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Climate change perceptions of Indigenous peoples (IP) are important because of their close connection with nature and the environment. This study assesses climate change insights of the Tharu in Bardiya district of Nepal in relation to climate variability and water sector-related hazards, focussing on Indigenous knowledge (IK) for adaptation and mitigation in agriculture. Tharu are the first settlers in Tarai, Nepal and largely depend on farming. Our sequential mixed-method approach first quantifies perceptions and then analyses qualitative information from participatory methods. We found the Tharu have perceived a temperature increase but a rainfall decrease; the former is validated with weather data, but not the rainfall trend due to high annual variation. The high ranking of flooding in both villages and drought in Bikri indicates the importance of the water sector and related hazards. Tharu have used Indigenous as well as scientific knowledge for weather predictions, coping and adaptation to water-related hazards in agriculture-based livelihoods. As the application of IK-based traditional agricultural practices has decreased due to their lower yield than modern agricultural practices, there is need for documentation, research and policy actions to integrate IK and science to reduce climatic vulnerability and increase productivity of resilient agricultural practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Endeavouring to highlight the temporal dimension in the conceptualisation of frontiers, this paper presents a case study of processes of frontierisation and defrontierisation in the highland Lindu valley of Central Sulawesi (Indonesia). After reviewing the literature on frontiers and establishing the rationale for a more processual framework for their analysis, it traces these processes within the history of the Lindu plain along four dimensions of frontierisation – control, extraction, settlement and conservation – from the precolonial era to the contemporary period of reform in Indonesia. Further refining previous anthropological theorisation of the frontier, the article also reconceptualises the closing of frontiers by moving away from the criteria of demographic and economic thresholds of occupation to focus instead on the exercise of agency by marginalised local peoples whose lands have been occupied by settlers, thus allowing them to reverse, if only incipiently, the relations of inequality between settlers and indigenes that have constituted frontiers. This process of defrontierisation is exemplified by how indigenous To Lindu have reasserted control over their own territory through alliances with both the Indonesian indigenous people’s movement and with transnational conservation, having been subordinated first by colonial incursions and then in the immediate postcolonial period through domination by entrepreneurial migrants whose own position was enhanced by synergies with governmental forces for modernisation and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberal conservation encompasses initiatives and measures depending upon market mechanisms to achieve conservation objectives. Such mechanisms have transformed aspects of nature and its care into commodities to produce a ‘green economy’ as the basis of conservation and sustainable development. Although many such programmes have been subjected to critical analysis, their role in environmental education has received far less attention. This article focuses on how environmental education efforts are conceptualised and operationalised by Rare, a transnational conservation organisation whose approach exemplifies neoliberal objectives through using ‘social marketing’ tactics in its Pride campaigns in order to ‘sell’ conservation values via a network of local partners managing these campaigns. As a case study, we concentrate on the Pride campaign conducted in two villages bordering the Lamandau River Wildlife Reserve in Central Kalimantan, evaluating its claims to success in redirecting local farmers away from use of fire in land clearing for swidden agriculture and oil palm cultivation. We conclude that Rare's focus on transforming individuals’ motivations and behaviours, in line with neoliberal environmentality, fails to address the barriers to conservation stemming from the structural drivers in the larger political economic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relevance of the restorative justice paradigm to issues of conflict avoidance and resolution in Indonesia. Sectarian violence engulfed Indonesia in the late 1990s after the fall of the New Order, largely as a result of resource competition and other economic factors. In addition, the revival of customary forms of authority through the national indigenous peoples movement exacerbated the potential for conflict between long-settled indigenes and more recent migrants. A case study shows how the spread of communal conflict to the Lindu plain in Central Sulawesi was averted despite the sectarian violence in a nearby city. Local customary procedures of adjudication were insufficient to cope with such issues in a multiethnic context, as the ethnic groups in the area did not all subscribe to the same body of custom ( adat). Instead, a diverse assembly of stakeholders invoked nationalist idioms of harmony and consensus to forge an agreement to avoid violence. Previous legal theorists have pointed to adat as a preexisting respository of restorative justice practices. However, this article argues that interethnic contexts require restorative practice to forge novel syntheses to deal with communal violence. Such syntheses may incorporate adat mechanisms, but they must also integrate other tools that gain the allegiance of multiple groups to work toward reconciliation and avoidance of further violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores impacts of national and regional policies upon the Bajau Laut, who occupy the maritime border region shared by Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. It considers how maritime movements, ethnogenesis, visions for economic development and commercial interaction have evolved in the region. These processes, combined with contemporary nationalism, border securitization, and conservation render such populations both prominent as a target of governmental action and invisible in terms of provision of social services and implementation of conservation initiatives. These facets complicate issues of political belonging within the state of Sabah, the nation-state of Malaysia, and the wider ASEAN