All posts filed under: Anthropology

The principle of extreme of equality denies diversity, says french philosopher Montesquieu

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In a time where freedom and democracy are debated in different ways, from health issues to ethnical ones, from historical perspectives to philosophical ones, Montesquieu’s reflections on the spirit of equality being very different from the spirit of extreme equality could contribute significantly to the current debates. Montesquieu was a french political philosopher who lived in the XVIIth century and wrote a world famous book called The Spirit of the Laws published in 1750 where he states the following: “As far as the sky is from the earth, so far is the true spirit of equality from the spirit of extreme equality. The former consist neither in making everyone command nor in making no one command, but in obeying and commanding one’s equals. It seeks not to have no master but to have only one’s equal for masters. In the state of nature, men are born in equality, but they cannot remain so. Society makes them lose their equality, and they become equal again only through the laws. The difference between the democracy that is regulated and …

London Boaters Mobilities in Today’s Society

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Within London, it exists a community of nomadic people, which unfolds along and concurrently coexists with all the hustle and plurality of the vibrant urban life. London’s intricate architecture disguises the presence of a widespread network of canals and rivers that crisscross it, and it is within such intricate loom that boaters slowly and silently carry on their lives. It is a “secret town” (Cullen in Braithwaite 1976:8), that of boaters, a world on its own that, ever since the construction of the first narrowboat, has concealed a character of marginality and of partial separation from State’s institutions. While allowing a higher degree of freedom and independence, the freedom to be wherever you choose, to move wherever you want, the boat has also always gifted boaters with the self-sufficiency of resources. However, many are the implications as well as the contradictions that spring from the coexistence of such flexible nomadic lives within the bounded spaces and sharp structures of contemporary society. Narrowboats where first built as means for the transportations of industrial goods, and where …

Red Hornbill Earrings

The meaning of “Beautiful Earrings” for an Ilongot, in the Philippines

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  In the hills of Luzon, in the Philippines, when an Ilongot  puts on red hornbill earrings it is the excepltional sign that he has killed a man. Red, bright and dancing from the upper lobes of the ears, the earrings are both body jewelry and a signal understood by everyone. They are seen as “beautiful”. When the anthropologist Renato Rosaldo of Stanford University, tried to further develop the meaning of “beautiful earrings”, the Ilongot looked at him with a kind of pity: “They’re beautiful, they used to answer, nothing more and nothing less.” Being able to wear those red hornbill earrings, is being able to show your masculinity. The beheading of another human being is, in itself, an expression of power, and not being able to wear “beautiful earrings” on visits and invitation is a problem. The meaning of those beautiful earrings is then shut down in a circular way: earrings show one has killed a man and killing a man means one is able to wear earrings on social occasions. The earrings are …