Khmer Potent Places: Pāramī and the Localisation of Buddhism and Monarchy in Cambodia

Cambodia is strewn with places of national, local or, most frequently, village importance, considered as potent places, that is to say, places that are said to have agency and a positive or negative power of interaction with human beings. This paper emphasises the constituent principles of potency using case studies based on ethnographic research conducted between 2007 and 2015 in Pursat province, western Cambodia. Beginning with the analysis of the sanctuary of a powerful land guardian spirit called Khleang Muang, the author progressively guides the reader to all the potent places that form a network which spatially tells the legend of the sixteenth-century Khmer King Ang Chan who passed by Pursat, coming from Angkor and settled in Lovek (south of Tonle Sap Lake). Violent death and sacrifices, rituals, spiritual energy called paramī, old buildings, monasteries, precious tableware kept in the soil, trees, stones, termite mounds?…?all those constituents of the potency of the places are analysed. The author’s discussion of the core of potency (pāramī and paramī) enables her to show how Buddhism and land guardian spirit cults are entangled in a single still hierarchical religious system. Finally, the author analyses how potent places in Cambodia embody a process of localisation of the nation-level institution of monarchy.     

Translating transgender: Using Western discourses to understand Samoan fa'afāfine

The analysis of gender as a socially constructed category is one of the foundations of the sociological project. The concept of transgender is of particular interest, in that it reveals that sex is not necessarily constitutive of gender. Gender nonconformity in non‐Western contexts particularly demonstrates that the ways in which sex, gender, and sexuality are conceptualised in Western discourses are open to challenge. However, academic research about non‐Western transgender identities and populations often ultimately replicates specific heteronormative and/or Western ways of seeing the world. In this article, I discuss how Samoan fa'afāfine have been represented by various academic disciplines, using a sociological perspective to deconstruct discourses commonly used in this process, which include Orientalism, essentialism, and functionalism. I then outline research that allows for a more nuanced understanding of the lived experience of fa'afāfine, situating them within the broader Samoan cultural context and paying attention to how fa'afāfine themselves construct and maintain their identities. I conclude that this more holistic approach should be taken with all representations of non‐Western and Western nonheteronormative identities and populations.     

‘Exercise is medicine’: Understanding the exercise beliefs and practices of older Chinese women immigrants in British Columbia, Canada

In this paper we examine how Western biomedical beliefs around exercise and related health practices compare and contrast with traditional Chinese medicine's (TCM) conceptions of health and exercise in a globalizing society, and how these narratives about health and physical activity are understood and taken up by 15 aging Chinese immigrant women (aged 65+) living in the multicultural city of Vancouver. Drawing upon theoretical work around the body and society to guide our analysis (including the ideas of Bourdieu and Foucault), we outline how the participants in our project take a pragmatic approach to their use of medicine, combining TCM with Western biomedicine in creative ways. However, understandings of the body are underpinned, we argue, by Eastern narratives of the ‘oneness’ of mind-body and the need for ‘balance’ in order to achieve health. Towards this end, we found that many of the participants view (and use) traditional Chinese body practices as an extension of TCM, a technique to help them achieve balance. We conclude that the neoliberal narrative of personal responsibility for health does not fuel the exercise practices of many of the participants, but rather that they perceive exercise as a pleasurable activity that improves their levels of happiness (and balance) and enhances their lives.     

Even when those struggles are not our own: Storytelling and solidarity in a feminist social justice organization

This article draws on an eight‐month ethnography in a feminist social justice organization that supports survivors of domestic violence and shares the storytelling practices that fostered solidarity. These storytelling practices stemmed from decades of decolonizing work undertaken by Māori women to have their knowledge and ways of being equally integrated into the organization. The storytelling practices, grounded in Māori knowledge, emphasized that the land is actively productive of our identity and knowledge; our actions and beliefs are part of a non‐chronological intergenerational inheritance; the personal is collective. I contend that these practices fostered solidarity and situated feminism in a collective history of localized struggle. Accordingly, this article expands our imaginative capacity for how solidarity can be thought of and fostered between feminists in different contexts.     

‘A ondi queras’: Ranchero identity construction by U.S. born Mexicans on Facebook

This study describes how transnational second‐generation Mexican bilinguals use a stigmatized variety of Mexican Spanish to communicate on Facebook and construct an identity. The stereotyped features of this variety index a ranchero identity. Historically, ranchero is an ambivalent identity for Mexican society in general. On the one hand, ranchero culture is a positive reminiscence of Mexico's agrarian past, while on the other, rancheros, along with indigenous Mexicans, are at the bottom of the hierarchy in Mexican society. A discourse‐centered, ethnographic analysis of digitally mediated conversations demonstrates how language use allows participants to reminisce about their collective past, maintain Mexican identities tied to their ancestors, fit their identities to contemporary U.S. Mexican culture, and distance themselves from the stigma associated with the ranchero background.     

