. Gudiya’s story highlights the ways in which she has engaged in relational realignments aimed at bringing her closer to the life she imagines, even as she has encountered new and persistent forms of inequality both local and transnational in scale.

Approaching diplomatic and courtly gift-giving in Europe and Mughal India. Shared practices and cultural diversity

This article deals with courtly gift-giving practices in Europe and Mughal India from a comparative and interwoven perspective. Given the historiographical lacunae on Mughal gift-giving, the article presents preliminary observations for further research. Unlike most contributions to this volume, this article understands the notion of diversity in terms of an intercultural diversity that came to the fore in courtly contexts and in diplomatic encounters. My arguments are bifold. On the one hand, European and Mughal rulers and their envoys shared a common ground of diplomatic gift-giving practices that were shaped by an understanding of what was worthy of giving and of the symbolic power of the given objects. On the other hand, courtly gift-giving practices were embedded in different social and cultural environments in Europe and India. By looking at the notion of the ‘gift’ and the social organisation of the Mughal elite, it becomes clear that pīshkash was an idiosyncratic concept in South and Central Asian contexts and that offerings of manṣabdārs to the Mughal emperor had a different character than those of European courtiers to their rulers.

"My One Regret...": The Case for Cultural Immersion in Study Abroad Programs

Study abroad has been an established institution in US universities for almost a century, and hundreds of thousands of students travel to all corners of the world every year. While many list some degree of cultural immersion as a main goal, most students have a difficult time achieving this. Drawing from interviews with twenty-five UConn undergraduates that studied abroad, this study attempts to identify factors that hold students back from cultural encounters. The study also discusses the 'success stories' of undergrads that made significant connections abroad, and highlights the factors that can lead to this (e.g., homestays, jobs, internships).

Medio ambiente social y cultural : Análisis de los enunciados de las clases de Educación Física

El análisis de las acciones verbales que tienen lugar en las clases proporciona información sobre las prácticas docentes. Los seres humanos contamos con el lenguaje como herramienta fundamental para comunicarnos y construir conocimiento. La reflexión sobre su uso, concretamente el uso que los docentes hacen de este instrumento netamente humano en sus prácticas, es esencial para acrecentar nuestro conocimiento acerca de la tarea docente.
Desde el área de la Didáctica de la Lengua y los enfoques teóricos de la Teoría de la actividad (Leontiev, 1983) y el Interaccionismo socio-discursivo (Bronckart, 1997/2004, 2007), emprendemos este trabajo que se circunscribe al material resultado de las observaciones de clases de Educación Física de nivel primario de escuelas públicas de San Carlos de Bariloche (Río Negro-Argentina). La metodología consiste en convertir los textos orales de las clases en registros escritos para estudiar su organización interna según tres niveles superpuestos, tal como Bronckart (1997/2004) plantea. El resultado es un trabajo de corte cualitativo en el que se estudian en profundidad los contenidos actitudinales presentes en las clases.
Nuestro objetivo es estudiar las interacciones docente-alumnos en el medio social áulico para determinar a través de qué actividades los docentes propiciamos el desarrollo de nuestros alumnos. Es decir, analizar cómo a través de los enunciados de los docentes, se construye el medio ambiente social y cultural (Voloshinov, 1992; Riestra, 2011) en las clases de Educación física.

Medio ambiente social y cultural : Análisis de los enunciados de las clases de Educación Física

El análisis de las acciones verbales que tienen lugar en las clases proporciona información sobre las prácticas docentes. Los seres humanos contamos con el lenguaje como herramienta fundamental para comunicarnos y construir conocimiento. La reflexión sobre su uso, concretamente el uso que los docentes hacen de este instrumento netamente humano en sus prácticas, es esencial para acrecentar nuestro conocimiento acerca de la tarea docente.
Desde el área de la Didáctica de la Lengua y los enfoques teóricos de la Teoría de la actividad (Leontiev, 1983) y el Interaccionismo socio-discursivo (Bronckart, 1997/2004, 2007), emprendemos este trabajo que se circunscribe al material resultado de las observaciones de clases de Educación Física de nivel primario de escuelas públicas de San Carlos de Bariloche (Río Negro-Argentina). La metodología consiste en convertir los textos orales de las clases en registros escritos para estudiar su organización interna según tres niveles superpuestos, tal como Bronckart (1997/2004) plantea. El resultado es un trabajo de corte cualitativo en el que se estudian en profundidad los contenidos actitudinales presentes en las clases.
Nuestro objetivo es estudiar las interacciones docente-alumnos en el medio social áulico para determinar a través de qué actividades los docentes propiciamos el desarrollo de nuestros alumnos. Es decir, analizar cómo a través de los enunciados de los docentes, se construye el medio ambiente social y cultural (Voloshinov, 1992; Riestra, 2011) en las clases de Educación física.

Medio ambiente social y cultural : Análisis de los enunciados de las clases de Educación Física

El análisis de las acciones verbales que tienen lugar en las clases proporciona información sobre las prácticas docentes. Los seres humanos contamos con el lenguaje como herramienta fundamental para comunicarnos y construir conocimiento. La reflexión sobre su uso, concretamente el uso que los docentes hacen de este instrumento netamente humano en sus prácticas, es esencial para acrecentar nuestro conocimiento acerca de la tarea docente.
Desde el área de la Didáctica de la Lengua y los enfoques teóricos de la Teoría de la actividad (Leontiev, 1983) y el Interaccionismo socio-discursivo (Bronckart, 1997/2004, 2007), emprendemos este trabajo que se circunscribe al material resultado de las observaciones de clases de Educación Física de nivel primario de escuelas públicas de San Carlos de Bariloche (Río Negro-Argentina). La metodología consiste en convertir los textos orales de las clases en registros escritos para estudiar su organización interna según tres niveles superpuestos, tal como Bronckart (1997/2004) plantea. El resultado es un trabajo de corte cualitativo en el que se estudian en profundidad los contenidos actitudinales presentes en las clases.
Nuestro objetivo es estudiar las interacciones docente-alumnos en el medio social áulico para determinar a través de qué actividades los docentes propiciamos el desarrollo de nuestros alumnos. Es decir, analizar cómo a través de los enunciados de los docentes, se construye el medio ambiente social y cultural (Voloshinov, 1992; Riestra, 2011) en las clases de Educación física.

Of mermaids and spirit men

A late afternoon and two elderly people sit on an old, steel, wire-sprung camp stretcher bed. They sit back-to-back, engaging in commentary on the vehicles and people that pass them by. One of them, the old man, says suddenly, 'Me! I'm number one singer myself!' Without hesitation the old woman says, simply and bluntly, 'Bullshit!' For the next half an hour the dialogue between the two never varies though the utterances increase both in auditory levels and passion. To the outside observer the dialogue seems simple and nonsensical. However in the world of Yanyuwa music, composition and performance these two people - in their old age in the early 1980s - are unique. The old man Jerry Brown Ngarnawakajarra and the old woman Elma Brown a-Bunubunu are the last two people in Yanyuwa society to have had revealed to them what in this article we will call 'dream state' songs.