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Symposium Review Of The Lives Of Amish Women—Karen Johnson-Weiner, Gracia Miller, Sheila Petre, Vlatka Škender

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

Who should respond to a cultural anthropologist’s monograph about Amish women? In developing a symposium for Karen Johnson-Weiner’s The Lives of Amish Women, the author’s own text provided an answer. Inasmuch as Johnson-Weiner frequently quotes the voices of Amish women, how about an Amish woman offering an unmediated voice? And inasmuch as Johnson-Weiner quotes many plain Anabaptist women authors, how about one of the writers whom she discusses, an opportunity for the spoken about to speak back? And, finally, inasmuch as Johnson-Weiner’s disciplinary home is cultural anthropology, what about a cultural anthropologist who is experienced in Amish research?

And …

Ishi, Briet's Antelope, And The Documentality Of Human Documents, Martin I. Nord

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Ishi, the “last wild Indian in North America,” was “discovered” in 1911 and spent the last years of his life living in an anthropology museum. There he was studied by anthropologists and viewed by the public as a living exhibit. In this paper, I take some initial steps in arguing that Ishi, the person, became a document to most people. The similarities between Ishi and Suzanne Briet’s hypothetical antelope, newly discovered and placed in a zoo, are eerie. Ishi, like the antelope, is brought into public knowledge as both an initial document and a wide variety of secondary documents derived …

The Dragonslayer: Folktale Classification, Memetics, And Cataloguing, Alex Mayhew

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Tales of great heroes overcoming great monsters have been a part of storytelling since time immemorial. Some of these tales follow recurring patterns, and one such pattern is that of ‘The Dragonslayer.’ From tales of Tristan and Iseult and Saint George and the Dragon, to the confrontation with the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit, ‘The Dragonslayer’ has been an enduring example of a recurring pattern in storytelling.

Different knowledge organization systems seek to arrange and connect texts and their recurring patterns in different ways. Folklorists look for recurring motifs and some wiki editors look for common tropes in …

Flesh, Freundschaft, And Fellowship: Towards A Holistic Model Of The Amish Kinship System, Vlatka Škender

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

Kinship as a social anthropological category, with its three fundamentals – affinity, descent, and siblingship – denotes an orderly system of social relationships past, present, and future, through which a social system is composed and reproduced. What rules, if any, regulate marriage alliance among the Amish? Why are both affinal and consanguineal relationships structurally subordinated to that of fictive kinship? Building on and reexamining the extant anthropological discourse concerning the Amish kinship organization, a comparative-diachronic analysis of courtship, marriage, descent, inheritance, and residential patterns in a holistic and alliance-focused social system is provided. The article contributes an analysis of social-cosmological …