Anthropological Perspective Research Articles

The Complexity of Beliefs: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Religion and Culture

This paper explores the intricate relationship between religion and belief systems, emphasizing the complexity of religious phenomena as cultural constructs rather than mere expressions of faith. Through a comprehensive analysis of various anthropological perspectives, we argue that religion encompasses a diverse array of cognitive processes that shape human understanding and social interaction. By examining case studies from different cultures, we highlight the significance of supernatural beliefs and their implications for societal cohesion. This study aims to elucidate the cognitive underpinnings of religious beliefs and their role in shaping human behavior, ultimately contributing to a deeper understanding of the multifaceted nature of religion.

Homo Faber – Work From an Anthropological Perspective - In the Light of Research Conducted in Poland

The article informs about the conference Homo Faber - How Do We Work, How Did We Work?, which took place at the University of Warsaw in 2023. The text recalls the results of the fieldwork of Anna Zadrożyńska – an ethnologist starting anthropological research on this topic in Poland. Then, it briefly presents research projects carried out in Poland using ethnographic methods,outlining the trajectory of changing approaches. In the conclusion, which is an introduction to the thematic part of the volume, it briefly presents the post-conference articles included in this part.

The Role of Jepuro Inter-Ethnic Cemeteries in Religious Moderation: Global Sociological and Anthropological Perspectives

Interethnic cemeteries, often overlooked by historians, possess great cultural and sociological value. This study analyses the Jepuro cemeteries in Juwana, Pati, highlighting their importance in the religious moderation of the region. These cemeteries reflect the community’s ability to manage ethnic and religious diversity with little conflict. The study addresses three key questions: the influence of interethnic funerals on the community’s philosophy and notion of religious moderation, and the impact of remains in the graves. Through a qualitative approach, observations, and interviews with residents, it is concluded that the cultural diversity brought by immigrants through the port of Tanjungpuro fostered religious moderation in the region. The variety of gravestones reflects a historical understanding of moderation being restored, and the interethnic burials show that religious moderation has been transmitted over generations. Preserving these cemeteries is not just important, it is essential, as they represent the community's multicultural legacy and its commitment to religious peace. It is suggested that local authorities protect these monuments and integrate their history into educational programs.

Hobbes and Kant: Materialism and Rhetoric

This article examines the subtle nuances of Hobbes’s and Kant’s perspectives on rhetoric and materialism, contextualising them within the broader framework of political philosophy. Despite both philosophers being critics of rhetoric, their approaches exhibit notable divergences. Hobbes, who advocated for monarchy, criticized rhetoric from the perspective of a materialist anthropology influenced by Lucretius. However, he paradoxically employed rhetorical strategies in his new scientia civilis. Despite critiquing both Lucretian materialism and rhetoric, Kant incorporated certain rhetorical elements compatible with his philosophical framework, particularly in relation to Epicureanism. This study analyses their interpretations of paradiastole and the implications for the political thought. The argument is that both thinkers, in seeking a rational foundation for the political order, anchor their notions of rationality in Epicurean materialism, by reconfiguring rhetorical elements to suit their respective philosophies. The article elucidates Kant’s republican proclivities and his aspiration to maximize the citizens’ autonomy, which contrasts with Hobbes’s monarchical orientation. This research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the early modern political thought and its relevance to the contemporary republican and democratic theory.

Development of Southeast Asian Folk Dance from the Perspective of Artistic Anthropology

Development of Southeast Asian Folk Dance from the Perspective of Artistic Anthropology

Human sexuality: anthropological, ethical and pedagogical perspectives

Not available.

