Macau’s Heterotopias: Ruins of St. Paul’s as a Spatial and Temporal Disruption

This article explores and decodes the social experiences of the ruins of St. Paul’s in Macau. The depictions of St. Paul’s as a disruptive social space are elucidated by the concepts of heterotopia, palimpsest and liminality. As a palimpsest, Macau’s ruins comprise a variety of concealed and superimposed semantic layers. One can read the ruins and decipher these semantic tiers. The reading of buildings as palimpsests recognises the paradoxical combination of their durable and transitory nature. St. Paul’s ruins encompass several stratified discourses such as cultural, historical, aesthetic. All of them are deciphered in their multivalent configurations, revealing their overarching heterotopic quality. This article aims to display St. Paul’s ruins as a culturally meaningful urban space of otherness within the ambivalent spatial realm of Macau while unfolding its disruptive nature.     

Cultural History Between Structure And Contingency: the Manus example

Carrier, James and Achsah Carrier. Wage, trade, and exchange in Melanesia: a Manus society in the modern state. (Studies in Melanesian Anthropology, vol. 7, edited by G.H. Herdt, FJ. Porter Poole and D. Tuzin.) Berkeley: University of California Press. 1989. xvii, 257pp., tables, references, index. ISBN 0 520 06389 9.

Carrier, Achsah and James Carrier. Structure and process in a Melanesian society: Ponam's progress in the twentieth century. (Studies in Anthropology and History, vol. 1, edited by N. Thomas.) Chun Harwood Academic Publishers. 1991. xxii, 261pp., appendices, glossary, references, author and subject index. ISBN 3 7186 5149 1.     

Accountability in a state of liminality: Iranian students’ experiences in American airports

This paper studies the lived experience of Iranian students upon arrival at American airports. By using two concepts of liminality and accountability, I examine how Iranian students walk the gauntlet of US airports, and study the influences of the treatment they receive at airports on their perceptions of the US. Empirically, I draw on 15 in-depth qualitative interviews with eight Iranian students at a Southern university in the US. The paper posits that multiple layers of liminality surface and intensify in airports as a threshold where international travelers can see both ways, behind and before them, while belonging to neither one. The requirement to be an ‘accountable other’ adds up to the contingencies of the situation. Theoretically, this paper puts the politics of mobility in the colonial context and claims that legal recognition will not result in integration when negative discourses around the civilizational other regards their mobility as a threat and challenges their social recognition.     

Effecting Change through Peace Research in a Methodological ‘No-Man’s Land’: A Case Study of West Papua

This article reflects upon the disciplinary and ethical challenges I have navigated as an ethnographer in the academic ‘no-man’s land’ of West Papua-related research. I contend that the peace and conflict studies concept of conflict transformation articulates productively with a critical ethnographic methodology, assisting me in charting a research path. Using examples from my own research relating to West Papua’s independence movement I argue that the ethnographer’s role is powerful and carries attendant responsibilities to research participants and to the world of knowledge for increasing peace with justice. This article provides a case study example of how researching the ways the vulnerable interpret the world can be an act of justice, arguing that emergent critical interpretations are essential to preparing the world for long-lasting, positive change.     

阈界理论视角下“典型美国佬”拉尔夫的身份

阈界理论包括分离、过渡和融合三个阶段,具有反复性、暂时性和模糊性等特点,运用阈界理论对华裔作家任碧莲的小说《典型的美国佬》中主人公拉尔夫的身份变化进行分析,进而挖掘他身份转变阈界过程中家庭观、家长作风和男尊女卑的心态、传统中国教育的影响以及个人主义膨胀等文化因素的影响。只有在两种文化之间寻求一种平衡才能实现更好的融合。     

