Anthropological Account Research Articles

Physical Education as Olympic Education

Introduction In a recent paper (Parry, 1998, p. 64), I argued that the justification of PE activities lies in their capacity to facilitate the development of certain human excellences of a valued kind. Of course, the problem now lies in specifying those ‘human excellences of a valued kind’, and (for anyone) this task leads us into the area of philosophical anthropology. I suggested that the way forward for Physical Education lies in the philosophical anthropology (and the ethical ideals) of Olympism, which provide a specification of a variety of human values and excellences which: •have been attractive to human groups over an impressive span of time and space •have contributed massively to our historically developed conceptions of ourselves •have helped to develop a range of artistic and cultural conceptions that have defined Western culture. •have produced a range of physical activities that have been found universally satisfying and challenging. Although physical activities are widely considered to be pleasurable, their likelihood of gaining wide acceptance lies rather in their intrinsic value, which transcends the simply hedonic or relative good. Their ability to furnish us with pleasurable experiences depends upon our prior recognition in them of opportunities for the development and expression of valued human excellences. They are widely considered to be such opportunities for the expression of valued human excellences because, even when as local instantiations, their object is to challenge our common human propensities and abilities. I claimed that Olympic ideals may be seen not merely as inert ‘ideals’, but living ideas which have the power to remake our notions of sport in education, seeing sport not as mere physical activity but as the cultural and developmental activity of an aspiring, achieving, well-balanced, educated and ethical individual. This paper seeks to make good that claim by trying to develop a case for Physical Education as Olympic Education. I begin by setting out various accounts and conceptions of the Olympic Idea; then I suggest a unifying and organising account of the philosophical anthropology of Olympism; and this is followed by the practical application of that account in two examples of current ethical issues. Finally, I seek to present an account of Physical Education as Olympic Education.

Across the border: Mongolian ethnic and national identity

Jankowiak, William R. Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City: An Anthropological Account. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. xvi + 345 pp. including notes, references, and index. $45.00 cloth, $17.50 paperback. Pasternak, Burton and Janet W. Salaff. Cowboys and Cultivators: The Chinese of Inner Mongolia. Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1993. xiv + 280 pp. including chapter notes, references, and index. $48.50 cloth

Sanuma memories: Yanomami ethnography in times of crisis

This text provides an anthropological account of the Yanomami and their social organisation, kinship and marriage, moving from the microcosm of individual experience to the broader sociological trends that engulf them. It draws on extensive fieldwork among the Sanuma.

Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City: An Anthropological Account.

The first contemporary enthnographic account of urban life in China, Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City studies both public and private life, including such aspects as religious belief, gender images, family life, and sexual attraction.

Sex, Death and Hierarchy in a Chinese City: An Anthropological Account (review)

