Abstracts - 2004, Volume 10, Number 1
Abstract
SOCIAL, EDUCATIONAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
1) Borut TELBAN: Fear, Shame and the Power of the Gaze in Ambonwari, Papua New Guinea
2) Julia ELYACHAR: Striking for Debt: Power, Finance, and Governmentality in Egypt
3) Bogomir NOVAK: Does the Nine-year Primary School Favour Learning over Teaching?
4) Karl M. WOSCHITZ: Ekstase und Zeit: Die Duplizität des Dionysischen und Apollinischen als Leitbegriffe
BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
5) É. B. BODZSÁR, A. ZSÁKAI, K. JAKAB & K. B. TÓTH : Body Fatness and Sexual Saturation Status
6) Ewa RĘBACZ: Škerlj's Stoutness Index in Young Males in East Africa
OBITUARY
7) Tatjana TOMAZO-RAVNIK: Ottó G. EIBEN
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1) Borut Telban, Fear, Shame and The Power of the Gaze in Ambonwari, Papua New Guinea
The following artide is about fear, shame and seeing and about the relation between them among Karawari speaking Ambonwari, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. When discussing the topic of fear in Papua New Guinea one cannot avoid confronting the notion of the, paranoid ethos' of Melanesian societies as proposed by Schwartz (1973). I discuss this at the beginning and show how both anxiety and fear are counteracted by what I have called 'care'. I present fear and anxiety as two separate concepts and I discuss their internalisation. After explaining Karawari terminology, I focus on Ambonwari notions concerning their fear of strangers, animals, and storms. The main body of the paper examines Ambonwari responses to the gaze of others. By recognizing how relationships between people and stability of the whole village can be constructed, modified and even controlled by fear, shame and pride (all of them consequences of a powerful gaze) Ambonwari men manipulate the visibility of behaviour (male defecation, for example) and things (carved spirits, for example) which are closely related to the undesired effects of the three emotional states mentioned above. In this way fear of being seen becomes important for social control and greatly influences people's shared reality and conduct. Moreover, manipulation of visibility is of a vital importance for a re-production of their cosmology. In such a way Ambonwari protect their village from inside and outside and try to preserve the unity of their cosmos or, in other words, cosmological oneness. By preserving dosed bodies Ambonwari men safeguard their dosed macrocosm. As cultural and social changes are taking place one wanders how are they going to deal with cosmological issues?
Key words: fear, anxiety, shame, emotions, seeing, the power of the gaze, cosmology, Papua New Guinea
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2) Julia Elyachar, Striking for Debt: Power, Finance, and Governmentality in Egypt
This article analyzes the emergence of new forms of power at the turn of the millennium that were articulated via the medium of debt. It draws on ethnographic analysis of a sit-in at a bank carried out by members of an NGO in Cairo to gain access to loans originating with the World Bank. Fieldwork findings are interpreted with reference to historical debates about debt in the 18th century as both corrupting and liberating that are highly relevant to the rise of "empowerment debt" at the turn of the millennium.
Key words: Egypt, Middle East, political anthropology, economic anthropology, debt, markets
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3) Bogomir Novak, Does the Nine-Year Primary School Favour Learning over Teaching
The main objective of this article is to find out to what extent the Slovene nine year primary schools implemented new learning, thinking and teaching styles in an attempt to improve the quality of teaching. We have used the following research instruments: observations of classes of the three eight-year and three nine-year primary schools, questionnaires for the teachers and interviews conducted with the pupils, teachers and headmasters. The main hypothesis is that by using all four teaching styles (of a waiter, constructor, alpine guide, and gardener) teachers find it easier to consider the interests of pupils for learning and thinking than by using only the first style of a waiter. The curricula of the nine-year primary school are more process- and goal-oriented than the curricula of the eight-year school, that are subject-oriented; teachers of the nine-year primary school have to perform new tasks and consult other colleagues at their own school and in other schools with regard to their experience in achieving new objectives. The burden on pupils is balanced in the last three years of primary school by teaching at three levels. Such teaching is flexible enough to allow pupils to move from one level group to another on the basis of their abilities demonstrated in a level group. At the highest level it is easiest for the teachers to teach transformationally and for the pupils to develop flexible thinking involving empirical, rational and intuitive thinking as well as experiential learning in transformational, auto-reflexive and creative terms. In genera], nine-year primary schools do not yet favour learning over teaching with the exception of the most talented pupils - since the culture of learning has only now started to develop.
