ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTEBOOKS XVIII/II ofluštvo antaopoloqov slovenije Slovene anthropological society Ljubljana 2012 Anthropological Notebooks 2012, Year XVIII, No. 2 COPYRIGHT © Društvo antropologov Slovenije/Slovene Anthropological Society, Gortanova 22, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia www.drustvo-antropologov.si drustvo.antropologov@guest.arnes.si All rights reserved. With the exception of fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, no part of this publication may be reproduced, copied or utilized in any form without written permission from the copyright holder. Editor-in-Chief Borut Telban Managing Editor Gregor Starc Review Editor Nataša Gregorič Bon Editorial Board Ivan Sprajc, Marija Stefančič, Tatjana Tomazo-Ravnik, Bojan Žalec, Liza Debevec Charles Susanne Free University Brussels Brussels, Belgium Howard Morphy Australian National University Canberra, Australia Aygen Erdentug Bilkent University Ankara, Turkey Proofreader: Terry T. 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ISSN 1408 - 032X Anthropological Notebooks XVIII/2, 2012 CONTENTS Subal Das and Kaushik Bose Nutritional deprivation among Indian tribals: A cause for concern....................................................................5 Paul Green Explorations of difference in a homogeneous field: Intermarriage and mixedness amongst Brazilian migrants in Japan...............................................................................................................................17 Janez Kolenc Anthropological approach to political culture: The case of Slovenia...............................................................27 Suchismita Mishra, Deepak Kumar Behera and Bontha Veerraju Babu Socialisation and gender bias at the household level among school-attending girls in a tribal community of the Kalahandi district of Eastern India......................................................................................45 Nevenka Podgornik Depression - a socio-cultural way of manifesting women's psychological crises ..........................................55 Dusko Bjelica, Stevo Popovic, Miroslav Kezunovic, Jovica Petkovic, Gregor Jurak and Pavel Grasgruber Body height and its estimation utilising arm span measurements in Montenegrin adults................................69 BOOK REVIEWS Fassin, Didier Humanitarian Reason. A Moral History of the Present.....................................................................................87 Anderson, Astrid Landscapes of Relations and Belonging. Body, Place and Politics in Wogeo, Papua New Guinea.................89 Heinonen, Paula Youth Gangs and Street Children. Culture, Nurture and Masculinity in Ethiopia............................................91 Fischer, Johan The Halal Frontier. Muslim Consumers in a Globalized Market......................................................................93 Fox, Katy Peasants into European Farmers? EU Integration in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania..........................95 Ahearn, Laura M. Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology.......................................................................97 Connerton, Paul The Spirit of Mourning: History, Memory and the Body.................................................................................99 Nutritional deprivation among Indian tribals: A cause for concern Subal Das Vidyasagar University, das_vu@rediffmail.com Kaushik Bose Vidyasagar University, kaushikbose@cantab.net Abstract Tribes constitute approximately 10% of the total Indian population. They are found in most parts of the country and are generally economically deprived. Anthropometry is a very useful and inexpensive method that can be utilised in determining the nutritional status of human beings. This paper deals with the utility of various anthropometric cut-off points in the evaluation of nutritional status. It has been observed that various tribal populations have high to very high rates of chronic energy deficiency (CED) based on their body mass index (BMI) values. These populations are experiencing extreme nutritional stress, which may have severe health implications with respect to morbidity and mortality. Urgent proactive nutritional intervention and supplementation programmes are needed to reduce their rates of CED. Inclusive development is imperative in addressing this problem. KEYWORDS: India, tribe, Body Mass Index, chronic energy deficiency Introduction In India, each state is practically equivalent to a country with its specific socio-economic level, different ethnic groups, food habits, health infrastructures and communication facilities. Thus, the nutritional status of the population shows significant variation between states since it results from a varying combination of factors (FAO 2010). Tribal peoples are acknowledged to have very close association with the ecosystem and the environment because of their fulfilment of daily nutritional requirements with food foraged from nature. Malnutrition is the condition arising due to the intake of inadequate (over/less) nutrients in diet. It includes both undernutrition (imbalanced diet and specific deficiencies) and overnutrition (Figure 1). Figure 1: Classification of malnutrition Overnutrition refers to intakes of energy/calorie that are greater than required. Undernutrition, in contrast, refers to lower intakes of nutrients than required. It can be divided into imbalanced diets and specific deficiencies. Globally, the most important micronutrient deficiencies are iron, vitamin A, iodine and zinc. Nutritional status can be assessed by dietary, anthropometric, biochemical and clinical methods. Ideally, a combination of methods should be used when assessing nutritional status using standardised techniques. Anthropometric measurements (such as height and weight) are used to construct indices for malnutrition. BMI is considered to be the most suitable, objective anthropometric indicator of nutritional status of adults. It was chosen because this anthropometric indicator, derived from measures of weight and height of individuals of both sexes, is consistently and highly correlated with body weight (or energy stores within the body) and is relatively independent of the height of the adult. A BMI < 18.5 kg/m2 is widely used as a practical measure of chronic energy or hunger deficiency (CED), i.e., a "steady" underweight in which an individual is in energy balance irrespective of a loss in body weight or body energy stores (Khongsdier 2005: 93). Thus, the use of BMI as an anthropometric indicator of nutritional status can be more appropriate in a country with diverse ethnic groups, such as India (Khongsdier 2001: 28). The assessment is done by observing the deviations of the anthropometric measures from the normal standard. The basic causes of undernutrition in developing countries are poverty, poor hygiene conditions and little access to preventive and health care (Mitra 1985; WHO 1990: 797). In developing countries like India, anthropometry, despite its inherent limitations, remains the most practical tool for assessing the nutritional status of the community (Ghosh 2001: 28). India is a land of numerous cultures and people. Many different ethnic groups found here outnumber many countries (Wikipedia 2012). Indian tribal people account for 8.14% of the total population of the country, numbering 84.51 million, according to the 2001 census. These tribal people reside in approximately 15% of the country's area. Indian tribals primarily reside in various ecological and geo-climatic conditions ranging from plains, forests, hills and inaccessible areas, scattered throughout India. According to Article 342 of the Indian Constitution, at present, there exist 697 tribes recognised by the central government. These Indian tribal groups have been recognised to reside in more than one state. More than half of the Indian tribal population is concentrated in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Maharastra, Odisha, Jharkhand and Gujarat (India Netzone 2012). It is due to the presence of these tribes that the country has such a diverse and varied flavour. West Bengalis a state in the eastern region of India and is the nation's fourth most populous. It is also the seventh most populous sub-national entity in the world (WorldGazetteer 2012). To date, there has been limited data on the anthropometric and nutritional status of various tribal populations of India (Arlappa 2005: 25; Bose & Ckakrabarty 2005: 14; Bose et al. 2006a: 18; b: 114; c: 45; d: 30). It has been recently suggested (Bose & Ckakrabarty 2005: 14) that there is urgent need to evaluate the nutritional status of various tribes of India. In this paper, the anthropometric status of adults within different states of India is discussed. The purpose is to review all available nutritional studies published using body mass index (BMI), and also to give a general overview of the prevalence of undernutrition in India, and the consequences thereof. Materials and methods This study is a review work, done to understand the prevalence of undernutrition among the adult tribal people of different states of India. The papers presented also analyse these studies to conclude the present level of knowledge regarding the problem of adult tribal undernutrition. The implications of the discussed research will help in formulating better recommendations for further research so as to reduce this nutritional burden. BMI was computed using the following standard equation: BMI = weight (kg)/ height2 (m2). Nutritional status was evaluated using internationally accepted BMI guidelines (WHO 1990: 854). The following cut-off points were used: CED BMI <18.5, normal: BMI = 18.5-24.9, overweight: BMI > 25.0. We followed the World Health Organisation's classification (WHO 1995: 854) of the public health problem of low BMI, based on adult populations worldwide. This classification categorises prevalence according to percentage of a population with BMI< 18.5: low (5-9%): warning sign, monitoring required; medium (10-19%): poor situation; high (20-39%): serious situation; very high (> 40%): critical situation. Results and discussion Adult undernutrition very simply happens, when you are hungry, and you consistently don't get anything to eat. Adult malnutrition can be measured by Body Mass Index (BMI) and a BMI below 18.5 indicates chronic undernutrition. Statistics have shown how 37% of adult Indians, 50% of adults belonging to the Scheduled Tribes and 60% of adult Indians belonging to the Scheduled Castes have a BMI below 18.5, which makes them chronically undernourished. Large sections of the Indian population are caught up in the middle of an enormous famine, while only child malnutrition which the Prime Minister recently labelled "a national shame" has come under the spotlight. Considering healthcare in India, it is a moral and social obligation to ensure that nobody is denied healthcare because of their inability to pay bills. The current proposal to increase GDP spending in India for healthcare to 2.5% is a major, positive level of development for healthcare in India (Medindia 2012). The states of Karnataka, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha are highly affected by adult malnutrition with more than half of the adults having a BMI less than 18.5 kg/m2. Patterns of adult malnutrition show extremely poor nutritional status in the states of Gujarat, Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh (FAO 2010).The comparative mean BMI (among males and females) of the studied tribals of India are shown in Table 1. From this, it is clear that Santal (20.5 kg/m2) males of West Bengal (Mukhopad-hyay 2010: 118) have the highest mean BMI and Warli (16.8 kg/m2) males of Maharastra (Adaket et al. 2006: 12) have the lowest mean BMI. Similarly, Jarwa females (19.8 kg/m2) (Sahani2003: 52) have the highest and Munda females (17.7 kg/m2) (Ghosh & Bharati 2006: 18) of West Bengal have the least mean BMI out of all the studied tribal populations.The state- and community-based sex-combined prevalence of CED are presented in (Figures2 to 5),it is clear from the figures that the overall CED was highest in Madhya Pradesh (76.0%) followed by Maharastra (71.9%), Jharkhand (58.5%), Tamil Nadu (55.0%), Andhra Pradesh (50.1%), Odisha (49.5%), West Bengal (45.9%), Kerala (37.8%), Andaman & Nicobar Island (29.5%), Assam (21.5%), while Meghalaya shows the least (14.3%) prevalence of undernutrition among the all studied states of India. This discrepancy in the prevalence rate of undernutrition may be due to the varied reasons, such as non-representative sampling, small sample size, etc. Whatever may be the reason of this, the situation of the tribals with respect to their health as far as morbidity and mortalityis extremely alarming and critical. Almost all the tribals mentioned in this study were experiencing very high to high CED rate excluding few communities from the North-Eastern region. It is prudent to say that research must be conducted among tribal communities from other areas of India before a more comprehensive picture arises. According to National Family Health Statistics-3 report (NFHS-3 2005-2006), the prevalence of undernutrition in India is 33.0% among males and 28.1% among females. In urban areas, these figures were 19.8% and 17.5%, respectively. In rural areas, these were 38.8% and 33.1%, respectively. However, the situation is much worse in West Bengal with corresponding prevalence of 37.7% and 31.6%, respectively. Among urban males and females, they were 19.9% and 15.5%, respectively. The corresponding rural figures were 44.9% (males) and 38.0% (females). Table 1: Comparison of mean EMI among tribal communities of India State Community Male BMI Mean Female Overall BMI Mean Reference West Bengal Bhumij 18.7 18.4 18.6 Ghosh, 2007 Dhimal 19.5 19.1 19.3 Datta Banik et al., 2007 Kora Mudi 18.7 18.3 18.5 Bose et al., 2006b Kora Mudi 18.6 18.3 18.5 Bisai et al., 2008 Lodha 19.5 19.3 19.4 Mondal, 2007 Munda 18.7 17.7 18.2 Ghosh & Bharati, 2006 Oraon 18.8 19.7 19.3 Mittal & Sivastava, 2006 Santal 20.0 19.3 19.7 Bose et al., 2006c Santal 18.5 18.7 18.6 Ghosh & Malik, 2007 Santal 20.5 19.5 20.0 Mukhopadhyay, 2009 Lodha 19.5 -- -- Bose et al., 2008 Bhumij 18.7 -- -- Bose et al., 2008 Odisha Bathudi 18.4 -- -- Bose & Chakrabarty, 2005 Bhuiya 19.4 -- -- Chakraborty et al., 2008 Gond 18.1 -- -- Chakraborty et al., 2008 Khond 19.2 -- -- Chakraborty et al., 2008 Munda 19.1 -- -- Chakraborty et al., 2008 Paroja 17.3 -- -- Chakraborty et al., 2008 Santal 18.3 -- -- Chakraborty et al., 2008 Savara 18.5 -- -- Chakraborty et al., 2008 Jharkhand Oraon 18.5 -- -- Datta Banik , 2008 Oraon 18.0 -- -- Chakraborty & Bose, 2008 Maharastra Andh 17.1 -- -- Adak et al., 2006 Bhil 18.0 -- -- Adak et al., 2006 Gond 18.3 -- -- Adak et al., 2006 Kathodi 17.0 -- -- Adak et al., 2006 Korku 18.3 -- -- Adak et al., 2006 Mahadeokoli 18.2 -- -- Adak et al., 2006 Warli 16.8 -- -- Adak et al., 2006 Kol 18.8 -- -- Adak et al., 2006 Manjhi 19.4 -- -- Adak et al., 2006 Sonr 17.6 -- -- Adak et al., 2006 Korwa 20.8 -- -- Adak et al., 2006 Sahariya 18.1 -- -- Adak et al., 2006 Kerala Mannan 20.2 19.1 19.7 Philomenamma & Ramadas, 2008 Andaman & Jarwa 18.9 19.8 19.4 Sahani, 2003 Nicobar Island Onge -- -- 21.0 Rao et al., 2005 Assam Boro-Kacharis 19.8 -- -- Khongsdier, 2001 Lalung 19.2 -- -- Khongsdier, 2001 Mechs 20.5 -- -- Khongsdier, 2001 Miris 19.6 -- -- Khongsdier, 2001 Meghalaya Phars 19.9 -- -- Khongsdier, 2001 Bhumij 0 10 20 30 40 50 CED % Figure 2: Prevalence of CED (%) among tribals of West Bengal & Odisha Figure 3: Prevalence of CED (%) among tribals of Jharkhand, Maharastra & Kerala Figure 4: Prevalence of CED (%) among tribals of Andaman & Nicobar Island, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh & Andhra Pradesh Figure 5: Prevalence of CED (%) among tribals of Assam & Meghalaya The study done by Adak et al. (2006: 12) shows that the prevalence of CED among the Kathudi (90.0%) of Maharastra was the highest. However, it should be kept in mind that the sample size of the studied tribals from Maharastra was very small (n=50) and with the increase of sample size (n= 200 or 300) the prevalence of CED also declines. Several recent studies from India (Yadav 1999: 30; Gogoi & Sengupta 2002: 13; Sahani 2003: 52; Bose & Chakrabarty 2005: 14; Bose et al. 2006a: 18) have utilised BMI to study nutritional status of tribal populations. Therefore, the use of BMI based cut-off points for the evaluations of CED are valid for use among tribal populations of India. The primary importance, from the public health perspective is the need for immediate nutritional intervention programs to be implemented among all the tribal groups experiencing very high to high nutritional stress. The Indian government should play an active role in reducing the rates of undernutrition among tribal people. Although priority must be given to tribal groups having the highest rates of undernutrition, all groups must be incorporated in these food supplementation programs. It is imperative that the recommendations should include not only adequate dietary intake but also various ways in which they can enhance their socio-economic status through improved education and employment opportunities. It is expected that better educational attainment will lead to more scope for employment and healthier dietary practices. Conclusions Since nutritional status is intricately linked with dietary habits as well as the ecology of the population, further research should be undertaken to investigate, in details, these factors. Each tribal population has its unique food habits (Mandal 2002). Moreover, there are distinct inter-tribal differences in the environment in which they reside, i.e. the ecology of the population (Lee & Nieman 2003). The studies reviewed here did not deal with these factors as they were beyond the scope of study. It is, therefore, imperative that future studies on tribal populations include these parameters when investigating their nutritional status. Similar studies should also be undertaken among other tribal populations in India, since they constitute a sizeable portion of India's population. Moreover, since undernutrition has several underlying causes (Medindia 2012; Lee & Nieman 2003), future investigations should aim at identifying the likely cause(s) of high rates of undernutrition among Indian tribal populations. The present review revealed that the nutritional status of the adult tribals is in a critical state. To overcome this problem, there is an immediate requirement for appropriate steps to be taken to improve the nutritional status of these groups on the basis of severity of the burden they are facing. Acknowledgements The authors express their thanks to the all other authors who work among the tribal peoples of our nation to highlight the problem of undernutrition. Since this is a review work, we did not require any financial assistance. Moreover, we have no conflict of interest for this. References Adak, Dipak Kumar, Rajesh Kumar Gautam & Ajay Kumar Gharami. 2006. Assessment of Nutritional Status through Body Mass Index among adult males of 7 tribal population of Maharashtra, India. Malaysian Journal Nutrition12(1): 23-31. Arlappa, N., N. Balakrishna, G. N. Brahmam & K. Vijayaraghavan 2005. Nutritional status of the tribal elderly in India. Journal of Nutrition for the Elderly 25(2): 23-39. Bisai, Samiran, Kaushik Bose, Argina Khatun, Sanjib Ganguli, Priyanka Das, Swapan Dikshit & Sampa Pradhan, Mishra Tanushree. 2008. Nutritional stress in Kora Mudis of two districts in West Bengal. India: A comparative statement. 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Age and sex variations in adiposity and central fat distribution among elderly Bengalee Hindus of Calcutta, India. Annals of Human Biology 28(6): 616—23. Ghosh, Mihir. 2007. Nutritional status of adult Bhumij males of Kharagpur, Paschim Medinipur. Seminar on Approaching Development in Department of Anthropology, Vidyasagar University, p. 22. Ghosh, Rohini & Prema Bharati. 2006. Nutritional status of adults among Munda and Pod populations in a periurban area of Kolkata City, India. Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health 18(2): 12—20. Ghosh, Sudipta & Shanti Lal Malik. 2007. Sex Differences in Body Size and Shape among Santhals of West Bengal. Anthropologist 9(2): 143—9. Gogoi, Gitimallika & Sarthak Sengupta. 2002. Body mass index among the Dibongiya Deoris of Assam, India. Journal of Human Ecology 13(4): 271—273. India Netzone. 2012. Indian Tribes. http://www.indianetzone.com/37/indian_tribes.htm. Accessed on 19 April 2011. Khongsdier, Romendra. 2001. 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Public Health Nutrition 9(1): 19-25. Reddy, Pandilla Palli Yadu Bhushana & Papa Rao Alahari. 2000. Dietary habits, food consumption and nutrient intake among the Sugali; a tribal population of Andhra Pradesh, India. Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nurition 9(1): 12-7. Sahani, Ramesh. 2003. Nutritional and health status of the Jarawas: A preliminary report. Journal of Anthropological Survey of India 52: 47-65. Wikipedia. 2012. List of Scheduled Tribes in India.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scheduled_Tribes_in_In-dia. Accessed on 18 April 2011. WorldGazetteer. 2012. India: largest cities and towns and statistics of their population. http://world-gazetteer. com/wg.php?x=&men=gcis&lng=en&des=wg&srt=npan&col=abcdefghinoq&msz=1500&geo=-104. Accessed on 3 August 2012. World Health Organization. 1990. Diet, nutrition and the prevention of chronic disease. WHO Technical Report Series No. 797. Geneva: World Health Organization. World Health Organization.1995. Physical Status: the Use and Interpretation of Anthropometry. Technical Report Series no. 854. Geneva: World Health Organization. Yadav, Y. S., P. Singh & A. Kumar. 1999. Nutritional status of tribals and non-tribals in Bihar. Indian Journal of Preventive Social Medicine 36(1): 101-6. POVZETEK Plemena predstavljajo približno 10 % celotne indijske populacije. Najdemo jih v večini delov države in so navadno ekonomsko prikrajšana. Antropometrija je zelo uporabna in poceni metoda, ki jo lahko uporabimo za določanje statusa prehranjenosti ljudi. V prispevku se ukvarjamo z rabo različnih kriterijev določanja statusa prehranjenosti in ugotavljamo, da ima plemenska populacija visoko do zelo visoko stopnjo kroničnega pomanjkanja energije (CED), katere ocena temelji na indeksu telesne mase (BMI). Ta populacija se sooča z ekstremnim prehranskim stresom, ki ima lahko resne zdravstvene posledice z vidika obolevnosti in umrljivosti. Za zmanjšanje stopnje CED so potrebni nujni proaktivni prehranski intervencijski programi, inkluzivni razvoj pa je nujni pogoj pri soočanju s tem problemom. KLJUČNE BESEDE: Indija, pleme, indeks telesne mase, kronično pomanjkanje energije CORRESPONDENCE: Kaushik Bose, Department of Anthropology, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore - 721 102, West Bengal, India. E-mail: kaushikbose@cantab.net. Explorations of difference in a homogeneous field: Intermarriage and mixedness amongst Brazilian migrants in Japan Paul Green University of Melbourne, pgreen@unimelb.edu.au Abstract Studies of Brazilian migrants living in Japan tend to focus on the importance of individual and collective identity dynamics at the boundary between migrant self and host Japanese other. An emphasis on boundedness, sameness and groupness in this field has led to important gaps in research, in terms of intermarriage and mixedness. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Japan this article examines how people make sense of such concerns, in memory, narrative and practice, in their everyday lives and in relation to and negotiation with other family members. A focus on kin and generational change, I suggest, provides a fresh basis to explore broader connections between self, ethnicity and nation state amongst Brazilian migrants living in Japan. In conclusion, this research highlights the importance of transcending a focus on relations and boundaries between migrant self and host other in migration studies in order to examine a range of social experiences, relations and differences evident within given migrant groups. KEYWORDS: intermarriage, mixedness, kinship, migration, generational change. Introduction In 1990 a revised immigration law provided a legal basis for Brazilians of Japanese descent to live, work and study in Japan (Tsuda 2003: 93). By 2007 there were over 310,000 Brazilian nationals in Japan (Ishi 2008: 115). Such people have fascinated scholars in recent years (Carvalho 2003; Green 2008; 2010; 2011; Ishi 2003; 2008; Lesser 1999; 2002; 2003; Linger 2001; Roth 2002; Sellek 1997; Tsuda 2000;2003; Yamanaka 1996; 2000). Questions of ethnic and national identity have dominated this literature, facilitating specific understandings of life in both Brazil and Japan. As Linger argues (2001: 25), Japanese Brazilians, or Nikkeis (Japanese emigrants), maintained a strong sense of ethnic identity in Brazil, through family and community ties and the celebration of traditional festivals. In the journey from Brazil to Japan this sense of identity is transformed, we are told, in the face of a cold and discriminatory society in Japan. Through interaction between self and other, Brazilian migrants embrace a national counter identity that finds individual expression in "Brazilian" clothing such as tight, figure hugging jeans and a collective sense of belonging through the haphazard public performance of samba (Tsuda 2000). This focus on identity concerns offers welcome and important insights into Brazilian migrant life in Japan. I follow Handler (1988; 1994), however, in questioning the consistent applicability of a conceptual framework that tends to emphasise and overstate the bounded, homogeneous qualities of people, ethnic and national communities and nations over potentially salient issues of transgression and difference. Built on a language of boundedness, sameness and groupness (Brubaker & Cooper 2000) the limitations of this conceptual approach are exacerbated by a tendency, evident in migration studies more generally, to examine life at the boundary between migrant self and host other. By focusing on differences between migrants and the mainstream society such studies deny the extent to which differences within a migrant group, based on class and generational concerns as examples, may be an everyday fact of life (Green 2010; Wimmer & Glick Schiller 2002: 324). By focusing on boundaries between communities this research also downplays the importance of family and kinship ties, which despite their central relevance for understanding life in Brazil more generally (DaMatta 1991), are best viewed as the most important social group within community (Tsuda 2003). One of the most striking features of this focus on relational communities is the almost complete lack of attention paid to issues of intermarriage and mixedness. While recent, reliable statistics do not exist, it was estimated in 1988 that 45.9% of Japanese Brazilians had married outside of their ethnic group (Lesser 2002: 50). The study also alluded to the importance of generational difference, with evidence of intermarriage rising from 6% to 61% amongst 2nd and 4th generation Japanese Brazilians, respectively. The impression given by "Nikkei" researchers is that such ethnically mixed families must have remained in Brazil. Issues of intermarriage and mixedness receive scant attention in Tsuda's extensive study (2003) and represent roughly three pages of Roth's monograph (2002: 72-4). Linger makes a crucial point when he suggests that most Brazilian families on the housing estate he lived on, 'as elsewhere in Japan, are ethnically mixed' (2001: 22n). This statement represents a mere footnote of an account of a distinct ethnic group's search for another categorical identity in their ancestral homeland of Japan. This article examines this under-researched aspect of social experience. As I illustrate here a focus on understandings and narratives of intermarriage and mixedness necessarily draws attention to the importance of family, kinship ties and generational difference, or in other words, other neglected aspects of research in the Brazilian Nikkei field. Following Burkitt's understanding (1999: 127) of the connection between subjectivity and social relationships I illustrate the extent to which understandings of mixedness and intermarriage exist in the remembered and contested realm of everyday family ties and relations between parents and their children. Examining narratives and understandings of intermarriage and mixedness on these relational terms, I suggest, provides insights into people's broader understanding of social and cultural change and the relationship between change, ethnicity and the nation-state. By analysing mixedness on these broader terms this article similar provides insights into the relationship between self, ethnicity and nation state that necessarily transgress an analytical concern for the construction of identities at boundaries between migrant self and host other. Intermarriage and social change This article draws on almost two years of ethnographic fieldwork in Japan. Based in Nagoya city, I conducted research in several surrounding towns and prefectures. Like Linger, I found the majority of my research participants to be of mixed descent or in relationships with non-Japanese Brazilians, or quite often other mestigos (people of mixed descent). Many Brazilian migrants in Japan claim cultural ties, through their parents and grandparents, to Japan but also Portugal, Spain and Italy, for