Yummy Mummy — The ideal of not looking like a mother

BackgroundPregnancy and childbirth are important life experiences that entail major changes, both physically, psychologically, socially and existentially for women. Motherhood transition and the accompanying bodily changes involve expectations of body image that are simultaneously naturally and socially produced and culturally informed by public, private and professional discourses about motherhood transition.ProblemMuch focus is levelled at the antepartum body in maternity services whereas the postpartum body seems left alone, although bodily dissatisfaction is of concern for many mothers, whose expectations of bodily appearance postpartum are sharp and explicit.AimTo explore Danish first-time mothers’ experiences of their body postpartum, focusing on body image.MethodsEleven first-time mothers participated in semi-structured interviews related to the postpartum body image. Data was analysed thematically.FindingsFour themes: (1) Reverting the body: on bouncing back and losing weight; (2) Picturing me: on standards of beauty and ideal bodies; (3) Redefining earlier self-images: on meta-reproachment of the body; (4) Idealisation of not looking like a mother: on societal pressure to think positively. Findings were discussed through the theoretical concepts by Scheper-Hughes and Lock: the body as both individual, social and political.ConclusionDespite nuanced reflections over the body as subject and object, women identified beauty as a personal trait dependent on visual appearance. Bodily beauty was identified as something individual, yet standardised. Women felt strengthened through motherhood but looking like a mother was not considered worth pursuing. To allow for women’s contradictory perspectives, caregivers are advised to communicate reflexively about the postpartum body.     

Leadership and emerging cultural patterns in a new television station

This longitudinal case study explores cultural patterns in a new British television company, tracking it from its inception into its third year. Qualitative research methods provide evidence to suggest that despite formal leaders’ intentions to achieve control and consensus, organisation members produce their own, diverse interpretations of leaders’ deliberate (and unintentional) messages. By drawing on inherited expectations and professional associations, members construct their own cultural worlds. Yet, the same professional norms and associations, which the literature suggests are salient in all media organisations, also provide legitimacy for individual leaders’ actions and therefore reinforce their cultural integrating role. Therefore, it is suggested that although organisation members are active in shaping culture, leaders of new media organisations of this nature are significant as sources of cultural cohesion, division and ambiguity, and thus they are influential in encouraging the formation of complex cultural patterns.     

Marx’s Four Expositions of His Theory of Social Formation and Their Historico-philosophic Significance

通过对马克思有关社会形态演进的四次论说的考察, 证明他的社会形态理论的核 心内容在于既肯定各民族社会形态从低级向高级发展规律的共同性, 又肯定他们发展 道路的多样性。他在19世纪晚期提出现代化后进国家可能不经过资本主义而建立社会 主义社会的理论设想, 是马克思社会形态理论的重大发展。中国共产党人提出的社会 主义初级阶段理论和建设有中国特色的社会主义理论, 是马克思主义社会形态理论的 最新发展。

关键词: 社会形态演进规律 “人类学笔记” “历史学笔记” 历史哲学

An examination of Marx’s exposition of the evolution of social formations on four occasions shows that the core content of his social formation theory consists in its affirmation of both the universality of the law of the development of social formations from lower to higher stages in different nations and the diversity of their developmental paths. The theoretical assumptions he put forward in the late 19^th century about the possibility of late-developing modernizers being able to establish a socialist society without passing through the stage of capitalism represent a major development of his theory of social formations. The theory of the primary stage of socialism and the theory of building socialism with Chinese characteristics advanced by the Chinese Communists are the latest development of Marx’s theory of social formations.     