region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This module for Involving Anthropology presents an account of one of the plenary debates held at the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) World Congress held at Manchester University, 5-10 August 2013. The module begins with a brief introduction to provide the context for the debate, which included two speakers for (Amita Baviskar and Don Nonini) and two speakers against (Helen Kopnina and Veronica Strang) the motion: ‘Justice for people must come before justice for the environment’. The introduction is followed by an edited transcript of John Gledhill’s welcome and introduction, the texts of the arguments made by each speaker for and against the motion (with the exception of Veronica Strang, whose presentation is being published elsewhere a summary of the comments and questions subsequently invited from the floor of the hall, and then a transcript of the responses of the presenters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents constitutionality as a new approach for analyzing bottom-up institution-building processes emphasizing local perceptions and local agency in common pool resource management. Using four case studies—fisheries in Zambia; pasture and forestry in Mali; fisheries in Indonesia; forestry in Bolivia—this approach analyzes examples of local institution building differing from top-down imposed participation. Our analysis highlights six components of constitutionality: emic perceptions of the need for new institutions, participatory processes of negotiation, preexisting institutions as a basis for institution building, outside catalyzing agents, recognition of local knowledge, and higher level acknowledgment of the new institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This introductory essay presents a genealogy, admittedly partial, of Robert Tonkinson’s theorisation, focusing upon how his mode of conceptualising the ethnographic issues he has traversed is basically a dialectical approach. In part such conceptualisation is understandable in terms of how his background has brought together a number of contrasting perspectives—detailed ethnography of specific situations and an abiding ‘uncontrolled’ comparative perspective, Aboriginal Australia and Melanesia, British social anthropology and American cultural anthropology, and others. The approach that he has developed in synthesising all these influences in his ethnographic and theoretical work has a powerful precedent in the ‘dynamic theory’ of Raymond Firth. This heritage helps explain both the convergence of Bob’s analyses with contemporary practice theory and the dialectical mode of argumentation he has adopted throughout his analyses, although he uses such terms as ‘paradoxes’, ‘adaptive strategies’, and ‘accommodations’ rather than thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The introduction concludes by analysing how the articles contributed to this special issue build upon Tonkinson’s work in providing their own original syntheses for analysing their own research situations, in some cases also understandable as ‘paradoxes’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including Australian anthropological research, the politics of Australian aboriginal people, and feminism theory.

This article examines how non-local frameworks and interventions have set the parameters of the local exercise of agency in regard to the use and valuing of resources in the upland valley of Lindu. Exploiting opportunities opened up by contemporary interventions, the indigenous To Lindu have revitalised their local custom (adat) as a community resource management system under the aegis of furthering conservation. This move has elicited various reactions from the migrants who have settled in Lindu in the last five decades. While largely accommodating their practices to customary regulation of fishing in Lake Lindu by the indigenous Lindu adat councils, these migrants have nevertheless continued to contest the imposition of customary restrictions on land ownership and limits on individual cultivation of land. These strategies of imposition of customary regulation by the indigenes and corresponding accommodations and contestations on the part of the migrants are also embedded in divergent definitions of Lindu as a locality, including whether resources should be governed on the model of a commons or open access regimen. The balancing through negotiations of these various valuations of Lindu and its resources — as customary territory, as open access land for development, as an enclave within a national park — will depend not only upon local initiatives, but also upon such external interventions as impending agrarian legislation that may grant national recognition to customary land. However, such external interventions will be complemented by local strategies of imposition, accommodation and contestation in forging new senses of locality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the growth of anthropology in Australia. Establishment of academic anthropology in the country; Impact of colonization and sociocultural transformations on anthropology and history; Relationship of indigenous peoples and immigrant minorities to the nation-state.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including Euro-America, the operation of the exclusionist model of fortress conservation in the European Union, and access to fishing grounds at the Berau Marine protected area.

The article discusses the linkage between biodiversity and human livelihood crisis. The article says that the recent Asian tsunami, El Nino-induced fires and zoonotic diseases exhibit that there is a linkage between human well-beingness and healthy ecosystems. The article says that the conflict between biodiversity and development of rural livelihoods encouraged debates between conservation biologists and social scientists. To attain practical solutions to biodiversity conservation, sustainable development, customary resource use and evolving government frameworks, a meeting was convened at Singapore to discuss over the biodiversity of the Malay Archipelago. The article suggests that issues relating to rural empowerment and resource governance should be urgently addressed.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the issue of boundaries for the Western Desert, shortcomings of Piketty's sole identification of the economy, and constituting anthropology to the re-analysis of the fact of inequality.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles within the issue including moral deficiency, religious environment, and role of politics in indigenous higher education.