example. It was particularly common to meet people of Japanese and Italian descent. The Italians were by far the largest European immigrant group to settle in Brazil. Many came to live and work in Sao Paulo State, and were supplemented at the turn of the 20th century by a supposedly more docile and eager workforce from Japan (Lesser 1999: 82). Several participants felt that rates of intermarriage amongst Japanese Brazilians have been rapidly increased from the 1990s in particular. Some participants, such as Luciane, who was a "pure" descendent of 28-years-old, often drew on their experiences of childhood as a way of locating the roots of this important aspect of change amongst Japanese Brazilians in Brazil: There has already been so much miscegenation in Brazil. When I was a child, nisseis (2nd generation Japanese Brazilians) married with nisseis, many Nikkei families were against marriages with other Brazilians. In such cases families would fall apart. There were lots of cases of children losing their inheritance because they had married a Brazilian. The Japanese community was really strong, with the culture brought by parents and grandparents preserved and maintained in Brazil. People just spoke Japanese at home and so on. Today this situation doesn't exist. The new generations don't speak Japanese, nothing. Nothing remains of Japanese culture, and it's difficult to come across Nikkei marriages. Generally one of them is a Brazilian without Japanese descent. The supposed loss of Japanese culture is brought home in a more personal sense by my friend Sylvia, who was also a pure descendent, in her early 20s. As a 3rd generation Japanese Brazilian Sylvia expected to play her own, particular role in the supposed disappearance of her culture: Our culture is disappearing. All that my parents learned is being lost. When I was a little girl my dream was to get married to a Japanese guy, have Japanese kids and continue our tradition, because my parents wanted it for me. But the reality is very different. I've never had a Japanese boyfriend and I don't know if I want to marry one anymore. I'll marry the man I love, Japanese, Brazilian, African, whatever. In Sylvia's view her culture was disappearing along with her childhood dream to marry a Japanese guy and maintain the ethnic tradition of her parents. Her new dream to marry Mr. Whatever, however, was not cast in stone. The "choice" she would make about an eminently marriageable partner was rather a point of contestation and negotiation between Sylvia and her mother. Here she reflects in this sense on her life as a teenager in Brazil: Sometimes I feel real pressure in my heart and I don't know what I really want to do. I never took my boyfriends home to know my parents. It's a little bit confusing. My mother knew that my first boyfriend was a mulato (person of African and European descent) and that I loved him. And I could see she was scared about this, that I would perhaps marry him, which really hurt me. Then one day a blue-eyed friend of mine came to pick me up and she told me that I should date him. Can you see? My family is so pre-conceited. I can have a non-Japanese boyfriend, but he should be white at least, she says. This is horrible. Sylvia's story hints at an often unspoken relationship between intermarriage and racialised boundaries of exclusion. During my time in Japan I never met a Brazilian that was in or the product of a relationship with a Brazilian of African descent. As Sylvia's tale, and Luciane's recollection of her childhood suggests, however, this "tug-of waf' between the values of different generations is shifting in favour of younger generations. Families are no longer falling apart over such issues, as they did during Luciane's childhood. This sense of change and acceptance can sometimes be found in the confines of one household. My friend Edson had 7 brothers, 4 of whom, like him, had married at some point in their lives. All of them had married non-Japanese Brazilians. Edson's second-oldest brother Hiroe went against his father's wishes and married a non-Japanese Brazilian in the early 1990s. By 1999 Edson was 28 and able to marry who he pleased. As Edson explained, Hiroe had paved the way for the rest of the brothers to marry in peace. In some cases, or perhaps because this shift of values seems irreversible, there is little or no conflict over such issues in some families. Many young Brazilians told me that their parents did not mind whether their future husband or wife was of Japanese descent or not. There was a greater acceptance of changing times and the fact that young Japanese Brazilians are now following their heart and not the tradition of an ethnic group imbued in kin ties. The cases of Sylvia and Edson illustrate the extent to which understandings of social change, intermarriage and potential marriage partners are embedded in the contested and remembered domain of kin and household ties. In the section below I highlight how and on what terms Diana, a mestiga of Japanese and Italian descent, makes sense of her cultural origins and identity in light of the relevance and influence of kinship ties at the heart and periphery of her life. Mixedness in practice - the case of Diana For many of the mestizos that I met concerns over the supposed loss of Japanese culture did not really exist. Japanese culture was just one potential experiential element of their lives and life history. For them racial mixedness presented a range of identification possibilities and ethnic heritages from which they could draw upon in the making of themselves as Brazilians of mixed descent. Being a Brazilian of mixed descent was often explained through the ethnic or national origins of other familial selves. As Aline, 25, described herself: 'I'm Japanese on my father's side and my mother is of Portuguese descent.' Aline's understanding of the two cultures "within her" derived its meaning through the two sources of that culture, namely the bodies of her mother and father. Most people spoke of their racial mixedness on such terms. If the parents themselves were mestizos, then people would step back a generation in order to account for and locate the "pure" origins of their mixedness. As Lidia, who was 27-years-old, described herself: 'My maternal grandfather was Japanese. He was married to an Italian woman. My paternal grandfather was German and he was married to a Portuguese woman.' This rather formulaic and equitable approach to cultural origins, however, did not necessarily reflect the ways in which people connected to kin and their associate sense of self identity in practice. Take the case of Diana. When I met Diana she was 40. She lived alone in the city of Ogaki. All of her family lived in Brazil. For Diana the historical absence of her father's side of the family in her life meant she had little interest in his "Japanese" culture. It was her mother's side of the family that mattered in this sense. The walls of her living room in Japan provided a microcosm of this life history. Photographs of Brazilians of Italian descent were sprayed over the walls, reflecting the web of social relationships imbued in them - collective ones of her older brother, her sister-in-law and their two nieces. There were larger images of the two nieces that she truly adored. Photographs of her younger, aspiring actor and musician brother, her parents and snapshots of "the whole family" together were also on prominent display for visitors. The significance of her Italian side also seemed to overwhelm the contours and features of her face and body. She resembled her mother, she suggested, in both looks and general body shape. Diana viewed her body as distinctly Italian, as something that had been passed onto her via her mother and her hearty Italian cooking. Diana had a few photos of her two Japanese Brazilian aunts and their husbands. They were stored inside a cupboard. This side of her family was kept out of sight. They were people she did not know in any intimate sense. The formal style of these photographs differed greatly from those of her mother's family on her walls. In the latter images people were captured in sunlight, in shorts and t-shirts, all smiles, hugs and embraces. The "Japanese" images were of people dressed in more formal attire. The photographs were all taken inside the darker light of family homes. They seemed to transmit more than simply a different sense of what constituted good presentation and posture for a photographic image. They echoed volumes about Diana's understanding of her cultural origins today. When Diana arrived in Japan she did not require face-to-face encounters with cold, reserved Japanese nationals to reinforce or even awaken the warmth and friendliness inside her Italian-inspired body. This perception of herself was created, in part, within the contrasting sense of intimacy found in each side of her parent's families. Diana's case illustrates on a more nuanced level how and in what ways people experienced "culture" in the realm of kinship ties. Diana, I suggest, embodies the Italian side of her mixed origins because she feels closest to this aspect of her cultural heritage. The closeness derives in part from the sense of love that is shared between her and the likes of her older brother's family. Put differently, Diana's understanding of family is grounded in social relationships, not blood. Blood matters but the meaning of kinship is not cast in conjugal stone. As Carsten suggests, 'blood is always mutable and fluid - as is kinship itself' (2004: 310). Diana feels closer to the Italian side of her family because these rela- tives represented an everyday or near everyday part of her life in Brazil. They regularly indulged in churrascos or family barbeques together. Feeding represents a central element of how and in what ways such people were and became close kin to Diana (Carsten 2004). In constrast, she felt little sense of connection or relatedness with her Japanese relatives, who on social terms represented distant kin. As I suggest below, for younger mestizos living in Japan their understanding of self may be inspired by generation difference and the extent to which they may identity with a historically constructed national narrative, inspired by the work of Gilberto Freyre, in which, 'conquest and slavery yield a beneficial miscegenation, an adaptive Luso-tropical synthesis' (Linger 2001: 298). Mixedness and national identity During the 1970s the nationalist Gilberto Freyre suggested that Brazil had produced the world's first "meta-race" or "beyond-race". In such circumstances, 'each Brazilian overcomes his or her consciousness of racial origin or status, of color as an indicator of origin or status. Instead, the Brazilian simply feels - Brazilian' (cited in Andrews 1991: 10). The meta-Brazilian, therefore, was no longer an identifiable fusion of conflicting but perfectly blended cultures. The vastly different cultural heritages of Indians, African Slaves, European and non-European immigrants were now simply indistinguishable aspects of the contemporary Brazilian's soul. As Linger argues, part reality, largely fantasy, 'Brazil's so-called "racial democracy" has long been a ballyhooed centerpiece of national pride' (2001: 298). Given the evidence, both statistical and empirical, of high intermarriage rates and mixedness amongst Brazilians of Japanese descent, it is surprising that questions have not been raised by researchers, of a potentially evolving relationship between ethnicity, mixedness and national identity in Brazil. It is certainly the case that many of the young Brazilian mestizos that I met were able to draw on their mixed heritage, as opposed to relations with a host Japanese Other, in other to justify their sense of attachment to the Brazilian nation state. Indeed, many of the Brazilian teenagers and twenty somethings with whom I spoke to suggested that they were typical Brazilians because they were mestizos. According to the 24-year-old Wagnerhe was a typical Brazilian salad, made of the fused leaves of his Spanish, Italian and Japanese origins. For the 18-year-old mestiga Ana she was typically Brazilian because, well, Brazilians are a complete jumble or mixture (of races). Lu followed her 'I'm a typical Brazilian' line with the view that '... in Brazil there doesn't exist a "pure" race because everyone's a mixture of others.' The appetite for such discourses was so pervasive that in some cases young Brazilians would turn to the city they lived in to defend their attachment to their racially-mixed nation. For Adriana, what made her a typical Brazilian was the fact that she hailed from the multi-cultural city of Curitiba (in Paraná State). As a mestiga with a pluralist heart she was able to suggest that her hometown was typically Brazilian (and therefore so was she). It contained people, she argued, from various non-European and European backgrounds, which, as such, indulged in each other's festivals and other cultural events. The "pure" descendent Sheyla's love of the category mestigo was such that she wanted 'its' children. As she told me: 'In Brazil you see all kinds of crazy (racial) mixtures! It's really cool. I like it ... I told my Mum that my children will be mestizos. She laughed so much!' Her admiration for cool and crazy mixtures may one day add another meta-Brazilian or two to the national production line. What Sheyla's case also illustrates is the extent to which, in some households and in contrast to the earlier case of Sylvia, families are able to joke instead of argue about a potential future involving mestizo grandchildren. For many young Brazilians, the category mestizo abounds with connotations of beauty and style. As Wagner put it, because of racial mixedness,'Brazil turns out lots of beautiful women. 'The association of the category mestizo with all things beautiful is much in evidence on the World Wide Web. On the friendship and romance pages of the website Braznet I often came across females looking for mestigosto date. One twenty something female migrant specifically asked for a Japanese-Italian Brazilian to brighten up her life. I wrote to her, inquiring about her particular taste in Japanese-Italian salad leaves. She replied with the answer that she had dated "one" before and considered them to be the "most" beautiful of mestizos. Another young Brazilian placed her advert as follows - in the heading she wrote in typical net shorthand:'Mestigos kdvcs!' (Mestizos where are you!). Her message is then 'Oi (Hi). My name is Talyta. I'm 16 years old. I'm really outgoing and looking for a handsome mestiginho (a typical Brazilian diminutive of mestigo). Write me ...' An endnote The very thought perhaps of a Brazilian of Japanese descent living in his or her ancestral homeland has led to a range of publications which focus the individual and collective identity concerns of this particular group of people. As I have illustrated here, such concerns have consequently neglected important aspects of social experience. For Luciane and Sylvia in particular the supposed disappearance of Japanese culture is felt, first and foremost, in the ties and relations of family. "Family", in this sense, represents the site and source of ethnic tradition and social change. For people of mixed racial origins, like Diana, their understanding of who they are as mestizos may be located in these kin ties but in ways that reflect the actual quality and intimacy of these relationships in her evolving life. The ways in which younger mestigos draw on categorical sources of identification to reflect an individuated sense of belonging to their salad nation reflects, in part, the sense of change occurring amongst Brazilians of some form of Japanese descent as young people marry and indulge in relationships on the basis of love and beauty, not obligation to one's parents and ethnic group. Crucially, a focus on mixedness in practice and narrative has highlighted the limitations of focusing on identity concerns between a migrant self and host other. For Sheyla, who wants to have lots of mestizo children, the shifting and varied relationship between self, ethnicity and nation-state is carved out of relationships with and in reference to a joking relationship with her mother. Young Brazilian migrants may often draw on a discourse of identity to speak of who they are and who they have or will become on these terms. Their narratives nevertheless highlight the extent to which researchers of migrant experience should be focusing on a range of social relations and experiences evident within a migrant community, which in this case has revealed important linkages to boundaries and transgressions of boundaries relating to other ethnic groups in Brazil. References Andrews, George R. 1991. Blacks and Whites in Sao Paulo, Brazil: 1888-1988. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Brubaker, Rogers & Frederick Cooper. 2000. Beyond "Identity". Theory and Society 29: 1-47. Burkitt, Ian. 1999. Bodies of Thought: Embodiment, Identity and Modernity. London: Sage Publications. Carsten, Janet. 2004. The Substance of Kinship and the Heat of the Hearth: Feeding, Personhood and Relate-dness among Malays in Pulau Langkawi. In: Robert Parkin & Linda Stone (eds.), Kinshipand Family: An Anthropological Reader. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 309-27. DaMatta, Roberto. 1991. Carnival, Rogues and Heroes: An Interpretation of the Brazilian Dilemma. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Green, Paul. 2008. Family and Nation: Brazilian National Ideology as Contested, Transnational Practice. Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs 8(4): 418-35. Green, Paul. 2010. Generation, Family and Migration: Young Brazilian Factory Workers in Japan. Ethnography 11(4): 515-32. Green, Paul. 2011. The Enemy Within?: Explorations of Personhood, Friendship and Difference amongst Brazilian Nationals Living in Japan. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37(3): 373-88. Handler, Richard. 1988. Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Handler, Richard. 1994. Is "Identity" a Useful Cross-cultural Concept? In: John R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations: The Politic of National Identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 27-40. Ishi, Angelo. 2003. Searching for Home, Wealth, Pride and "Class": Japanese Brazilians in the "Land of Yen." In: Jeffrey Lesser (ed.), Searching for Home abroad: Japanese Brazilians and Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 75-102. Ishi, Angelo. 2008. Between Privilege and Prejudice: Japanese-Brazilian Migrants in "the Land of Yen and the Ancestors." In: David B. Willis and Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu (eds.), Transcultural Japan: At the Borderlands of Race, Gender and Identity. London: Routledge, pp. 113-34. Lesser, Jeffrey. 1999. Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil. Durham: Duke University Press. Lesser, Jeffrey. 2002. In Search of the Hyphen: Nikkei and the Struggle over Brazilian National Identity. In: Lane R. Hirabayashi, Akemi Kikumura-Yano & James A. Hirabayashi (eds.), New Worlds, New Lives: Globalization and People of Japanese Descent in the Americas and from Latin America in Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 37-58. Lesser, Jeffrey. (ed.) 2003. Searching for Home Abroad: Japanese-Brazilians and Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Linger, Daniel T. 2001. No One Home: Brazilian Selves Remade in Japan. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Roth, Joshua H. 2002. Brokered Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Migrants in Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Sellek, Yoko. 1997. Nikkeijin: The Phenomenon of Return Migration. In: Michael Weiner (ed.), Japan's Minorities: The Illusion of Homogeneity. London: Routledge, pp. 178-210. Tsuda, Takeyuki. 2000. Acting Brazilian in Japan: Ethnic Resistance among Return Migrants. Ethnology 39(1): 55-71. Tsuda, Takeyuki. 2003. Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective. New York: Columbia University Press. Wimmer, Andreas & Nina Glick Schiller. 2002. Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-state Building, Migration and the Social Sciences. Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs 2 (4): 301-34. Yamanaka, Keiko. 1996. Return migration of Japanese-Brazilians to Japan: The Nikkeijin as Ethnic Minority and Political Construct. Diaspora 5(1): 65-97. Yamanaka, Keiko. 2000. "I Will Go Home, but When?" Labor Migration and Circular Diaspora by Japanese Brazilians in Japan. In: Michael Douglass and Glenda Roberts(eds.) Japan and Global Migration: Foreign Workers and the Advent of a Multicultural Society. London: Routledge, pp. 123-52. POVZETEK Študije brazilskih migrantov, ki živijo na Japonskem se navadno osredotočajo na pomembnost dinamike individualne in kolektivne identitete na meji med jazom migranta in japonskim gostiteljem kot drugim. Poudarjanje povezanosti, enakosti in skupinskosti, je na tem polju privedlo do pomembnih sivih področij v raziskovanju, kot so proučevanja mešanih zakonov in mešanja. Pričujoči članek, ki temelji na obširnem etnografskem delu na Japonskem, proučuje, kako ljudje osmišljajo tovrstne skrbi v spominu, pripovedovanju in praksi v svojem vsakdanjem življenju in v odnosu ter pogajanju z ostalimi družinskimi člani. Menim, da osredotočanje na sorodstvo in generacijske spremembe predstavlja svežo podlago za raziskovanje širših povezav med jazom, etničnostjo in nacionalno državo med brazilskimi migranti na Japonskem. Nenazadnje pa raziskava osvetljuje pomembnost preseganja osredotočanja na odnose in meje med migrantskim jazom in gostiteljevim drugim v migracijskih študijah, saj na ta način lahko proučimo širši spekter družbenih izkustev, odnosov in razlik, ki jih lahko opazimo med raznoterimi migrantskimi skupinami. KLJUČNE BESEDE: mešani zakoni, mešanost, sorodstvo, migracije, generacijska sprememba CORRESPONDENCE: PAUL GREEN, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Room 534, East Tower, John Medley Building, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia. E-mail:pgreen@unimelb.edu.au. Anthropological approach to political culture: The case of Slovenia Janez Kolenc Educational Research Institute Abstract Research to date into the political culture of Slovenia has shown that traditional patterns of political action dominate, and that the norms of political culture are still mainly objectively determined. Continuing to retain such traditional forms of social and political action and communication, which strongly influence the social and political decision-making process, can crucially influence the most important political decisions that will need to be taken on the national level. The results of the three dimensions of political culture (subjective, social and objective) show that social complexity has been increasing rapidly, particularly during the transition period. This contributes to the on-going increase of instability in the political system and, as such, represents an objective obstacle to its consolidation and democratisation. The specific role and importance of subjective factors of political culture could only increase on the basis of the consolidation of the political system. Finally, some significant features of rationalisation and modernisation of the political system, which have been revealed in my analysis, could be developed even more if they were not obstructed by the existing competitive pattern of conflict resolution, the increasing role of social and political violence, the antagonism between the interests of capital and the interests of labour, the very low legitimacy of democracy, and inexperienced and insufficiently active voters. To date, there have not been sufficient indications of an independent and autonomous political public in Slovenia. KEYWORDS: political culture, Slovenia, time series, anthropology, democracy, riots, demonstrations, civic culture Introduction The most widespread anthropological discussion framework required for the study of political culture and democracy (Juznic 1994) ties us to the assertion that socialisation - the emergence, learning and transfer of certain social ways of life - and inculturation - the emergence and transfer of the habits, customs and values of a particular culture - emerged before the concepts of socialisation and inculturation were formed. It is possible to assert that such a conclusion regarding subsequent recognition applies to all social and natural phenomena. Scientific understanding of phenomena generally arises only after the particular social or natural phenomenon has emerged and appeared to people for some time as an unresolved question or problem. The very logic of scientific research itself, which is a product of Enlightenment philosophy and a modern worldview, teaches us that it is not possible a priori to assume any scientific truth on a tangible truth with which we are dealing. In that phenomena and the essence of a particular phenomenon never entirely overlap, that there always remains a difference between what we wish to understand and the understanding itself, that the subject and object of scientific understanding are never identical; this also captures the reason for the emergence of science itself. Man is simultaneously both the subject and object of understanding. The duality or dialecticism of this special position is evident in the recognition that as people we are part of tangible reality, as well as part of symbolic reality, the symbolic and tangible universe (Piaget 1973: 179). Consequently the requirement facing us is the new-age idea that raises the question of whether scientific understanding is even possible, and if so in what way it is possible and what scientifically understood truths about society and social phenomena are like. In this instance, the phenomenon or subject that we recognise through scientific methods is society and man himself, and consequently the science of society and people, insofar as it constitutes a scientific understanding of society, is itself the subject of anthropological science and part of the scientific truth about human beings as a social, cultural and natural phenomenon. In this aspect, I present a global research model derived from an anthropological conceptualisation of relations among individuals, society and culture. < Figure 1: Research model - human in the centre vs. polis, communis, socius This shows the difference between social and political activity. If others (Lat: socius) are the source of social activity, then community (Gr. politeia, Lat. communis) is the source of political activity. From a theoretical perspective, this involves emphasis on the differences between the human ability to manage objects, themselves and achievements in a decentralised manner, and the human ability for a decentralised and intersubjective, i.e. social, understanding of objects, themselves and achievements. Definition of the problem Every scientific discipline has a different definition of the human individual as a subject and itself, as a method of understanding. The anthropological science with which I am involved defines a human being as a natural, social and cultural being, wherein it is possible to agree with Juergen Habermas (1985: 20), who states that the task of sociology and cultural anthropology is to investigate all phenomenal forms of social action, and not merely selected individual aspects of its systematic action. Sociology must also investigate all forms of symbolic action and all structures of the living world (Ger. Lebenswelt). Structure of the living world At the macro, meso and micro levels of anthropological analysis, if such research is conducted using empirical methods and data, one important 'variable' is the status or scope of the theory used to explain social events. Here, I provide a review of some of the most influential theories on political, cultural and social change, and on that basis I incline toward an empirically based theory of monitoring social change using the method of social and political indicators (Habermas 1985; Berg-Schlosser 1996, Flora 1983; 1987; Jodice & Taylor 1983). On Theory The relation between a "critical theory of society" and a "theory of social systems" to me represents a framework for opening up analytical questions and, at the same time, also a theoretical starting point for and introduction to the discussion of socialisation science and the genesis of the research concept of political culture and the explanatory power of the research concept in research on democracy. The starting point, where Juergen Habermas' theory of communicative action represents "the paradigm of the individual" and the general theory of social systems of Niklas Luhmann represents the "paradigm of society", is further justified by the prevalence of one and the other approaches in research to date of political culture. Generally, such research efforts are conducted using a systems-theoretical approach to research of political culture, and a social-critical or critical-theoretical approach to such research. Research reports are dominated by the systems-theoretical approach, which (with modern empirical research methodology) introduces to research complex quantitative methods and interaction research models with countless dependent, intervening and independent variables. If the systems-theoretical approach, the prime proponent of which is Niklas Lu-hmann, and which is widespread in research, strives to dominate in theory, attempting to become the "one and only science of society", then in this regard the critical approach is less ambitious and more open to mutual criticism. In the case of the Juergen Habermas' theory of communicative action, the openness of this approach is particularly apparent, as it does not give final judgements on social science, but rather strives to determine its critical criteria. Critical theory of society - theoretical-analytical model Taking into account Weber's (1972) distinction between phenomenal forms of Western rationalism, we distinguish among the following components of culture: cultural value sphere, such as science and technology, arts and literature, law and morals; cultural systems of action, such as science companies, universities and academies, arts companies - institutions for the production, mediation and reception of art and art criticism, legal system - justice, scientific jurisprudence, judicial public, religious communities living according to the principles of ethics with universalist requirements; central systems of action, which consolidate the social structure: capitalist economy, modern state and small families; personality system with operational dispositions and value orientations typical for methodical lifestyles and appropriate methods of forming a subject (Habermas 1985: 447-5). Habermas states that only Western societies have developed to the extent that their elements lost their initial constellation in the modernisation processes, so that they can only self-regulate through the relatively autonomous sphere of the economy, public administration etc. In his work, Max Weber described this modernisation as social rationalisation, in which capitalist companies were established on the principles of rational economic action, and the modern state on the principles of rational administration. Both spheres were thus established on the rational-action type. In the sense described above, Habermas distinguishes among the following phenomenal forms of Western rationalism: Cognitive elements Evaluative elements Expressive elements CULTURE Modern natural science Rational, natural law Protestant ethics Autonomous culture Science companies Legal education Religious (universities, academies, institutions laboratories etc.) Arts companies SOCIETY Capitalist economy Modern form of state Civic Small families PERSONALITY Dispositions for action and value orientation Methodical lifestyle Counterculture lifestyle Table 1: Phenomenal forms of Western Rationalism in the Modern Age (Habermas1985: 237) Hypothesis Human culture and the understanding thereof succumb to the law of constant change, wherein even the concept of change itself gives in to changeable knowledge. Scientific truth is something that can never be finally verified or falsified and is thus subject to endless verifications of methods, recognition processes and the validity of the findings themselves. The science of society and man does not therefore assume that it is possible to finally recognise objective reality and its laws, but rather assumes that findings are themselves only part of this reality (Popper 1973). Consequently, any conclusion always remains open to question and can therefore function only as a criticisable explanatory system (Deutungssystem) (Habermas 1985; Luhmann 1984). Nevertheless, there is a general rule for social-science research, which is the logic of the conditional, under which 1. EGOCENTRICITY 2. DECENTRICITY 3. EXCENTRICITY (SEVERAL TYPES) A. Contingent circularity B. Concentric circularity C. Spiral circularity Legend: 1. Egocentricity is the personality trait that consolidates the social ego of individuals. 