144 China Review International: Vol. ?, No. ?, Spring 1994 ship) which has changed. It is contradictions of this sort—between the stated goals and current structure of China's stock markets—which need to be analyzed for indications of the direction of future reform. Much of the information necessary for such an analysis is present in this book, but the author does not sufficiently help us with the task. Ellen Hertz University of California at Berkeley William R. Jankowiak. Sex, Death and Hierarchy in a Chinese City: An AnthropologicalAccount New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. xvi, 345 pp. Hardcover $45.00, paperback $17.50. copyright1994 by University of Hawai'i Press When I first saw the words "Sex, Death and Hierarchy" in the title ofWilliam Jankowiak's book, I expected a Freudian treatise postulating a deep Chinese psychological structure. Fortunately I was wrong. Sex, death, and hierarchy are just three of the racier topics covered by this wide-ranging urban ethnography. Marketing considerations aside, it could just as easily have been titled "Ethnicity, Kinship , and Conflict" or "Age, Class, and Gender." What holds the book together is a careful examination ofinteractions among Chinese ofdifferent ethnicities, genders , ages, and classes in a variety of urban social settings. The city in question is Huhhot, the capital of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region (IMAR). Though not a particularly large Chinese city (population 492,011), it is the cultural and political center for the entire region. Huhhot contains the majority of the IMAR's universities and, because of its location near the border with Mongolia, also hosts a regional headquarters ofnational defence. Though located in the IMAR, Huhhot today is a predominately Han city, the 1982 census listing approximately 80 percent of the population as Han, 10 percent as Mongol, 5 percent as Hui (Muslim), and 5 percent as other. Denied the opportunity to do research in the Mongolian grasslands, Jankowiak spent thirty months in Huhhot between August 1981 and November 1983, and between June and August of1987. The setting ofJankowiak's research and the style of urban ethnography he undertook allowed him to broaden recent portrayals of China under Deng. Though there are studies of Chinese women, Chinese peasants, Chinese intellectuals, Chinese workers, Chinese minorities, Chinese youth, Chinese elderly, and so on, most of these works treat each group in isolation from the others. Jankowiak concentrates on interactions—between Han and Mongols, peasants and intellectuals, cadres and workers, women and Reviews 145 men, parents and children—and on the images and stereotypes these categories ofpeople construct ofthemselves and of each other. Moreover, instead ofexamining life within the work unit (an important butwell-worn strategy), Jankowiak focuses on the public and private domains ofthe nonwork world—homes, dorms, neighborhoods, restaurants, housing units, parks, markets, and streets. After a brieftheoretical introduction and a useful history ofthe city, Jankowiak begins his ethnography proper. Chapter 3 deals with Mongolian ethnicity. It examines the use ofMongolian language, Han and Mongol views on 'affirmative action', Han and Mongol stereotypes ofeach other, Mongol/Han intermarriage , and the interplay ofgender and ethnicity. Jankowiak portrays Huhhot Hans and Mongols as fundamentally alike, sharing similar "ethical and social obligations to one's family and friends, common criteria for assessing esteem and choosing a mate, shared notion of social hierarchy and structure, and lifegoals and overall worldview, among others" (p. 5). As in Dru Gladney's study ofMuslim ethnicity,1 Jankowiak emphasizes the role of state categorization and entitlement policies in the generation ofethnic difference and conflict. Chapter 4 examines Huhhotians' perceptions of social hierarchy. Jankowiak argues that "the Huhhotian conceptual order expanded from one organized in 1983, around four distinct cultural principles—extraordinary administrative authority /no administrative authority, academic knowledge/ignorance, the genteel/ the crude, and the ethical/the unethical—to include, by 1987, a new principle— money/no money" (p. 61). After laying out the divisions of ethnicity and social hierarchy, Jankowiak examines interactions and conflicts in public settings. Chapter 5 concentrates on neighborhoods—what the Huhhotian conceptions of a neighbor and a neighborhood are, quarrels among neighbors, and crime. Chapter 6, my favorite, presents twenty-three case studies ofpost-bicycle-accident arguments. Jankowiak focuses on how disputants of a particular gender, age...

Sex, death, and hierarchy in a Chinese city: an anthropological account

Sex, death, and hierarchy in a Chinese city: an anthropological account

BOOK REVIEW

Journal of Advanced NursingVolume 17, Issue 12 p. 1503-1503 BOOK REVIEW First published: December 1992 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.1992.tb02824.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Abstract Challenges in Caring Explorations in Nursing and Ethics by J M Brown, A L Kitson and T J McKnight Experiences of Death An Anthropological Account by Jenrufer Hockey Personal Construct Psychology in Clinical Practice Theory, Research and Applications by David A Winter Catch Me a Nightingale by Joan Ash Management Issues in Critical Care edited by Carole Birdsall The Chronic Illness Trajectory Framework The Corbin and Strauss Nursing Model edited by Pierre Woog Living and Working With Autism edited by Luisa L Arendt Volume17, Issue12December 1992Pages 1503-1503 RelatedInformation

Blue Mountains: The Ethnography and Biogeography of a South Indian Region. Edited by Paul Hockings. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989. xiv, 406 pp. Rs. 350.00.

The first general survey in 80 years of the geography and anthropology of the Nilgiris district of south India, this book makes a unique contribution to the growing literature on this region. The contributors, from a variety of disciplines, offer fourteen original studies including the first overview of Nilgir languages, the most recent account of the Kotas, the first archaeological survey of the region since 1873, a detailed biogeographical overview in an anthropological account of south India, and the first sociolinguistic study of a south Indian town.