From Potent Dead to Potent Places? Reflections on Muslim Saint Shrines in South Asia

This paper analyses the issue of the thaumaturgy of the Muslim saints in South Asia by focusing on the notion of potent place rather than on the exemplary lives of these figures and on their exceptional relations to God. Nevertheless, there is an important contradiction between the ubiquity of the saint, his residence with God and his strict localisation in space. To establish a firm relation with him and obtain his intercession, devotees must visit him precisely where his corpse was buried. Generally, this place was already potent or extra-ordinary before the inhumation of the saint. Does the process of the saint’s institutionalisation through the rites performed on his body transfer the potency of the place onto the saint and the power of the saint to the place? The analysis will draw on fieldwork enquiries conducted at the shrine of the martyr Ghāzī Miyāñ, the oldest (eleventh century) and most popular Muslim heroic figure in Northern India and Nepalese Terai, and at the shrines of two popular Sufi saints of Sindh (Pakistan), Lāl Shahbāz Qalandar and Bodlo Bahār.     

Interpreting civil society engagement with the G20: the qualified inclusion of the 2014 Civil 20 process

The G20 (Group of Twenty) has emerged as an important site of policy coordination of its member governments and has engaged various social sectors via the development of G20 outreach groups, including the Civil 20. The key issue is whether the Civil 20 outreach process has enabled the inclusion of civil society perspectives into the G20 process. In order to analyse whether the Civil 20 process is significant, this article considers how this outreach process operated during Australia's presidency of the G20 in 2014. It does so by utilizing an interpretivist approach to identify the prominent narratives involved in the G20 by focusing upon the key policy statements from the outreach groups and interviews with participants of the Civil 20 process. This article argues that the Civil 20 process in 2014 included civil society perspectives more actively than in the past but was a qualified form of civil society inclusion.     

Voice quality as a marker of ethnicity in New Zealand: From acoustics to perception1

This study is the first acoustic analysis of voice quality in the two main ethnic dialects of New Zealand English. In a production experiment, narratives from 36 speakers were analyzed and H1‐H2 spectral tilt measures were calculated for each vowel. The results provide instrumental evidence for impressionistic claims about the differing voice quality features of the two main ethnic groups, showing that Maori English speakers are creakier than European New Zealanders. A perception experiment was also carried out to determine the perceptual salience of voice quality for the identification of speaker ethnicity. The results of regression analyses confirm that listeners are sensitive to the phonation differences, and are able to rely on phonation cues in an ethnic dialect identification task. The study demonstrates the role of voice quality as a critical sociolinguistic variable, and highlights the importance of listeners’ previous dialect exposure in terms of sensitivity to prosodic cues. Ko tēnei pūrongo te tirohanga tuatahi ki ētahi āhuatanga o te reo e puta ana i te korokoro o ngā kaikōrero o ngā reo ā‐iwi e rua o te Reo Pākehā i Aotearoa. I tētahi whakamātau i āta tirohia ngā oropuare o ētahi kōrero nō ngā kaikōrero 36, ā, kua tatauria ngā ine H1‐H2 e kīia ana ko te spectral tilt. Ko ngā putanga he taunakitanga mō ngā whakaaro o te tāngata e pā ana ki te rerekētanga o ngā reo o te hunga Pākehā me te hunga Māori, e whakaatu hoki ana he kekē atu te reo o ngā mea e kōrero ana i te ‘Māori English’ i te reo e kōrerohia ana e te iwi Pākehā. He whakamātau whakarongo i whakahaerehia kia kite mena he āwhina tēnei āhuatanga o te reo kia mōhio te kaiwhakarongo ko wai te iwi o te kaikōrero. Ko ngā whakaputanga o ngā tatauranga e kī ana kei te tino mārama tēnei āhuatanga o te reo e puta ana i te korokoro o te tāngata, ā, ka taea ēnei rerekētanga te whakamahi kia whakawehea te tangata Māori i te tangata Pākehā. Nā tēnei ka kitea he āhuatanga motuhake te reo o te korokoro, ā, he mea nui hoki mena kua tino wāia te kaiwhakarongo ki ngā reo ā‐iwi. [Māori]     

Comparing Pansexual- and Bisexual-Identified Participants on Demographics,Psychological Well-Being,and Political Ideology in a New Zealand National Sample

Pansexuality, characterized by attraction to people regardless of their gender, is an emerging sexual identity. Research has started to explore the differences between those who identify as pansexual and those who identify as bisexual, typically defined as being attracted to both men and women. This article extends past research by testing for differences between those who identify as pansexual (n = 52) and bisexual (n = 497) in a nationally representative sample. We used the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (NZAVS) to test for differences in demographic variables, psychological well-being, and political ideology. We found that pansexual participants were younger, more likely to be gender diverse (transgender or nonbinary), and more likely to be from the indigenous Māori ethnic group than bisexual participants. Pansexual participants also reported higher psychological distress and were more politically liberal than bisexual participants. These results suggest that people who identify as pansexual are, on average, quantifiably different from those who identify as bisexual; this study adds to a new but growing body of research on emerging plurisexual identities.     