2. Decentricity is the ability of individuals to understand themselves and the world around them. 3. Excentricity is the ability of individuals: A. to understand one another in mutual contingency B. to create social circles, groups C. in terms of thinking and action to be open or closed to their social environment Figure 2: Research model - social and personal characteristics of human beings scientific debate is separate from other types of debate on and in society (Schutz 1971: 6, 45, 49-50). It differs primarily in that it selects a subject, defines the objectives and methods, designs assumptions and the scope of conclusions, even before we actually start research in a methodical and systematic manner. A systematic and planned approach to comprehension, methodical doubt and hypotheticals, the principle of the verifiability and relativity of every scientific finding and formed empirical method of thought, which is critical in relation to both objective reality and itself, and which is reflected in awareness of the deficiencies and fallibility of own knowledge and at the same time the changeability of the tangible world with which we deal: these are the fundamental aspects of the scientific debate on human culture and society that particularly distinguish this debate from other, more or less ideological debates. Social science, furthermore, cannot come up with any generally valid conclusions, applicable and established at all times, regarding society and culture. However, this science can point out those cultural characteristics of human beings and social entities, egocentric (centred in self), decentric (centred outside self) and excentric (circles around self) that are common to human beings and that represent the necessary conditions for the definition of the social and cultural dimensions of individuals, and by which people are essentially different from other living beings. This problem is represented schematically in the research model shown in Figure 2. Method On the basis of the hermeneutic method, I carried out a criticism of sources in order to determine the national-culturally determined set of indicators for appropriate operationalisation, formalisation and scaling of concepts of democracy and political culture. On this basis, I compared them with the operationalisation and set of indicators from international research already underway. The system of national indicators was combined with a system of intercultural indicators so as to enable their empirical comparison and the verification of their mutual effects in the multivariate research space. I relied on the methodology of scientific research sometimes referred to as double hermeneutics (Giddens, 1989: 165-70). This methodology follows the scientific requirement for greater respect for theory, both in the design of research concepts and in the construction of empirical models and interpretations of empirical research results. Here, we require a broad elaboration of theoretical sources that must become constituent parts of the research concept and justify a particular research strategy by producing explicit hypotheses originating from theoretical sources and assumptions. The hermeneutic method follows from the assumption that a particular area of scientific interest can be read as an open book and that humans are creatures in which both the method and objective of the findings are already captured. In this sense, any intercultural research is a hermeneutical problem that includes the mediation of all substantive frameworks as the most determinative methodological instruction in research. Such research does not exclude the logical possibility, e.g. of comparing the validity of the theory that illness is caused by germs with the theory that states that illness can be cured by magic rituals. Quite the reverse, such understanding of social facts is a necessary condition for this dialectic possibility. The hermeneutic method is therefore particularly important for comparative consideration of cultures, which includes any consideration of political culture. The methodological procedures whereby I discover the characteristics of the phenomena I research can be more accurately described as follows: I strive for such a conceptualisation and empirical operationalisation of variables as will be pragmatic-inductive (Mill 1843; Berg-Schlosser 1996; Tilly 1984; Przeworski 1970; Teune 1970 etc.). The variables selected should be as universal as possible and should enable intercultural comparison. Such a requirement for universality of indicators must be seen as a debate on the difference between universal and particular rationality, which arises not only due to the difficulties occurring in collecting empirical data for analysis, but also due to the selection of various research strategies that can arise on the basis of the same theoretical assumptions and viewpoints. Thus, a particular researcher, starting from the same theoretical position, may select entirely different relevant variables from another researcher, with regard to the defined problem. Therefore, as far as possible, universal selection and operationalisation of variables is carried out on the following basis: a) critical analysis of basic theoretical concepts, where I opted to apply Habermas' (1985) theory of communicative action; b) analysis of previously determined empirical relations among observed sizes and proportions of research phenomena; c) a combination of the two approaches, with "scientific intuition" - long years of experience dealing with the problem I am observing - also a deciding factor (Bajec 1977: 29). I therefore placed the derived empirical models in relation to the selected global research model and attempted as broadly and accurately as possible to analyse and define individual elements in their mutual multi-causal relationships. From such methodological requirements, I also expected significant methodological theoretical achievements, primarily through the use of various statistical methods. I thus strived for a consistent connection between historical-sociological, diachronous-vertical research and synchronous-horizontal monitoring and comparative research, where (in my view) it is only possible to find the intersection of any generalisation on empirical foundations. Instruments and variables I devoted the greatest scientific research effort to the social and historical determinism of the processes of democratisation and political inculturation - the socio-historical circumstances that formed and continue to form the political culture, with the emphasis on analysis of political, social and cultural indicators in Slovenia. I therefore researched the importance and influence of major social and historical events that are anchored in the personal, social, political and national consciousness in Slovenia, and that objectively influence the political culture of the population. The Slovenian political culture is also determined by economic crises and natural disasters - in a sense, this is a general development rule of the modern world, which is increasingly degrading natural wealth. Economic exploitation contributes to a cyclical crisis of the global capitalist system. In Slovenia, too, political parties are being established in Slovenia to defend nature. Both economic policy and economic development are influential factors in political inculturation, both on individual development levels and on their actual phenomenal forms. This is a task that continues to demand special and additional interdisciplinary research and cooperation, certain aspects and outlines of which I presented in the chapter on social factors that influence the political and civic culture. Research to date into the political culture in Slovenia led me to conclude that our personal, social, political and national character is more determined by objective historical circumstances than by the action of subjective agents of political socialisation. I considered the question of the stratification and class structure of Slovenian society in connection with the formation of political parties, and in this regard also the influence of this structure on the political culture. The predominant determinism of processes, contents, forms and methods of political socialisation and inculturation by objective factors of political culture support the hypothesis that the political culture in Slovenia remains largely egocentric and operates as an unconscious, irrational and residual element in modern political processes and conflicts. I also attempted to verify this hypothesis through current monitoring of the dynamics of cultural, economic, social and political indicators. In this regard; I also deal with scientific research through the unconscious, and all that objectively determines our position and action. In this sense, it is possible to assert that the action of subjective agents of political socialisation in Slovenia is particularly unsuitable and ineffective. (see Kolenc1993: 173-238) The emancipation and civil-democratic potential of agents of political socialisation is only just developing in Slovenia, a matter that I synchronously analysed through discourse analysis, analysis of social, political and cultural indicators and through comparative analysis of European dimensions. Time series 1953-1993 Social reactions Definition of indicator Absolute frequency Absolute frequency Absolute frequency Absolute frequency Absolute frequency Absolute frequency Absolute frequency Absolute frequency Absolute frequency Name of indicator profile of protests profile of social unrest profile of armed conflicts frequency of government measures frequency of murders motivated by domestic political violence frequency of changes in government institutions = government stability regular changes of government irregular changes of government frequency of elections Table 2: Definition of variables Results Profile of Slovenia based on time series - social reactions For the category of the most important political events in modern national history, I formed a set of variables that indicate the profile of the state, as can be seen in the time-series analysis. Such classification and quantification of political events offer us the raw material of systems indicators that measure the national ability to resolve conflicts, the stability of government institutions, and the spread of political freedoms. This sample of indicators can also be evaluated and compared with those measures of economic production or social welfare that provide a general profile of each individual state or group of states. The World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (World 1983: 176-199) defines nine indicators that measure changes in the protest potential of a country, penalties and norms, and government changes. These indicators are defined in Table 1. The time-series curves show events that affect protests and government sanctions over time and the number of "political" defeats for dominant political personalities. The curve for changes in government shows something similar. Data are aggregated on a ten-monthly basis over the previous 45 years. As events we counted certain physical activities at a time and place that often appear in newspapers. In essence, the quantification of reports on political events from newspaper sources is similar to the content-analysis method. Searching through public records requires the formation of phraseology or thesauruses that describe the particular type of political action of interest. We encoded only events with political content. We began encoding political events in January 1993, with a group of social-science students in Salzburg and Ljubljana. Encoding ran until September 1993, when we began to verify and clean up the data, completing this work in April 1994. In line with the instructions in the World Handbook (Jodice & Taylor 1983: 8-15), we conducted the encoding process using the index to the New York Times, which we searched using the geographic principle and marked events. Records of events from this index were supplemented by secondary sources that contained a different combination of events or which contained data compiled from national newspapers. These data were drawn from Keesing's Contemporary Archive, Archiv der Gegenwart, Current Digest of the Soviet Press, and (for the period since 1990) from the national newspapers Delo, Dnevnik and Vecer. The data thus arranged was analysed using the time-series method, while their adequacy was verified using tertiary and quaternary sources - historiographical and social science studies or "longitudinal case analysis". Individual profiles are treated as measures of social democratic changes - as those important factors that form the objective dimension of political culture in Slovenia. These events are triggered by subjective and social action, but overwhelm this action, becoming some form of "invariant", a necessary and lawful reality, particularly if interpreted as indicators of social and political stability. Firstly, the profile of protest demonstrations (see Figure 3), which indicates a predominantly irrational although not very violent method of conflict management, shows that this method of conflict resolution in the immediate past - since 1945 - was not very common, although in 1955 and especially in 1987-1990, we see a rising curve of protest demonstrations in Slovenia. 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 1950-1993 Figure 3: Demonstrations A similar situation can be seen in Figure 4, where social riots were the method for resolving social and political tensions and disputes. One interesting conclusion is that the frequency of such events grows in the same historical periods as protest demonstrations. Figure 4: Social riots From 1990 to 1993 (see Figure 5),armed conflict was often chosen as a method for resolving political conflicts. These events represent something objective (undesirable) and entirely different from previous situations in the last fifty years. At the same time, this is also the largest change recorded when the data are viewed retrospectively. 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 1950-1993 Figure 5: Armed conflict The profile of political defeats shows that in future this variable could have a greater influence on the situation in the Slovenian state. From the data in Table 3, it is entirely clear that this type of conflict resolution has become increasingly common in the last five years, and there are even signs that it could become one of the most important methods for more rational resolution of political antagonism. Government measures (see Table 3) are also becoming an increasingly common method and means of attempting to resolve social and political problems in a more rational manner. Traditionally, this was very often used in the past, particularly after 1989. All types of changes of government (see Table 3), except irregular replacement of the executive branch, could be one of the rational instruments for resolving conflicts that could contribute to the stability of the political system. Changes to the executive branch and the frequency of elections are the most common means of changing the government architecture, as are regular replacements of the government, particularly in the period after 1990.There are at least three conclusions that can be drawn from the time-series analysis showing the country profile. Firstly, the social, economic and political changes taking place in Slovenia are very frequent and rapid. The professionalisation of political activity has also advanced in leaps and bounds. Such developments can be considered to be a process of accommodation to the new historical situation and to the challenges of the age caused by major changes in the global economy and politics. Viewed as a whole, this process can be assessed as a positive characteristic of the profile of the Slovenian state, as such transition characteristics convince us that the transition to a more democratic political system - and consequently a more democratic political culture - is happening not in a revolutionary but in a reformist way. The presence and prevalence of rational procedures in resolving political problems could, in the future, contribute to growth in a rational social potential in a newly formed state. This is largely a new move in Slovenian political culture, if we recognise that Slovenia, viewed from a historical perspective, is one of those countries or regions where democratic regimes were defeated on several occasions under economic crisis conditions. We can thus expect that, with the growing capacity of the government to stabilise the political system and preserve the institutions of the democratic political regime, forms of democratic behaviour and democratic political culture will also grow. Secondly, the fairly frequent changes in government and regular replacement of governments in recent years, and the new constitutional charter adopted in 1990 based on the best European democratic tradition, which legalised a proportional electoral system, can be considered positive changes, given the characteristics of the overall profile of the state. In this regard, it is very important to emphasise that there have been no irregular replacements of the government. If we view this data as an indicator of the objective dimension of political culture, we can then reasonably assert that the effective action of state institutions (e.g. the executive branch)can have a decisive influence on the successful transition to a democratic political system. In contrast, the same indicators could strengthen traditional and fragmentary and non-participatory forms in the political orientation of Slovenian citizens, particularly at lower - meso and micro - levels of the social system. The growing role of the executive branch does not lead to greater democratisation of the political system as a whole, viewed over an extended historical period, since at the same time and as a consequence, the roles of other influential factors of political culture decline — particularly the influence and power of civil society actors. In any event, the greater efficiency of state institutions indirectly increases the specific role and relative weight of the subjective dimension of political culture, which is then more likely to lead to more participatory forms of political decision-making at lower levels of the political system and in other social subsystems. Thirdly, the competitive form of conflict resolution unfortunately remains dominant, and this is the main negative characteristic I observed in the data of the Slovenian country profile. It is clear that armed conflict is more often used to manage conflicts than protest demonstrations and social unrest. We have to take into account the fact that the civil war in nearby Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenian independence are objective historical facts that have influenced the current political mindset and actions among Slovenian citizens. We must, therefore, consider the contradiction and discrepancy between the growing role of political freedoms and the growing role of violent conflict resolution as an important determinant that will affect the political culture in the future. Possible neutral, negative and positive effects of individual events during the period of transition to democracy are shown schematically in the table below: Effects / Events Method of conflict Spread of political resolution freedoms Protests / demonstrations - + Social riots + - Armed conflict - - Political defeats - + Government measures 0 0 Changes to government + + Regular replacement of government + + Irregular replacement of government n/a=+ n/a=+ Elections + + Legend: The symbols +, - , 0 indicate the influence of transition variables that can have a positive, negative or neutral influence with regard to the extent of changes in political culture (adapted fromTaylor & Jodice 1993). Table3: Profile of Slovenia based on time series From the results shown in Table 3 we can conclude that political defeats (political deaths), changes in governments, regular replacement of governments and elections are the positive events and effects that best support the spread of political freedoms, but at the same time armed conflict and political defeats are the events with negative impacts that influence irrational conflict resolution and to the largest extent contribute to the dominant competitive form of conflict management in Slovenian society. Such a distribution of the main categories in the country profile leads us to the conclusion that rational forms of political orientation are better supported by the higher than by the lower levels of the political system, while, in consequence, irrational, emotional and ideological orientations are being established and reinforced on horizontal cross-sections of society. These events are not consciously promoted through subjective, inter-subjective and social action of agents of political socialisation, but are rather fostered by the rapidly changing, objective, contradictory and uncontrollable complexity of reality itself. Such characteristics influence the objective, social and historical circumstances that in the future could become the greatest problem for the establishment and consolidation of more democratic forms of political behaviour and action, and (at the same time) a barrier to establishing a survival image of the democratic political regime in Slovenia. The burden of past historical events has a very important influence on the political culture of Slovenian citizens. The lack of a state-forming tradition is particularly important in this context. Discussion and conclusion In future, much work will have to be done in the political culture in Slovenia to demystify and de-taboo certain issues that burden the present. Part of the anthropomorphisation of the physical world is, for instance, the attitude of Slovenes towards their own history and its interpretation. In observing the factors of the general historical background, it appears that their influence on the formation of civic and political culture is both very strong and dispersed. Such factors as historical memory, the consciousness of a shared identity, (the importance of the central region), the share of the periphery, the importance of church history, the period of the emergence of the state, the character of state-forming traditions, the significance of major historical events anchored in the collective memory, and the consolidation of democracy reveal that these heavily burden the contemporary political culture. In Slovenia, these factors are still rather the subject of various day-to-day political disputes and the cause of social disintegration rather than factors of cohesion of the population. Such influence of history on the modern political processes and political culture certainly does not contribute to consolidation of democratic elements in the political culture of Slovenia. The general historical background of a country is also simultaneously a basis that, one way or another, is rooted in the historical consciousness of the population, in the formation of the political culture that represents either an encouragement or a barrier to stable democratic development of the country. The relatively small size of the Slovenian territory, and the dispersed population, the existence of a strong central region, and the large shares of the periphery do not serve to propel development. The formation of historical consciousness was strongly influenced by the counter-Reformation activities of the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, the state was only established in modern times. Because of all of this, democratic forms of governance are still not consolidated. All of these factors strongly affect the subjective dimension of politics and the political culture of citizens and political elites which(without consolidated democratic institutions with their own rationalisation potential) cannot overcome these historical circumstances and features in a very short period of time. Historical circumstances favourable to the development of democracy and the consolidation of democratic institutions usually arise over centuries. External factors of influence represent a similar burden of the past. During the First World War, Slovenes were on the losing side; before the war, they were ruled by the inflexible, absolutist Austro-Hungarian regime. Slovenes were on the winning side in the Second World War, but at the cost of internal political division, which continues to burden daily political life today. Before the Second World War, Slovenia, together with the rest of Yugoslavia, was an economic and agrarian appendage to Germany, while its western region, Primorska, was part of fascist Italy. Consequently, there was very great economic dependence. After the Second World War, Slovenia became the internal market of the Yugoslav state, and its economic development became dependent on central planning within that federation. Even after 1991, Slovenia was still very economically dependent, as some 70% of economic trade was linked to the countries of western Europe (the European Union), while the dominant ideology continued to support a pattern of value orientations that is more exclusive than inclusive. The two ideological "supersystems", Marxism and Catholicism, continue to compete for dominance. In the 20th century, the state was indirectly or directly involved in all major military conflicts in Europe, and in 1991 it fought for its independence using military force. All of this contributed to the formation and preservation of non-democratic, competitive forms in resolving political conflicts and reduced the rational potential of mass and elite political culture. Issues associated with certain ethnic minorities, such as the Roma, are mystified and rendered taboo, while issues associated with gender and sexuality, often in connection with the special rights of women, such as abortion rights, remain mystified. The relationship to authority itself remains taboo, as people in Slovenia mostly continue to fear authority, which they see as something high above them and unreachable, and they often curse it. Vlado Miheljak aptly described Slovenes' attitude to authority when he said: The average Slovene is convinced that it's all lies, corrupt, spoilt. In the eyes of the public, all businesspeople are tycoons, all bankers breach confidentiality, all judges have sold their souls, all doctors are negligent or overpaid, all teachers are unmotivated, all priests (with perverse exceptions) are paedophiles, all politicians are paragons of evil etc. In short, the whole system is corrupt and broken (2009). Such value and emotional attitudes towards the social and political system, democratic institutions and the actors of political life are far from a rational, considered attitude to the social environment, and to authority in particular. It is almost a view of politics and the whole system that conceals rather than reveals or discloses real social conditions, with people almost thinking that the world of Slovenian society and politics is dominated by imaginary, supernatural forces that would have to be summoned for help. Questions of attitudes towards mass media, and crimes from the recent and remote past fought over now by one ideological-political force in Slovenia or the other, are taboo, and it is almost forbidden to talk of social revolution and historical revolutions, without which it is impossible to understand the past, let alone today's fights and conflicts. And so it goes on. We should therefore in the future modernise the whole economic, cultural, political and social subsystems, as often emphasised by France Bučar, and put the right people in the right places in Slovenia. In the future, we will have to act according to Socrates' and Marx's principle that society will only be successful when it elects qualified people. The division of labour in Slovenia continues to be dominated by negative than by positive personnel selection. There is considerable clientelism, corruption and cliquishness. Perhaps it would be wise to repeat what Anton Trstenjak said of Slovenian society. He emphasised the following characteristics of the Slovenian "modern man": a) a tendency towards alienation instead of originality; b) a tendency towards assimilation as a consequence of smallness and poor historical experiences (Illyrianism, pan-Slavicism, Germanisation, Hungarianisation, Italianisation, Yugoslavism etc.); c) inactivity and indiscipline due to forced collectivisation and industrialisation and the process of proletariatisation of the agricultural population; d) loss of traditional values (honour etc.), the bearer of which was always agriculture; e) levelling and uniformity of regional characteristics into a pan-Slovenian character, which is the only positive acquisition; f) heroism in WWII has still not replaced the subservient character of Slovenes; g) the banditry of "hajduci", which is associated with the traditional justness (pravdarstvo, pravdaštvo) among Slovenes and is a special characteristic of the non-autochthonous "mass consumer culture" and "materialistic acquisitiveness". Trstenjak concluded his analysis as follows: 'There is certainly no doubt, we have activated modern man, so that he is dangerous to himself and to the whole world' (Trstenjak 1986: 704). Thus, he writes about the "bordef' character of Slovenes: Even during the old Yugoslavia, there arose among Slovenes a Yugoslav consciousness, stressing that Slovenian is a dialect and not an independent national language. It is probably in the character of a nation, particularly the Slovene nation, to tend towards imitation, adaptation and mingling with other nations... Slovenes are a "border" nation, al- most a majority live in the "border region", where they adapt to others (Trstenjak 1986). In the present era, in a Europe without borders, the future challenge will be to ensure that Slovenes form their own nation state, one that is internally multicultural and externally intercultural and European. 