The Contest of Moralities: Negotiating Compulsory Celibacy and Sexual Intimacy in the Roman Catholic Priesthood

Jane Anderson                                                                                                

1-17

Religions can claim moral fixity while experiencing moral fluidity, a contradiction that produces social tensions. By going behind the facade of a fixed morality, found in the official teaching on compulsory celibacy for Roman Catholic priests, this article explores how respective moralities have been constructed and negotiated by the papacy of John Paul II and priests who have sexually intimate friendships. In examining social processes that are used in the production of moralities, I show how the papacy constructs etymologies to establish its claim that celibacy is an essential tradition, which are concomitantly rhetorical representations of a fixed morality. I then analyse the idiomatic constructions of priests with ‘friends’ in which they informally challenge the etymological ploys of the papacy with alternative readings of tradition, representations that, in turn, create new moralities. Features of this contest of moralities are then examined, which suggest that the tension between moral fixity and moral fluidity constantly tests a religion’s readiness for change.               

‘The Miserablest People in the World’: Race, Humanism and the Australian Aborigine

Kay Anderson and Colin Perrin        

  19-39

This paper considers how an idea of the Australian Aborigine impacted upon the development of racial thinking throughout the nineteenth century. We distinguish three phases of this development. Against the background of what was considered to be a distinctly human capacity to rise above nature, our central argument however is that the extreme and irremediable savagery attributed to the Aborigine led to the mid-nineteenth shift to a polygenist, or an innatist, idea of race. The first part of our discussion, covering the early 1800s, elicits a specifically humanist puzzlement at the unimproved condition of the Aborigines. But, as we will show in the central part of our discussion, it was not only the Aborigines’ inclination but their capacity for ‘improvement’ that came to be doubted. Challenging the very basis upon which ‘the human’ had been defined, and the unity of humankind assumed, the Aborigine could not be accommodated within a prevailing conception of racial difference as a mere variety of the human. The elaboration of polygenism may therefore be understood as arising out of this humanist incomprehension: as an attempt to account for the ontologically inexplicable difference of the Australian Aborigine. In the final part of our discussion, we trace the legacy of the Aborigine’s place within polygenism through the evolutionary thought of the late nineteenth century. Despite an explicit return to monogenism, here the Aborigine is invoked to support the claim that race constitutes a more or less permanent difference and, for certain races, a more or less permanent deficiency. And as, in these terms, the anomalous Aborigine became an anachronism, so Australia’s indigenous peoples came to embody the most devastating conclusion of evolutionary thought: that in the human struggle for existence certain races were destined not even to survive.

The Anthropology of Personal Identity: Intellectual Property Rights in Papua New Guinea, West Papua and Australia

John Burton  

40-55

This paper discusses large-scale genealogical work at three projects in Papua New Guinea, West Papua and Australia and considers three questions: in what respects is genealogy intellectual property (IP) and, if so, who owns it; what were the regimes of permissions that permitted the collection of genealogical knowledge in each of the three cases; and what duty of care do collectors/curators of genealogical knowledge have in respect of preservation and safeguarding against improper use? It is argued that a new form of ‘emergent’ knowledge arises in which intellectual property rights (IPR) are unclear. What is more certain is that anthropologists owe a ‘cultural heritage duty of care’ towards genealogical information. The key criterion is that anthropologists must be in a position, and allowed by those who employ them, to guarantee ‘unbroken oversight’ of genealogical materials regardless of what media they are on or how they are stored.

Cannabis and Fantasies of Development: Revaluing Relations through Land in Rural Papua New Guinea

Jamon Alex Halvaksz                                                                     

56-71

Over the past decade, marijuana has become a significant element within Papua New Guinea’s communities, revealing an important connection to the broader political economy. For young men, fluctuating commodity prices, the intermittent exploitation of mineral wealth and a reluctant tourist economy only gives them a taste for development. Marijuana seems to offer its permanence. Somewhere between the harsh reality of local economic and ecological futures young men near the town of Wau (Morobe Province) imagine themselves as successful entrepreneurs in the emerging drug trade. In particular, I consider how young men imagine the planting of this illicit crop as mediating tensions between acting individually and acting communally. While most have yet to take action on these fantasies, they provide insight into the development aspirations of rural Papua New Guineans. In this paper, I examine these development fantasies as they speak to a broader political economy and transformations of local landscapes throughout rural Pacific communities.

Anthropology and the Dialectic of Enlightenment: A Discourse on the Definition and Ideals of a Threatened Discipline

Bruce Kapferer                                                       

307-321

The knowledge practices of social and cultural anthropology can be conceived as undergoing constant methodological reconsideration or reformulation as a consequence of internal critique and of institutional change effected in the larger educational and political environment. Neo-liberal shifts affecting the institutional context may have influenced a deepening of the crisis in anthropology where the nature of its project has become less certain or has threatened a reconfiguration of such proportion that anthropology may be losing sight of its direction. This essay explores some of the Enlightenment roots of social and cultural anthropology. It is presented as very much an idea that embodies and reflects what Adorno and Horkheimer discussed as the dialectic of Enlightenment. The argument presented is less pessimistic claiming that the distinction of anthropology is in its pursuit of Enlightenment ideals that it has maintained and rehoned as a consequence of its own routine internal critique. The vital implication of the discussion is that anthropology is in a situation of serious threat in largely a post-Enlightenment world. In such a context, the methodological ideals that emerged as integral to the spirit of anthropology are well worth maintaining rather than abandoning. The ideals that are addressed are conceived to be integral to the importance of anthropology as critique and as a knowledge practice capable of sustaining a profound contribution to the understanding of the potential that is human being.

Letterbox
Monique Skidmore                                                                                                    

95-96

Book Reviews

Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson. The Origin and Evolution of Cultures. [Ben Marwick]

97

Zohl dé Ishtar. Holding Yawulyu: White Culture and Black Women’s Law.[Myrna Tonkinson]                      

98

Donald Denoon. A Trial Separation: Australia and the Decolonisation of Papua New Guinea. [John Connell]

100

Sarah F. Green. Notes from the Balkans: Locating Marginality and Ambiguity on the Greek-Albanian Border. [Tim Pilbrow]

101

Holger Jebens. Pathways to Heaven: Contesting Mainline and Fundmentalist Christianity in Papua New Guinea. [Alison Dundon]                             

102

Verena Keck. Social Discord and Bodily Disorders: Healing among the Yupno of Papua New Guina. [Shirley Lindenbaum]           

104

Hotze Lont. Juggling Money: Financial Self-help Organizations and Social Security in Yogyakarta. [Patrick Guinness]                                                                                      

106

Fiona Magowan and Karl Neuenfeldt (eds). Landscapes of Indigenous Performance:Music, Song and Dance of the Torres Strait and Arnhem Land. [Helen Reeves Lawrence]      

107

David McKnight. Of Marriage, Violence and Sorcery: The Quest for Power in Northern Queensland. [David F. Martin]                      

109

B. J. Parker and L. Rodseth (eds). Untaming the Frontier in Anthropology, Archaeology and History. [Tim Murray]                                                               

111

Alexei Yurchak. Everything Was Forever, Until it Was No More. [Pál Nyíri

112

Films

Film Review Article: The Storm of Deepa’s Water: From Violent Tempest in Varanasi to Glacial Account of Hindu Widowhood. Sheleyah Courtney           

115-120

Film Review: Kotla Walks: Performing Locality. Written and researched by Sanjay Srivastava.[Kalpana Ram]