Finding Your Island: To Return or Not to Return
Based upon multiple field visits to the same site in northwest Mindanao in the southern Philippines, the issue addressed here is how ethnographic data may differ, pro and con, as the researcher ages and changes over time. Issues of validity, reliability and even potential creativity of insights are touched upon as variables in long-term research to the same locale.
Takers Keepers, Losers Weepers: Theft as Customary Play in the Southern Philippines
This article presents ethnographic findings from the northwest coastal region of Mindanao, the largest island in the Southern Philippines. I argue that street-level theft (pickpocketing, land squatting, and kidnapping) can be seen as emerging, at least in part, from customary norms based in what Alan Dundes might term folk ideas. Time-honored behavior patterns conveyed by word of mouth include getting something for nothing (pa-bukongay), being street smart (pa-abtikay), and being first (pa-unahay). These locally resonant ideas influence the kinds of behaviors that are tolerated in children and adults, and they should be considered as important independent variables when attempting to understand definitions of and motivations for theft in this region.
Photoinduced spin-state transition of Co3+ in the layered perovskite manganite thin film
The photoinduced effect, at different temperatures, on layered perovskite manganite La1.2Sr1.8Mn1.8Co0.2O7 thin film deposited on a SrTiO3(100) substrate has been studied using a He–Ne laser (632.8 nm) with the power of output 25 mW at low temperatures. The electrical transport and magnetic properties of the film are investigated systematically in the temperature region from 20 to 300 K. The resistance shows a significant decrease at low temperatures (T<90 K) under laser irradiation, which can be interpreted in terms of the spin-state transition of Co3+ ions. The magnetic field combined with the laser is also used to detect the photoinduced effect of the spin-glass state. The time dependence of the metastable system under several applied fields was also discussed. The system has the ability to keep a persistent memory of the magnetic history imprinted in its zero-field resistance.