In your hands (Ezandleni Zakho): A theatre-based approach to engaging embodied indigenous knowledge towards collaborative social action

ABSTRACT This study examines multilingual performativity in Janger Banyuwangi, a traditional performing art from Indonesia’s Pendalungan borderland, where Javanese, Osing, Madurese and Indonesian converge on a single stage. Drawing on Austin and Butler’s performativity theory and Blommaert’s sociolinguistics of globalisation, it explores how translanguaging practices not only reflect but actively construct social reality, moving beyond models that treat languages as separate systems. Based on five months of ethnographic fieldwork, including observations of five performances and interviews with 15 artists, audience members and cultural figures, the study identifies four key linguistic functions. Javanese krama indexes hierarchy and politeness, Madurese enables humour and indirect social critique, Osing reinforces local identity and supports heritage preservation and Indonesian fosters inclusiveness across generational and ethnic boundaries. These functions interact through fluid translanguaging, allowing performers to negotiate power, solidarity and identity simultaneously. The findings show that Janger’s multilingualism forms a dynamic performative space where differences are actively managed rather than erased. By highlighting the productive role of linguistic diversity in performance, this study contributes to sociolinguistics, performance studies and cultural anthropology, while offering practical insights for cultural preservation and multicultural education in diverse societies.

ABSTRACT At a time when migrants drowned in the Mediterranean Sea are often present in media representations only as statistics, Giulia Bertoluzzi's film Strange Fish sets out to restore the dignity and the humanity of the dead. At the core of her film, there is the Cemetery of the Unknown in Zarzis, Tunisia. In this cemetery erected on a former garbage dump, the fishermen of Zarzis become surrogate mourners. They view it as their ethical duty to restore the dignity of the dead. This paper argues that Bertoluzzi engages in a form of filmic forensics. By reconstructing how migrants died, the film shows, in all its atrocious detail, how current regimes of border policing use the elements as ‘unwitting killers’. In this form of ‘prevention through deterrence’, border policing in the Mediterranean Sea parallels the use of the Arizona desert in the policing of US-American borders. Strange Fish can thus also be read through the work of cultural anthropologist Jason De León, who argues that border policing deliberately aims at creating a ‘land of open graves’. Finally, the paper relates Bertoluzzi's film Strange Fish to Billie Holiday's song ‘Strange Fruit’: Even as the lynching of black people in the US-American South in the first half of the twentieth century is vastly different from the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea, both also urge us to ask whether the absence of mourning for some deaths is also based on the fact that these bodies are non-white.

ABSTRACT Post-war suburbanisation is a foundational element of the Australian urban experience but brought a balance sheet of social costs alongside material benefits. Most development authorities were slow to acknowledge the need for a more explicit social approach to urban questions until the 1970s, a decade of questioning conventional wisdom, promoting wider community participation, and greater awareness of the importance of place in planning outcomes. This paper explores this narrative in reconstructing the career and contributions of a relatively forgotten figure in the development of Australian planning. Caroline Kelly (1899–1989) pursued a remarkably varied life. Her three core careers: actress-entrepreneur, social anthropologist, and social planner were shaped throughout by her feminist outlook. Kelly’s third career for a succession of major planning bodies in Sydney saw her advising on social wellbeing and placemaking activities for relocated suburban populations and receiving communities as the social aspects of urban planning were first being considered as an integral part of the wider planning mission. In an era of great social change, her skills in communication and social research enabled her to appreciate and promote consideration of human issues in the planning process. Kelly’s was a resolute voice for qualitative inquiry, and for planners listening to, acknowledging, and addressing the needs of displaced communities, with particular concern for the isolation, loneliness and lack of social infrastructure suffered by women, children and teenagers in suburbia. A place-based perspective provides the interpretive structure to analyse Kelly’s activities from the 1940s to the 1980s. Caroline Kelly’s social research revealed that all residents in expanding urban environments were experiencing social displacement and disconnection. Kelly promoted better-informed planning and active place-making supports to encourage the reformation of individual social identity, thereby nurturing a stronger connection to place. As a social anthropologist, university lecturer and planning consultant, Kelly helped drive the emergence of social planning as a fundamental component of modern planning in Australia.