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Povzetek Dosedanje raziskovanje politične kulture v Sloveniji je pokazalo, da prevladujejo tradicionalni vzorci političnega delovanja in so zaradi tega norme politične kulture še vedno in pretežno objektivno determinirane. Nadaljnje ohranjanje takšnega tradicionalnega načina družbenega in političnega delovanja in komuniciranja, ki močno vpliva na način družbenega in političnega odločanj a, lahko tudi v prihodnosti odločilno vpliva na niz najpomembnej ših političnih odločitev, ki jih bo potrebno sprejeti na nacionalni ravni. Rezultati opazovanja vseh treh razsežnosti politične kulture kažejo, da v Sloveniji skokovito narašča družbena kompleksnost, posebno še v prehodnem obdobju, kar prispeva k nadaljnjemu naraščanju nestabilnosti političnega sistema. Takšna nestabilnost predstavlja objektivno oviro za njegovo konsolidacijo in demokratizacijo, saj bi le na osnovi konsolidacije političnega sistema lahko narasla tudi specifična vloga in pomen subjektivnih dejavnikov politične kulture. Nekatere značilne poteze racionalizacije in modernizacije političnega sistema, ki sem jih razkril v analizi, bi se lahko razvile še bolj, če jih pri tem ne bi ovirali prevladujoči kompetitivni vzorec razreševanja konfliktov, naraščajoča vloga družbenega in političnega nasilja, antagonistično razmerje med interesi kapitala in interesi dela, zelo nizka legitimnost demokracije ter neizkušeno in ne preveč aktivno volilno telo. Bolj natančno rečeno, ne razpolagamo z nobenimi indici, ki bi kazali na to, da obstaja v Sloveniji neodvisna in avtonomna politična javnost. KLJUČNE BESEDE: politična kultura, Slovenija, časovne vrste, antropologija, demokracija, družbeni nemiri, demonstracije, državljanska kultura IN MEMORIAM: JANEZ KOLENC With great sadness we learned about the death of Janez Kolenc - Vanč, on 11 May 2012. Janez was a kind, warm, tolerant person and a devoted colleague. Slovene Anthropological Society has lost a great scholar and analyst of Slovenian and European politics and one of its most loyal members. The paper, presented here, was accepted for publication months ago and we regret that Janez left us before he could see it published, but we take it as an honour to present his last work to wider public and pay tribute to his memory. May you travel well, Janez. Socialisation and gender bias at the household level among school-attending girls in a tribal community of the Kalahandi district of Eastern India Suchismita Mishra Sambalpur University, suchismita44@gmail.com Deepak Kumar Behera Sambalpur University, behera.d@gmail.com Bontha Veerraju Babu Indian Council of Medical Research, babubontha@gmail.com Abstract This study reports on gender bias as a result of the socialisation process among schoolattending girls of Sabara, a tribal community living in the Kalahandi district of the eastern Indian state, Orissa. The study is based on both qualitative and quantitative data collected from 60 parents and girls aged 8-14 years, who have brothers in the same age range. These data were collected on gender bias in the home, which is a key part of the on-going socialisation process.Gender stereotyping is found to be deeply rooted in the families' social structure. This study reports the parents' attitude and various restrictions are imposed on girls with regard to mobility and social relations, which are not found for their male counterparts. During menstruation, seclusion and other restrictions must be observed by girls. They are socialised at an early age towards household chores, including taking care of young siblings. The socialisation process installs in the minds of the girls that they are inferior and subordinate. Thus, the whole socialisation process results in the deprivation of various opportunities for girls in this community. KEYWORDS: children, gender, Orissa, socialisation, tribe, Sabara Introduction Socialisation is a rational process and its objective is to build gender identity (Crespi 2003). Gender socialisation is a more focused form of socialisation; it is how children of different sexes are socialised into their gender roles (Giddens 1993) and taught what it means to be male and female (Morris 1988). Though the Indian constitution grants equal rights to women and men, strong patriarchal traditions persist and manifest themselves in different ways. In most Indian families, a daughter is viewed as a liability, and she is conditioned to believe that she is inferior and subordinate to men. Sons are idolised and celebrated (Coonrod 1998). Children are always referred as "builders of the nation", but many children are deprived in various ways accessing various opportunities of life. This is especially true in case of the tribal girls, who constitute a considerable part of the total population. The socialisation process of society perpetuates the self-sacrificing, self-pitying and submissive images of girls. This is because they are socialised in such a way, and the over-protective nature of parents and society sometimes adversely affect the girl. The subordination of girls is responsible for the socialisation process that emphasises the pre-ordained role that she will assume as an adult. The implications of such unequal treatment result in limiting the opportunities and choices that girls may have, both in the present and in the future (Kotwal & Gupta 2006). Though there is no dearth of literature on gender bias in India, only a few studies have exclusively dealt with this problem, particularly among tribal societies. This paper is concerned with understanding of different dimensions of gender socialisation, and analyses how the gender socialisation process leads with the different parameters of the relationship between the society and the child, which results in gender discrimination in various prospects of the lives of girls. This gender-based study deals with the life of school-attending girls of the Sabara tribe inhabiting the Kalahandi region of Orissa, one of the underdeveloped regions of India. Methodology The present study was conducted in five villages of the Gourdchhendia area in the Kalahandi district, which lies in the western part of Orissa, an eastern Indian state. The total area of the district is 8,197 square kilometres and its administrative headquarters is Bhawanipa-tna. This study is done in Gounchhendia grampanchayat, which is approximately sixty kilometres from the district headquarters. Grampanchayat, the lowest administrative unit, consists of acluster of villages and hamlets. Gourdchhendia grampanchayat consists of five villages/hamlets (Khursliguda, Belguda, Chikli, Kandulbandh and Goundchhendia), which are predominantly inhabited by the Sabara tribal community. The Sabara tribe is called by various other names, including Saur, Sora and Saura, etc. They have a racial affinity to the Proto-Australoid type and their physical features resemble those of the aborigines of central and southern India. Sabara constitute 6.26% of the total tribal population of Orissa and rank third in size among the 62 tribes of Orissa (Census of India 1981). The sampling was done by selecting Sabara families. Four schools exist in the study area, two of which are upper primary schools, and two are middle English schools. The criteria of inclusion of families were: having at least two children in the family, one boy and a girl, and both should be in the age group of 8-14 years. Another criterion is that both children must be attending school or one of them may be a dropout. Thus, 60 families were included in the study, with their prior consent. The girls and the parents of the child were taken as respondents. The data pertained to various issues of socialisation in the family related to the sample respondents (girls) and brothers of sample respondents were collected from the girls by interviewing them alone. Interviews were also conducted with the parents of these children. The first author has spent considerable time in the community, and observations were made on several related issues. Standard methodology is adopted during collection of these data (Pelto & Pelto 1978). All the ethical guidelines and suggestions were followed while undertaking the interviews with children (Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health 2000). Results The opinion of parents on the equal treatment of boy and girls in the family was obtained (Table 1). Of the 60 parents, only 18 (30%) opined that girls should get equal treatment in the family, while 70% of parents justified the discrimination against girls. Girls' age Opinion of parents on whether or not they treat daughters equally with sons Yes No 7-9 years 8 (30.77%) 18 (69.23%) 10-12 years 7 (31.82%) 15 (68.18%) 13-14 years 3 (25.00%) 9 (75.00%) Total 18 (30.00%) 42 (70.00%) Table 1: Distribution of sample girls in terms of their age group and parent's opinion regarding providing equal treatment in the family Table 2 illustrates the responses of girls in terms of restrictions imposed on them and their brothers. Around 62% of girls reported that their parents imposed restrictions on Age Restriction imposed Strict Neutral Liberal Sampled girls 7-9 years 10-12 years 13-14 years Total 18 (69.23%) 10 (45.46%) 9 (75.00%) 37 (61.67%) 6 (23.08%) 8 (36.36%) 3 (25.00%) 17 (28.33%) 2 (07.69%) 4 (18.18%) 0 (0.00%) 6 (10.00%) Brothers of sampled girls 7-9 years 10-12 years 13-14 years Total 10 (52.63%) 3 (12.50%) 0 (0.00%) 13 (21.67%) 7 (36.84%) 8 (33.33%) 3 (17.65%) 18 (30.00%) 2 (10.53%) 13 (54.17%) 14 (82.35%) 29 (48.33%) Table 2: Distribution of sample girls and their brothers in terms of their age group and restriction imposed on them them against 22% of responses for the restrictions on respective brothers of the respondents. These restrictions are more among the higher age groups of girls. The situation is just opposite in case of boys. The degree of restrictions decreases as the age of boys increases. The qualitative data also revealed that the parents of a girl are always vigilant regarding her clothes, social relations, behaviour, habits, etc., and that they restrict girls in each and every sphere. However, these restrictions are not imposed upon their brothers. Behaviour that is acceptable for boys is considered inappropriate for girls. Girls' sitting, standing, talking, interacting gestures are also considered important. Girls should not talk loudly; they should not stand with their hands on their hip. Generally, their standing gestures/postures should not look odd, or others will comment that they stand like a male. Girls are often rebuked for rushing to a place, jumping or running, etc. It was observed that a girl should be docile in manner and perform household duties very promptly and graciously. She should not laugh loudly. Such a girl in this community is called a Lakshmibanti (the girl who possesses wealth like Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth). If she stands or runs like a boy or has similar gestures, she is called andirachandi (like a man). In contrast, if the boy possesses a loud voice, has a long stride and stands straight, then he is termed "strong and bold". It is also observed that the restrictions are imposed on girls who attained puberty. Menstruation is taken as a period where various restrictions are imposed, as people think that this period is impure. When the girl begins to menstruate, she should not show her face to the male members of the family for three days, and she will be secluded. On the first day of menstruation, the girl has to take bath and wash her hair. She should sleep on the floor in a corner of the house where nobody touches her. During these three days, she is restricted from touching water and other utensils and also prohibited from going to places where their deities are placed. The girls who have attained puberty are considered impure; thus, they cannot help in religious activities. They cannot hold up kalasa (an earthen pot which carry water to bath the deities or sprinkle water on the deity). The question of time of maturity in case of a male child does not arise. Girls are considered as mature after their first menstruation, which occurs between the ages of 10 to12 years. So, the girls are mature at a very tender age. However, boys are considered mature when they obtain work and earn money, which usually happens after the age of 20 years. It is thus, pertinent to emphasise that these types of practices treat the girls as impure and inferior, which results in the low self-perception of the girls. After puberty, girls are restricted from playing with boys. Moreover, the parents usually do not allow girls to play games in which activities like jumping and running are involved. There are also some constraints in space and time, e.g. they should not stay outside home after evening, they should not go alone around the fields in the lean season time when there is no agricultural activity, they should not go alone to the weekly markets, etc. The restrictions that are defined by time and space result in the girls remaining inside the four walls of their house and helping their elders in household chores. The adolescent girl has to inform her parents about her movements outside the house. If she comes late her parents question her. The parents perceived that this period is the most crucial period for the girls; if anything goes wrong, there will be a problem arranging her marriage. However, such types of restrictions are not imposed upon boys. Girls are dressed according to their age and their parents' choices. Small girls in the pre-pubertal stage can wear any clothing their parents buy for them; however, after puberty the girls are restricted to wearing dresses or skirts that fall below the knees. After the age of 13 years, the majority of girls wear saris, covering the whole body. In their local term, a Dangiritukel (a grown-up girl) should wear a sari. Boys wear whatever they choose, buying whatever clothes they want at the market. From the childhood, girls are encouraged to do the household chores, such as washing dishes, cleaning the house, cooking food, collecting water from the nearby ponds or tube wells, collecting firewood, taking care of the younger siblings, taking care of cattle, etc.; they should know about agricultural activities. Boys are encouraged to look after fields, cutting firewood, and to do work outside home, such as marketing, metal working, repairing agricultural tools, etc. After puberty, many parents withdraw their girls from school, with a view that they have sufficiently matured and they should take care of the house. In this area, not all villages have schools and parents do not allow their girls to go out of their village for schooling. The attitude of parents on the inheritance of property in this community is not favourable to girls (Table 3). Parents of only four of the 60 girls (6.67%) opined that parental property should equally be shared to sons and daughters. The remaining parents are of the opinion that daughters should not have rights to parental property. Girls' age Attitude regarding the inheritance of parental property to daughters Yes No Undecided 7-9 years 2 (7.69%) 23 (88.47%) 1 (3.84%) 10-12 years 1 (4.55%) 19 (86.36%) 2 (9.09%) 13-14 years 1 (8.33%) 11 (91.67%) 0 (0.00%) Total 4 (6.66%) 53 (88.34%) 3 (5.00%) Table 3: Distribution of sample girls in terms of their age group and parents attitude regarding the inheritance of parental property Discussion This study shows that boys are considered to be necessary, both socially and religiously, because having a son is considered to be old age security and only he has the right to perform last rites of his parents. It reveals the importance of age-old tradition with regard to son preference, which is common in Indian society (Khan & Prasad 1983). Deogaon-kar and Deogaonkar (1991) stated that in some tribes a girl does not get a share from her father's property, and it is hypothesised that the traditional Hindu method of succession was adopted by the tribal communities. A study showed that the taboo on women touching and using the plough in tribal societies has been seen as a way of denying women a control over the means of production i.e. land (Kishwar 1987a; b; c; Nathan 1997). In most Indian families, women do not own any property in their own names, and do not get a share of parental property (Sen & Shiva Kumar 2001). This study also provides similar results about boys' importance in inheriting parental property. Many scholars pointed out that in several countries parental preferences for sons over daughters is found (Freedman & Coombs 1974; Vlassoff 1976; Cleland, Verrall & Vaessen 1983). There are some traditional boundaries for girls in this tribe. They are subjected to various rules and regulations both inside and outside home. This community is patriarchal and hence the females are subjected to control by the males. This socialisation process forces girls to remain suppressed and to feel themselves to be inferior and subservient under male power. Human beings are not normally solitary individuals. The whole process of social conditioning demonstrates that the personality, from its simple beginning to its entire complex manifestations in adult behaviour, is the product of the influence of group pressures and social customs upon the individual (Malhotra & Sharma 2001). Ramana and Rao (1999) stated that parents feel that they are training their daughters to be effective homemakers and it is considered that the normally accepted gender stereotype for a girl is to take upon domestic responsibilities. Boys are looked on as inferior if they remain within the four walls of the house; in contrast, it is expected that the girls should take all the traditional female roles within the home perfectly. Thus, the socialisation process installs orthodoxy and stereotypes in the minds of children. Families are responsible for preparing the girls to play the typically feminine roles of a daughter, wife and mother. Hence, they are suppressed and made to forget their own identities. The domestic activities of the girls are viewed as women's work, i.e. done by women only. This segregation of tasks by gender leads children to think that some tasks are for more males and some are more females (Witt 1997). Therefore, at a very tender age, girls have to do the household activities. The parents think that it will help the child in the future and that boys will want girls who can do more work, i.e. the girls who are most desirable are those who can does a lot of work both outside and inside home. In domestic chores, parents sometimes expect children of different genders to perform different kind of tasks (Basow 1997). Parents are the primary influence on gender role development in the early years of one's life (Kaplan 1991; Miller 1987; Santrock 1994). This view is supported by Saraceno (1988), who stated that the family is the social and symbolic place in which difference, in particular sexual difference, is believed to be fundamental and at the same time constructed. Thus, gender-based prejudices and economic hardship both operate on girls, depriving them of enjoying their childhood. Using land size as an indicator of household welfare for rural families, Bhalotra and Heady find that girls' farm labour actually increases with household welfare in Pakistan and Ghana. A similar effect is not found for boys (Bhalotra & Heady 2003). From childhood, a girl sees her mother's contribution to the family. She finds that her mother perform the household duties alone, after giving food to everyone she takes the food at last as have occupied lower position as compared to the male members of the family. She always keeps her head down in the family's decision-making process. Girls observe the modesty and submissiveness of their mothers in the family environment. Thus, she understands the socialisation process and trains herself accordingly. This view is supported by Marinova (2003), who stated that the first lessons children receive from their mothers are usually heavily influenced by the same stereotypical thinking. An infant enters the world without knowledge of rules or relationships among people. Between infancy and adolescence, society's basic expectations and limitations are imparted to the child in a complex series of processes generally referred to as socialisation (Malhotra & Sharma 2001). Socialisation practices lead to gender discrimination; females are taken less seriously by their counterparts even in the areas in which they outdo men (Malhotra 1974). Girls are socialised early into household chores and to look after younger siblings. In the absence of her mother, all household burdens are imposed on her. She finds very little time for her personal affairs. The household works are considered to be "women's work". Gender stereotypes are related to cognitive processes, because we have different expectations for male and female behaviour (Crespi 2003). In the study families, most of the females are working in agricultural fields on daily wage basis. In the absence of their mothers, the girls have to look after all the family household works; they have no option for rest, even if they are ill. It is well-established that working long hours in economic activities or household chores can adversely affect children's health and education (International Labour Organisation 2004). Puberty and attaining menarche lead to many taboos on the movement of girls. Many parents withdraw their daughters from schools just after attaining the puberty and restrictions are imposed on their movements. From this study, it is clear that although girls do not constitute a minority group in the family, they are forced to adhere to the features of minority group, i.e. inequality and being denied the right to live on par with boys. They are accorded lower status and denied equal autonomy with boys. They are considered inferior to the boys, and are never permitted to live according to their wishes. Conclusions Gender stereotypes are pervasive in contemporary Indian society (Hetherington & Parks 1999). The socialisation process gives much priority to her future than to the present. A girl is trained to be a good wife at a very young age and parents are expected to get them married as early as possible. The widespread prevalence of gender bias in all spheres of life is a reflection of the deep-rooted gender inequalities that persist throughout India. This is due to male patriarchy, a system of male dominance legitimised by the family and the society through superior rights, privileges, authority and power. Parents justify the household level discrimination against girls. The desire for a male child to continue the family lineage, the expectation of old age security for parents and the inheritance of property in favour of boys, etc. are responsible for discrimination against girls, which is the major hindrance for their overall development. Girls are restricted at every moment of their life and deprived of opportunities like education; they are even deprived of a chance to enjoy their childhood. Socio-religious practices and the entire socialisation process condition girls to believe that they are inferior and subordinate to men. Tribal women in general, and in comparison with caste women, enjoy more freedom in various walks of life. However, the present findings reveal the truth that girls are even more disadvantaged than boys, even in the tribal context. Bibliography Basow, Susan A. 1992. Gender Stereotypes and Roles. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. Bhalotra, Sonia & Christopher Heady. 2003. Child Farm Labour: The Wealth Paradox. The World Bank Economic Review 17: 197-227. Census of India. 1981. Census of India 1981, Series-I India. New Delhi: Registrar General and Census Commissioner. Cleland, John G., Jane Verrall & Martin Vaessen. 1983. Preference for the Sex of Children and their Influence on Reproductive Behaviour. World Fertility Comparative Studies No. 27. Washington D. C.: National Academy Press. Coonrod, Carol S. 1998.Chronic Hunger and the Status of Women in India. New York: The Hunger Project. Crespi, Isabella. 2003. 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Kaplan, Paul S. 1991. A Child's Odyssey. St. Paul: West Publishing Company. Khan, M. E. & Chivukula Venkata Subrahmanya Prasad. 1983. Family Planning Practices in India-Second All India Survey. Baroda: Operations Research Group. Kishwar, Madhu. 1987a. Toiling without rights. Economic and Political Weekly 22(3): 95-101. Kishwar, Madhu. 1987b. Toiling without rights. Economic and Political Weekly 22(4): 149-55. Kishwar, Madhu. 1987c. Toiling without rights. Economic and Political Weekly 22(5): 194-9. Kotwal, Nidhi & P. Gupta. 2006. Reasons for School Dropouts among Rural Girls. Kurukshetra: Journal on Rural development 55 (1): 20-1. Malhotra, Kapila A. & Anita Sharma. 2001. The Influence of Social Norms and Gender in Learning. Journal of Community Guidance and Research18(2): 247-56. Malhotra, Dalip Kumar. 1974. An Experimental Study of Problem Solving Behaviour as a Function of Personality, drive and practice. Doctoral Thesis. Chandigarh: Punjab University. Marinova, Jivka. 2003. 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Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. 2000. Guidelines for the Ethical Conduct of Medical Research Involving Children. Archives of Disease in Childhood 82(2): 177-82. Santrock, John W. 1994. Child Development. Madison: Brown and Benchmark. Saraceno, Chiara. 1988.Sociologia della famiglia. Bologna: II Mulino. Sen, Kalyani Menon & A. K. Shiva Kumar. 2001. Women in India: How Free? How Equal? Report commissioned by the Office of the Resident Coordinator in India. New Delhi: United Nations. Vlassoff, Carol. 