The Mt. Popa Watershed and Bagan’s Bronze-Iron Age | ပုပ္ပါးတောင် တေတေ တေလဲနယ်တြေနှင့် ပုဂံတေသ တြေး-သံတေေ်

Two bronze ‘mother-goddess’ figures were found last year near Wealaung, Central Myanmar. While typical of the late first millennium BCE to early CE Bronze-Iron culture of Halin and the Samon valley south of Mandalay, Wealaung and nearby sites like Inde, Songon and Sardwingyi are located to the west, in the Mt. Popa watershed. Thus the ‘Samon culture’ may not have been an offshoot of the Dian cultures of Yunnan but an indigenous development that spread east and north while locally absorbed within the early first millennium CE clan-based societies of Bagan. မြန်ြာမြည်အလယ်ြိုင်း ဝဲလလာင်ရွာအနီးြှ အြိနတ်သြီးလြေးမြားအရုြ်နှစ်ခုေို ယြန်နှစ်ေ လတေ့ရှိခဲ့ရြါသည်။ ယင်းလတေ့ရှိြှုသည် ဟန်လင်းနှင့် ြန္တလလးမြို့လတာင်ဘေ်ရှိ စြုံမြစ်ဝှြ်းလေသရှိ ခရစ်နှစ်ြတိုင်ြီ ြထြလထာင်စုနှစ်လနာေ်ြိုင်းြှ ခရစ်နှစ်ဦးြိုင်းောလ လြေး-သံလခတ် ယဉ်လေေးြှုထေန်းေားရာ စံနြူနာမြလနရာြေား၏ အလနာေ်ဘေ်တေင် ေေလရာေ်လန လသာ ဝဲလလာင်၊ အင်းတဲ ြတ်ဝန်းေေင်လနရာြေား၊ ဆုံေုန်းနှင့် ဆားတေင်းကေီးစသည့် ြုြ္ပါးလတာင် ၏ လရလဝ လရလဲလေသြေားြင်မြစ်သည်။ သို့မြစ်၍ စြုံမြစ်ဝှြ်းယဉ်လေေးြှုသည် ယူနန်မြည်နယ် ေီယန်ယဉ်လေေးြှု၏ အစေယ်အြေားတစ်ခုြဟုတ်လတာ့ဘဲ ခရစ်နှစ် ြထြလထာင်စုနှစ်အလစာြိုင်း ောလ ြုဂံလေသ၏ ဓလလ့တူလူြေုိးစုအြေဲ့အစည်းြေားအတေင်း အရြ်လေသအလိုေ် လေ်ခံ ေေင့်သုံးြှုလြောင့် အလရှ့ဘေ်၊ လမြာေ်ဘေ်အရြ်တို့တေင် ြေ့ံနှံ့ခဲ့လသာ လေသတေင်း ြေံ့မြိုး တိုးတေ်လာြှုြင် မြစ်သည်။

Familial Conversion: A Case Study on the Ethical-Religious Role of the Household in the Mass Conversion of Wenzhou Christians

This article explores the familial conversion which has cumulative impact on the mass conversion of Wenzhou Christians after 194 9. Acknowledging the dramatic revival of Christianity in Wenzhou following reform and opening in China by no means precludes recognizing the hidden upsurge of conversion events before 1978. Through a ease study on the congregation of Qingpu Church in Heyang area of Wenzhou > I hope to demonstrate that the familial aspect of conversion in the form of household units> rather than individual conversions> is the key to understanding the conversion of Wenzhou Christians. The article argues that the oneness of family derived from the emotional and responsible relationships within it, along with the process of the conversion ritual, constitute the ethical-religious role of the household > which contributes to the emergence of familial conversion. This preliminary study attempts to draw more attention to family,an essential ethical and even existential cultural factor in Chinese society. It is through the family that we may come to better understand the indigenous development of Christianity in China.

Ethnic Identity and Well-Being of Andean Indigenous People: The Effect of Individualistic and Collectivist Value Orientations

The aim of this research was to evaluate the mediating effect of the value orientations of collectivism and individualism on the relationship between ethnic identity and well-being, the latter conceived from the worldview of Andean natives. For this purpose, under an observational and cross-sectional design, 395 Lickan-Antay adults (57% women) living in areas of indigenous development and in two cities in northern Chile were surveyed. We used the Lickan-Antay BLA32 well-being scale, a short version of the Portrait 21 Values Questionnaire to measure individualistic and collectivistic values, and an adapted version of the Ethnic Identity Scale. The results show that ethnic identity had a direct positive effect on all three dimensions of well-being (harmony with community life, ethnic harmony and harmony with nature), and total indirect effects on all five dimensions of well-being, one of them originating mainly from collectivist orientations. Individualistic orientations also showed a positive, though less intense, mediating effect on well-being. We conclude that collectivist and individualistic motivational patterns coexist in Lickan-Antay natives and explain an important part of the relationship between ethnic identity and well-being. Finally, we discuss our results and suggest replication of this study in other ethnic contexts to assess the generalizability of these findings to other native peoples of the Andean region of South America.

Indigenous climate change adaptation: New directions for emerging scholarship

Although Indigenous peoples’ perspectives and concerns have not always been accommodated in climate change adaptation research and practice, a burgeoning literature is helping to reframe and decolonise climate adaptation in line with Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences. In this review, we bring together climate adaptation, decolonising and intersectional scholarship to chart the progress that has been made in better analysing and responding to climate change in Indigenous contexts. We identify a wealth of literature helping to decolonise climate adaptation scholarship and praxis by attending to colonial and neo-colonial injustices implicated in Indigenous peoples’ climate vulnerability, taking seriously Indigenous peoples’ relational ontologies, and promoting adaptation that draws on Indigenous capacities and aspirations for self-determination and cultural continuity. Despite calls to interrogate heterogenous experiences of climate change within Indigenous communities, the decolonising climate and adaptation scholarship has made limited advances in this area. We examine the small body of research that takes an intersectional approach to climate adaptation and explores how the multiple subjectivities and identities that Indigenous peoples occupy produce unique vulnerabilities, capacities and encounters with adaptation policy. We suggest the field might be expanded by drawing on related studies from Indigenous development, natural resource management, conservation, feminism, health and food sovereignty. Greater engagement with intersectionality works to drive innovation in decolonising climate adaptation scholarship and practice. It can mitigate the risk of maladaptation, avoid entrenchment of inequitable power dynamics, and ensures that even the most marginal groups within Indigenous communities benefit from adaptation policies and programmes.

Understanding the Role of Outsiders in Community-Based Development Interventions: A Framework with Findings from Iran

This article analyzes various roles of development practitioners (called outsiders) in five different cases of community-based development (CBD) in rural Iran. It provides a review of the literature on CBD and identifies three main types of roles fulfilled by outsiders to support indigenous development processes. These include preparing the ground, activating community-based organizations as participatory institutions, and taking on the role of brokers who bridge the gap between the local community and outside institutions—especially the state and market. From the analysis of empirical qualitative data collected during fieldwork in Iran, the article concludes that while the roles played by the outsiders in CBD interventions there correspond mostly to those identified in the literature, there are differences in their strategies of intervention and activities under each role which correspond with their contextual contingencies. Recognizing this variation is needed to deepen the understanding of CBD practices and help practitioners think about alternative perspectives and approaches.