This article examines the history of ethnological studies conducted by the missionaries of Africa ('White Fathers') in Northern Zambia, situating their work within the broader context of British colonial social anthropology. It explores the relationship between missionary ethnographic practices and the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, a government anthropological institute established in 1938. The White Fathers' studies of African customs formed part of a broader process of their agendas to 'modernise' and Christianise African populations. Christianisation was a modernising project, in relation to how missionaries framed their work as bringing 'modernity' to colonised societies, often defined in terms of Western ideas of progress, development, and civilisation. This idea was central to the ideology of empire, especially from the 19th century onwards, and had both material and discursive dimensions. This work and the processes of enculturation, processes of adapting Christian beliefs to local customs, paralleled the indirect rule system. In this paper, I argue that the White Fathers' close engagement with Bemba cultural practices and material culture contributed to the ethnologisation of Bemba identity, reinforcing tribal distinctions and elevating Bemba prominence over other ethnic groups. These studies not only shaped colonial knowledge production but also played a role in transforming indigenous subjectivities, positioning local populations as governable Christian citizens. By interrogating the entanglements between missionary ethnography and colonial anthropology, this article sheds light on the intersections of Christianisation, knowledge, power, and colonialism in colonial Zambia, and seeks to contribute to wider scholarship on missionaries as ethnographic agents in colonial Africa.

This reflection on the themed cluster of articles on linguistic anthropology and AI addresses what social anthropologists might wish to know about the linguistic anthropological analytical toolkit when turning to large language models (LLMs) as objects of analysis. In particular, this afterword discusses what agency might be understood to be when the scholarly attention is focused largely on how people use communicative repertoires to accomplish complex social tasks with others. Building on how linguistic anthropologists understand human semiosis, the article makes apparent how human communicative agency differs from the communicative agency expressed by LLMs.

Abstract In recent years, palaeogenomics has significantly advanced our understanding of human population history and evolution. Emerging studies now employ ancient genomic data to explore biological relatedness in archaeological contexts, with a growing number of studies on the topic. These investigations probe, for instance, the role of biological kinship in burial organization and mortuary practices, shedding new light on the complexities of ancient and historical human societies. Our review surveys a few examples of these studies, scrutinizing the methods and interpretations of DNA-based kinship research. We discuss the overlap between biological relatedness and other forms of kinship, acknowledging the complexity of human relationships across time and cultures. Emphasizing interdisciplinary collaboration, we advocate for integrating theoretical frameworks from sociocultural anthropology, archaeology, and Indigenous studies into palaeogenomics for a more thorough understanding of kinship in past societies. Additionally, we offer guidance throughout for newcomers venturing into using ancient DNA to study relatedness, reviewing key methodological aspects involved in biological relatedness inference and addressing common misconceptions, potential pitfalls, and methodological limitations.

Abstract Houses and unilineal descent groups have been treated as different types of social phenomena in socio-cultural anthropology, and as borrowed for analysis of households and settlements in archaeology. This paper contends that houses and lineages, especially those configured by Crow–Omaha kinship terminologies, are better considered as perspectival variants, reflecting differences that are fundamentally synchronic versus diachronic. Crow–Omaha systems and house societies exhibit signal similarities, occupying an intermediate status between kin-based and class-based formations, and evidently derive in an evolutionary sense from prior ‘Iroquois’ or ‘Dravidian’ forms. Setting out the terms in which kinship systems should be considered if they are to serve as useful explanatory analogues for archaeological analysis, the paper then proceeds to examine Lévi-Strauss’s original inspiration for the ‘house’, i.e. societies of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. It is no coincidence, the present paper contends, that Kwakwa̲ka̲’wakw, the archetypal house society is situated adjacent to a Crow-matrilineal series of communities that share a great deal in common with it culturally, as a result of centuries of exchange. In short, the house needs to re-attend to kinship structures, as descent groups need to be reconnected with exchange structures and alliance processes earlier elaborated by Lévi-Strauss.