1976. The Value of Sons in an Indian Village: How Widows See It. Population Studies 44: 5-20. Witt, Susan D. 1997. Parental Influence on Children's Socialization to Gender Roles. Adolescence 32(126): 253-9. POVZETEK Študija obravnava spolno pristranskost kot rezultat socializacijskega procesa med šolo obveznimi dekleti plemenske skupnosti Sabara, ki živi v okrožju Kalahandi vzhodnoindijske države Orissa. Študija temelji na kvalitativnih in kvantitativnih podatkih, zbranih med 60 starši deklet, starih med 8 in 14 let, ki imajo brate podobne starosti. Zbrani so podatki o spolni pristranskosti kot ključnim delom dolgotrajnega socializacijskega procesa. Spolna stereotipizacija je globoko ukoreninjena v družbeni strukturi družin, študija pa kaže na odnos staršev in različna omejevanja mobilnosti in družbenih odnosov, katerim so dekleta podvržena, njihovi bratje pa ne. Med menstruacijo se morajo dekleta osamiti in se podvreči tudi drugim omejitvam in že v rani mladosti so socializirane v gospodinjska opravila in skrb za mlajše brate in sestre. Socializacija deklicam vcepi občutek manjvrednosti in podvrženosti, zaradi česa je mogoče socializacijo v tem primeru razumeti kot prikrajšanje deklet za različne priložnosti v tej skupnosti. KLJUČNE BESEDE: otroci, spol, Orissa, socializacija, pleme, Sabara CORRESPONDENCE: BONTHA V BABU, Indian Council of Medical Research, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi, India. E-mail: babubontha@gmail.com. Depression - a socio-cultural way of manifesting women's psychological crises Nevenka Podgornik Faculty of Advanced Social Studies, nevenka.podgornik@fuds.si Abstract In the context of the anthropology of health, in this article depression is discussed as the most common form of the manifestation of women's psychological crises. The outline of the history of such crises indicates that we should search for commonalities between depression and hysteria in the comprehension and understanding of the phenomenon as well as in the reinforcement of the unequal relation between the genders and stigmatisation. The classic feminist theoretical starting points for the understanding of women's social status in this article are completed by the analysis of ethnographic material that illustrates and confirms the theoretical statements about the androcentric construction of the modern Slovenian social space and the relations in it. KEYWORDS: anthropology of health, depression, hysteria, women's mental health, androcentric culture Introduction From the beginning of modern psychiatry, the gender stereotype discourse was supplemented by a medical discourse. The result of the mutual intertwining is visible in the phenomenon of hysteria. In the 19th century, women's hysteria became the most visible product of psychiatric help. Within the medical theories, on the basis of the distinction between the emotional and passive woman and the rational and active man, the belief in the labile and unhealthy female nature and the strong and healthy male nature was introduced. The fact that the function of the binary structure between the two genders also works within the concept of mental health is shown in the work of Brovermann and her colleagues (Brovermann, Brovermann, Clarkson, Rosenkrantz & Vogel 1970). The research took place among American therapists who spoke about their conceptions about a psychologically healthy man, a psychologically healthy woman and a psychologically healthy adult. The research results confirmed that the images of a psychologically healthy man and woman follow the stereotypical images of masculinity and femininity in today's European and American societies. If a psychologically healthy man is active, rational, psychologically stable, a psychologically healthy woman is more passive, emotional and labile. The therapists' answers about their idea of a psychologically healthy adult were the same as the answers about their idea of a psychologically healthy man. A healthy adult man has to be sufficiently aggressive, active, controlling, and strong and without fear; he has to control his emotions and has to follow his purposes. In contrast, a "psychologically dysfunctional" man had a great deal of the qualities that were earlier attributed to a psychologically healthy woman (passivity, too much sentimentality, irrationality, adventurism, feelings of fear and weakness, no aggressiveness, and no dominance). The qualities composing the stereotypical female image can also be a starting point for the search of a man's psychological problems; the concept of the psychological health within the psychiatric-medical and psychotherapeutic practice is regulated to the cultural stereotype of a healthy man (Zavirsek 1991: 19-20). Psychiatry's politics, as a part of the social control's apparatus, strengthens the normal/abnormal, health/illness with the specific sexual diagnosis that is shown in an output of different criteria and on the basis of which the woman comes into a psychiatric institution. The division and the valuation of the genders in the opposition of better-worse means an imminent stigma that is carried by the gender stereotypes, regarding which the stigma stays in a latent form, as shown by Goffman (1981), in negative stereotypes; it activates itself with an individual's wilful determination in personal interest. Goffman's theory of the stigma emphasises that the stigma is a discrediting identity in which the "abnormal" difference covers all the other characteristics and marks them to the extent that puts the owner of this attribute in an inferior position in society. It is a relationship that is dependent on society's normative expectations. The stigmatisation process, in which the stigma realises itself in the form of a negative identity, is almost inevitable within the medical model. Society's image of a mental illness, as well as of psychiatry, has a negative influence on the individual's self-image. Society responds to someone who is labelled as a mentally ill person in accordance with the stereotype and judges all his actions through this stereotype's prism. The stigmatisation becomes an additional source of degeneration for mentally ill persons in our society. The history of hysteria Hysteria, the woman's illness, allegedly caused by a wandering uterus, was known in ancient Egypt. The uterus was living organism whose movements were indicated by different diseases and symptoms: eye problems, ear problems, toothaches, speech impediments, menstrual anomalies, neck pain, etc. Women with these kinds of problems were treated with herbs, baths, inhalations, massages and magical-religious techniques in order to return the wandering uterus to its normal anatomical position. The conviction of the wandering uterus persevered until the 2nd century, when the conception of hysteria (the name comes from the uterus's anomalies, hysteria, the Greek word for the uterus) appeared for the first time in Hippocrates's texts, where it is mentioned in an observation about asphyxiation caused by the uterus. He defines hysteria as one of women's most common diseases, especially typical of infertile and sterile women, young widows and old virgins. In Hippocrates's opinion, the two main causes of a wandering uterus were the lack of moisture and peculiarities in the menses; the symptoms of the disease depend on which organs the uterus touches and puts pressure on (the liver, the stomach or the head). A woman could lose the ability to talk, but the greater danger was asphyxiation. Hippocrates's sexual aetiology of hysteria was also shown in his therapeutic procedure; for curing the disease, he prescribed entering into marriage and a pregnancy, and as a support to these therapies also a forced fixing of the uterus, its cleaning and moistening (Braun1988: 35-6). Plato also followed Hippocrates's tradition for whom the moving and the wandering of the uterus was caused by an unrealised maternity. The uterus longs for and wants a baby, the non-realisation of its natural need releases a plethora of female diseases (ibid.: 45-7). The theory of the wandering uterus and its animal nature was contested by Soranus and Galen, although they were still connecting the causes of hysteria with the uterus. For Soranus, the best remedy for hysteria was pregnancy; other therapies that he suggested were walks and gymnastics, reading aloud and vocal exercises, baths and nutrition. Galen labelled hysteria as a completely somatic disease; he prescribed sexual intercourse, because (in his opinion) sexual abstinence was dangerous, especially to young widows and single women (ibid.: 36). At the beginning of the 17st century, Edward Jorden, an English doctor, developed a new theory about vapours that rise from the uterus to the head and that way damage memory and intelligence, and cause blackouts, which are symptoms of hysteria. According to this theory, hysteria began to be treated as a disease that needs therapeutic treatment (consultancy, etc.). Hysteria also began to be attributed as the cause of melancholic mental states characteristic of virgins, nuns and widows. Even in the 17th century, the therapy recommended for these women was matrimony, because melancholy was caused by illegitimate intercourse, sexual abstinence, life in a convent or virginity (ibid.: 47-8). Hysteria's appearance among men become possible to appear when Charles Lepois (1563-1633) designated it as a nervous disease whose cause can be found in the head; its principal symptom being pain in the head (ibid: 50-1). Sydenham, an English doctor, saw the causes for hysteria in the emotional instability, which is shown in the physical symptomatology (ibid: 49). Hysteria thus became a mental disease. In the 18th century, the causes for hysteria were finally transferred to the head, and it found its place among many other diseases that fit the concept of neurosis. At the end of the 18th century, hysteria was consequently transferred to psychiatric hospitals. The second half of the 19th century was characterised by discussion about the simulation of hysteria. A hysterical woman was a liar and her hysteria a non-disease, because she was just simulating it. Hysterical women were considered the subjects of their own disease. Jean-Martin Charcot, a French neurologist, disputed the concept of lying hysterical women and attempted to prove the cause to be excessive suggestibility and loss of one's own will, which are the caused by a damaged psyche. He organised theatrical performances in the Salpetriere psychiatric hospital, where female patients showed the symptoms valid at that time. Charcot affirmed that the automatic reflexes of the nervous system activated a hysterical formation of the symptoms that originated in a trauma. He believed that these reflexes loosened under hypnosis, causing muscle cramps, contortions, screaming and scolding, hallucinations, insensitivity to the touch and the complete incapacity of sensory comprehension with all that have been under hypnosis. In his opinion, hysteria was an inborn disease; therefore, he recommended that hysterical mothers be separated from their children, especially from their daughters, and vice versa hysterical daughters from their mothers (ibid.: 56-62, 446-51). Later, Charcot's student, Sigmund Freud, developed the theory that hysterical symptoms were the result of a conflict between the individual's social and ethical standards and her unsuccessfully repressed needs. The ideology of woman's hysteria is a typical social construct that was put into effect in the 19th century. With the capitalistic ways of production, professional and private spheres had become separated at that time. The work that needed to be done in the family circle, to make it function normally, belonged to women, who were to ensure the on-going stability of functions, such as taking care of everyday life, giving birth and educating children. The women who had these roles had some positive qualities attributed to them, such as kindness and sacrifice for others. However, women were considered more prone to diseases and to pathological kinds of behaviour because of their sensitivities. This image of woman was quickly grasped by the culture-forming institutions of that time, which consolidated the conviction that women, because of their specific nature, are prone to develop women's diseases, among which hysteria was primary. Hysteria, which has been connected with women more frequently than men, started to be treated by psychiatry in the end of the 19th century; it had been determined to be a women's disease with scientifically proven evidence, and it was treated and studied in this sense. The anthropologist Darja Zavirsek states that the branched hysteric symptomatology in the medical and non-medical records suits a defined social reality. Furthermore: The objective definition of hysteria never existed, it always depended on the social reality and on the fact how was the woman and the woman's body looked at by people who took the right to write about and to define it (1990: 182-3). Hysteria in the Slovenian territory In this way, some Slovenian women also "became hysterical"; their hysteria was attributed to their gender, followed by ideological discourses about the 'perfect mother' that prevailed in the Slovenian territory in the 19th century. The initial medical, church and laic discussions about female hysteria were mixed with deliberations about nervousness. The doctor Edvard Savnik (1877) explained women's predisposition to nervousness as originating in the gender's difference regarding the different number of sensory receptors. The smaller female body contains more receptors, especially if the woman prevails over the man, which causes the agitation of the woman and of her imagination. Savnik saw the cause of the female nervousness in women's lifestyles. The nervousness caused by the abandoning of the physical health care, doing work that belonged exclusively to the male domain, causing an overwhelming agitation of the woman's receptors, which led to nervousness and other mental disorders. Moreover, giving birth was also dangerous for women. Their emotional and labile nature posed many dangers, from which they could be saved only by men. Among all the causes that could trigger a disease Savnik mostly cited heritability, too much or too little food, the influence of coffee, tea and alcohol, a non-hygienic dwelling, uncontrolled passions, overly difficult work, children's education, religious ecstasy, etc. In this way, Savnik started the Slovenian discussion of nervousness that continued with the deliberation of different authors about hysteria and mental disorders. Some years later, Fran Gostl (1893)saw drunkenness as one of the basic causes of insanity causing the epilepsy in men and hysteria, epilepsy, and pathologies in menstruation and pregnancy, in women. In line the women's natural predisposition to diseases and insanity, Arnsek (1926) introduced the idea of men with some external symptoms that show the danger of an unhealthy young woman and a bad bride. In Arnsek's opinion, the nature of a person and a healthy soul are reflected in the eyes, the face and the body. He also asserted that: a well-formed robust bony cheek, a particularly lower jaw comparing to the skull indicates the lack of a woman's spiritual life... A crooked figure, a crooked mouth, a crooked walk, a curved writing (now left, then right, then up) indicates a crooked, inconsequential, cunning, capricious thinking and a nature full of internal opposites. From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, the discussion about women ranged from the adoration of the women and their mission to warnings against their cunning, their inclination towards infidelity, their secrets and sensitivity. A cultured woman, the holder of the ideal female nature has to suppress her passions, to suppress her emotions, to have control over her body and soul. Typically, such malice was applied women's diseases. Many people thought that a woman's hysteria was caused by her single life,which does not enable her to satisfy her sexual desires, or by an unhappy married life. Most frequently, hysteria was seen as manifesting itself in women that had hysterical mothers. The priest Skubic (1909) also acknowledged other, social causes of hysteria, besides heritability, like a bad education and an early leaning toward sexuality. He warned priests and doctors about the danger shysterical women. He described them as frequently inclined to suggestion, domineering, anxious, of unsteady temper and mainly desirous of attention. He talked about hysteria as a both disease and a simulation. He thought that hysterical women exaggerated, lied and simulated disease to gain their doctor's and priest's attention. Arko (1935) also followed this ambivalence, because in his opinion hysteria wasa hereditary disease, caused by the inflammation especially of the woman's genitals, by poisoning, fear; but he also deemed hysterical women to be lying fakers. Arko also introduced a description of hysterical attacks of the Charcot type, composed of different occurrences that point to hysteria. The most common being blinking, snorting, yawning, hiccupping, sneezing, stammering, muteness, vision and hearing hallucinations, vomiting, trembling, dizziness, fainting, cramps, rapture, anger and delirium. In Slovenia, the definition of hysteria also depended on the observer's perspective, which is why we cannot talk about an objective, scientific definition of hysteria as a state of disease. Definitely, throughout the history of hysteria women become the main objects of control. They were expected to care for morality, children and housekeeping. Later, these cares started to become increasingly determined as "female" and as having an important role in women's mental health. Depression and other traditional forms of mental suffering's manifestation in the context of gender stereotypes and medical discourses of current psychiatry In line with societal expectations, bound to gender, there are also acceptable forms of the manifestation of psychological crisis. Within the regular gender roles and the determined cultural context, depression and other forms of mental anguish manifestations, especially addiction, become an answer to the personal distress and anguish. In Slovenia, there are two culturally acceptable examples of manifesting emotional distress: excessive consumption of alcohol, and suicide1 or attempted suicides. The most common diagnosis among men is alcoholic psychosis, while among women neurosis and depression prevail. Therefore, it is about the forms of the manifestation mental suffering that are attributed to women and that, with its forms, emphasises a typical woman's behaviour. Such manifestations are the consequence of the woman's socialisation and of the latest life experiences connected with it. Women expresses their personal dissatisfaction with silent, inconspicuous women's behaviour. In the Western world, depression is considered a "woman's diagnosis". The research done in Ljubljana's psychiatric hospital confirms this, stating that among all the patients with depressive symptomatology, 83.2% were (84 patients) and 16.8% male (17 patients) (Zavirsek 1994: 199, 202). The forming of depressive mental states is influenced by aggravating, traumatic life incidents, and (according to the data of different research) they are the main cause in more than 85% of cases. Disappointment in the family, marriage disputes, a change of the place of residence or working place, a disease or the death of a family member, financial problems or the loss of a certain social status - in 30% of the cases these kinds of events are the precursors of a mental disorder, according to the research of Brown and Harris (1989) who focused on the causes of the mental disorders. They showed that the type of event does not determine the period of illness as much as the meaning the person affected attributes to it and its subjective transformation. The research showed that a woman who has a strong, intimate relationship with her husband, relative or friend is less susceptible to depression than a woman who does not have this kind of support in a relationship. The meaning of satisfying relationships, a strong and abundantly intertwined social net, is increasingly indicated as being the basis of strong mental health. The study of the Italian anthropologist, Donatella Cozzi (1992), reveals the causes of depression in women who live in the Slovenian populated province of Karnija. This 1 Hanging is still the most common form of suicide in Slovenia, followed by poisoning and drowning, especially among women. province was marked by a century of emigration caused by poverty. The people leaving were mostly men who returned home after a few years of work in foreign countries. Because of this situation, the culture of Karnija is based on the women's physical work in the fields, producing crops and dairy-farming. Consequently, throughout Italy people believe the image of the physically strong women from Karnija. Recently there have been some sudden lifestyle changes, states Cozzi, which is why the women's role in this environment is changing, while the traditional values are still very strong. The women in Karnija express depression, the extreme version of women's emotional state, as physical pain. They express their distress as tiredness, inability to work, headaches or lower back pain. This is a somatisation of the psychological distress, defined differently by every culture. This kind of expressing problems (with tiredness or body weight) is the most acceptable and consequently the more common. People from Karnija think that an emotional expressing of the problems (with anger or agitation) is not appropriate, while the tiredness is culturally acceptable. Cozzi is convinced that this culture defines a woman as one that has to keep her moral posture, for this reason she cannot directly express her problems. In this context, depression obtains different, additional meanings. Social pressure is very strong, because all the social reproduction forms - the care for the children's education, agriculture, animals and different artisanal work - are on the woman's shoulders. She is the cultural guarantor for a society's continuity, but she has no authority, which is why she persist in this situation. The only culturally acceptable way of expressing her dissatisfaction and problems is tiredness, which manifests itself through physical pain. Among the adult female population in Slovenia, alcohol addiction is very common, in addition to physical pains (especially headaches). In the alcoholic section in the Centre for Mental Health in Ljubljana, there were four times more men than women among the first treatment for alcohol addiction. Among the women admitted for the first time, alcoholism was at second place, following neurotic disorders (Zaviršek1994: 199). It is impossible to talk about a specific type of alcoholic, because the problem of alcohol addiction appears in different age brackets and the different social and economic conditions in which the women live. Alcoholic women are subjected to different social, emotional and physical risks than men. It is necessary to emphasise that differences remain between the genders in the field of alcoholism and drug abuse, because a man's drinking is often tolerated, whereas for a woman it is strongly criticised. The research demonstrates that women drink because of different reasons than men. Women's alcoholism is connected to their emotions, and to concrete events in their lives, their pasts and life patterns, that they acquired while growing up, to the inferior role of women in the family and the society, and to traumatic experiences in their childhood and adolescence. One addiction frequently intertwines with another. Alcohol and pharmaceutical additions2 are frequently connected to eating disorders. Food, coffee, cigarettes and tranqui-lisers are substances women are more frequently addicted to, especially because they are 2 In Slovenia women in particular consume regularly all kinds of pharmaceuticals. Most commonly, they are medicines that reduce anxiety and internal tension, and painkillers (Zmuc Tomori 1995: 36). socially acceptable. Food addiction (food refusal, excessive eating, binging and purging, and the combinations thereof) have many individual causes in the opinions of experts: searching for one's identity, compulsory control of feelings and sensations, achieving better results, corresponding to an ideal body-form, etc. We can conclude that somatisation, which manifests itself in chronic "illness",3 is a more socially acceptable way of manifesting the emotional dissatisfaction. Manifesting daily dissatisfactions with addictions, attempting suicides, etc. is less stigmatising than other forms of psychiatric diagnosis. Regarding the cultural characteristics connected to traditional ideas about health and illness, physical illness is socially more acceptable than emotional distress that (in the experiences of the psychiatric services users) especially brings stigma. On the method My ethnographic work was based on an important principle of qualitative methodology - to research people as individuals, groups and communities as totality in their real context. A holistic view of a person can see single aspects of a person's operation in connection with the whole human action. People's experience and behaviour are inseparably connected to the environment, creating a social-cultural context. The context includes the individual's past, because if a person's history is known, we can understand the phenomena occurring in her life as a totality. The life story enables the researcher to see the social world from the social agent's point of view, which can refute the presumptions and prejudices of external observers. In my research, I explored the individuals' subjectivity, their special and different ways of experiencing their life situation, and the interpretation of the event's meanings and behaviour. Mainly, I wanted to discover their relations with the important questions about their lives, their distress and strategies for controlling their burdensome life situations. Regarding the qualitative research, the method used for gathering the empirical material is the questioning method; in one case, there is also a personal journal, i.e. a personal unofficial document. I used a non-structured or partially structured interview, a so-called open interview. This technique made it possible for the interviewees to structure the interview by themselves, to indicate what was important to them. They told their stories with their interpretations and with their addition of values and this enabled my understanding of the complex continuity of their life stories and the connection between their hospitalisation and their life events. I limited the study to patients of the Clinics for Mental Health in Nova Gorica and in Tolmin. I carried out the interviews with the prior approval of the National Medical Ethics Committee, in Ljubljana. The women cooperating in the medical discussion had obtained a diagnosis for depression and they were hospitalised in a psychiatric clinic. The selection, which is coincidental within the stated limits, confirmed that middle-aged women are more susceptible 3 The medical terminology (disease, disorder) reinforces the stigmatisation of the differences and accentuates the biological component of the arisen problems, which is why we place it within quotation marks. to psychological distress because of a lack of emotions, a small social network outside the family circle, and bad intimate relationships. Otherwise, the women I included in my research did not belong to a homogeneous group. They came from different social levels and groups; they had different professional statuses, marital statuses, etc. Sixteen interviews were not sufficient to demonstrate a representative pattern, yet they did add some knowledge to the social and emotional status of the female users of psychiatric and psychosocial services. On the general findings The stories of the interviewees4 are stories of loss, suffering and limited opportunities. They are stories about a lack of encouragement, self-confidence, a negative self-image, about numerous burdens and losses in the daily life. The identification with the concept of womanhood caused a feeling of inferiority, guilt, incompetence, uselessness to many women, which aided the occurrence of emotional distress. The basic starting points for the development of the symptoms diagnosed as depression are a negative self-image with a low self-confidence and self-esteem. Among the totality of their life events, they spoke most frequently of their economic problems, social jeopardy, loneliness, lack of quality intimate relationships, loss of a loved person, war experience, rape, and illnesses. They frequently spoke of hard work, material poverty and unpleasant family situations, and the loss of life objectives.5 From the written stories, we can understand that the depression is frequently caused by a traumatic event such as the loss of a loved person, physical violence as a traumatic event, the surgical removal of the breasts, the feeling of loss after a hysterectomies and similar surgeries. It is linked to the social experiences and the social realities in which these women live, along with sudden losses, social and emotional deprivation. Their psychological suffering is the expression of difficult life conflicts, such as overloading, division between work outside and inside home, a sense of inferiority, disagreements in a marriage and in a family, rape, psychological and physical violence, etc. These stories indicated that the social status is correlated to the level of probability that the person becomes a victim of mental stress. The more these people were being socially undervalued, the greater the possibility they had to experience depression. Research shows that the people who are more prone to becoming mentally stressed particularly include elderly people, poor people, women and some ethnic minorities. The combination of stigmas also contributed to social exclusion. Most frequently, it was about unwed mothers, poor women, those of another nationality, and also users of 4 We are introducing just a rough socio-anthropological perspective of the stories, which represents interesting material for psychotherapeutic analysis.. 