“Clamoring Blood”: The Materiality of Belonging in Modern Ainu Identity

The tension between silence and vocalization, embrace and rejection, of Ainu ancestry has been a key factor in negotiating Ainu subjectivity since Ainu territories were colonized in 1869. As early as 1799, expressions of Ainu ethnicity were alternately cloaked and exaggerated as Japan vacillated between assimilation and segregation policies in eastern Hokkaido Ainu communities. Officially recognized as Japan's indigenous peoples in 2008, Ainu subjectivity has become increasingly politicized as the state and other stakeholders seek to define Ainu ethnicity for future legislation. Today Ainu belonging is frequently gauged by bodily metaphors of a vocalized blood. Cultural sensibility and blood are often conflated in Ainu discourses of identity: Ainu revivalists report that a sensation of “clamoring blood” (J: chi ga sawagu) inspires them to revisit ancestral memories and begin fashioning Ainu identities. Historically, intra-Ainu relations were not bound to blood but instead embodied in material expressions, such as invisible cords for women and crest-like emblems for men, symbols that enabled flexibility where needed. Since the twentieth century, the hyper focus on blood raises the specter of colonially imposed rhetorics of eugenics, assimilation policies, and specifically, the problem of race. Relatedness in the Ainu community is not exclusively defined by “consanguineal relations”; rather, a long history of adopting ethnic Japanese children and non-Ainu into Ainu families renders complex the question of identity. This article assesses how immutable notions of racial difference intersect with self-determination and current articulations of Ainu identity.     

“The River Told Me”: Rethinking Intersectionality from the World of Berta Cáceres

ABSTRACT

Inspired by the spiritual and political journey of Berta Cáceres (1973-2016), a fierce Lenca woman leader from Honduras who died in defense of sacred indigenous rivers, the essay aims to rethink the frame of intersectionality that is axiomatic in feminist theorizing and activism. Against the backdrop of the January 2017 Women’s March in the USA, I interrogate inclusionary accounts that equate intersectionality with a pre-existing unity among women that leaves power differentials intact. I recover the intersection as an index of invisibility and violence by drawing on the intimate connections that Berta foregrounded between multiple structures of domination. However, I argue that attending to the relational histories and geographies of patriarchy, colonialism and capitalism, is insufficient for imagining more just futures that are hospitable to subaltern horizons. Feminist praxis must also interrogate the Western liberal conceptions of agency and human-nature relations that undergird its intersectional analysis. Through an exploration of the indigenous cosmovisions and transnational grassroots solidarity that coalesce under Berta’s name, I point to the importance of cultivating a disposition to listening to incommensurable worlds where rivers tell stories and call upon us. This is an ecofeminist vision capable of rooting intersectional analysis within decolonizing relations and alternatives.     

EA-YPredictor:基于Y-STR数据的家系特异性单倍群归属判别分析软件

目的Y染色体为男性所特有,其遗传标记蕴含着丰富的生物地理信息,故可溯源家系,在嫌疑人排查和追踪中发挥作用。Y-STR突变率较高,而Y-SNP突变率极低,几乎不会发生回复突变,所以后代男性群体携带祖先特有的Y-SNP。本研究期望通过现在我国Y库建设中通用的17个Y-STR的单倍型数据预测Y-SNP单倍群细支。方法基于前期观察,选取千人基因组计划III期中的513例东亚人群(中国及周边区域)作为基础数据集,在Java平台和Microsoft Excel软件框架下,以遗传距离计算和Y染色体进化树构建手段相联合研发Y-STR数据的家系特异性单倍群归属判别分析软件:EA-YPredictor。结果本研究揭示了15个单倍群大支下的核心单倍型。通过随机选取70个公开数据库样本,EA-YPredictor软件预测准确性达到92.8%(95%置信区间:[84.1%,97.6%])。结论在Y-SNP复合扩增检测尚无定论的情况下,本软件可基于二代测序样本对Y-STR数据库样本进行单倍群细支的准确预测,能适用于辅助家系单倍群判断。随着测序技术的不断换代和优化,更多高通量的Y-STR和Y-SNP数据补充将会使本软件进一步优化。此外,本软件对于Y数据库中Y-SNP遗传标记的筛查建库有一定指向作用。     

“I was a homo thug,now I'm just homo”: Gay gang members’ desistance and persistence

In a growing body of research, the methods of and motivations for gang desistance are being investigated, spurred in part by concerns about the long-term negative effects of gang membership. Despite recent calls for scholarship that is more inclusive of LGBTQ populations and attentive to issues of sexual identity, however, most gang research remains overwhelmingly heteronormative. In this study, I use in-depth interviews with 48 self-identified gay male gang members to explore how and why they have desisted from or persisted in their gangs, as well as explore how desistance or persistence has affected their self-perceptions, lives, and activities. Because not all have left their gangs, I examine the markers in young men's narratives that signal shifts away from—but sometimes also toward—their gangs, as well as their zigzagging paths out of gang involvement. As gang structure and composition hold importance for their members’ experiences, I use a comparative approach by contrasting men in predominantly straight gangs with those in gay gangs. Set within a heterosexist cultural context, the structure of the gang combines with individual shifts in identity to encourage pathways out of straight gangs and pathways into continued involvement with gay gangs.     