Abstract Kinship studies recently have been going through a new wave of attraction in archaeogenetics and archaeology. Interdisciplinary cooperation remains an important challenge in these endeavours. Any research that requires interdisciplinary efforts will lead to reductive and potentially misleading conclusions if that cooperation is restricted to a range that is too narrow. The consequences usually are inadequate research results and insufficient ranges of interpretation. Moreover, such methodologically limited inquiries also may entail ethical concerns. Some of this is also valid for kinship analyses, in the study of the deep past as well as for contemporary communities. The present article examines the recently presented case of (‘Pannonian’) Avar excavations to demonstrate how archaeogenetic and archaeological interpretations may tend to ignore socio-cultural complexities. By arguing for the inclusion of socio-cultural anthropology in professional interdisciplinary kinship analyses of the deep past, concepts such as polygyny, levirate, ghost marriage and the notion of ‘female exogamy’ are examined for the case under scrutiny. The article illustrates how certain kinship practices—often misinterpreted in solely genetic terms or entirely ignored—can be understood as ethnographically grounded while also having a cross-cultural meaning suitable for comparison that is indispensable for the study of kinship in any historical period.

ABSTRACT Research on fire safety in traditional villages has primarily focused on disciplines such as social anthropology, safety engineering, and architectural science, with existing studies often limited to a single disciplinary perspective. Framed within resilience theory, this study employs a mixed-methods approach to collect statistical, textual, and spatial-visual data through questionnaires, interviews, and field investigations across 14 ethnic minority settlements in Guangxi and Guizhou provinces to analyze fire safety measures in traditional Dong villages in China. The analysis covers pre-disaster prevention, disaster response, and post-disaster recovery, with a focus on technological, institutional, and cultural dimensions. The study also examines the impact of social changes on fire prevention capabilities in these villages. The findings indicate that the decline of traditional social structures has led to reduced community involvement in firefighting efforts. Furthermore, modern firefighting technologies have not been fully adapted to local needs and cultural contexts, limiting their effectiveness. The paper concludes by proposing strategies to modernize fire prevention by integrating indigenous knowledge with advanced technologies. This research contributes to both the theoretical and practical aspects of fire resilience in traditional rural communities.

We argue that everyday creative tasks that involve generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) are tacitly performed within computational test environments that not only enable and constrain human agency but also shape the epistemic conditions that allow us to ascertain what constitutes creativity itself. Without making such taken-for-granted conditions explicit, society will remain unable to critique them. To make these conditions explicit, we combine elements of cultural anthropology, science and technology studies and the pragmatic sociology of critique to develop an alternative framework for describing such tasks processually as testing creativity . We then apply this framework to a case study of a university student’s use of GenAI to create an image based on digital ethnographic observations. Adapting descriptive categories from 20 th century experimental creativity tests like of fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and originality we draw attention to specific qualities of judgement exercised by the student as part of his performance of this everyday creative task. We show how GenAI-mediated creativity is a layered, processual activity, enabling more critical engagement with its entanglements and implications. By reframing creative tasks with GenAI as testing creativity, we open space for critique and re-description of the conditions under which digital creativity is enacted.

In this paper, a comparative analysis of Nihon Buyo and Classical Manipuri Dance will be carried out to explore the expression of convergent aesthetics within the disciplined body practices of two culturally and geographically distinct traditions. The study examines movement vocabulary, posture management, space arrangement, costume, and ritual setting by foregrounding stillness, circular motion, and cultivated grace as interdependent systems of embodied knowledge. Based on dance ethnography, close performance analysis, and comparative aesthetic theory, the discussion shows that both art forms focus more on continuity than discontinuity, on restraint rather than virtuosic performance, and on internal control rather than external representation. The special focus is on spiral and figure-eight movement patterns, the constitutive nature of costume in the construction of bodily discipline, and the devotional or contemplative paradigms in which performance finds itself. The article suggests that, without assuming direct historical transmission, the echoes of Nihon Buyo and Manipuri dance result from a similar aesthetic logic based on agrarian memory, ritualized discipline, and moralized ideas of the body. The placement of the traditions into a common analytical focus is that the study serves as a contribution to scholars of Japanese Studies in general and the debate on dance studies and cultural anthropology more specifically; by foreshadowing classical dance as an emblem of the ways societies write philosophical values, maintain the collective memory, and seek transcendence using the moving body.

Interview, in mid-May 2025, with the Catalan anthropologist Manuel Delgado (1956-), full professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Barcelona, who has addressed, in his renowned academic trajectory, theoretical and methodological foundations of an anthropology of the urban.