从伊斯兰早期的《古兰经》注释学校看清真寺的学术功能

作为伊斯兰教的重要外化象征之一，清真寺具有的诸多功能在推动伊斯兰社会与文化的历史进程中，发挥着不可或缺的作用。它在相当长时期内所承载的学术研究功能，又使其成为伊斯兰文化形成、发展继而体系化的核心场所之一。其中，伊斯兰教黎明时期（公元610-750年）的再传弟子在麦加、麦地那、伊拉克创建的《古兰经》注释学校及其培养的杰出注释学家，就是清真寺学术功能的具体显现。     

Criminal sittings – rape in the colony, New Zealand, 1862

In 1862 His Honor, Justice Johnston, issued his instructions to the jury of the New Zealand Supreme Court for two simultaneous rape trials – the alleged rape of a European woman by two Māori men, and an alleged “assault with intent to commit a rape” of a Māori woman by a European man. This article argues that those instructions should be read within an historiographical critique of British colonial expansion, print capitalism and violence. Drawing on feminist postcolonial theorizing the question posed here, is, “What is the historical, ideological context for a newspaper reporting of the possible rape of a Māori woman in 1862?     

Seeking Liberation,Facing Marginalization: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders' Conditional Acceptance in Hip‐Hop Culture

Using interview data with Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) hip‐hop participants, we analyze how respondents construct hip‐hop as a liberating space where they can circumvent limiting racial and ethnic stereotypes. However, an intersectional lens reveals the constraints that hip‐hop's hypermasculinity places on AAPI men as well as the ethnosexualized expectations that AAPI women must negotiate. The experience of AAPI men and women in hip‐hop due to their unique position in racial and gender hierarchies interacts with stereotypical notions of AAPI people in wider society to relegate these participants to the margin rather than center of hip‐hop culture. Thus, we find respondents' constructions of hip‐hop less an indicator of hip‐hop culture's openness than a statement of how constricting the mainstream U.S. culture is for AAPI Americans, rendering hip‐hop's conditional acceptance preferable by comparison.     

Telling the Collective Story? Moroccan-Dutch Young Adults’ Negotiation of a Collective Identity through Storytelling

Researchers taking a social constructionist perspective on identity agree that identities are constructed and negotiated in interaction. However, empirical studies in this field are often based on interviewer–interviewee interaction or focus on interactions with members of a socially dominant out-group. How identities are negotiated in interaction with in-group members remains understudied. In this article we use a narrative approach to study identity negotiation among Moroccan-Dutch young adults, who constitute both an ethnic and a religious (Muslim) minority in the Netherlands. Our analysis focuses on the topics that appear in focus group participants’ stories and on participants’ responses to each other’s stories. We find that Moroccan-Dutch young adults collectively narrate their experiences in Dutch society in terms of discrimination and injustice. Firmly grounded in media discourse and popular wisdom, a collective narrative of a disadvantaged minority identity emerges. However, we also find that this identity is not uncontested. We use the concept of second stories to explain how participants negotiate their collective identity by alternating stories in which the collective experience of deprivation is reaffirmed with stories in which challenging or new evaluations of the collective experience are offered. In particular, participants narrate their personal experiences to challenge recurring evaluations of discrimination and injustice. A new collective narrative emerges from this work of joint storytelling.     

Don Juan: A Universal Theme in Ukrainian Drama

This article uses the University of Calgary Gorbachev Foundation Public Policy Project (UCGF99) as a case study for exploring the challenges of international participation in promoting reform of the content and context of public policy in postcommunist Russia. Drawing on evidence from a series of interviews with Russian and Canadian participants, it focuses on how cultural and power issues played out in UCGF99’s work. Because public policy stands at the juncture between state and society, public policy reform is an ideal rubric for exploring how values accompany aid and the way that the culture of the receiving society shapes the implementation of that aid. The interviews reveal an inherent tension between the ideal of egalitarian co-operation and the reality that the work done by the partnership was dedicated, ultimately, to the “reform” of one side by the other. They also highlight the extent to which reform is a process of translation: as concepts and international models make the transition to another society, their own cultural specificity becomes apparent, as does the challenge of translating them in a manner meaningful to the society undergoing “transition.” This article focuses on two related questions of translation: how issues of language, culture and power played out in the “consultant” structure of UCGF99 partnerships, and the concrete challenges of transforming Russian political culture using Canadian models.     