Dietary and Social Stratification: An Anthropological Perspective

Dietary and Social Stratification: An Anthropological Perspective

Anthropology and Rural Sociology: Combining Qualitative Methods to Analyze Rural Life and Beliefs

This paper explores the application of qualitative methods in analyzing rural life and beliefs through the perspectives of anthropology and rural sociology. Qualitative research methods, such as participant observation, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and text analysis, can reveal the complexities of rural social structures, cultural changes, and religious beliefs. By integrating the perspectives of anthropology and rural sociology, this paper demonstrates the unique advantages of qualitative methods in understanding the internal mechanisms, cultural traditions, and community interactions in rural societies. The study emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary research in interpreting the diversity and complexity of rural societies. The findings indicate that qualitative methods not only capture the dynamic processes of rural society but also provide rich first-hand data, offering scientific evidence for policy formulation and social practice.

Crimscapes. Kulturanthropologische Perspektiven auf Politiken der Kriminalisierung

At the end of the last century, criminalisation has become a globally accepted mode of governing social problems. Using two policy fields, sea rescue in the Mediterranean and combating hate speech on the internet, we propose a cultural anthropological perspective on the punitive turn and the politics of criminalisation. Using the concept of crimscapes, we describe the dynamic landscapes that unfold around criminal justice interventions, in which new figures of threat and vulnerability emerge, moral orders are restructured and new constellations of actors and practices are brought to the fore. By relating different policy fields, understood as local articulations of global dynamics of criminalisation, the concept also points to the ambivalences of this policy, which can also have an enabling and protective effect alongside exclusionary, stratifying and punitive effects. This underlines the need for critical cultural anthropological research that highlights the ambivalences and contradictions of criminalisation and contributes to an informed critique that is not based solely on normative evaluations, but can also draw attention to unintended effects and contradictions in political debates.

Анализ профессиональной культуры сотрудников органов внутренних дел: философско-антропологический ракурс

The article provides an analysis of the professional culture of employees of internal affairs agencies from a philosophical and anthropological perspective. The work notes that two elements can be defined in the structure of professional culture - professional competence and personal qualities. A general description of each of these elements is given. It is noted that it is the philosophical and anthropological perspective that allows us to fully analyze the essence of the personal element in the structure of a certain type of professional culture. From the philosophical and anthropological perspective, three principles on which it is based have been identified: the unity of normativity and initiative; the unity of dynamism and statics; the need for systematic information exchange. These principles are of a dialectical nature and are defining, distinguishing the professional culture of employees of internal affairs agencies from other types. The personal component turns out to be of primary importance, influencing decision-making in a specific situation. Paths for further research into the professional culture of employees of internal affairs agencies are outlined.

Философско-антропологическая проблематика в работе М. Хоркхаймера и Т. Адорно «Диалектика Просвещения»

The article is devoted to the analysis of the work of the Frankfurt school theorists M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno “Dialectics of Enlightenment. Philosophical fragments” from a philosophical and anthropological perspective. These thinkers became famous primarily as representatives of sociological knowledge. The study showed that their heritage also raises philosophical and anthropological issues. The work shows that in “Dialectics of Enlightenment” the authors offer an original concept of the history of European culture, presented from the perspective of the evolution of being and consciousness of the individual. Thinkers are convinced that the entire history of European culture appears as a distinction between man and nature, the removal of the natural from the consciousness of the individual. Modern culture is considered by M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno as the apogee of this sociocultural crisis, after which, according to them, “non-existence” comes. Based on the presented assessment of theorists of the Frankfurt School, a conclusion is made about the validity of understanding the current crisis of European culture (crisis of the 20th century) as a sociocultural transformation, marking the entrance to a new stage in the dynamics of the countries of this region.

The Jerusalem pilgrimage road in the second temple period: an anthropological and archaeological perspective

The pilgrimage to the Second Temple included ceremonial elements of strong spiritual significance that elevated the participants to spiritual exaltation. This ceremonial process began with the first steps pilgrims took from their homes towards Jerusalem and concluded when they reached the Temple. This article presents the ceremonial element of the pilgrimage in light of archaeological and anthropological research, integrated with historical sources and with reference to the topography of Jerusalem and its surroundings (including the use of geographic information systems). These tools are used to retrace the path that pilgrims walked and present what the pilgrimage meant for them. The article also investigates whether the physical act of walking can shape the pilgrimage experience and, if so, how this occurs. It is also argued that the main approach to the Temple Mount for Jewish pilgrims led from the south (via the Kidron and Hinnom valleys), and that the construction of this route was designed with geophysical and architectural details meant to enhance the spiritual experience of the pilgrims.