This study presents a comprehensive and theoretically grounded reassessment of the rock art heritage of Azerbaijan, positioning it as a critical node in the broader network of Eurasian prehistoric cultural landscapes. Drawing on a multidisciplinary framework that integrates archaeology, cultural anthropology, iconographic analysis, and digital heritage technologies, the research systematically investigates major petroglyph complexes, including Gobustan Rock Art Cultural Landscape, Gamigaya, and Delidagh. Spanning from the Upper Paleolithic to the Bronze Age, these sites provide a diachronic visual archive of human socio-economic organization, symbolic communication, and environmental interaction. Methodologically, the study employs comparative-historical analysis alongside advanced digital documentation techniques, including photogrammetry and 3D scanning, to enhance both analytical precision and preservation strategies. The findings reveal that Azerbaijani petroglyphs exhibit strong stylistic and thematic affinities with wider Eurasian rock art traditions, thereby supporting hypotheses of transregional cultural exchange, migration dynamics, and the diffusion of symbolic systems. Particular emphasis is placed on the semiotic complexity of motifs such as hunting scenes, ritual dances, and maritime representations, which collectively reflect early cognitive and social structures. Furthermore, the research advances the argument that Azerbaijan’s rock art constitutes not only a foundational element of national cultural identity but also an integral component of global heritage discourse. In the context of increasing environmental and anthropogenic threats, the study underscores the strategic importance of integrating innovative digital preservation methodologies with sustainable cultural management frameworks. Ultimately, this work contributes to ongoing scholarly debates on prehistoric cognition, cultural conti

ABSTRACT Intercultural similarities are usually studied between countries that share similar socio-political structures or belong to the same cultural spheres. However, this research reveals notable cultural parallels between Ireland and China – two nations that are geographically distant and characterised by divergent politico-legal systems and ideological traditions. Drawing on data from a nationwide survey and interdisciplinary research encompassing social anthropology, law, history, religion, and philosophy, this paper investigates the underlying causes of these similarities from a legal-cultural perspective. The findings suggest that people’s social mentalities and attitudes towards law and legal compliance are not necessarily determined by the politico-legal systems in which they live. Rather, their shared socio-political, cultural, and historical experiences may foster comparable legal consciousness and behavioural norms across otherwise disparate societies. This study challenges some of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory, which would not anticipate such convergence between countries as seemingly dissimilar as Ireland and China.

ABSTRACT Food security in rural agrarian regions is often approached through technical and economic interventions, overlooking the roles of language and culture as socio-ecological mechanisms. This study examines how the Dawan language and indigenous cultural practices contribute to food security in South Central Timor (TTS) Regency, East Nusa Tenggara, an area with persistently high stunting prevalence. Using a participatory qualitative approach integrating ethnolinguistics, cultural anthropology, and ecology, data were collected through observation, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and document analysis. The findings show that the Dawan language functions as a medium for transmitting agricultural knowledge, ecological indicators, and normative rules governing food production and storage. While cultural practices may persist amid language shift, the erosion of local language weakens the depth and adaptive logic of food knowledge. This study proposes a Holistic Preservation Model integrating linguistic documentation, cultural revitalization through education, and participatory policymaking to strengthen sustainable food security.