Visualising the invisible: children on the streets of Lima,Peru, realise the self through photographs

This article presents findings from a photographic project conducted with six adolescent boys living and working on the streets of Lima, Peru. In this article, I examine how photographs provided the boys with a means by which to express themselves and served to humanise these participants who exist at the most extreme margins of society. Drawing parallels between the participants’ use of photographs and the roles that photographs play for families, I examine how the ability to record and document their childhood provided the boys in this study the opportunity for critical engagement in the creation of their own histories.     

Veblen and Weber, on the Spirit of Capitalism

Abstract Sociology has benefited from inquiries into the theoretical potential in the writings associated with individual 'authors', as well as from the examination of research 'topics' through the works of two or more writers. Of these complementary approaches, the latter provides the basis for this essay. The focus here is on the 'spirit' of modern capitalism from the standpoint of the formulations by Veblen and Weber. These writers provide alternative hypotheses on the decisive variable instrumental to the spirit of capitalism, namely, technology and religion respectively. In most other respects there is remarkable similarity in the two writings. The present analysis has enabled the comprehension of the spirit of capitalism in terms of four sequential phases. These are: early capitalism (capitalism as spirit); early-modern capitalism (capitalism as spirit and economic organization); late-modern capitalism (spiritless capitalism); and post-modernity (society in need of a spirit).     

Naming,blaming and claiming ablism: the lived experiences of lawyers and advocates with disabilities

The social model explains that different abilities are not the true cause of disablement. Ablist institutions and practices construct a certain level of ability as disability. How do people respond when they are being disabled by society? This study analyses how 28 advocates and lawyers with disabilities respond when they confront ablism. This study employs the naming, blaming and claiming model to map the conduct of 28 lawyers and advocates with disabilities from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Despite their empowered position, participants often did not claim for every act of ablism. This study analyses why participants did not claim. One of the primary issues raised by participants was a gap between the range of parties who caused disablement in society and the way in which anti-discrimination laws attributed duties.     

Cultural Discourse in Action: Interactional Dynamics and Symbolic Meaning

Cultural sociology has recently developed new tools with which to understand and analyze meaning in terms of cultural discourse. Specifically, this paper further develops the Alexanderian form of discourse analysis through application on the micro-level. Utilizing extensive ethnographic data, the mythopoetic men's movement is examined in terms of how its participants construct political meaning that motivates and guides their action. In empirical detail, these actors can be seen as creating a cultural discourse that constitutes the social movement at a fundamental level while at the same time the discourse is continually negotiated, contested, and reconfigured. Exposed is the “discourse of liberational masculinity” which is used by movement participants to challenge and confront hegemonic masculinity in American society. Examining the mythopoetic men's movement from this perspective demonstrates the analytic utility of this approach through revealing in unique ways the dynamics of morality, political belief, and perceived hegemony within this popular contemporary social movement.     

“We don’t have to talk about how I feel”: emotionality as a tool of resistance in political discourse among Israeli students – a gendered socio-linguistic perspective

This article demonstrates how the gendered patriarchal mechanisms that exclude women from the political sphere are being produced, re-produced, and challenged in interpersonal political conversations by concentrating on the discursive mechanisms that construct the way young Israeli women and men talk about politics. The research is based on a yearlong intra-group dialog process. The group met for weekly sessions during two semesters, in which the group members discussed and expressed their thoughts and feelings regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) demonstrated how the political space is being marked, defined and delimited through gendered discursive practices. We present the different roles participants take in the group, and in particular the different strategies women use in face of disciplinary discursive mechanisms. The process revealed that the development in the group discussion was strongly intertwined with the change in the positioning strategies of the female participants. In particular, we found that women deployed emotionality as a tool of resistance that challenges gender binaries and masculine dominance. Our conclusion highlights the importance of the daily interactions in creating, sustaining and changing the political discourse of a society in conflict.     

Black Rain: a kaupapa Māori (a Māori approach) to addressing family violence and intergenerational trauma

In working with Māori to address family violence and the trauma that arises when it is occurring across generations, three elements are essential. The first is helping whānau (family members) to recognise and reconnect with the impact of the violence they are caught up in. The second is to do so in a way that contextualises this because it never involves and affects individuals alone. And third is to do so by being conscious of the whole of a person's being and being aware that the spiritual realm is the entry point. For 30 years, Fay Pouesi has been working with Māori whānau, initiating kaupapa (approaches) that include these three elements. This article details one kaupapa, known as Black Rain, which has been successfully helping men and women to break the cycles of intergenerational violence within their whānau since 2010. To do this, we will draw upon Fay's work and that of two colleagues who now work with her.