The making of ‘real men’

This article considers the legacy of Enlightenment and Empire in settler society as a conflict of cultural values,at once a problem of justice and identity. Aotearoa/New Zealand is an exemplary case: the failure of the court system to fully acknowledge that settlement was founded on negotiation with indigenous people threatens to return this society, in constitutional and social terms, to a state of nature. I consider the problem raised by the claims to justice of indigenous Maori through the viewpoint of a major historian, and white New Zealander or Pakeha, J. G. A. Pocock. The progressivism of enlightenment history still evident in his thinking undergirds a view of Maori history as a primitive dreamtime. This misconception belies the refusal of Pakeha to acknowledge the extent to which their own view of history is a product of enlightenment myth-making. The negative British view of Maori in the nineteenth century shows the continuity of racial stereotypes since Captain Cook's encounter. Today, the judicial failure to countenance different cultural values reorients questions of justice. The state of nature returns as the absence of a constitutional framework for negotiating specifically cultural differences. The abstract universalism of liberal justice – Pakeha think justice cannot be culturally inflected – is part of the problem, and fuels Maori grievances. Yet Pakeha are increasingly turning to Maori insignia to establish a sense of national identity. Historical justice and questions of national identity remain inseparable in settler societies. The failure to consider settlement in terms of competing cultural values, evident in the problem of history, creates the conditions for an uncivil society. In this context I question the grounds for regarding acts of indigenous violence as unjustified.     

Culture,Development, and Social Theory: On Cultural Studies and the Place of Culture in Development

Debates in development theory have recently swung back to taking seriously the relationship of culture to development, especially in the face of manifest failures of conventional approaches to economic growth and social transformation. This has happened at a moment when, especially within anthropology, the concept of culture itself is undergoing critical examination, and when cultural studies has emerged as a major challenge to anthropology's self-defined specialisation in the social-scientific analysis of culture. Few attempts have been made, however, to relate cultural studies and development studies, despite the fact that the relatively recent ‘cultural turn’ in the social sciences has derived largely from the currently fashionable status of cultural studies and its multidisciplinary nature. This paper explores this relationship and suggests that a cultural studies approach, despite its weaknesses, potentially revitalises the significance of culture in relationship to development.     

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.     

What Labour Engenders1: Women and Men,Time and Work in the New Guinea Highlands

Debates over equality in New Guinea have raged for years. While people may subscribe to egalitarian values, this seems hollow to some observers in the context of relations between women and men, notably the sexual division of labour. Some even talk of men exploiting the labour of women. This paper considers the validity of these claims in the Was valley of the Southern Highlands Province, using data collected in a time-budget survey to document and assess differences between women's and men's activities. It also reviews ideas of time expended undertaking any activity, and the relevance of notions of work and labour to people's daily routines. It questions the propriety of introducing capitalism's preoccupation with labour. Differences in the activities of women and men, far from evidencing relations of inequality, are significant for such stateless political orders in eschewing hierarchical arrangements, where no one exercises control over resources or capital needed by others to secure livelihoods.     

Strange Buddhas and the King of the Monks: Locating History and Community in a Muslim State

In this paper I discuss the way in which ethnic and cultural minorities articulate a sense of community through the production and negotiation of historical agency. The Thai Buddhist villagers of Kelantan live in a predominantly Malay and Muslim state along Malaysia's eastern seaboard. Although possessing few myths of common origin, these villagers use a myriad of autonomous reckonings of the past in constructing a sense of cultural distinctiveness in the modern Malaysian nation state. The past is often spoken of by Thai villagers in the guise of anecdotal stories which encapsulate the dizzying array of relationships the community is enmeshed in. My paper shows how these stories are meaning filled texts by which villagers understand their marginal identity. I conclude by arguing that anthropologists should pay close attention to the minutiae of disjunctured histories that permeate the lives of men and women everywhere as a valuable means of making sense of contemporary social realities.     

“大自然的智慧”——解读康德《实用人类学》

康德在《实用人类学》中提出一个核心概念:大自然的智慧。他通过这个核心概念深刻揭示人的本质特性,系统地回答了“人是什么”这个总问题。这个概念包含丰富的辩证思想,它是对康德历史哲学中的“大自然的计划”思想的进一步阐发,是黑格尔“理性的狡计”的直接思想来源,是德国古典哲学中最有价值的思想之一。当然,它也存在着历史局限性。     

应用人类学与中国实践

通过对人类学应用传统和现有应用人类学实践的回顾,文章介绍了应用人类学在中国实践的现状,归纳了应用研究的特点,并对应用人类学的实践以及相关的问题进行了反思:为人民服务是实践的核心,而少数民族、城乡差别、区域差别是实践关键点.