Wuyi Rock Tea Drinking Associated Knowledge and Practice: A Case Study from the Anthropological Perspectives

There are two domains in the anthropological knowledge of food and the practice of foodways: the materialist school, represented by Marvin Harris, and the teleological school, represented by Claude Levi Strauss. Scholars have considered these two schools irreconcilable for many years. This paper made a practical study of the two domains by investigating the consumption of Wuyi Rock Tea in Fujian Province from the perspective of anthropology. It suggests that Wuyi Rock Tea drinking has become a symbolic social behavior in Chinese society along with Chinese pragmatic principles. Consumers enjoy Wuyi Rock Tea and desire to consume it for various reasons.

Entrevista a Claudio Lomnitz.: Segunda parte: el antropólogo creador

This interview corresponds to the second part of the talk held with Professor Claudio Lomnitz, which took place on April 19, 2023. In the academic world Lomnitz is recognized for his books that deal with important topics to think about national culture from anthropological and historical perspectives, such as nationalism, regional cacique power, the culture of death on the Mexican border with the United States, violence, religion; to intimate topics such as his own family legacy from a diasporic genealogy.

Towards an Anthropological Perspective on Human Flourishing in Education

ABSTRACT While many recognise the impact formal education has on human flourishing, often overlooked are the forces in society that shape our conception of the good life. Our understanding of flourishing is formed as much by the culture we live in as by the classrooms we learn in. This oversight impacts our ability to think clearly about flourishing because it keeps us from seeing the foundations upon which our idea of the good life is built. Contending that the language used by psychologists often reduces our understanding of human flourishing and existence we argue that the notion of the good life many of us adopt simply by existing in our modern therapeutic culture has been deeply distorted. On this basis, we advance a corrective for constricted therapeutic conceptions of flourishing, arguing that human flourishing needs ‘anthropology’ in two senses – one employed by social scientists and one by theologians and philosophers – and we make the case for the educational importance of turning to ‘anthropologies of the good’ as a positive, constructive examination of flourishing that is philosophically and theologically sophisticated enough to parse the several empirical investigations of human nature and bring clarity and insight to their findings.

Event as the central construal of psychological time in humans.

Time is a fundamental dimension of our perception and mental construction of reality. It enables resolving changes in our environment without a direct sensory representation of elapsed time. Therefore, the concept of time is inferential by nature, but the units of subjective time that provide meaningful segmentation of the influx of sensory input remain to be determined. In this review, we posit that events are the construal instances of time perception as they provide a reproducible and consistent segmentation of the content. In that light, we discuss the implications of this proposal by looking at "events" and their role in subjective time experience from cultural anthropological and ontogenetic perspectives, as well as their relevance for episodic memory. Furthermore, we discuss the significance of "events" for the two critical aspects of subjective time-duration and order. Because segmentation involves parsing event streams according to causal sequences, we also consider the role of causality in developing the concept of directionality of mental timelines. We offer a fresh perspective on representing past and future events before age 5 by an egocentric bi-directional timeline model before acquiring the allocentric concept of absolute time. Finally, we illustrate how the relationship between events and durations can resolve contradictory experimental results. Although "time" warrants a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach, we focus this review on "time perception", the experience of time, without attempting to provide an all encompassing overview of the rich philosophical, physical, psychological, cognitive, linguistic, and neurophysiological context.