Introduction. The study is conducted within a cultural studies framework, with a focus on the processes of sociocultural integration in one of Russia’s multiethnic regions, the Republic of Mordovia, and is grounded in the theoretical foundations of cultural studies, ethnology, and social anthropology. The tension between the need to preserve the unique ethnocultural code of the Mordovian people and the successful sociocultural integration of new (foreign and non-local) members of the regional population generates the risk of both social isolation of newcomers and the formation of parallel communities, as well as spontaneous assimilation that disregards the cultural needs of all parties involved. Despite the existence of extensive literature on migration, adaptation, and national policy, the academic discourse continues to reveal a deficit of empirically grounded and conceptually elaborated models of integration specifically oriented toward the national republics of the Russian Federation. The aim of the study is to examine integration as a complex process of the self-organization of sociocultural integrity, proposing a replicable methodology suitable for scaling in other comparable multicultural constituent entities of the country. Materials and Methods. The methodological foundation of the study is grounded in the principles of axiological analysis and the synergetic model of cultural interaction, which made it possible to examine in detail the practices of harmonizing interethnic relations within the specified regional context. The primary material of the research consists of project-based activities carried out by the Mordovian Regional Public Organization “Cultural and Linguistic Diversity of the Territory”, with the support of the Ministry of Culture, National Policy and Archival Affairs of the Republic of Mordovia, aimed at the cultural adaptation of foreign nationals and non-local citizens arriving for long-term employment or study. Results and Discussion. The authors propose a model of active cultural education grounded in the principles of mutual respect, engagement with traditional values, and, as a result, sociocultural integration through contemporary communication formats. The project initiatives of non-profit organizations are manifested in heterogeneous activities (conducting interactive lectures in workplaces and educational settings, involving participants in artistic and craft practices, organizing dialogue platforms with the participation of representatives of diverse multiethnic communities, etc.). Conclusion. In the context of ethnocultural diversity, the unity of the Russian people is not a static condition but a dynamic process that requires sustained constructive effort on the part of the state, society, and citizens themselves. The contribution of this study to scholarship lies in its interpretation of cultural diversity as a key resource for sustainable development, one that fosters the strengthening of civic solidarity and the formation of a shared identity while taking regional specificity into account.

ABSTRACT This article examines an Indigenous‐led approach to conservation developed through more than 17 years of collaboration between Ailan Awareness, a community‐based organization in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, and an anthropologist working in the region. Our partnership is grounded in kinship, reciprocity, and long‐term accountability, and it demonstrates how conservation can be reimagined as an Indigenous resurgence practice rather than an externally imposed model. Drawing on ritual traditions such as Vala , which integrates socio‐spiritual authority with ecological restoration, and institutions such as the Ranguva Solwara Skul , which fosters intergenerational knowledge transmission, we show how biocultural diversity is enacted as both a political claim and an ecological necessity. Ethnographic, ecological, and archival research conducted in partnership with local communities reveals that conservation here is inseparable from Indigenous sovereignty, spiritual obligation, and cultural revitalization. We argue that these efforts constitute biocultural sovereignty: a mode of environmental governance that centres customary law, ancestral ties, and collective decision‐making. By situating conservation within the lived moral fabric of kinship and community life, our work challenges dominant conservation paradigms and offers pathways for decolonial, place‐based environmental practice. Ultimately, we show that conservation grounded in kinship and love sustains both ecological and cultural futures.

ABSTRACT The materiality of war arrived in the Solomon Islands during the 1940s, as part of World War II, and it has never left. Although World War II is often imagined as a matter of the past, belonging to the European trenches, the materiality and the violence of the war far exceeds these narrow spatial and temporal limitations. In this paper, I draw on recent work from social anthropology, area studies, and science and technology studies related to the concept of reverberations to show how the violence of World War II persists in the everyday in the contemporary Solomon Islands. Focusing specifically on the violence enacted by explosive remnants of war (ERW), I show how abandoned and unexploded ordnance enacts a bodily violence that is reproductive of relations of gender, class, and ethnicity. What is more, I show how the bodily violence of ERW in the Solomon Islands is intertwined in an epistemic violence that devalues the bodies and lives of Solomon Islanders. Through these forms of violence, World War II continuously reverberates into the present.

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.In our article, we advance a case for considering transhumanism as a religion. Following William James, we define „religion” minimally as a set of experiences that define and shape one’s identity. These may include peak experiences, the feeling of transcendence, and also access to previously hidden knowledge, or gnosis. In James’ view, mystical experiences in particular include feelings of ineffability (partial or complete incommunicability), noesis (secret knowledge), transience and passivity (subordination to a higher power). Using a religious studies framework gleaned from James, we critically examine transhumanism, with an eye towards answering the question of how religious experiences figure into transhumanism, in so far as it functions as a religion. Specifically, we are interested in how transhumanists themselves describe their experiences through the lens of their diverse, often (but not always) explicitly secularist belief systems. Theologian Hava Tirosh-Samuelson has argued for conceiving of transhumanism generally as a „secular faith.” Building on cultural anthropologist Jon Bialecki’s work on Mormon Transhumanism, we argue that the complex technological circumstances of the early 21st century have resulted in a technognostic form of religiosity that blends a belief in human technological prowess with a religiously motivated hope for transcendence.