Until the mid of the 19th century, the Ao tribes had lived isolated from foreign political influence and practiced “headhunting” for thousands of years. In most cases, this horrendous practice was ...understood as a senseless and accidental “cutting off someone’s head” for some reason or even for no reason. Nevertheless, the “headhunting” practice was a method of defense and attack, which had constituted a tradition in Ao Naga military tactics. The safety of the villagers depended entirely on the level of military training of the tribe’s male population. In other words, for the Naga tribes, who represented sociopolitical units in a monarchical structure, the practice of “headhunting” meant not only self-defense from the hostile tribes, but also as a mechanism for survival. However, the practice has become only a symbol of the past Naga history for the modern generations today that entirely have converted to Christianity.
Market intelligence is crucial in ensuring executive search consultants make suitable decisions and deliver informed advice, knowledge and talent to clients. This article examines the types of market ...intelligence required by executive search consultants and the methodologies and sources used in intelligence gathering. An assessment as to whether the intelligence-gathering process is about who you know or what you know is also provided. The article considers the impact of demands for market intelligence on executive search firms and discusses knowledge management principles and processes as a means of aiding the effective capture, sharing and use of market intelligence. The article concludes with some observations on the skill sets required of researchers in executive search.
In this paper, I address a prominent colonial representation known as "headhunting", because this term has been in use almost synonymously with Nagas and continues to exert negative psychological ...ramifications on contemporary Nagas. Due to a lack of work revising the exaggerated representation, the colonial portrayal is being sustained by the frequent and continued use of terms such as "former headhunters" and "once headhunters". Therefore, this work is in part to represent the Nagas not as "barbaric headhunters" but as "normal" human beings both in the past as well as in the present. To do so, first, I will outline traditional Naga warfare, the context in which decapitation occurred. Second, I will examine the subject as it is being presented in the literature of Euro-Americans. Finally, the paper will end with the argument that the term "headhunting" was simply an invention of the colonizers and briefly note the ramifications of colonial stereotypes on contemporary Nagas.
This article investigates how useful notions of 'Malay spirit beliefs' and 'the uncanny' are for analysing encounters with mysterious non-human creatures, known as makhluk gaib, in Indonesia's Riau ...Archipelago. It suggests that the multiplicity of cosmologies within a plural society necessarily frustrates efforts to analyse such encounters within the framework of specific cultural worldviews. Rather, interactions between humans and makhluk gaib come to be meaningful through being embedded in the diverse affective experiences of multicultural living. To gain greater analytic purchase on the diversity of affects fostered within the case material, the article rehabilitates Freud's suggestion that one can delineate multiple species of the uncanny. Species concerned with repression and historical memory are shown to be less unsettling than recent theoretical interventions suggest, whilst a more powerful species of the uncanny is argued to derive from the multiculturalism of the region's population in the context of provincial secession. L'auteur décrit l'utilité de notions de « croyances malaises dans les esprits » et de « l'étrange » pour l'analyse de rencontres avec de mystérieuses créatures non humaines appelées makhlukgaib dans l'archipel indonésien de Riau. Il suggère que les efforts d'analyse de ces rencontres dans le cadre de visions du monde culturelles spécifiques se heurtent inévitablement à la multiplicité des cosmologies au sein d'une société plurielle. De fait, les interactions entre les humains et les makhluk gaib prennent leur signification parce qu'elles sont tissées dans les expériences affectives diverses d'une vie multiculturelle. Afin d'avoir une meilleure prise pour analyser la diversité des affects fournie par les matériaux, l'auteur réhabilite la suggestion de Freud selon laquelle on peut identifier de nombreuses sortes d'étrange. Celles ayant un lien avec la répression et la mémoire historique s'avèrent moins dérangeantes que ne le suggèrent les interventions théoriques récentes, tandis qu'une sorte plus puissante d'étrange serait issue du multiculturalisme de la population de la région, dans le contexte de sa sécession provinciale.
The current article examines a 90 cm. tall, prehistoric Native American pictograph painted in red ochre which depicts a red Anthropomorph wearing a “V”-shaped headdress. For a seven-day period at the ...summer solstice the face and headdress of the red Anthropomorph are illuminated with sunlight. The authors proffer photographic, archaeological, and iconographic evidence confirming that the pictograph was made by the prehistoric, agriculturally-reliant Fremont culture of Utah (USA) circa AD 1100 – 1300, and that it was indeed a summer solstice indicator. Because genetic and cultural data verify that some Fremont people were ancestors to the Native Americans that occupy the modern pueblos in Arizona and New Mexico, we gather late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century ethnography from the latter pueblos to show that the summer solstice marked a major shift in agrarian practices—from field preparation and sowing to rain-making and crop fruition. Additional rock art iconography associates the red “Anthropomorph-with-V-shaped-headdress” motif with headhunting, a practice that, according to Pueblo Indian ethnography, was necessary for rain-making and abundant harvests. We then trace this historic Pueblo Indian conception to prehistoric head-taking pictographs aligned with the summer solstice and the seasonal shift it signaled towards rain-making through ritualized headhunting.
This study, based on a lifelong involvement with New Guinea, compares the culture of the Kamoro (18,000 people) with that of their eastern neighbours, the Asmat (40,000), both living on the south ...coast of West Papua, Indonesia. The comparison, showing substantial differences as well as striking similarities, contributes to a deeper understanding of both cultures. Part I looks at Kamoro society and culture through the window of its ritual cycle, framed by gender. Part II widens the view, offering in a comparative fashion a more detailed analysis of the socio-political and cosmo-mythological setting of the Kamoro and the Asmat rituals. Next is a systematic comparison of the rituals. The comparison includes a cross-cultural, structural analysis of relevant myths.
This publication is of interest to scholars and students in Oceanic studies and those drawn to the comparative study of cultures.
Jan Pouwer (1924) started his career as a government anthropologist in West New Guinea in the 1950s and 1960s, with periods of intensive fieldwork, in particular among the Kamoro. A distinguished anthropologist, he held professorships at universities around the world.
Neste artigo investigo as transações coloniais entre “civilização” e “barbárie” através da análise da controvérsia sobre a participação do governador de Timor, Afonso de Castro, na chamada “festa das ...cabeças”, cerimónia associada à celebração de vitórias guerreiras e decapitação de inimigos em Timor Leste, em 1861. Exploro de uma perspetiva dupla, interligada, o mimetismo colonial do governador nesta “selvajaria” ritual. Por um lado, abordo o mimetismo enquanto relação vivida com o espaço envolvente, um modo prático de entrega do sujeito às circunstâncias do rito, marcado pela tensão entre a assimilação ao meio e a demarcação da diferença. Por outro lado, concebo-o enquanto relação inscrita numa racionalidade política de tipo parasitário, com vista à governação colonial. Por conseguinte, argumento que o mimetismo colonial encontra no parasitismo a expressão da sua produtividade política.
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