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The Cebuano term palihi denotes a range of rituals to induce desired outcomes through analogical causation. It is predicated on the understanding that at inceptions - including the New Year, building, planting, and pregnancy - qualities may be transmitted from an entity or process to another that is in genesis or renewal. A type of sympathetic magic, palihi is intended to direct these forces to bring luck, such as prosperity, intelligence or vigorous growth. Drawing on ethnographic research on Siquijor Island and interviews with Filipino diaspora this article explicates key patterns and principles underlying palihi, situates these within an international scholarship on associative magic, and considers what palihi and related taboos illuminate about Visayan concepts of personhood, particularly the development, boundaries, connections and malleability of people. The article advances a case for anthropological conceptualizations of personhood whereby bodily boundaries/permeability are not necessarily fixed, but subject to sometimes dramatic temporal flux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In much of the rural Philippines, young adults are assigned and assume pivotal roles in helping their families 'get ahead' in an age of mobility and economic transformation. On Siquijor Island, parents from small-scale fishing and farming backgrounds invest heavily in children's education, partly in the hope that they will gain 'professional' employment and send remittances. Despite the duties this entails for young people, Siquijodnon characterise the period of pre-marital education and employment in terms of freedom and modernity. This article explores the interplay of ideals of obligation and autonomy for young women, in a context where intergenerational conflict over their life paths is prevalent. While in theories of personhood, individualism and relationality have long been constructed as opposites, the article shows that rather than ideals of individualism replacing those of relationality, both discourses have intensified, resulting in heightened pressures on young women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Articles in this special issue probe the relationships between strategies for upward socio-economic mobility and intergenerational aspirations in Asia. With capitalism, urbanisation, mass media, education and migration increasing throughout Asia, now is a time of flux in opportunities and subjectivities. Such changes are lived as deeply personal and relational. Young people are often instrumental to familial 'development' strategies, and this effects divisions of labour, norms of moral economy, life course ideals and distributions of power. At the same time, media, education and development discourses often exhort people to author autonomous destinies through entrepreneurialism, career and consumerism. Contributors to this issue, 'Development, Gender and Intergenerational Aspirations in Asia', ethnographically explore how old and new dreams—some emphasising autonomy, while others stress familial obligation—conjoin, elide and compete, and how people negotiate associated life course expectations. We also show how dreams find limits, requiring redreaming and rerouting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is much scholarship deconstructing 'mainstream' Australian perceptions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, there has been little attention to how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples perceive non-Indigenous Australians. Yet such perceptions are telling of cultural difference and the circulation of power in a neo-colonial state. In this paper, we focus on Bininj/Yol people in and around the remote town of Maningrida in the Northern Territory, where the term 'Balanda' denotes non-Indigenous Australians, particularly of European descent. Exploring themes of work, time, material accumulation, and Country, we ask how Bininj/Yol people construct Balanda; how their understandings of Balanda shape their understandings of Self and vice versa; and how their constructions of Self are refracted through Balanda discourses about Aboriginality. Bininj/Yol portraits of Balanda are seldom flattering and frequently serve as a counterpoint to local Aboriginal ideals of Self. Balanda seem bafflingly deficient in traits proper and natural: they flout appropriate relations with other people, land and cosmos, and appear obsessed with work, clock time, rules, and material accumulation. Drawing on the concept of the gaze as a force that both objectifies and subjects, we then consider the influence of asymmetric 'looking relations' on local Aboriginal senses of Self. This was especially apparent during the Northern Territory 'Intervention' when the people of the Maningrida region suddenly saw themselves through Balanda eyes, and beheld a shockingly different image than the one they held of themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concepts of development are inevitably loaded with value judgements concerning what constitutes 'proper' social and economic organisation. Focusing on the cultural politics of development on Siquijor, an island in the Central Visayas region of the Philippines, this paper explores these often tacit ideals. It considers one of the key idioms Siquijodnon use in explaining how development is brought about-cooperation-and some of its locally perceived opposites-'crab mentality', politicking and corruption-which contain powerful moral critiques of self and society. On Siquijor, local discourses of development have it that widespread poverty in the Philippines demonstrates a failing of Filipinos to live up to supposedly universal norms of ethical socio-economic conduct. However, I argue that attention to local norms of moral economy reveal the ambivalence underlying these notions of development, particularly in relation to the roles of individualism and reciprocity in socio-economic organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea that freedom should be an explicit goal of development schemes has become popular over recent decades. In this article we consider ways in which the concept is applied to remote Indigenous Australia, such as in Noel Pearson's invocations of Amartya Sen's concept of 'development as freedom'. We draw on the work of governmentality theorists that critically probes the notion of freedom and the ways in which it is tied to its seeming antonym, discipline. We ask what understandings of remote Indigenous Australian life, what ways of thinking about Indigenous futures, may be eclipsed by approaching development aspirations through this (neo-)liberal prism of freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'colonial mentality' is popularly used among many Filipinos to refer to a tendency to compare themselves negatively to Amerikanos. This paper explores the everyday form such deprecating self/other constructions take on the island of Siquijor in the Central Visayas region of the archipelago. It sheds light on how these constructions are socially situated, deployed and reproduced, their limits and their effects. It shows that comparisons between categories of Filipino and Amerikano must be understood in relation to local hierarchies. On Siquijor, local imaginings of Amerikano lifestyles and bodies not only serve as reference points for ideals of affluence and beauty, but act as markers of prestige in competitions for status between neighbours and kin, sustaining a sense of Amerikano superordinancy. While, on Siquijor, superordinancy presumes neither innate nor moral superiority (and, indeed, there exists ambivalence towards the relative moral status of Amerikanos and Filipinos), there is a strong presumption specifically that the failure' of the Philippines to achieve similar levels of affluence to the US is due to moral deficiencies of the Filipino self Thus, outward-looking desire is contained by inward-looking discontent, the latter keeping the former from spilling over into demands for change to a global status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The desire of Filipinas to find husbands abroad, particularly of European extraction, is difficult to ignore for the anthropologist who continually finds him/herself positioned as a potential transnational dating agent, chat-room tutor or even highly eligible marriage prospect. Extending analyses that view this phenomenon as multifaceted and irreducible to economics, we situate the search for transnational marriages in the context of imaginings of self and other. Drawing on ethnographic research in two areas of the Philippines, we consider some of the ways in which Western men are constructed as desirable marriage partners, relating this to broader imaginings of national difference. We then argue that finding a foreign husband may be about more than changing personal and familial circumstances, more even than a desire for the romanticised other. The desire for transnational marriage can be seen as part of a process of self-actualisation: a quest for knowledge and experience of the world through which a paradox of self and other can be reconciled and the self remade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The New Poverty Agenda is said to represent a break with the past and to offer a rationale for aid that is built on partnerships towards a common and realizable goal – the elimination of poverty. However, recent critiques have highlighted problems with the practice of poverty policy, and particularly limitations identified from its association with global actors which stand accused of contributing to poverty. For some, there is no new agenda; a poverty focus merely represents a different path to the same ends (i. e., political reform and economic adjustment). This paper investigates the implications for smaller donors, such as Australia and New Zealand, of adopting poverty policy as defined by the World Bank and others. It argues that certain contexts, such as the Pacific, demonstrate the weaknesses of an all-encompassing policy that remains muddled and contradictory. In terms of effective partnerships, much more could be gained by first seeking to learn more about the nature of poverty in the immediate region and its underlying causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews anthropological DVD films "Shamans of Siquijor: The Healers," directed by Rosanna Brillantes, and "Arukihenro: Walking Pilgrims," directed by Tommi Mendel.