A GASOLINE SCENTED SINDBAD: THE TRUCK DRIVER AS A POPULAR HERO IN SOCIALIST HUNGARY

The author reconstructs the figure of the trucker as an interesting figure in socialist Hungary's ‘history of mentality’. The study outlines how the figure of the trucker and the popular meanings people associated with them, has constituted a post-Turnerian ‘liminoid construction’ that secured them the (ill-)fame of transgression of any kind of border, subversion against any kind of interest different from theirs, or simply just the fame of agents of change of Hungary's post-1956 everyday life culture. Their liminal character's representation had three major fields: Firstly, in books and movies truckers are usually at the threshold between everyday life of socialist Hungary,and life worlds of another countries, cultures, fields of knowledge and pleasures, between the feared and wanted, the unknown and the quotidian well-known. Secondly,their self-representation unveiled a strenuous way of life and continuous pressures represented by conflicting expectations of self-interest, the family, the profession, colleagues, the company, and social norms. Thirdly, an analysis of their usual life situations (on the road, at the border, at home, etc.), highlighted how these culturally constructed environments served as contrasting ‘cultural landscapes’ to the truckers' liminoid figure. An analysis of the role of motors and women in the representation of truckers gave an explanation of the popular appeal associated with truckers. The last section on truckers' contribution to the emerging Hungarian consumer culture in the 1970-1980s revealed major trucker missions such as supplying objects of desire and (perhaps more importantly) images of another cultures; the conveyance of ‘at-hand’ knowledge and skills about other cultures; travel itself; and performance at trendsetting ‘habitual show’ of doing petty business, and more generally, everyday risk-taking and decision making. Probably truckers' most important role was their contribution to the knowledge, attitudes and skills people employed in making up a Hungarian consumer society.     

Betwixt and between identities: Liminal experience in contemporary careers

Liminality, defined as a state of being betwixt and between social roles and/or identities, is the hallmark of an increasingly precarious and fluctuating career landscape. The generative potential of the liminality construct, however, has been restricted by six key assumptions stemming from the highly institutionalized nature of the rites of passage originally studied. As originally construed, liminality (1) implied both an objective state and the subjective experience of feeling betwixt and between, and was (2) temporary, (3) obligatory, (4) guided by elders and/or supported by a community of fellow liminars, (5) rooted in culturally legitimate narratives, (6) and led to a progressive outcome, i.e., the next logical step in a role hierarchy. By recasting these assumptions as variables, we improve the construct’s clarity, precision, and applicability to contemporary liminal experiences that are increasingly under-institutionalized. We illustrate the utility of our updated conceptualization by arguing that under-institutionalized liminality is both more difficult to endure and more fertile for identity growth than the highly institutionalized experiences that gave rise to the original notion. Drawing from adult development theory, we further propose that for under-institutionalized experiences to foster identity growth, the identity processes involved need to be more akin to identity play than identity work. We discuss the theoretical implications of our ideas for research on liminality, identity, and careers.     

从礼仪到象征:阈限理论在西方学界的学术发展路径

阈限理论发端于范热内普的过渡礼仪研究,范热内普作为一位天才式的法国民族学家和民俗学家,长期被法国主流人类学和社会学界排斥。他对过渡礼仪的研究著作在其身后方被欧美学者重新发现,这其中,维克多·特纳极大地推动了阈限理论研究。近几十年来,西方学者进一步发展了阈限理论,寻求揭示复杂工业社会下的阈限时刻或境遇。以托马森、绍科尔采等为代表的学者已经从多个方面发展了阈限理论,认为阈限可以比拟人们熟知的机制、结构、秩序、话语等术语,此外,诸多学者也将阈限运用于管理学、教育学、跨国主义等学科中。故而,就阈限理论发展而言,它本来经典性地用于对仪式过程的分析,后来又被学者们扩展至诸种非仪式性研究中,具有广泛的象征意义,逐渐超越了人类学的研究范畴,被应用于国外人文社会科学领域。与之相关的过渡礼仪、近阈限、交融等概念也频繁见诸西方学者的多种研究论著中。