Temiar kinship terminology: a linguistic and formal analysis

Neolithic Britain, 2018

For traditional societies, by which we mean those peoples whose worlds are permeated by kin relations and obligations, and among whom past societies such as those of Neolithic Britain are mostly to be counted, the most precious inheritance is knowledge. Inherited knowledge is of many kinds, the most overt of which is instrumental knowledge—how to make a rope from fibre, where to look for and how to utilize medicinal plants, and so on. Alongside this, however, is a plurality of less obvious but equally fundamental knowledges that include kinds of behavioural knowledge (in the sense of customs and prohibitions, for example), forms of discursive awareness (how to negotiate the social world; what to recall and recount as story and history), and understandings of esoteric beliefs and their concomitant ‘necessary’ actions. Collective cultural and customary knowledge, then, is a resource that makes possible the sustaining and renewal of human social relationships through time. There is a m...

Among theoretical fields addressing the conceptualization of interrelationships between nature and society, patrimonial approaches remain relatively unexplored. Stressing the multiplication of local dynamics where elements of nature are redefined as "patrimonies" (ranging from local patrimonies to world heritage) by various social groups, this conceptual field tries to qualify these dynamics and their determiners to understand how they allow us to better address contemporary environmental challenges. Through a multidisciplinary approach in social sciences, centered on rural forests, we analyze the multiplication of patrimonial processes in forest development at various scales. First, we elaborate on the concept of patrimony and on patrimonial processes and present the current construction and dynamics of forest patrimonies. A crucial question concerns the links that form between the many spatial-temporal levels where these processes develop. Moreover, these patrimonial processes can be quite divergent, not only across scales from local to global, but also between "endogenous" (or bottom-up) and "exogenous" (or top-down) processes. We present two detailed examples in Morocco and Sumatra, where patrimonial constructions are developing simultaneously at various scales and through various actors who treat the forest in very different ways. Drawing from these examples, we discuss how and why the simultaneous development of different, often overlapping, patrimonial constructions along these scales allows collaboration or, conversely, can lead their holders into conflict. Lastly, we discuss the contribution of patrimonial concepts to resilience thinking and social-ecological systems theory.

Economic & Political Weekly, Vol.XLVIII No.35, August 31, 2013, ppp.33-36.

EPW article. This is a study of three villages in the Aravalli Hills of south Haryana, which have full title over the common lands and forests and have taken three radically different alternatives. One community, Mangar, is on the verge of losing the battle to the allure of real estate. The second village, Zir, is still confidently preserving the forest as its common property, and the third, Bhondsi, appears to be divided in interests and has decided to let the forest department do the protection for the immediate future. These three different trajectories tell us about the significance of 'nested' relationships in conserving our forests.

A focus on institutional norms and rules gives an incomplete picture of rural land tenure; building an account of local practice from specific cases reveals nuances and variations that are otherwise elusive. Following the latter approach, the paper describes so-called "communal" tenure in Hobeni, a community in Xhora District, in the Transkei region of South Africa. A practice-based approach reveals significant variations in tenure practices, related to the kinship composition of local neighbourhoods. In areas where a few families are numerically predominant, agnatic kinship is the primary means for access to land. In areas that are diverse in their kin composition, other ties (for example, friendship, church membership, common employment, etc.) are used as a basis for access to land. The demographic variation underlying these practices appears to be widespread in communities in the Eastern Cape and beyond, suggesting considerable diversity within the workings of "com...

Revue d’ethnoécologie

Current …, 2013

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Chapter in: Andersson, J and M. Breusers (eds.), Kinship structures and enterprising actors. Anthropological essays on development, Wageningen, Wageningen University,, 2001

This paper maps out how kinship relations and customary law of the Luo of Western Kenya at present mediate people’s social relationships and attributes regarding land. Kinship relations represent what may be called general organizing principles of social life, or an ideology, and are interpreted here as intertwined with customary law. Customarily, land is regarded as being the inalienable property of the clan, to be inherited according to lineage membership. Fieldwork has revealed, however, that land issues are often surrounded by conflict and confusion. This can be partly explained by the fact that customary land tenure arrangements have been reshaped over the years by the introduction of private land ownership, which dates back to the colonial period, and more specifically to the Swynnerton Plan implemented since the 1950s. Land, customarily belonging to a lineage and given in usufruct to a lineage member, is now formally individual property. It is registered, and title deeds are issued according to modern state land laws. This has opened doors for the sale and the acquisition of land outside the realm of customary law, but if the ‘owner’ wishes to sell the land he still needs the consent of the council of village elders. Thus, a situation has evolved whereby customary and private land tenure arrangements are welded into the way the Luo deal with land, understand land issues and resolve conflicts over land. Currently, land conflicts take place in arenas where the two different systems of land tenure form the background for different positions and interpretations.