5 The psychiatric diagnosis augments the initial distress; it additionally stigmatises the person, subordinates her socially and economically and by doing so it prevents her social inclusion, which is essential for the preservation and restoring of her mental health. By that we mean the inevitability of a disability retirement. Brown and Harris' study about depression among women (1989) states that a paid job is one of the four protective factors against depression. A paid job increases the possibilities for gaining self-confidence and a sense of self-esteem, a sense of safety, and it enables greater opportunities for social contacts. a psychiatric hospital. Among the users, the ones with uncertain social status, belonging to the middle and lower classes prevailed. Their social network was small and barely interconnected; most frequently, it was composed of family members. They mostly searched for an emotional support outside the family circle, among the few friends they had. Their stories have proved every time that it would have been easier for them to surmount their distress with other's social and emotional support. The somatisation of everyday suffering as a socially more acceptable manifestation of emotional dissatisfaction's was typical of the women that took part in the research. The interviews showed that people usually manifest their dissatisfaction in culturally acceptable forms of behaviour. Different cultures manifest their suffering and stress in different ways; their methods of solving difficult life situations6are also different. Women expressed also their mental suffering in a culturally and sexually acceptable way, within legitimate social limits; they adjust their mental distress to a certain social-cultural environment.7 A message about what is right, wrong, acceptable and what is desired instils the ideals of a culture already in a child; this is indicated in the ways of surmounting crisis - they represent a specific sexual manifestation of distress.8 These individual stories uncovered the psychiatry's users' needs. They would need different community services that would help them change their burdening social situation. At the same time, a question emerged of whether psychiatric institutions' services within the established medical model are really adequate for the women's specific problems and needs.9 Most of the interviewed women returned to the psychiatric clinic according to the syndrome of "revolving doors" - they had been hospitalised before but just for several short periods. Many of them noticed that people changed their attitude towards them when they heard that theyhad been hospitalised - they were stigmatised by the institution's social status itself. The stories of these women show that patriarchal relations in Slovene society still predominate and that a woman's role determined by society is the role of a mother and wife, caretaker and caregiver. Most of the women run the household by themselves, without help. Many of them realise themselves through housekeeping and they identify with their role of housekeeper. Most of the interviewed women had (in addition to their unpaid care work) production jobs and jobs ascribed to women and their "nature", such as 6 The culturally acceptable forms of mental disorder's manifestation in Slovenia are alcohol abuse and suicide attempts. This is why on the level of biomedical classification in Slovenia one of the most common diagnosis among men is psychosis and neurosis and depression among women. Hysteria as a woman's diagnosis was substituted by depression (Zavirsek1994: 40-1). 7 A person adjusts her problems to the cultural norms and behaviour patterns and also to the regular sexual behaviour within a definite social group in a culture. A culturally defined behaviour pattern like depression is attached to the female sex; it develops different sexual ideologies and it causes many women with an acceptable behaviour pattern to identify and to adjust the psychical distress expressions to it (Zavirsek 1993: 104,105). 8 The women cited crying, sleeping, resting, tablets and isolation as the most important acts of surmounting crisis situations. 9 The discussions with these women showed that their needs are not always merely pharmacological. sales clerks, hairdressers, nurses, cookers, teachers, cleaning ladies, etc. Some of them also grew up on farms, where the patriarchy as a characteristic of the traditional country society in Slovenian countryside and has not yet completely disappeared among country folk. Conclusion The androcentric view of the world was changing gradually through history based on three basic cultural discourses; the greatest role was played by the Judeo-Christian tradition with its idea of a sexual and inferior woman and a superior man, created in God's image. This kind of view is a typical social construct which passed on, with the appearing of industrialisation, the division between man and woman qualities to a capitalistic form of production, where women again received an inferior status compared to men. Furthermore, women's problems in modern society area double strain. By endeavouring for equality with men, they managed to enter the sphere of paid jobs but they still have all the duties that traditionally belonged among their responsibilities, i.e. taking care of the household and the family. Household chores remain a woman's primary responsibility, in a marriage women have less validity and power than their husbands.10 The sources we followed in this work showed that the structural inequality between the genders still exists. It is reinforced by a patriarchal ideology that reproduces the structural inequality with out a cknowledging a care job as being productive. Problems, solved with feminist social theory, which are defined as the cause of personal and interpersonal conflicts, proved to be effects of the patriarchal ideology within the wider social context. They are a manifestation of determined social relationships between women and men in a patriarchal society. Women's mental problems are closely linked to the social role of today's woman, which is a set of past educational patterns and reinforced external expectations, as indicated in this work. In Slovenia, among the women's mental health problems, there are different forms of depression that predominate as a reflection of the stressful burdens and of overloaded women in the personal, familial and employment field. The most frequent answers to women's personal distress and suffering are drug abuse and other forms of addiction. They manifest their mental suffering with forms that are attributed to women and are the consequence of socialisation and later life experiences connected to it. Women express their personal dissatisfaction within the regular sexual roles and the determined cultural context, which proved true also for the interviewed women. They adjusted the expressing of psychological distress to a determined socio-cultural environment and to acceptable behaviour patterns. Hysteria, as a part of the cultural deliberation about women, from the 19th century onward, became a model of the gender's perception and it reinforced the belief about woman's natural predisposition for diseases. However, as a psychiatric diagnosis along 10 Research on conjugal roles - the studies done by the sociologists about who does what at home, the number of working hours and the study of the power (decision-making) in a marriage - showed that the pattern of a woman's double burden continues, but the share of men in the entire household is rising. The women in relationships are confronted with the lack of influence on important decisions (especially financial ones) (Haralambos & Horborn 1999: 372-4). with the symptoms, it still expresses a misogynistic attitude towards everything that can be defined as "female". One of the effects of the patriarchal ideology and the androcentric view of a woman's needs is the psychiatric medical discourse. The historic memory is preserved in the forms of patriarchy and sexual stereotypes, which can be found in medical descriptions, diagnosis and "treatments". The medical treatments11 are one of the effects of the patriarchal ideology and the androcentric view of the needs of women who search for help. The medical advices do not consider the social dimensions of everyday life; they are based on the stereotypical convictions of the woman's role in the family and society. Traditional psychosocial services generally do not consider the social context in which the person lives. We can criticise the Western medical model for neglecting the psychosocial component, stigmatising a person and the treatment's elements (psycho-pharmaceuticals, etc.). Frequently, traditional psychiatry denies the connection between the everyday events and the hospitalisation. However, anthropology of health defines medical treatment as a social practice, which realises new psychosocial services that consider the individual's social context, the differences between genders, and the connection of personal and social realms. Through the life stories of women who have had medical treatment, it was possible to view the need to consider the social context in which they lived and the meaning of social factors. Caution must also be taken regarding interlacing the meaning of negative factors, such as the class one belongs to, the patriarchal sexual pattern, national belonging, physical violence, and a long period of living in threatening and stressful relationship. These are the basis of the women's mental health problems, which is why they have to be recognised and considered in a medical treatment as causes of a mental disorder. Anthropology of health has brought us through the basic concepts and discourses, such as gender and culture, to the characteristics of the human social systems, to the values and the manifestation of pain. In addition to its position regarding health and disease, it also made it possible to consider the views of the society and culture in which we are. 11 In the long-term, the medical model is considered as the less efficient, to which people return again and again, by the syndrome of revolving doors. The results of a psychiatric hospitalization are numerous iatrogenic injuries: addiction to medicines, lifelong stigmatisation, reduced self-esteem and self-confidence, consolidation of a false-self, repression of an authentic feeling and expression, changing relationships with the family members, with friends, changing relations in a job and the loss of life goals (Lamovec1995: 34). References Arko, V. 1935. Histerija [Histery]. Zadrugar 19(10). Amšek,Andrej.1926. 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Ljubljana: Fakulteta za družbene vede. Žmuc Tomori, M. 1995. Slovenija pred Pekingom: Varovanje zdravja žensk [Slovenia before Beijing: Protecting women's health]. Ljubljana: Vlada Republike Slovenije, Urad za žensko politiko. POVZETEK V kontekstu antropologije zdravja v članku obravnavamo depresijo kot najbolj pogosto obliko manifestiranja psihičnih stisk žensk. Oris zgodovine histerije pokaže, da gre med depresijo in histerijo iskati določene podobnosti, tako v pojmovanju in razumevanju pojava kot tudi utrjevanju neenakega razmerja spolov in stigmatiziranja. Klasična feministična teoretska izhodišča razumevanja družbenega položaja žensk v članku dopolnimo s predstavitvijo raziskovalnega dela - izsledki etnografskih materialov, ki ilustrirajo in potrjujejo teoretske ugotovitve o androcentrični skonstruiranosti sodobnega slovenskega družbenega prostora in odnosov v njem, KLJUČNE BESEDE: antropologija zdravja, depresija, histerija, duševno zdravje žensk, androcentrična kultura CORRESPONDENCE: NEVENKA PODGORNIK, Faculty of Advanced Social Studies, Kidričeva 9, 5000 Nova Gorica, Slovenia. E-mail: nevenka.podgornik@fuds.si. Body height and its estimation utilising arm span measurements in Montenegrin adults Du{ko Bjelica University of Montenegro, sportmont@t-com.me Stevo Popovi} University of Montenegro, stevop@ac.me Miroslav Kezunovi} University of Montenegro, miroslavkezunovic@hotmail.com Jovica Petkovi} University of Montenegro, jovicapetkovic@t-com.me Gregor Jurak University of Ljubljana, gregor.jurak@fsp.uni-lj.si Pavel Grasgruber Masaryk University, centrum74@gmail.com Abstract The unusual height of Montenegrin inhabitants of the highland region has been recognised by European anthropologists more than 100 years ago. In light of rather sparse recent scientific literature, the purpose of this research study was to examine the body height in both sexes of Montenegrin adults nowadays. Furthermore, the relationship between arm span and body height, which varies in different ethnic and racial groups, was used as an alternative to estimating the body height for some groups of the population. The nature and scope of this study analyses 285 students (178 men, aged 20.97±2.44 and 107 women, aged 20.86±2.63) from the University of Montenegro. The anthropometric measurements were taken according to the protocol of the International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry (ISAK). Means and standard deviations were obtained. A comparison of means of body heights and arm spans within and between the sexes were carried out using a t-test. The relationships between body height and arm span were determined using simple correlation coefficients and their 95% confidence interval. A linear regression analysis was then performed to examine the extent to which arm span can reliably predict ANTHROPOLOGICAL NOTEBOOKS 18 (2): 69-83. ISSN 1408-032X © Slovene Anthropological Society 2012 body height. The results have shown that male Montenegrins are 183.21±7.06 centimetres tall and have an arm span of 185.71±8.17 centimetres, while female Montenegrins are 168.37±5.27 centimetres tall and have an arm span of 168.13±6.58 centimetres. Comparing the results with other studies has shown that both sexes of Montenegrins make Montenegro the second tallest nation in the world, while arm span reliably predicts body height in both sexes. However, the estimation equations that have been obtained among the Montenegrins are substantially different than in all other populations, since arm span was close to body height: in males 2.50±4.15 centimetres more than the body height and in females 0.24±3.88 centimetres less than the body height. This confirms the necessity for developing separate height models for each population on account of ethnic differences. KEYWORDS: prediction, standing height, stature, arm span, Montenegro Introduction The Republic of Montenegro covers an area of 13,812 sq. kilometres and borders Albania, Kosovo (as defined under UNSCR 1244/99), Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and the Adriatic Sea in the south-west of the Balkan Peninsula. According to the 2011 census (Monstat 2011), the population of this area numbered 620,029 inhabitants: 50.61% are women, and 49.39% are men. The main features of the ethnic structure of the population of Montenegro areas follows: 44.98% of the population are Montenegrins, 28.73% are Serbs, 8.65% are Bosnians, and 4.91% are Albanians, etc. It is interesting to compare the results of the most numerous ethnic groups to the results of the 1981 census. The population living in the same area in 1981 numbered 68.54% of Montenegrins and 3.32% Serbs, while "Bosnians" did not exist as a category at that time; they were referred to according to their religion, i.e. "Muslims". However, these differences were not caused by some great migrations, as it might seem at first sight. It is the result of the ideological sentiments of a number of citizens of Montenegro, who changed beliefs during the difficult and turbulent time of the 1990s. Thus, it is important for this research study to underline that most of Montenegro's population has the same origin and the variations of their ethnicities are the outcome of the ideological concepts and their religious affiliations. When populations share a genetic background and live in the same environmental conditions, the average height is frequently characteristic within the group; for this reason, the authors consider all people who live in Montenegro to be Montenegrins. The unusual height of Montenegrin highlanders is a fact recognised by European anthropologists more than 100 years ago. A sample of 800 Montenegrin men measured by Robert W. Ehrich (Coon 1975) at the beginning of the 20th century gave the highest average in all of Europe (177 cm), with some districts approaching 178 centimetres. Furthermore, a more recent study conducted by Pineau, Delamarche, & Bozinovic (2005) showed that the male population of the Dinaric Alps is on average the tallest in the whole of Europe. Thus, this study has challenged many scientists to believe that Montenegrins are still the tallest population in Europe. This assumption was supported by the fact that many Montenegrin males did conform to standard Dinaric specifications, but were all taller than most Dinarics elsewhere. According to data collected by Coon (1975), Montenegrin males were taller than people from Herzegovina (175-176 cm), Bosnia (171-174 cm) and the coastal zone stretching from Istria to Dalmatia (166-171 cm). However, the problem is that, unlike most other countries, Montenegro keeps poor records and this assumption could not be proven thus far. Pineau et al. (2005) also contributed to an update of average body heights among European populations. Although this study does not contain the exact data of the Montenegrin population, it represents the most recent study related to the average body height of modern Montenegrins. Pineau et al.'s investigation showed that, contrary to the general belief, the male population of the Dinaric Alps is on average, the tallest in the whole of Europe. With an average height of 184.6 centimetres in 17-years old males (still with unfinished growth), they were taller than the Dutch of the Netherlands who had been regarded as the tallest population in Europe with 184 centimetres on average. It is also interesting to add that the female population in the Dinaric Alps, with an average height of 171 centimetres comes a close second to females in the Netherlands (Pineau et al. 2005). It is well known in scientific literature that the measurement of body height is important in many settings: it is an important measure of body size and gives an assessment of nutritional status (Datta Banik 2011), as well as an important measure of determination of basic energy requirements, standardisation of measures of physical capacity and adjusting drug dosage, and evaluation of children's growth, prediction and standardisation of physiological variables such as lung volumes, muscle strength, glomerular filtration and metabolic rate etc. (Golshan, Amra & Hoghoghi 2003; Golshan, Crapo, Amra, Jensen & Golshan 2007; Mohanty, Babu & Nair 2001; Ter Goon, Toriola, Musa & Akusu 2011). However, the exact body height cannot always be determined the usual way because of various deformities of the extremities or in patients who have undergone amputations or similar injuries. In such circumstances, an estimate of body height has to be derived from other reliable anthropometric indicators, such as hand and foot lengths (Agnihotri, Agni-hotri, Jeebun & Googoolye 2008; Agnihotri, Purwar, Googoolybe, Agnihotri & Jeebun 2007; Kanchan et al. 2008; Rastogi, Nagesh & Yoganarasimha 2008; Sanli et al. 2005), knee height (Fatmah 2005; Hickson & Frost 2003; Karadag, Ozturk, Sener & Altuntas 2010), length of the sternum (Menezes et al. 2009; Menezes et al. 2011), vertebral column length (Nagesh & Pradeep 2006), sitting height (Fatmah 2005), length of scapula (Campobasso, Di-Vella & Introna 1998), arm span (Aggrawal, Gupta, Ezekiel & Jindal 2000; Datta Banik 2011; Fatmah 2005; Hickson & Frost 2003; Jalzem & Gledhill 1993; Mohanty, Babu & Nair 2001; Ter Goon et al. 2011) as well as cranial sutures (Rao et al. 2009), skull (Bidmos 2006; Bidmos & Asala 2005), and facial measurements (Sahni et al. 2010) etc. Therefore, all these anthropometric indicators that are used as an alternative to estimate body height are very important in predicting age-related loss in body height, for example, in identifying individuals with disproportionate growth abnormalities and skeletal dysplasia or body height loss during surgical procedures on the spine (Mohanty et al. 2001), as well as predicting body height in many older people, as it is very difficult to measure it precisely, and sometimes impossible because of mobility problems and kyphosis (Hickson & Frost 2003). According to all mentioned above, the authors believed it would be reasonable to find the effectiveness of using various body indicators in estimating body height in the Montenegrin population because of their specific anthropometrical characteristics, such as very long legs, very high trunks and sitting height, correspondingly large chests and extremely low relative span, as well as short arms (Coon 1975). Several studies have reported the effectiveness and reliability of using various body parameters in predicting body height and arm span (Hickson & Frost 2003; Jalzem & Gledhill 1993; Mohanty et al. 2001; Ter Goon et al. 2011). However, the associations of arm span and body height was found to vary in different ethnic and racial groups (Brown, Feng & Knapp 2002; Reeves, Varakamin & Henry 1996; Steele & Chenier 1990). Even though several studies of this nature are available on western populations, very limited data is available on Montenegrin subjects. In the light of rather scarce recent scientific literature, the purpose of this study was to examine the body height in both sexes of Montenegrin adults and the relationship between arm span and body height. Methods The nature and scope of this study encompassed 285 students (178 men and 107 women) from the University of Montenegro as subjects. This group was chosen because the growth of an individual ceases by the time a person enters university and there is no age-related loss in body height at this age. The authors have also believed this sample could fairly represent the whole population of Montenegro, as students were admitted into the University of Montenegro regardless of geographical residence and socio-economic status, or ethnicity. The average age of the male subject was 20.97±2.44 years old (range 18-36 yrs.), while the average age of the female subject was 20.89±2.63 years old (range 18-37 yrs.). It is also important to emphasise that the authors could not accept students with physical deformities that could affect body height or arm span, and that those without informed consent were excluded from the study. Another exclusion criterion was being non-Montenegrin (two participants were excluded from the data pool). Accordingly, the authors purposely selected the students from the Faculty for Sport and Physical Education at University of Montenegro as they believed that most of them would be eligible to participate in the study; this is the only faculty for sport and physical education in Montenegro that brings together students from all parts of Montenegro. According to Marfell-Jones, Olds, Stew & Carter (2006), the anthropometric measurements, including body height and arm span were taken according to the protocol of the International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry (ISAK). A trained anthropometrist, whose quality of performance was evaluated according to the ISAK Manual prior to the study, performed these measurements(the same one for each measure). The age of the individuals was determined directly from their reported date of birth. The body height is the perpendicular distance between the top of the head (the vertex) and the bottom of the feet. It was measured using stadiometer to the nearest 0.1 centimetres in bare feet with the participants standing upright against the stadiometer. The respondents had to put their feet together and move back until their heels touched the bottom of the stadiometer upright. Their buttocks and upper part of their back were in contact with the stadiometer upright, but their head did not have to touch the stadiometer. The respondent's head had to be in the Frankfort horizontal plane. This was achieved when the lower edge of the eye socket (the orbitale) was horizontal with the tragion. The vertex was the highest point on their head, otherwise the respondents had to raise or lower their chin until it was in the Frankfort horizontal plane to align their head properly. The arm span is the anthropometric measurement of the length from the tip of the middle fingers of the left and right hands when raised parallel to the ground at shoulder height at a one-hundred eighty degree angle. It was measured using a calibrated steel tape to the nearest 0.1 centimetres in bare feet on a level concrete floor with their upper backs, buttocks and heels against the wall providing support. The participant's head was also in the Frankfort horizontal plane and the arms were outstretched at right angles to the body with palms facing forwards. The measurement were taken from one middle fingertip to the other middle fingertip, with the tape passing in front of the clavicles while two field workers supported the elbows. The measurements were taken twice, and an average of the two readings was calculated. When the two measurements were within 0.4 centimetres of each other, their average was taken as the best estimate for the true value. When the two initial measures did not satisfy the 0.4 centimetres criterion, two additional determinations were made and the mean of the closest records was used as the best score. The analysis was carried out using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 10.0. Means and standard deviations (SD) were obtained for both anthropometric variables. A comparison of means of body heights and arm spans within and between the sexes was carried out using a t-test. The relationships between body height and arm span were determined using simple correlation coefficients and their 95% confidence interval. Linear regression analyses were then performed to examine the extent to which arm span can reliably predict body height. Finally, these relationships were plotted as scatter diagram. Statistical significance was set at p<0.05. Results A summary of the anthropometric measurements in both sexesis shown in Table 1. The mean of the arm span for male subjects was 185.71±8.17 centimetres, which was 2.50±4.15 centimetres more than the body height and statistically significant (t=3.093, p<0.002); for female subjects it was 168.13±6.58 centimetres, which was 0.24±3.88 centimetres less than the body height and statistically insignificant (t=0.291, p<0.771). The sex difference between body height and arm span measurements was statistically significant (body height: t=18.80; p<.000, and arm span: t=18.87; p<.000). Subjects Body Height Range Arm span Range (Mean±SD) (Mean±SD) Male 161.6-201.5 156.0-206.0 (183.21±7.06) (185.71±8.17) Female 156.9-182.2 152.0-184.7 (168.37±5.27) (168.13±6.58) Table 1: Anthropometric measurements of the population The simple correlation coefficient and their 95% confidence interval analysis between the anthropometric measurements are presented in Table 2. The relationships between body height and arm span are high and significant in the sample, regardless of sex. Subjects Correlation 95% confidence Significance Coefficient interval p-value Male 0.861 0.817-0.900 <0.000 Female 0.809 0.735-0.866 <0.000 Table 2: Correlation between body height and arm span of the study subjects The results of the linear regression analysis are shown in Table 3. The first of all models was derived by including age as a covariate. However, it was found that the contribution of age was insignificant and therefore age was dropped and estimates were derived as a univariate analysis. The high values of the regression coefficient signify that arm span significantly predicts body height in both Montenegrin sexes. Subjects Regression Standard R-square t-value p-value Coefficient Error (SE) (%) Male 0.861 0.033 74.2 22.499 0.000 Female 0.809 0.046 65.4 14.079 0.000 Table 3: Results of linear regression analysis where the arm span predicts the body height The relationships between arm span measurements and body height among the above models is plotted as a scatter diagram. ♦ 20D_ *. ** V * • H .z&dS£> • F i i i i i 160 170 180 190 200 Body height (cm) Figure 2: Scatter diagram and relationship between arm span measurements and body height among both sexes Discussion and conclusion Although there was some hypothesis that Montenegrin males are the tallest male population in all of Europe, which has not been proved yet because of poor records, this study contributes to a very important update of average body heights among Montenegrin males and females. The results proved that Montenegrin males are very tall with an average of 183.21 centimetres but this is not the tallest in Europe. It does not come close to 184.6 centimetres documented by Pineau et al. (2005) and 183.8 centimetres of the Dutch male population measured in the last nationwide survey in 2010 (TNO 2010). However, the 183.21 centimetres average height of Montenegrin men is