Between resistance and negotiation: indigenous organisations and the Bolivian State in the case of TIPNIS

A government-driven road-building project, crossing the national park and demarcated indigenous communitarian native land Isiboro Sécure (TIPNIS) in the Bolivian Amazon, has caused considerable debate, divisions and conflict. Based on extensive fieldwork in Bolivia, I examine the conflict between 2011 and 2013, focusing on specific cases of micro-politics with examples of changing strategies, local negotiations and strategic framings in the interactions between the indigenous organisations and the state involved in the conflict. I show that the evolution of the conflict has been affected by these micro-political issues, as well as strategic state projects. Secondly, I focus on how discursive framings have legitimised advanced or marginalised certain solutions, ideas and interests.     

A community under siege: exclusionary education policies and indigenous Santals* in the Bangladeshi context

Abstract

This article presents and analyses the voices and responses of the research participants about the impact of exclusionary formal and informal education policies imposed on the Santal community in Palashpur, Bangladesh (Palashpur is a pseudonym for the site of my research; it is also a metaphor for contested space where the colonial power and politics of the nation state exert domination and subordination). These policies are implemented through a state-led, centralised, monolingual and exclusionary curriculum in local primary and secondary schools, schools run by the churches, and schools supported by nongovernmental organisations. The education policies in Bangladesh bear the legacy of the combined forces of cultural homogenisation and social exclusion rooted in the colonial learning structure and its objectives. Embedded in these policies are elements of the civilising mission, an ultra-religious assimilative but exclusionary nationalistic agenda, and Western values of modernity and development. In this rural context, these alien ideologies and practices in education are actively engaged in eliminating local institutions, the knowledge system of indigenous peoples, the texture of their lives, their joy of living, their spirituality and their sense of being. This article reveals how, imposed from above, education policy and practices have dispersed an indigenous community to negotiate a life that goes against the interests of the community itself and its members.     

Power and dispossession in the neoliberal food regime: oil palm expansion in Guatemala

ABSTRACT

Guatemala’s palm oil production has surged in line with the global demand for biodiesel and vegetable oil production. While corporate land grabs have been a popular concept in agrarian studies, we emphasize the integral roles of the state and racially-charged political power relations, enhanced by the neoliberal food regime. These power relations, with racism at their core, foster land control grabs occurring alongside the rise of the palm oil industry. Their effects extend beyond merely the dispossession of land. The oil palm expansion and related dispossessions mostly benefit the international markets and the wealthy ruling class comprised of creole descendants and affluent ladinos. The soaring industry has given rise to human rights violations and a lack of access to or control of various resources, such as food and water. Based on fieldwork, we show that dispossessed Guatemalans, especially the indigenous, experience rising poverty, domestic food shortages and an influx of foreign foodstuffs as the meagrely paid work in the oil palm sector is only available for the few.     

Resource Sovereignties in Bolivia: Re‐Conceptualising the Relationship between Indigenous Identities and the Environment during the TIPNIS Conflict

This paper examines the active re‐construction of indigenous identities within the Plurinational State of Bolivia through the case study of a resource conflict that arose with the government's announcement of its intention to build a road through a national park and indigenous territory, the Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure (TIPNIS; Indigenous Territory and Isiboro Sécure National Park). Ethnographic fieldwork shows that both the state and the lowland indigenous movement have fashioned essentialised understandings of an indigenous identity linked to the environment in order to legitimise competing resource sovereignty claims.     

The development path of rooibos tea – a review of patterns and lessons learnt for the commercialisation of other indigenous teas in South Africa

ABSTRACT

The commercial value of indigenous South African animal and plant resources can add significantly to the nation's socioeconomic development and contribute towards the achievement of the goals of the African Renaissance. However, very few of the country's many indigenous plants have been successfully commercialised. This article reviews the development phases of one success story: rooibos tea. Its development trajectory offers a useful lesson in the commercialisation of other South African indigenous animal and plant resources. Constraints that hindered the effective commercialisation of the beverage are highlighted, notably the initial over-reliance on a local market and the lack of coordinated broad marketing and quality assurance. These constraints were compounded by international trade restrictions imposed on South Africa prior to the 1994 transition to democracy. While the world moved forward, the rooibos tea sector lagged behind in the development of niche markets. It was only in the late 1990s when a seemingly perfect match between the health-giving properties of rooibos and consumer needs was achieved, thus creating a vibrant niche market for the tea. Since then, production and sales of rooibos tea have increased markedly. Adherence to national and international codes of good manufacturing practice, together with the recognition of the importance of fair trade principles regarding the participation of small-scale cooperatives, are becoming increasingly important parameters for product acceptance.