Ocean and Beyond: A Benthic Imagination of the Black Historiography in August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean and Henry Dumas’s “Ark of Bones”

Ocean can be read as a mnemonic text, from anthropological, historiographical, sociological, and literary perspectives, despite ocean being constructed, in our popular imagination, as a void –a ‘non-place’ in Mark Auge’s term.Ocean, in general, symbolizes chaos. The present studyseeks to identify the symbolic and material connotation of ocean water,recognizing how ocean becomes an integral part of African-American diasporic identity, cultural, and historiographic legacy, predicated on a mnemonic context, as represented in August Wilson’s play Gem of the Ocean and Henry Dumas’s short-story “Ark of Bones,” bringing out a literary-historical dimension of ocean water, closely linked with identity-formation.

The trading house: A relational and configurational insight into family businesses

What analytical framework can we employ to conduct ethnographic investigation into family businesses? As sociological and anthropological perspectives increasingly extend their gaze beyond the legal confines of firms to include the kinship groups (household, business family) behind them, no existing integrative concept examines the sui generis organizations formed by these overlapping institutions. Based on fieldwork conducted among shopkeepers in rural France, this article proposes a relational and configurational approach to family business by developing an overarching category: the ‘trading house’. Combining Claude Lévi-Strauss’ analysis of the aristocratic house with feminist-inspired perspectives on domestic economy, the trading house refers to an interdependent group of (re)productive cooperation—comprising, at least, a business and a household—that, directly or indirectly, ensures the management of a transferable symbolic and material estate centered around a market activity. The relational perspective examines boundaries, resources, and interpersonal ties within the house as outcomes of an ongoing relational work, which delineates, blurs, and (dis)connects domestic, business and family spheres, all the while ensuring the historical continuity of the estate beyond its living representatives. The configurational perspective simultaneously draws attention to the (re)productive, monetary, and reputational interdependencies that bind and unite the members of the house across these shifting boundaries. This framework is particularly well-suited for understanding traditional small businesses in rural areas.

Infrastructure and the evolution of settlement space: a study from a spatial anthropological perspective on the Pearl River Delta

The complex system of the settlement space in China’s Pearl River Delta region has always featured infrastructure as a key medium to explore the evolution of the settlement space. Therefore, anthropological research on infrastructure has become an important dimension for researchers to in analyzing social and spatial issues in the Pearl River Delta region. This study explores the correlation mechanism between infrastructure and settlement space by referring to literature reviews and empirical cases, revealing the underlying political factors, economic factors, cultural factors, and complex social change process of the physical space through empirical case studies. It provides a theoretical research genealogy for exploring spatial evolution in addition to a research sample for analyzing social and cultural changes in the Pearl River Delta region. Moreover, it emphasizes the cognitive significance of historical context and has important implications for future urban development.

Academic filmmaking and its discontents

Working with the same filmed material from the perspective of anthropology and screen studies, the authors discuss their disciplines’ different approaches to academic filmmaking. This article presents two videos, Filming Out Loud and Whose Stories, made from the same raw footage shot by the two authors together at the garage Cedric Motors, situated close to Manchester University, UK, where they were taking a summer course in ethnographic filmmaking at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology in June 2022. After spending seven days at the garage, filming the workdays of the owner Pat Rafter and his main employee (who wishes to remain unnamed), this raw material was then edited separately by each author. Producing points of methodological comparison between videographic criticism working with “an archive of moving images and sounds” (Keathley and Mittell 2019) and the culturally situated “encounters with alterity” enacted through ethnographic filmmaking (Cox et al. 2016), the authors engage with the methodological differences and commonalities between their two disciplines and filmmaking practices. By focusing on how the unpredictability of ethnographic fieldwork generated a rethinking of received conventions, interdisciplinary collaboration in visual research is here framed as an opportunity for a “transmutation of sensibilities” (Csordas 2007) bringing into question both videographic criticism’s imperative of critical thinking articulated audiovisually (generally on archival material) and visual anthropology’s observational legacy. Scraping at the weld between disciplinary received knowledge, the authors reflect on the positionality and ethics of their research and on the task of elaborating a filmic narrative while accounting for different social or cultural worlds