Keywords: teaching styles, learning styles, thinking styles, eight-year primary school, nine-year primary school, pupil, transmissive school paradigm, transformational school paradigm
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4) K. M. Woschitz, Ekstase und Zeit: Die Duplizität des Dionysischen und Apollinischen als Leitbegriffe
Das vorliegende Referat will das zum philosophisch-anthropologischen Begriff gewordene Begriffspaar "Apollinisch-dionysisch" mit seinen vielfältigen Aspekten aus dem klassischen Humanismus entfalten. Einerseits handelt es sich urn das Kulturgeistige, harmonisch Geordnete, bildhaft Gestaltete, weisheitsvoll Begrenzte der ethischen Maximen des Apollogottes von Delphi, ferner urn den Menschen als "animal symbolicum" und eine kuIturanthropologische Ausdruckskraft (Religion, Mythos, Kunst, Wissenschaft), andererseits urn das Dionysische als das leidenschaftlich Bewegte, die Ekstase, urn Schmerz und Schuld, Leidenschaft und Reinigung (Katharsis) sowie urn die ekstatisch wirksamen Qualitäten (simultane Distanz und Nahe, tödliche Starrheit und suggestive Lebendigkeit) des frontalen Blicks der Maske des "Maskengottes" Dionysos. Die Maske ermöglicht "verwandelnde Vereinigung" und "vereinigende Verwandlung", ist Ausdruck der dionysischen Tragodie und in ihr Darstellung menschlicher Hohen und Tiefen sowie der tragischen Verknotung von Gotterwille, Menschenwille und Schicksal.
Schlüssel Wörter: Dionysischen, Apollinischen, Ekstase, Zeit, Mensch
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5) E. B. Bodzsár, A. Zsákai, K. Jakab and K. B. Tóth, Body Fatness and Sexual Maturation Status
Purpose: (1) to characterize the maturation status on the basis of breast development in the girls and genital development in the boys, resp. on occurrence or non-occurrence menarche or spermarche; (2) to study the sexual differences in body components during the puberty, (3) to analyze body components in children belonging to the same age group, but different maturation stages and to the various of maturation indicators, but differing in age. Subjects: The subjects of the present subsample of the 2nd national cross-sectional study were such children that had already begun pubertal development. The chronological age of the girls (n = 2673) and boys (n = 2869) ranged between 10.0 and 16.0 years. Methods: The girls were subdivided by the maturation stages of the breast, while the boys by those of the genitals. Sexual maturation was assessed visually and rated by Tanner's suggestions (1962). Percentage of body fat was estimated by model of two components (Durnin and Rahaman 1967, Siri 1956), while masses of body components (fat, bone, muscle and residual mass) were assessed by the Drinkwater and Ross' (1980) four-component anthropometric fractionation method. Multiple comparisons of the means were tested by Scheffe's formula at the 5% level. Results: Sexual differences in body composition, present already in childhood, became more accentuated during puberty, due mainly to growing fat content in the girls and to increasing lean body mass in the boys. In the females early maturers were heavier and contained more fat than less mature girls. This increase relative and absolute fat mass was proportionate to weight gain. In the males increasing fat mass lagged behind the gain in lean body mass both with advancing age and maturity status. Conclusion: Body composition and maturity status are closely interrelated in both genders while gender-specific tendencies increase dimorphism and the several factors making up the differences between maturation types. Fat content was greater in both sexes in the early maturers. Also the developmental rate of prepubertal fat accumulation was faster in the early maturers when compared to those maturing later. Standards for the age change of body composition can therefore inform us not only about the development of bone, muscle and fat in childhood, but also allow a short-range prediction of pubertal events.
Keywords: body components, developmental stages of breast, developmental stages of genitals, menarche, spermarche
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6) Ewa Rébacz, Škerlj's Stoutness Index in Young Males in East Africa
The research material in this study was male youth in Kenya (n=423), Tanzania (n=153) and the Sudan (n=154). The survey was carried out in 2000 boarding schools, where students were fed and their time was fully organized for them. These vocational schools, where students learned their professions of tailor, a joiner, a bricklayer, a car mechanic, a locksmith, a welder and an electrician provided all the students with accommodation and dormitories. The people examined were in the chronological age of between 18 and 30. The calculated Škerlj's index allows for determining the body stoutness among young men. This study took advantage of people from several different nations and tribes. In all the groups analyzed the dominant levels of stoutness are "average" and "thin."
Keywords: East Africa, Škerlj's index, African people, morphological structure
