Dilemma of a Native: On Location,Authenticity, and Reflexivity

With the focus on native/halfie anthropology, I address in this paper three issues of location, authenticity, and reflexivity of the anthropologist in close connection to the reality of uneven distribution of power inside academe among scholars and institutions, and, above all, anthropologists, including native anthropologists. I emphasise that interaction between the field and the ethnographer never closes even after the fieldwork is over; the issue of intersubjectivity is not confined in writing one book, but permeates an ethnographer's lifelong career; the power relation is no longer divided only between the field and the home institution, but also divided within so-called Western academe. Through these discussions, I try to draw our attention to multiple axes of tension in the production of anthropological knowledge.     

Narratives of race and nation: Everyday whiteness in Australia

Australia's history as a white nation has been riddled with not only mis-treatment of the ‘other’, but in more recent times of a type of invisibility of the ‘other’ that has disabled many within this nation from recognising the continuation of practices and policies of racial discrimination. This paper presents the findings from research conducted over 2001–03 during the ‘boat people’ crisis in Australia, when a number of everyday individuals volunteered time to assist refugees. It goes on to argue that while the policies of Multiculturalism of the 1970s had attempted to create a more inclusive society and had for the participants in this research transformed into nation-defining narrative, its failure to incorporate everyday people in its inception and continuation was productive of a blind spot in relation to racial treatment because most could believe all was well in this arena.     

Complexity of determining the most vital elements for the p-median and p-center location problems

We consider the k most vital edges (nodes) and min edge (node) blocker versions of the p-median and p-center location problems. Given a weighted connected graph with distances on edges and weights on nodes, the k most vital edges (nodes) p-median (respectively p-center) problem consists of finding a subset of k edges (nodes) whose removal from the graph leads to an optimal solution for the p-median (respectively p-center) problem with the largest total weighted distance (respectively maximum weighted distance). The complementary problem, min edge (node) blocker p-median (respectively p-center), consists of removing a subset of edges (nodes) of minimum cardinality such that an optimal solution for the p-median (respectively p-center) problem has a total weighted distance (respectively a maximum weighted distance) at least as large as a specified threshold. We show that k most vital edges p-median and k most vital edges p-center are NP-hard to approximate within a factor $\frac{7}{5}-\epsilon$ and $\frac{4}{3}-\epsilon$ respectively, for any ?>0, while k most vital nodes p-median and k most vital nodes p-center are NP-hard to approximate within a factor $\frac{3}{2}-\epsilon$ , for any ?>0. We also show that the complementary versions of these four problems are NP-hard to approximate within a factor 1.36.     

Bayesian density estimation using bernstein polynomials

We propose a Bayesian nonparametric procedure for density estimation, for data in a closed, bounded interval, say [0,1]. To this aim, we use a prior based on Bemstein polynomials. This corresponds to expressing the density of the data as a mixture of given beta densities, with random weights and a random number of components. The density estimate is then obtained as the corresponding predictive density function. Comparison with classical and Bayesian kernel estimates is provided. The proposed procedure is illustrated in an example; an MCMC algorithm for approximating the estimate is also discussed.     

Consistency of Bernstein polynomial posteriors

A Bernstein prior is a probability measure on the space of all the distribution functions on [0, 1]. Under very general assumptions, it selects absolutely continuous distribution functions, whose densities are mixtures of known beta densities. The Bernstein prior is of interest in Bayesian nonparametric inference with continuous data. We study the consistency of the posterior from a Bernstein prior. We first show that, under mild assumptions, the posterior is weakly consistent for any distribution function P ₀ on [0, 1] with continuous and bounded Lebesgue density. With slightly stronger assumptions on the prior, the posterior is also Hellinger consistent. This implies that the predictive density from a Bernstein prior, which is a Bayesian density estimate, converges in the Hellinger sense to the true density (assuming that it is continuous and bounded). We also study a sieve maximum likelihood version of the density estimator and show that it is also Hellinger consistent under weak assumptions. When the order of the Bernstein polynomial, i.e. the number of components in the beta distribution mixture, is truncated, we show that under mild restrictions the posterior concentrates on the set of pseudotrue densities. Finally, we study the behaviour of the predictive density numerically and we also study a hybrid Bayes–maximum likelihood density estimator.     

Combining Information from Several Groups in Estimating Characteristics of Immigrant People

The topic of immigration is attracting more and more attention also from the methodological point of view due to elusiveness and anonymity difficulties. Some results on a suitable sampling technique (Blangiardo 1996) and on the problem of estimating the mean of a quantitative characteristic of interest (Statistica LXIII 3:537–560, 2003) are almost consolidated nowadays. Yet the estimate of a parameter referring to a small sub-population is still open. In such a context the presence of rare domains calls for an eligible composite estimator. The present paper proposes some point and region composite estimates for the proportion and makes a comparison between them via a simulative study based on real data.     

A Long Loop: Transmigration of Korean Women in Japan

Focusing on new women immigrants/migrants from Korea to Japan in recent years, this article explores the form of transmigratory practice of U‐turnees, who have past experiences of having lived in Japan or been born there prior to the end of Japan's colonial rule in 1945 and returned to Japan around the year 1989 when the South Korean government lifted the restriction of overseas travel for its citizens. I suggest through mini life histories of five women that their lives can best be understood in terms of ongoing engagement with more than one nation‐state as home. On this basis, I argue that what might look like a chaotic swirl of new immigrants/migrants is in fact not based on the discovery of a brave new world, but firmly based on family history and configurated by state‐to‐state relations.