Head over heels in debt?

The average household in the UK is in debt to the tune of nearly £9000—and that is not including the mortgage. Consumer borrowing, on credit cards, car and retail finance deals, overdrafts and unsecured personal loans was £4525 per average UK adult at the end of February 2007. Are we drowning in debt? Chris Tapp , Associate Director of Credit Action, reports.     

跨越边际与自我的足迹——访澳大利亚著名人类学家王富文(Dr.Nicholas Tapp)教授

自20世纪80年代以来,中国西南边疆以其多元的民族文化和丰富的区域特点,吸引了大批中外人类学、民族学家们的学术兴趣,并相继出现了"族群"、"区域"和"跨境"三大研究模式。澳大利亚国立大学人类学系高级研究员王富文博士(Nicholas Tapp),回顾了他从泰国转入中国西南少数民族地区的跨国研究经历,对特定时代中西学术交流的特点与目前海外中国西南研究的学术动态作了较为客观的评价,对于我们了解目前西方人类学界盛行的"跨境"研究模式具有一定的启发意义。     

对国内国际移民理论研究的反思——以“蒙”苗人为例

中国的苗族被分为三到四个族群,他们所讲的语言相互不通,而且在当前来看他们在文化上几乎没有共同之处。这些族群中的一支自称为“蒙”（Hmong）。在过去200年里,“蒙”苗从广西和云南不断移入越南和缅甸,然后进入老挝和泰国,并在那里的山地建起了小村寨。整个过程里他们与来自云南的回族和汉族保持着贸易关系。本文作者于1981至1982年在泰国北部做田野考察时,老人们仍然会讲汉语云南方言,而现在的他们已经忘记了汉语,只会讲他们自己的“蒙”语以及他们当前居住国的主要语言,如泰语、老挝语或者越南语。     

In Defence of the Archaic: A Reconsideration of the 1950s Ethnic Classification Project in China

This paper argues for a new understanding of the Chinese ethnic classification project of the 1950s, which is too easily read as merely an exercise in colonising representations. Claiming that there may yet be cultural spaces uncolonised by 'modernity', the paper argues that recent research, through over-emphasising the transformation of local identities by the state and concentrating on minority elite views, may have missed something of the facticity with which culture is experienced at the local level. The paper examines the main effects of classification, drawing on the author's Sichuan research to show that it may sometimes be necessary to indulge in a kind of essentialism in order to understand the complexity of the changes which have taken place. It is suggested that minority policy together with other social changes has in some cases paradoxically strengthened traditional expressions of identity at the expense of both the official minority categories often stressed, and more local cultural sub-distinctions. However, the problems of isolating the effects of these changes in the absence of detailed local accounts of the 1949-89 period are drawn attention to, and the paper calls for a new ethnography of the classification project itself. In conclusion, the shortcomings of an extreme constructivist approach in accounting for the strength of local 'indigenisms' are examined, and the classification project is shown to have had important aims in common with those of anthropology in elucidating vital local senses of difference.     

Estimating Nantucket’s Effective Population

Population Research and Policy Review - This paper extends demographers’ traditional approaches to estimating local populations using symptomatic data. We augmented those approaches in order...