taller than the 181.3 centimetres of Lithuanians (Tutkuviene 2005), the 180.9 centimetres of Serbs (J. Grozdanov, personal communication, 1 December 2011), the 180.6 centimetres of Icelanders (Dagbjartsson, Thornorsson, Palsson & Arnorsson 2000), the 180.5 centimetres of Croats (Juresa, Musil & Tiljak 2012), the 180.4 centimetres of Swedes (Werner & Bodin 2006), the 180.3 centimetres of Slovenes (Starc & Strel 2011), Danes (Statistics Denmark 2011) and Czechs (Vignerova, Brabec & Blaha 2006) and the 141.7 centimetres of the shortest ethnic group in the world, the Mbuti Pygmies (cited in Froment 1993), which would make Montenegro the second-tallest nation in the world. Gender ♦ Male * Female From the other side, the average body height of Montenegrin females was less than it expected. The results proved that Montenegrin females are 168.37 centimetres tall on average but not as tall as the 171.1 centimetres of the female population in the Dinaric Alps (Pineau et al. 2005) and the 170.7 centimetres of the Netherlands (TNO 2010), but still the second tallest nation in the world, according to the available record (unfortunately, some regions of the Dinaric Alps were excluded because of unavailable records). However, there is a hypothesis that both sexes of Montenegrins did not reach their full genetic potential yet, since they have been influenced by various environmental factors (wars, poor economic situation, etc.) in recent decades. Therefore, the authors believe that these circumstances had a negative bearing on the secular trend in Montenegro, while it is expected that the secular changes affecting height will go up in the following 20 years, comparable to developed countries where this trend has already stopped. For better viewing of the average body height around the world, the authors have prepared Table 4 to present a summary of the available recent data for both sexes in European countries as a continent where the tallest people live, while the summary of the data from the rest of the world is sorted in Table 5 (most of the data are from national surveys). Country Average Body Height Source Male Female Belgium 179.5 166.3 DINBelg 2005 Czech Republic 180.3 167.2 Vignerová et al. 2006 Croatia 180.5 166.3 Juresa et al. 2012 England 177.6 163.4 NHS 2009 Finland 178.4 165.2 Peltonen et al. 2008 France 177.8 164.2 InVS 2007 Hungary 177.5 164.4 Bodzsár & Zsákai 2008 Ireland 176.3 163.3 Sproston & Mindell 2006 Island 180.6 167.2 Dagbjartsson et al. 2000 Italy 176.5 162.6 Cacciari et al. 2006 Latvia 177.6 167.1 Gerhards 2005 Lithuania 181.3 167.5 Tutkuviene 2005 Montenegro 183.2 168.3 Present study Netherland 183.8 170.7 TNO 2010 Poland 178.5 165.1 Kutega et al. 2010 Russia 177.2 164.1 Brainerd 2006 Slovenia 180.3 167.4 Starc & Strel 2011 Serbia 180.9 167.3 J. Grozdanov, per. communication 2011 Spain 177.3 164.0 Carrascosa Lezcano et al. 2008 Sweden 180.4 167.0 Werner & Bodin 2006 Turkey 173.6 161.9 I§er¡ & Arslan 2009 Wales 177.0 162.0 Statistics for Wales 2010 Table 4: Average body height in European countries Country Average Body Height Source Male Female Australia 174.8 163.4 ABS 1995 Argentina 174.5 161.0 Del Pino et al. 2005 Bahrain 171.0 156.6 Gharib & Shah 2009 Bolivia 166.6 155.4 Baya Botti et al. 2009 Brazil 170.7 158.8 IBGE 2010 Cameroon 170.6 161.3 Kamadjeu et al. 2006 China 173.4 161.2 Ji & Chen 2005 Egypt 170.3 158.9 El-Zanaty & Way 2008 Ghana 170.0 158.0 Schulz 2003 India 165.2 152.0 Mamidi et al. 2011 Iran 173.4 159.9 Haghdoost et al. 2008 Ivory Coast 171.0 159.0 Schulz 2003 Malaysia 166.3 154.7 Lim et al. 2000 Mexico 168.0 155.3 Del Río Navarro et al. 2007 Mongolia 168.4 157.7 WHO 2007 New Zealand 177.0 165.0 OSHS 1997 Nigeria 167.2 160.3 Ter Goon et al. 2011 Qatar 170.8 161.1 Bener & Kamal 2005 Saudi Arabia 168.9 156.3 El Mouzan et al. 2010 South Africa 168.0 159.0 OrcMacro 2007 South Korea 174.2 161.3 Kim et al. 2008 Sri Lanka 165.6 154.0 Ranasinghe et al 2011 United Arab Emirates 173.4 156.4 Abdulrazzaq et al. 2008 United States of America 176.3 162.2 McDowell et al. 2008 Table 5: Average body height in the rest of the World It is also interesting to note that the high frequency of very tall subjects appears to be characteristic of the Montenegrin males, since 13% measured 190 centimetres or more in body height. If 13% in Montenegro would be compared to 28% in Dinaric Alps, 20% in the Netherlands and only 1.5% in France (Pineau et al. 2005), it would imply that very tall males are still not as frequent in Montenegro as in the Dinaric Alps in general and in the Netherlands. 0.060.050.040.03-0.Q2-^0.01 -g ooo- B S*0 06~ Ü-0 05" 0.040.03002-o oi ooo- Male T1 m 160 170 190 180 Body height (cm) Figure 3: Frequency of body height among both sexes 200 The estimation of body height using various anthropometric measurements has attempted by many authors in many studies over the centuries. As already mentioned, all of them estimated body height from various anthropometric measurements, but it is important to emphasise that the arm span has been derived the most reliable body indicator for predicting the body height of an individual (Mohanty et al. 2001; Ter Goon et al. 2011). However, it must be emphasised that the individual and ethnic variations in respect of body height and its relation with arm span were already observed in European (Reeves et al. 1996) and African populations (De Lucia et al. 2002), while Mohanty et al. (2001) stated that the estimating equation varies from race to race, and ethnic group to ethnic group. In Steele and Chenier's study (1990), the arm span was nearly 8.3 centimetres more than the body height for the black population (105.36% body height), whereas for the white population this difference was only 3.3 centimetres (102.04% body height). Mohanty et al. (2001) have noted in their study that the arm span was nearly 2.5 centimetres more than the body height in South Indian females (101.4% body height), which is similar to that noted in the white population. In Ter Goon et al.'s study (2011), arm span was 5.8 centimetres more than body height for Nigerian males (103.3% body height), whereas for Nigerian females this difference was only 4 centimetres (102.5% body height) which is similar to that noted in the white population. Therefore, the main goal of the present study was to find out if these facts are true for the Montenegrin population, since it is known that the estimating equation varies from race to race, and ethnic group to ethnic group (Mohanty et al. 2001). Hence, in the present study it is also observed that the arm span was 2.5 centimetres more than the body height in males (101.4% body height), while it was 0.24 centimetres less than the body height in Montenegrin female population (99.9% body height). The arm span/ height ratio in Montenegrin males is quite low when compared with other Europeans, and it has obviously not changed in the course of the last century, as evidenced by pre-World War II data cited by Coon (1975). The results of the abovementioned studies are also very similar to the correlation obtained in the present study (men: r=0.861; women: r=0.809). For example, Mohanty et al. (2001) reported that the correlation was r=0.82, while in Hickson and Frost's study (2003) correlation was r=0.86; in Zverev's study (2003), the correlation was r=0.87 for males and r=0.81 for the female population, and in Ter Goon's study (2011) correlation was r=0.83. As the correlation between arm span and body height was high and significant in both Montenegrin sexes, the arm span measure therefore seems to be a reliable indirect anthropometric measurement for estimating body height in Montenegrin adults. Even though these relations are similar, the estimation equations which are obtained in the Montenegrin population (especially in the female population) are substantially different from other populations. Therefore, it is necessary to develop separate models for each population, on account of ethnic differences, using bigger samples for the prediction of body height utilising arm span measurement, as with the sample of this study, as well as some other previous studies (Aggrawal et al. 2000; Hickson & Frost 2003; Kwok & Whitelaw 1991; Steele & Chenier 1990; Ter Goon et al. 2011; Zverev 2003). A more precise estimation of the average body height and its prediction utilising arm span measurements in Montenegrin adults would require a larger sample with sufficient geographical and social heterogeneity or a national survey that measures the whole population. Thus, the obvious limitation of this research study was the composition of the measured sample that consisted of university students. 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Legal Medicine 12(1): 23-7. Sanli, Sultan, Emine Kizilkanat, Neslihan Boyan, Esin Ozsahin, Gulhal Bozkir, Roger Soames, Hamza Erol & Ozkan Oguz. 2005. Stature estimation based on hand lengt hand foot length. Clinical Anatomy 18(8): 589-96. Schulz, Paul. 2003. Wage rentals for reproducible human capital: evidence from Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Economics of Human Biology 1(3): 331-66. Sproston, Kerry & Jennifer Mindell (eds.). 2006. Health Survey for England 2004: The health of minority ethnic groups. Leeds: The Information Centre. Starc, Gregor & Janko Strel. 2011. Is there a rationale for establishing Slovenian body mass index references of school-aged children and adolescents? Anthropological Notebooks 17(3): 89-100. Statistics Denmark. 2011. Statistical Yearbook 2011. http://www.dst.dk/pukora/epub/upload/16218/sy2011.pdf. Accessed on 4 July 2011. Statistics for Wales. 2010. Welsh Health Survey 2009. Cardiff: Welsh Assembly Government. Steele, Marilyn & Thomas Chenier. 1990. Arm-span, height and age in black and white women. Annals of Human Biology 17(6): 533-41. Szollosi, Erzsebet. 1998. Secular trend in Debrecen university students (in Hungarian). Anthropologiai Kozle-menyek 39: 43-51. Ter Goon, Daniel, Abel Lamina Toriola, Danladi Ibrahim Musa & Simon Akusu. 2011. The relationship between arm span and stature in Nigerian adults. Kinesiology 43(1): 38-43. TNO. 2010. Lifelong Healthy and Active - PDF growth charts. http://www.tno.nl/content.cfm?context= thema&content=prop_case&laag1=891&laag2=902&laag3=70&item_id=1141&Taal=2. Accessed on 3 June 2010. Tutkuviene, Janina. 2005. Sex and gender differences in secular trend of body size and frame indices of Lithuanians. Anthropologischer anzeiger 63(1): 29-44. Vignerova, Jana, Marek Brabec & Pavel Blaha. 2006. Two centuries of growth among Czech children and youth. Economics and Human Biology 4(2): 237-52. Werner, Bo & Lennart Bodin. 2006. Growth from birth to age 19 for children in Sweden born in 1981: descriptive values. Acta Paediatrica 95(5): 600-13. WHO. 2007. Mongolian STEPS Survey on the Prevalence of Non-communicable Disease Risk Factors 2006. Geneva: World Health Organisation. Wronka, Iwona & Romana Pawlinska-Chmara. 2009. Childhood environment and adult height among Polish university students. Collegium Antropologicum 33(4): 1039-45. Zverev, Yuriy. 2003. Relationship between arm span and stature in Malawian adults. Annals of Human Biology 30(6): 739-43. POVZETEK Evropski antropologi so nenavadno višino Črnogorcev zaznali že več kot pred 100 leti. V luči redkih znanstvenih študij je namen te raziskave preučiti današnjo telesno višino pri obeh spolih odraslih Črnogorcev in razmerje med razponom rok in telesno višino. Le-to je namreč različno glede na različne etnične in rasne skupine ter predstavlja alternativo določanja telesne višine za določene skupine populacije. Glede na namen je bilo v študijo vključenih 285 študentov (178 moških, starih 20,97±2,44 in 107 žensk, starih 20,86±2,63) Univerze Črne gore. Antropološke meritve so bile izvedene skladno z ISAK protokoli. Izračunane so bile aritmetične sredine in standardni odkloni. Primerjavo med aritmetičnimi sredinami telesne višine in razpona rok za vsak spol in med spoloma smo naredili s t-testom. Razmerje med telesno višino in razponom rok smo določili z uporabo korelacijskega koeficienta na podlagi njegovega 95% intervala zaupanja. Z linearno regresijo smo ugotovili, kako zanesljivo razpon rok napoveduje telesno višino. Rezultati so pokazali, da so moški Črnogorci visoki 183,21±7,06 centimetrov, razpon rok pa imajo 185,71±8,17 centimetrov. Črnogorke so visoke 168,37±5,27 centimetrov, razpon rok pa imajo 168,13±6,58 centimetrov. Primerjava rezultatov z drugimi študijami kaže, da so Črnogorci ne glede na spol drugi najvišji narod na svetu, pri tem pa razpon rok zanesljivo napoveduje telesno višino pri obeh spolih. Vendar pa je enačba med navedenima antropo-metričnima merama pri Črnogorcih precej drugačna kot pri vseh drugih populacijah, ker so vrednosti razpona rok precej bližje telesni višini: pri moških 2,50±4,15 centimetra več od telesne višine, pri ženskah pa 0,24±3,88 centimetra manj od telesne višine. To potrjuje potrebo po razvoju ločenih alternativnih modelov določanja telesne višine za vsako populacijo na podali etničnih razlik. KLJUČNE BESEDE: napovedovanje, stojna višina, velikost, Črna gora CORRESPONDENCE: STEVO POPOVIC, Faculty for Sport and Physical Education, University of Montenegro, Narodne omladine b.b., 81400 Niksic, Montenegro. E-mail: stevop@ac.me. BOOK REVIEWS Fassin, Didier. 2012. Humanitarian Reason. A Moral History of the Present. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. xvi + 336pp. IsBN: 9780520271173. The world of today seems to be perceived as steeped in all kinds of crisis-moral, political, economic, ecological and humanitarian-and as an uncertain place increasingly experienced through notions of risk, deficiency, suffering and injustice. Concomitantly, people understand themselves and their prospects in life through ideas of managing risk. Increasing numbers of individuals and institutions across the globe are organising themselves systematically to provide help in the aftermaths of great natural or man-made disasters. Overcoming one's own precarious situations and, through acts of solidarity and compassion, helping others in similar situations seems to be held up not merely as a moral but also a political imperative. But what does it mean to be moved by other people's predicaments, and to feel obliged and entitled to offer them help in the 21st century? How do the ideas and practices of humanitarian action exert themselves? Can humanitarian actions deliver justice? What does it mean to live and work under various forms of humanitarian governments? Didier Fassin's Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present, aims to offer some answers to these important questions. Fassin's book is a precise and rich depiction of the moral landscape charted by contemporary humanitarian ideas, practices and policies. It analyses how the global order of humanitarianism works in situations of crisis- how it effectively and affectively deals with humanitarian actors, both aid workers (medical specialists, humanitarian bureaucrats, armed forces, etc.) and those that aid workers are trying to help, i.e. victims of poverty, homelessness, unemployment, exile, natural disasters, famines, epidemics and war. Nine nuanced ethnographic case studies situated in France, South Africa, Venezuela, Palestine, and Iraq analyse a range of social contexts tainted and structured by emotions of shame, empathy, frustration, consciousness of the tenuous and by different struggles for justice. The first part of the book is devoted to a detailed political analysis of a specific French relationship with humanitarianism - a relationship shown to be morally and altruistically inspired, politically ambiguous and deeply paradoxical. Fassin looks at various institutional sites and social settings where public morality regarding the management of crisis is being constituted and rehearsed. The book thus contextualises situations where the workings of humanitarian government are most palpable. We read about how the government has set up "listening centres" aiming to reach the underprivileged of the country; how it helps the economically disadvantaged through allocating governmental resources; how it calibrates immigrant status and rights to individuals' physical and mental health statuses, and even sometimes creates special extra-legal structures, such as asylum centres and "waiting zones" to more easily deal with asylum seekers. The second part of the book traces the dissemination of principles of humanitarian government around the world: ethnographies here again dissect various categories of morality and help as applied to, for example, the politics of victimhood of AIDS orphans in South Africa, disaster victims in Venezuela or traumatised adolescents in Palestine. Analysing various narrative, medical, corporeal, military and bureaucratic renderings of humanitarianism, this book has a stake in the enrichment and complexification of humanitarianism as a concept. Fassin questions the wider reasons that have given form to certain kinds of emotional responses to humanitarian interventions, as well as to their practical effects. The book's central insistence is that humanitarian reason occupies a key position in the contemporary moral order. Moral sentiments have become an essential force in contemporary politics, whose discourses and practices are nourished and legitimised by humanitarian morality. Fassin sets on to depict and analyse various strategies through which people in everyday situations attempt to produce, provoke and mobilise emotions of empathy and the moral sentiments required for a humanitarian action. It is in this tension between compassion and repression that the researcher seizes and locates the morality being articulated together with politics. Fassin demonstrates something more than the political deployment of emotion, exploring how the empathy towards others that results in humanitarian work belongs to a constructed, politicised, and morally charged order. Humanitarian reasoning and its practices are never disinterested or unprejudiced. Carefully but revealingly, the book documents all kinds of moral, ideological, and bureaucratic contortions as these warp and structure humanitarian interventions. The book thus questions the often-elicited fantasy of a global moral community that humanitarianism is said to support, and points to the expectations built in the notions that empathy and solidarity have redeeming powers (p. xii). In an analytical fashion that does not minimise the altruistic engagement or reduce the charitable efforts of the individuals, organisations and governments involved in the care of injured, threatened, or jeopardised, the book delves into the tense, unequal, unstable and ambiguous relationships between the help providers and the sufferers. The collection again and again insists that it is problematic to evoke so fluently, in such tragic mises-en-scènes, those places where western generosity and altruism is celebrated for the sake of its effect on the poor. Humanitarian Reason is an extraordinary accomplishment - scrupulous, attentive, and well thought-out. The book further intervenes in a most timely way into the causes and consequences of the often disappointing modern history of peace-building. Carefully examining the moral, juridical, ideological, and economic conditions that allowed military and legal interventions to be understood as humanitarian aid actions, the book challenges the already difficult relationship between humanitarian moral categorisations and their associated political judgements. These complex relationships become even more excruciated, putting in question the conventional attitude of seeing humanitarian intervention as beneficial. This book should be an essential reading for any anthropologist and social scientist dealing with the issues of humanitarianism or the aftermath of conflict or cultural trauma. Equally, it will be a seminal reading for anyone reflecting on problems faced in medical anthropology, the anthropology of bureaucracy, and engaged anthropology. Maja Petrovic-Steger Independent Scholar Anderson, Astrid 2011. Landscapes of Relations and Belonging. Body, Place and Politics in Wogeo, Papua New Guinea (Person, Space and Memory in the Contemporary Pacific Series, Volume 3). New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. 324 pp. Hb.: $95.00 / €55.00. ISBN: 9781845457754. A walk around Wogeo island introduces readers to the important places that recur in daily interactions and myths. The author offers a new perspective on the island's society, relating her Wogeo teachers' ideas about their past in the form of myths and cultural knowledge that have contributed to make their island entity. She not only focuses on place as the essential element in the social relations of belonging, through maintenance of bodies, leadership and house structures; but she also updates Hogbin's ethnographic writings from 50 years earlier on which her own ethnographic overview is based. Her use of a phenomenological approach to social mapping places this ethnography firmly within a new genre of Melanesian ethnography. Anderson brings to light the world of the Wogeo by focusing on landscape images that they use in ordering the flow of their sociality, both practically and metaphorically. Everyday practices are explained in terms of connections and disconnections between the beings and entities in the world, as well as through myths and important cultural figures. Place is a corollary of belonging. Pathways through the space, both real and metaphorical, lead to further understanding of how the land and sea encompass Wogeo thinking about belonging, and distinguish them from their neighbours. The Wogeo, she suggests, welcome Hogbin's and her writings, which will provide guidance to young people in a changing world of Kastom. The author has sought out the subtleties of her main concepts by considering the channels of relationships between the landscape and social relations. As people move around the island, and as she herself visited villages beyond Dab where she was based, they closely follow cultural prescriptions about maintaining their bodies. They carry "baskets" of knowledge as that indicate different types of knowledge for which each person is respected, some of which indicate leaders (koakoale) (p. 153) (the author uses the local term throughout for which she gives the gloss 'chief' only in the Glossary). For some, a "true" leader should have the right matrilineal identity, whereas other leadership offices derive their power from bodies of knowledge drawn from the spatial pathways of history, both terrestrial and metaphysical. House structures, particularly the rafters, embody many aspects of belonging to Wogeo society. Looking after one's body was a subject the author heard referred to frequently, as one pathway of relationships that features in proper adherence to Kastom. Direct physical contact between bodies, both human and non-human, may be regarded as "dangerous" with sexual fluids, saliva, smell and "germs", as well as breath and spoken words as part of the flow of substances, some for good, some contributing to negative outcomes, including death (p. 101). The references to disease are closely linked to the power of magic, where failure to follow proper pathways may be used to explain negative outcomes. Matrilineality that features strongly (as matri-moieties) in Hogbin's earlier analysis of gender in Wogeo, is, for Anderson, only one set of pathways and bodies of knowledge that people utilise all the time, but must be kept hidden from public discourse (p. 10), and thus barely acknowledged to the outsider. Matrilineally transferred essence is associated with the constitution ofpersons, embodiment, associated with particular knowledge, and named houses. But matrilineal associations (tina) are only one of a 'multitude of alternatives [...] in relation to other aspects of a person's identity and history' (p.10). The use of the term tina for a matrilineage as one sub-division of the moieties identifies those of "one body", that is identifying together, but not to be spoken of openly because of collective ownership of sorcery. Matrilineages own the named houses on the island that are associated with bodies of knowledge and titles, but the house as built structure does not contain a matrilineage. Ideally people fill the houses primarily according to the history of the places and not because of matrilineal belonging. This alternative to descent structure theory which dominated anthropology in Hogbin's era indicates how we have oversimplified social relations by reducing all the variations of relationships to female or male lines of descent. We have used it to encompass affiliation, residence rules, inheritance pathways etc. By unravelling Wogeo knowledge, Anderson has revealed a different base to the intricacy of their social relations. As one outcome, we need to address kin terms more widely to encompass other bodies of knowledge; the concepts of mother and father need expanding from our earlier reductive exercises. The term tina for mother has strong resonances of Austronesian kin terms found across Polynesia, not just for its biological filiations, but for the ties to place and key practices of everyday living, as Anderson indicates. Anderson makes a major clarification of one aspect of matrilineality, namely the complex relations between a house and the people associated with it, that takes us far beyond "residence rules". 'The social units that are most relevant and visible in daily life in Wogeo are based on shared belonging to a place, and names, titles, land rights, and certain corpuses of knowledge are conceptualised as belonging to, and embedded in, the place' (p. 183). Houses in Wogeo are much more than the actual built structure. The histories of a place are embodied in the rafters of named houses in the villages. Each rafter is connected to certain pieces of land, thereby reflecting the histories of the people who have held rights in them and in the land associated with them. Both the rafters and the land are known as ro. Understanding the roof structure of a house thus becomes a way of understanding the utilisation of agricultural land. Many aspects of the social history of belonging are encapsulated in the rafters, particularly naming. The rafters exist as a body of knowledge which Wogeo people use to explain the house and its associations as an integral part of the social landscape. Anderson has taken us through several "journeys" as we explore the world of the Wogeo. Through her use of place as the anchor point the reader is led to understand how belonging to this society is intimately tied to place, whether village, or house, or Wogeo island as a social landscape. Many "pathways" are involved. Her own use of phenomenology provides one such "way", an alternative to Hogbin's, yet building on his cultural knowledge; she indicates throughout the text how her thinking about Wogeo society has been influenced by ideas of anthropologists working in neighbouring Melanesian societies. The product is a crisp yet complex formulation of her perspective as she strives to stay true to the details that Wogeo advocates shared with her. The responses of those Wogeo and other Pacific peoples who read this ethnography will be watched with interest. Nancy J. Pollock Victoria University Wellington (New Zealand) Heinonen, Paula. 2011. Youth Gangs and Street Children. Culture, Nurture and Masculinity in Ethiopia. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. 