Existing studies of Iban burial and religion have focused on places where traditional practice has (at least until recently) continued. Motomitsu Uchibori (1978), Peter Metcalf (1975, 1976), and ...Cliff Sather (2003, 2012) have provided ethnographers with some of the fullest accounts available of the ways in which the world's peoples deal with death. Peter Kedit (1993), John Postill (2003, 2006), Robert Cramb (2007, 2010), and before them, Vinson Sutlive (1972, 1978, 1992), provide accounts of modernity as it has affected the Iban. This Research Note focuses on the interface between Iban culture and modernity and examines how urbanization and globalization are contextualized in Kuching: specifically, it looks at how far the Ibans have gone to make their own modus vivendi, accommodating elements of traditional practice and beliefs about the afterlife in their Christian identity, and how traditional burial customs have been adapted and changed. It complements previously published studies of change and continuity in Iban ritual and beliefs following Anglican mission work (Varney 2010, 2011). John Peel's account of the encounter between Anglican Christianity and an African society (Peel 2000) provides a critical model for the present study. The continuing process of adaptation in Iban mourning rituals and burials, and in beliefs about the afterlife, is considered by examining (1) adat pemati (a measure of social and personal worth in terms of the length of mourning and fines payable if mourning restrictions are broken). (2) sabak (chant describing the journey to the next world sung by a specialist wailer before burial), and (3) sebayan (the afterworld of the dead). By gathering information about the ways that leaving baya' (grave goods) observing mourning (serara'bunga) and its ending (agetas ulit) are continued, it is now possible to recognize the considerable extent to which `cultural blending' (Park 2011) has occurred in modern Kuching. Key stages in contemporary burial rituals in Kuching, and the associated beliefs, are described: o before the burial, including family gatherings, adat pemati, sabak and its alternatives. o burial, Christian services, baya, grave ornaments: o mourning, the use of ngetas ulit to end mourning, anniversaries of death and All Souls night; the associated beliefs in sebayan, soul and spirit taught by missionaries and leading to confusion among Iban Christians.
This paper is based largely on notes of conversations in June 1968 when I spent time at the Methodist headquarters at Sibu and accompanied a Methodist missionary to the longhouses with Christian ...inhabitants along the Baleh river. That visit was intended to gain an understanding of the differences and commonalties of the Methodist and Anglican missions to complement my research on Iban Anglicans (Varney 1968, 1969, 2010a). In 2010 I again visited Sibu. I talked with Ibans preparing for Methodist ministry and with the staff of the Methodist Theological School (MTS) and was encouraged to make my record of Methodist work, as I found it in 1968, more widely available. Its inclusion here as a Research Note shows that material based on interviews over 40 years ago can illuminate understanding of the recent rapid advance of Christianity in Sarawak and of the wider context of contemporary Iban society. The paper begins by introducing the work of Christian missions with the Iban in Sarawak since 1848. The picture that emerges is consistent; some Iban were baptized but most were satisfied with their own religion and resisted the idea that there might be something better. The history of Methodist work includes the response to the baptisms of Temenggong1 Koh and other Iban leaders in 1949, 1949, which came as `astonishing news' to Malcolm MacDonald, then Commissioner-General in South-East Asia (MacDonald 1956:199). The paper describes the position of Iban Christians in 1968, just five years after the creation of Malaysia, with the establishment of the Sarawak Iban Annual Conference (SIAC) with The Rev. Joshua Bunsu as its President. In the same year the Anglican church had its first local, and Iban, bishop. These were important factors for the future development of Christianity in Sarawak.
In 2006, federal judges issued more opinions on the validity of the age discrimination theory to cash balance pension plans than in any prior year. In the Cooper v. IBM Personal Pension Plan case, ...the 7th Circuit held that any differences between the benefits of younger and older employees merely correlated with age and thus IBM's cash balance formula is age-neutral. On January 26, 2007, a New Jersey District Court dismissed the age discrimination claims brought against a cash balance plan sponsored by Dun & Bradstreet Corp. In Register v. PNC Financial Services Group, the 3rd Circuit rejected the age discrimination theory. A Missouri District Court, a Colorado District Court, and a New York District Court also rejected the age discrimination theory. The consensus among the appellate courts and the various district courts has not extended to the Second Circuit district courts that had recognized the claim as valid in 2006, and may not extend to the federal circuits where appeals from dismissals of age discrimination claims are pending.
The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently upheld a defense judgment in a 401(k) employer stock case following a bench trial on breach of fiduciary claims. The appellate court's analysis of ...the Eastern District of Virginia's 58-page opinion presents a roadmap for how plan sponsors and fiduciaries should deal with employer stock in defined contribution plans. The Fourth Circuit's affirmance of the judgment in favor of the employer embraces many of the arguments put forth by defendants in seeking dismissal of similar 401(k) "stock-drop" cases: Congress's preference for employee investments in employer stock in defined contribution plans; the exemption of employer stock funds from the duty of prudence to the extent it requires diversification; evaluation of the prudence of fiduciary conduct without regard to hindsight or results; and that a mere decline in the price of a plan investment -- even a big drop -- does not implicate a breach of fiduciary duty.
This research establishes the Dakota-outcrop sequence stratigraphy in part of the eastern San Juan Basin, New Mexico, and relates reservoir quality lithologies in depositional sequences to structure ...and reservoir compartmentalization in the South Lindrith Field area. The result is a predictive tool that will help guide further exploration and development.
Neither the Pension Protection Act nor the Seventh Circuit's Cooper decision resolve three other claims commonly asserted in cash balance age discrimination litigation: 1. disparate impact claims, ...asserted only under the ADEA (not ERISA), 2. so-called ERISA 204(h) claims, and 3. antibackloading claims. Of the three, only ERISA 204(h) claims have shown any promise for plaintiffs, largely due to an apparently erroneous retroactive application of the disclosure rules recently adopted by the IRS. The anti-backloading claims, typically arising out of conversions of traditional benefit plans to cash balance plans, have met with little success in the district courts that have considered them in cash balance plan litigation. There also may be serious questions as to whether any statutory basis exists for the disparate impact claims, also typically based on cash balance plan conversions, and allegations that they disfavor older employees. While the Cooper decision and the PPA reflect progress in fight to protect cash balance plans, the war is far from over. The question is whether, when it finally ends, there will be any cash balance (or, for that matter, defined benefit plan) sponsors left to celebrate the victory.