Indigeneity on the Move, 2018

In this paper I explore the relationship between modes of land ownership, conceptualizations of land and nature, and notions of indigeneity. I proceed from the well known idea that the portrayal of upland communities of Northeast India as ‘indigenous’ depends to a large extent on a presumably inextricable relationship between people and land (Li 2010, Karlsson 2011). Upland people are believed to ‘belong’ to their land, and its forests, in the sense that it is considered sacred to them. One way in which this essential tie to land finds expression, is in joint land ownership. In the Garo Hills of Meghalaya, collective ownership has been legally secured in the colonial period. Whereas its aim is to avoid that villagers lose their land, it cannot counteract disparities in power and wealth that occur, and have always been prevalent, within village communities. Moreover, in much of the Garo Hills there is a tendency towards the privatization of land use, as well as ownership. This commodification of land is unavoidable for the modernization of agriculture, yet challenges Garo notions of indigeity, as well as related perceptions of land and nature. In the paper, I will analyze the transformation of land relationships, the legalities in which these are founded, and the consequences that these transformation have for Garo notions of indigeneity. Judith Pine wrote: "De Maaker provides a detailed description of the mismatch between global and local discourses that communities and activists nav- igate, challenging the assumption, fundamental to global discourses, that indigenous peoples in all cases have a par- ticular relationship with the land. He notes, for example, that Garo people—portrayed as loving the land in promo- tional literature—see it instead as full of danger and dif- ficulty. Cosmopolitan Christian Garo, on the other hand, create a global sensibility within which “authentic” Garo wearing loincloths perform the role of “archetypical con- servationists, driven by the ‘sacrality’ which they locate in nature” (31). There is a temptation to dismiss as inau- thentic the efforts made by these activists to situate them- selves or their rural counterparts as indigenous. Avoid- ing this oversimplification, de Maaker instead describes the complex, historically situated relationships to land, the discourses between traditional religion and Christianity, and the shifting notions of what it means to be indigenous in a South Asian context. This sets the tone for the book." (Pine, J. (2020) American Ethnologist 47(1): 92-94.

1987

This dissertation is a study of the way in which ethnicity shapes various aspects of the life of a Lebowa vi11age. Differing histories as labour tenants on the white farms of the south-eastern Transvaal have determined differing access to agricultural resources for Pedi and Ndebele when they leit the farms for their present home in the village of Morotse. In the contemporary setting, these rural assets are combined with the migrant remittances which have become indispensable to the survival of any househoid in the southern African reserve areas. Again, the resulting combined packages of resources are distributed unequally between the two ethnic groups. Corresponding to this relative poverty or prosperity, a range, of household types has evolved, with a broad contrast between a Pedi and an Ndebele type. The practice of inheritance also manifests a contrast between the two ethnic groups. At times, ethnicity is manifest not simply in different aspects of social structure, but in more overt conflict. I describe an occasion on which ethnic hostility was expressedrelating to the use of agricultural land and in co4clusion attempt to explain the existence of ethnicity in the village in the light of some recent literature on the topic. I argue that, in general, ethnicity must be understood in the light of competition over scarce resources in the contemporary ttHomelandtt context. In addition, the particularly strong ethnicity apparent in the Ndebele vi.llage section I explain by reference to the history of chiefly authority in the community, and to the observance of particular marriage rules. My final explanation thus j-nvokes the events of recent history and the circumstances of the-present.

American Journal of Botany, 2014

The authors thank M. Merello, L. Peters, and J. Solomon at the Missouri Botanical Garden (MO) and M. Vincent at the Turrell Herbarium, Miami University (MU) for herbarium materials; M. Adams and J. McKnight for persimmon archaeology references; A. Strong, A. Miller, C. Buising, and M. Renner for manuscript comments; C. Dao and J. Honts for help with sample preparation; and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.