186 pp. Hb: $70.00 / £42.00. ISBN: 9780857450982. Paula Heinonen's Youth Gangs and Street Children distils Paula Heinonen's six years' (1995-2001) of fieldwork in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. The monograph explores the gendered world order of Ethiopian culture, childhood and streetism, the term for a way of life bound by its own set of rules for children who work and/or live on the streets. Heinonen argues that this term addresses cultural issues specific to Ethiopian street children. She challenges the general assumption that street children operate outside an adult framework by drawing attention to children in Ethiopia who have a meaningful adult presence in their lives despite the street being their main source of socialisation and economic activity. The author provides ethnographic examples to demonstrate that these children are indeed still very much connected to their poverty-ridden parents and particularly their mothers. She also chronicles what happens when no adult guidance is in place, as in the case of the youth gangs she follows over the course of several years. These children (borcos) have severed ties with their families for good, using domestic physical or sexual abuse as justification, and they are often too ashamed to return home. Heinonen argues that it is exactly this culturally constructed sense of shame and pride or yilunta in Amharic (although it has equivalents in most Ethiopian languages) that is at the core of all societal undertakings and extends into the lives of street children. The book offers a good sense of the current socio-political system in Ethiopia, with its numerous political changes, and the specific impact of communism on the development of governmental structures. From the point of view of streetism, especially enlightening is the discussion of the kebele system, which offers housing at rent-controlled prices to selected members while leaving those outside the system without even a government issued identity card. Given the large influx of migrants from the countryside, where most Ethiopians still reside, into Addis Ababa, the consequence has been housing shortages and hordes of unregistered people in the capital, fuelling streetism kind of life. The author shows that the patriarchal world order offers an essential code of conduct for the street children, who are inculcated into the same belief system as the rest of the Ethiopian society. Keeping up appearances and saving face is important for adults and children alike. In the case of boys, there is a strong emphasis on the ritual affirmation of their maleness, which leads to both physical and sexual violence, including child-to-child rape, one of the most sensitive topics of the book. In the case of girls, their femaleness is affirmed by acting as docile and obedient daughters to their parents or as "wives" to the gang members, but, as the author shows, not all girls and women confirm to this, which in turn results in gender-based violence, both physical and sexual. Disciplining children both at home and in school, takes form of a corporal punishment and often equals child-abuse, but is not portrayed as solely the problem of the impoverished, as even the street children from wealthier backgrounds in her sample had left home because of severe abuse. All in all, it is the combination of the cultural (yilunta and the patriarchal world view) and the socio-historic (the peculiar housing and registration system that extends into the fields of health and education) that the author argues are among the main causes for the never-ending cycle of abuse and poverty that lead children to streetism. Throughout the book, Heinonen points out that neither the state nor the non-governmental sector provides adequate support for those living and/or working on the streets. Despite popular conceptions, the author insists that street children, including members of youth gangs, are not criminals, but rather they represent the failures of a system that perpetuates poverty and inequality. She is vehement that being part of a gang does not necessarily lead to a criminal future, but rather a destitute one. Youth Gangs and Street Children is a well-researched and insightful monograph. The author's relatively long period of field work enables her to follow-up on the longer term fates of the informants. Heinonen has taken great care to gather and categorise her data and to distil it down to its essence. It is not, however, the kind of book that provides copious amounts of ethnographic data from which readers can draw their own conclusions. The analysis does have a personal and at times emotional tone to it, but it is nonetheless well-reasoned and investigative. Moreover, there is none of the cultural relativism that is present in much of the anthropological work on children. Childhood is presented as a universal concept, albeit culturally mediated, in the tradition of the 20th century children's rights movement in which children are primarily perceived as victims. This renders the monograph a rich source for those interested in children's rights. Although there is a detailed methodology section, more reflection on how the author may have been perceived by her informants (as, for example, a native, a foreigner, a friend, a mother-figure) would have allowed readers to better evaluate her working relationship with those informants. The book does provide a great deal of insight into the complicated ways in which urban poverty is perpetuated in the developing world. However, more analysis of the impact of political instability and regime change would be helpful. The reflection on the differences between the street children who have meaningful ties to their families and those who do not, is certainly a powerful and enlightening aspect of the book. Finally, the monograph serves as an abundant source for those interested in gender, especially for understanding the real-life strategies employed by Ethiopian women and children to survive in a predominantly patriarchal society, and especially for following the way maleness is constructed. Karina Vasilevska-Das Riga Stradins University (Latvia) Fischer, Johan. 2011. The Halal Frontier. Muslim Consumers in a Globalized Market. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. 202 pp. Pb.: £17.99. IsBN: 9780230114180. The book explores complex and multi-layered dimensions of transnational and local aspects of economic practices regarding marketing and consumption of Halal food among middle-class Malay Muslims in Britain. This book attempts to provide an insight that how religious interpretation, market economy, state interventions and consumption practices create a complex phenomenon in everyday social life that defines the process of identity construction among Malay Muslims in London. The book not only explores the fusion and fissions among the Muslim consumers of Halal in London, but also narrates the ambiguity and lack of secular disciplining of "religious markets and food" practices that British public in general is exposed to. The author uncovers how globalisation of religious market is giving birth to 'political food' among increasing Muslim consumers in Muslims societies as well as among Muslim diaspora. In his views, Halal food provides the space for diasporas to perform "politics at distance". The author did his fieldwork with middle-class Malay Muslims in London with to see the reflections that Malaysian state presents a unique example among the Muslim countries that regulate, interpret, trade, control and produce the consumption practices and market for Halal food, for local as well as global Muslim consumers. The author maintains the direct relationship between the nationalisation of Islam by the Malaysian state and the standardisation of Halal in the local and international markets. Islamic reformism and state patronisation of it have created the venues from where Halal was made accessible and in a way compulsory for Malay middle-classes. Halal also became a space for Malaysian state to introduce standards for Muslim world by satisfying middle-class consumer's sense of taste and aspirations towards "ethical food intake". The nature and type of food consumption makes social class a performative category as people cook and serve Halal and national food to guests and foreigners at their homes. The increase in the number of Muslim customers under global capitalism has evoked the contestation over the Durkheimian concepts of sacred and profane in their daily lives at Malaysia and elsewhere. Malaysians in Britain are predominantly Malays because of Malaysia's state policy of providing privileges, opportunities and benefits to Malays more than Chinese and Indian ethnic minorities in business, education and jobs etc. The writer interviewed and collected data from middle-class young Malays who arrived at London in the previous two or three decades. The contestation over the control and definition of what is Halal or who can certify Halal products are common debates observable at all public forums, whether official or unofficial. The obvious proponents of these debates of standardising public consumption of Halalare religious scholars and activists who are in close association, both professionally and socially, of Muslim entrepreneurs and businessmen while the potential opponent is the secular state. The process of globalisation of Halal finds London as potentially conducive space for introduction and clientele. While the state is silent over the issue of Halal recognition, the reason is not only state's claim to be secular, but at the same time, there is a disagreement among Muslims over the authentic definition of what is Halal. There are competing bodies and personal narratives embedded in sectarian interpretations, which claim the authority to define and interpret what is Halal. Malay people on the other hand, do have a set definition of Halal that is told by Malaysian state through national curriculum. But in a cosmopolitan environment like London, the issue of defining Halal is an open debate among Arabs viewing themselves as gatekeepers of Islam, Pakistanis having a demographic advantage among British Muslims and Malaysians with a state sponsorship over defining Halal while other Muslim ethnic groups having their own economic and social reservations over the issue. There is a mixed feeling among Malay consumers about logos of Halal food items available in various stores. For most of the consumers in London, the Halal logo alone is not enough attraction to buy anything. The Halal has created an urban landscape of its own in London through discursive practice as well as market visibility. However, the domesticated intake of Halal food items by Malay consumers is an indicator of a lack of total satisfaction on the present Halal urban landscapes. Another aspect about increased consumption of Halal food in London is that people perceive it as clean, hygienic and pure food. The author infers that the state's secularism in Britain shows its authoritative and regulative presence on issues related to public expressions of morality like the veiling of Muslims women in some ways, but it is silent over the issues of public consumption like the intake of Halal. However, the writer informs reader about international marketing of Halal by another state like Malaysia, but misses the demand and aspiration of some European state to control it. The book does not talk about the anti-Halal movement in London by animal rights groups and debates on compulsory stunning. Malays are negligible in numbers among the Muslim population in London. Other diasporic communities, such as Pakistanis, Arabs, Bangladeshis, Africans and Indian Muslims, who are part of Halal markets not only as consumers but also as sellers and traders, have more potential to provide a better and in-depth picture of Halal consumption patterns in London than the diaspora Malays. However, as the writer has tried to link the Malaysian state's venture capitalism advancements and its reflection among people's behaviour, the selection of Malays as research informants makes more sense, as other Muslims communities do not have this nationalist context while consuming Halal. The book as a whole provides a valuable ethnographic insights to the reader about national politics of Malaysia and its link with the quest for consuming Halal among Malays in London, diasporic identity construction patterns, capitalism's co-option of Muslims markets and middle classes by making relevant adjustments, and an analysis of narratives and discourses that channels the ideals of "distinction" and "taste" among Muslim middle classes by advocating type of moral consumption and ethical life styles while living in global society and economy that operates on the principals of "sinful" Western capitalism. Sufyan Abid University of Sussex (United Kingdom) Fox, Katy. 2011. Peasants into European Farmers? EU Integration in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania. Zürich and Berlin: Lit Verlag. 360 pp. Pb.: €34.90. ISBN: 9783643801074. The European Union enlargement and associated agricultural projects have opened a new field of research for rural and agricultural anthropology. New member states turned out to be the ideal context to explore how the EU's agricultural projects interact with local farming structures, and what their implications for rural livelihoods are on the margins of EU. However, it is obvious that examining farmers' adjustments and the perception of agricultural restructuring in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe have not been addressed in detail. That is why particular case studies, such as Katy Fox's Peasants into European Farmers? EU Integration in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania, offer important insight into the process of reshaping the livelihoods of farmers and semi-subsistence producers in a globalised world. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in Southern Carpathian Mountains of Romania, Fox analyses how the EU's Common Agricultural Policy was deployed in the first year after Romania's membership in EU (2007) and discusses how this process influenced the life possibilities of Romanian villagers, in particular those who perceive themselves as semi-subsistence "peasants". The study reveals the new regulatory framework for agriculture and focuses on the way CAP managed to marginalise farming families, through their exclusion from the decision-making process. Hence, CAP clearly supported the intensification of production by favouring commercial farms. Drawing on the extremely well-written ethnography, Fox describes the different strategies of survival deployed by villagers who were not able to conform to the new CAP demands. Her emphasis is on the significant obstacles for peasants' participation in the agricultural projects. The book begins with situation of the Romanian, otherwise highly polarised, agriculture in the global context and an introduction of the theoretical framework: the author advocates "pragmatist materialism" and relays on the analytical concepts of value, personhood and hope as tools to illustrate the processes of change in rural Romania. Through the adoption of Walter Benjamin's concept of "constellation", the first chapter provides a detailed historical background to Romanian peasantry. It also deals with Romania's complex and ambivalent relationship with its past and Europe, which influences the peasants' and the elite's narratives of "progress". Fox argues that the 'present constellation mobilised a utopian future of equalisation in the European "household"', thus in the second chapter she invites us to think critically about what EU projects and especially CAP imply. In particular, she exposes the gap between the imagined aspirations and the actual effects of the EU projects. Therefore, this chapter sheds light on the different, problematic aspects of CAP and among them Fox especially criticises the dominance of models of personhood that neoliberal projects enforce. The main goal of Romanian agricultural policy is to reduce subsistence holdings and turn them into commercial and specialised farms. That consequently calls small farmers to step out of the game in which they cannot compete. Thus, it is obvious that CAP produces special hierarchies, in Romania it was also obvious that CAP implementation institutions were still inefficient, placing the blame for the failures of agricultural reforms on the peasants, who were regarded as inadequate, immature and unwilling to change. The following chapters introduce us to a variety of topics on everyday life of Romanian peasants that are based on the impressive ethnographic descriptions: among other things Fox examines women's work, their hope in uncertain times and process of (re) making households; the way people produce their (although limited) space for resistance to biosecurity, through the avoidance of EU regulation by continuing to keep, sell and slaughter animals in "traditional" ways; problems with implementing EU's Direct Payments policy; the transformation of the Romanian agri-food system and the implication of the branding processes as well as the failures of EU's certification schemes. The final chapters discuss resistance or "manoeuvres" evident in transhumance and cheese production. At the end, changes in fruit and alcohol production are presented, where Fox reflects on the perceptions of personhood and state in new social order. It was common that disappointed peasants pointed to the inadequacies of state; however, villagers' perception varied according to their own success in the new post-socialist world. It is important to note that Fox moves away from "transitology" that dominated post-socialist studies in the West, however she does not remain blind to the fact that 'transition' is still alive as a native category that people use to express and conceptualise their "progress". After all, as she claims, political projects are not a list of administrative or technical rules but they tend to produce new social order and have an impact on the ways people imagine their future and themselves, even in the case when they feel quite alienated from them. Although she places small farmers/peasants in the centre of her research, the book gives quite a balanced overview of the different ways transformations are experienced by various actors (local elites, policy-makers, CEOs of private companies etc.), which is a truly important step that enables us to move away from uncritical glorification of the marginalised groups and gives broader perspective on the topic of agricultural changes in the Balkans, without losing its critical edge when analysing neoliberal projects. In addition, it is valuable that she highlights deeply asymmetrical power relations between "old" and "new" Europe, which are evident in EU policy regarding the agricultural development in the Balkans. This is an important issue that certainly needs further exploration and it would give even more strength to this well-researched and theoretically strong book. Fox's analysis of peasant's unsuccessful "integration" in the EU is therefore an extremely valuable contribution to an emergent field of study, and it would be of great interest to all the scholars and students interested in agricultural anthropology, family farming, developmental strategies, resistance and hope in rural societies. Alenka Bartulovic University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) Ahearn, Laura M. 2011. Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology (Primers in Anthropology). Malden and oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. xvi+368 pp. Hb.: £55.00 / €66.00. IsBN: 9781405124409. Laura Ahearn's book Living Language is intended as primer for undergraduate students and those unfamiliar with linguistic anthropology. The book appears suitable to the chosen audience: the degree of difficulty is somewhere in between the introduction of Salzmann and the classic Foley (which is intended for graduates). The number of illustrations and graphs is limited, making the book a text-driven study volume. It covers a great deal of ground in an accessible manner. The book is divided into three parts with four chapters each, followed by endnotes, references and an index. The first part, entitled 'Language: Some Basic Questions,' introduces the field of anthropological linguistics, doing so through a mix of theory and practical examples. The first chapter explains that words live "socially charged lives", i.e. language is embedded in social practice and social practice likewise is mediated by language. Thus, the primary tenet of linguistic anthropology is immediately disclosed. Four key terms are offered to guide the reader through the rest of the book: multi-functionality, language ideologies, practice and indexicality. The following chapter provides real-life examples of research questions in the field and discusses data collection methods, analysis processes, and common ethical issues. The third and fourth chapter give more flesh to the tenet that language reflects and constructs social practice, by zooming in on language acquisition in different cultures and the relation between language, thought and culture. The works of Boas, Sapir and Whorf on the intertwined nature of language and thought are carefully discussed as well as contemporary research proving some Whorfian effects, in e.g. the conception of space. The second part, 'Communities of Speakers, Hearers, Readers and Writers,' examines the role of language in the formation of communities and the influence of the communities' practices on verbal behaviour. Chapter 5 questions the notion of "speech community" and presents alternatives such as "speech network" and "community of practice". Chapter 6 presents some facets of multilingualism in a "globalised" context, arguing that both the micro-level practices of individuals and the macro-level ideologies of a society need to be taken into account to understand multi-lingual behaviour. Chapter 7 introduces research on literacy practices and the interface between spoken and written language. Next to the famous research of Heath on how literacy practices in three different American communities influence children's school performance, the chapter includes modern-day research on love-letter writing in Nepal and instant messaging. Chapter 8 focuses on the performance side of language, offering three approaches to study the role of speech in enacting social events: performance as opposed to "mere" competence; performativity (i.e. speech act theory); and performance as interaction between verbal artists and their audience who together create meaning and identity through their actions. The third part, called 'Language, Power and Social differentiation,' looks at language as an index of identity and social inequality. Chapter 9 on language and gender is a balanced overview of patterns of language use in relation to the social concept of gender and gendered ideologies. Chapter 10 on race and ethnicity raises the legendary American Ebonics controversy and comments on forms of overt and covert racist talk. Chapter 11 is a short introduction to endangered languages, discussing the extent of language extinction and what it means to talk about "death" in the case of languages. The final chapter concludes the whole book, drawing together various strands from the previous sections to explain that language is closely connected to issues of power and agency. How people use language and think about language use both reflects and shapes social norms, inequalities in relations and cultural identities, whether these are debated or taken for granted. Overall, this reviewer finds the book balanced, appreciable and well written. There is some minor discontent (probably because of the linguistic background of this reviewer), since linguistics usually is taken as Chomskian. This stance is on the one hand understandable since Chomsky has dominated the field for some decades, but on the other hand, it leaves little room for acknowledging the contribution of early field linguists to anthropology, or the emergent field of documentary linguistics, which places language back in its social context. It explicitly seeks to profit from an interdisciplinary approach to language as it is used in a community (see e.g. Widlok (2005) and the key volume of Gippert et al.). Additionally, in a number of places, the author presents theories and discussions as "daunting", "challenging" and "difficult", which will stimulate some readers to persevere, but may leave others with a feeling of inadequacy. Sometimes, the debates seem to be more central than the actual anthropological research (the section on the New Literary Studies approach seems to be included for the sake of the argument (ch. 7) and the notion of chiasm (ch. 8) is not central to the discussion). Worse, the author qualifies her own account of a certain critique as probably obscuring (p. 168). If so, then why include it? It is the task of the author to illuminate, not mystify, theoretical discourse - which, it must be emphasised, she does admirably throughout the book. Lastly, the author uses her own fieldwork in Nepal as example in several places, even to illustrate her "mistakes" made during fieldwork. Research on new technologies and developments is incorporated as well (examples include internet, and schooling for girls in Nepal). This gives the book a fresh, honest and up-to-date taste. This reviewer also liked the use of the four key terms introduced in the first chapter to shed light on the topics presented in subsequent chapters, creating a sense of coherence and teaching how to look at various issues from an anthropological point of view. Next to the four key notions, Ahearn gradually introduces other pertinent anthropological concepts such as emergence and hegemony, thus enabling (or as the anthropologist says, socialising) students to understand (and hopefully participate in) anthropological discourse. Anne-Christie Hellenthal Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia) Connerton, Paul. 2011. The Spirit of Mourning: History, Memory and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 190 pp. Pb.: £17.99. ISBN: 9781107648838. After Connerton's previous books How Society Remembers and How Modernity Forgets, the present volume still delights with the author's distinctive eloquence, analytic intelligence and a new broad scope of historical, social and cultural perspectives. In his new book, Connerton continues to explore the already familiar grounds of social and cultural memory, and introduces new facets to his study, concentrating on the inscription of memory within human bodies, and its incorporation into institutions, histories and traditions. Connerton divides his book in two parts. The first three chapters examine the relationship between narrative and cultural memory, and the four subsequent chapters focus on the relationship between the body and cultural memory. In the first chapter, 'The birth of histories from the spirit of mourning,' Connerton explores the two hardly separable categories of narratives - legitimation and mourning. His argument of general intertwinement of these two categories rests upon various examples of how people generate histories from the sense of loss and mourning. The analysis of Aeschylus' Oresteia sets the stage for viewing the process of historical change as an endless succession of vengeance. The author moves on to the description of the memorial dance floor in Charleston, then turns to the Jewish historiography, genocide, and the examples of cultural bereavement as well as the culture of public apology. Connerton infers that lacking bereavement customs people resort to histories as remedies against the unbearable experiences of grief, loss and mourning. The second chapter, 'The seven types of forgetting,' represents a structural rationalisation of the constructive and coercive practices of forgetting. Prescribed forgetting, forgetting for the sake of creating a new identity, and annulment as a response to a sheer excess of information, are the successful or constructive types of forgetting which enhance social bonds. The paradox of imposed forgetting, according to The author, lies in the fact that 'the requirement to forget ends in reinforcing memory' (p. 41). Here, he highlights the practices of repressive erasure, structural amnesia, planned obsolescence and humiliated silence. The third chapter, 'Silences', introduces a plurality of silences and distinguishes between intentional silence and imposed silencing. Connerton traces the former in an array of religious rituals, arts, public speeches, music and psychoanalysis. The latter comes into play when remembering becomes dangerous. Imposed silencing is exemplified by book burning, censorship, denied relief of expressing grief publicly, physical coercion and, finally, by death. The fourth chapter, 'Spatial orientation,' opens the second part of the book with the body and bodily practices in the centre of the discussion, bringing in the relation between the body and cultural memory. Connerton starts with the representation of binary classifications as categorical mappings of body topography, exposing them as a system of mnemonic devices, the focus of which is both in the body and in the world surrounding the body. Pointing at the flaws of the rhetoric of the art of memory, he rather concentrates on humanity's libidinal, or affective, input in topography. His argues that the art of memory is preserved by a system of places within the body, not by special landmarks. The fifth chapter, 'Tradition as conversation and tradition as bodily re-enactment,' continues to explore the body as a receptacle of history, which is carried in people, thus, allowing a tradition to act upon them. The tradition, therefore, signifies mentality or principles of social life, rather than simply "handing down". In this chapter, Connerton analyses Gadamer's hermeneutics and discusses his model of knowledge, understanding, questioning and cultural reproduction. The author's criticism of Gadamer's model lies in the claim that understanding and tradition do not rely on "opening and keeping open' of questions, but rather on their occlusion (p. 122). From here Connerton concludes that tradition is more of bodily re-enactment than a conversation through dialogues with texts of the past. The next chapter, 'Tattoos, masks, skin,' contains an overview of masks, their uses and their connection to power in different societies. It also provides multiple examples of practices of bodily alterations such as tattoos and scarifications. Drawing from linguistic utterances of referring to the skin as metaphor for the person, Connerton suggests that bodily decorations function as a form of powerful mnemonic code. He traces the difference between skin signs as marks of honour and as marks of shame. After examining numerous examples, Connerton concludes that tattoos are powerful memory codes both for the group and for the individual. They are driven by the same principles as the places of memory, with the only difference being that these places of memory are found not in the buildings, objects or environment, but upon the flesh. In the last chapter, 'Bodily projection,' the author extends his thesis by introducing the bodily projection onto the habitats in which we live. He focuses on empathic, mimetic and cosmic projections, which show that architecture, public spaces, social and natural environments can be interpreted as expressions and consequences of bodily memory which foregoes them. There is much more to Connerton's book than I have been able to explicate in the short space of a book review. In general, in The Spirit of Mourning, he successfully elucidates that 'culture happens as and in the lived body' (p. ix). This book is definitely worth reading and it is of great use to researchers and students in anthropology. Polina Tserkassova Tallinn University (Estonia)