Book Reviews

Book Reviews Get access Experiences of Death — an Anthropological Account. Jennifer Hockey. Pp. 201. Edinburgh University Press. 1990. ISBN: 0 7486 0221 6. Ian Johnson, Dr Ian Johnson, Dr Consultant in Palliative Medicine, Leicestershire HospiceOadby, Leicestershire Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Public Health, Volume 13, Issue 4, November 1991, Pages 362–363, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.pubmed.a042666 Published: 01 November 1991

Experiences of Death: an anthropological account (Book).

Sociology of Health & IllnessVolume 13, Issue 3 p. 448-449 Free Access Experiences of Death: an anthropological account (Book). Marina Barnard, Marina Barnard Public Health Research Unit, Glasgow UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Marina Barnard, Marina Barnard Public Health Research Unit, Glasgow UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: September 1991 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.ep10493035AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume13, Issue3September 1991Pages 448-449 RelatedInformation

Prayer and Community: The Havurah in American Judaism (review)

104 SHOFAR Nonetheless, if these two groups provided the main impetus for Britain's decision to withdraw, the contribution of the Haganah should not be underrated. While the author cuts off his discussion in the fall of 1947, from then on, as the fighting against the British fell off and operations shifted more and more against Arab forces, soon operating in company, battalion, and even regimental formations, the Haganah came into its own, and without it the War of Liberation could not have been won. In conclusion, then, this book delivers what the title promises. It is strong in its evaluation of the British counter-insurgency effort, though somewhat weaker on the Jewish side where the author relies entirely on works translated into English and also seems to overestimate the influence of Jewish opinion on American policymakers. Happily, this study is free of the special pleadings and advocacy which so often mar works on the subject, and if, on occasion, the opinions cited are uncomfortable for the Jewish reader, it must be remembered that within the context of the time even a great Englishman such as Winston Churchill referred to the Jewish underground fighters as "brigands and bandits." Moreover, the reader should remember the statement already cited above, that the Jewish insurgents represented the "highest quality" of opponents the British army faced in the post-war period. Gunther Rothenberg Department of History Purdue University Prayer and Community: The Havurah in American Judaism, by Riv-Ellen Prell. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989. 335 pp. $37.50. Strange as it may1seem, given the plethora of books about American Jews and Judaism, we know next to nothing about the faith American Jews hold or what enables them to hold it. The number of times they go to shul, the percentage that observes dietary laws, their attitudes concerning Israel and antisemitism: on these subjects the data are plentiful. But as Riv-Ellen Prell notes correctly, researchers to date have "paid little attention to how religious experience is constituted." Her attempt to fill part of that gap with this anthropological account ora havurah-style minyan meeting in Los Angeles in the early 'seventies is most welcome, therefore. Prell's work takes its place among a small but growing literature devoted to the inner life of American Jews-in this case to the construction and authentication of contemporary Jewish identity through the "performance" ofJewish prayer. Prell's contribution is two-fold. First, she has culled from her participant -observation and interview schedules a rich set of quotations which VoLume 9. No.1 FaLL 1990 105 confirm the portrait of havurah Judaism offered by previous scholarship and personal contact with the movement. The language of the 'sixties is pronounced , the tension between tradition and "expressive individualism" acute, the ambivalence towards hierarchy and organization at the heart of the movement's travails. Members of the "Kelton Minyan" came together weekly to pray despite their difficulties with the act of prayer and their lack of clarity on just who or what they hoped would hear their prayer. They stayed together despite such difficulties because their gatherings offered a depth of experience, a sense of community and authenticity, a precious piece of continuity with past and future. Prell shows nicely how their tinkering with the aesthetics of the synagogue enabled them to reject the models of their parents without abandoning Jewish commitment itself. The core of the book is devoted to the origins of the prayer group, the structure of its prayer service, and two "crises" which threatened to break the group apart: one over discomfort with the act of prayer, the other over the relative "invisibility" of the group's female members. The account is convincing, at times even suspenseful . Prell transmits to the reader the affection which she developed for her subjects. We want the group to make it. The book's second contribution is a careful reading of the immense theoretical literature (particularly anthropological) on religious ritual, and its use to supplement primarily sociological accounts of the context in which modern Jewish religious activity occurs. Prell moves back and forth gracefully from her data to theory-Douglas and Turner are here, along with Tambiah, Geertz, and...

Ritual Speaking in a Canadian Suburb: Anthropology and the Problem of Generalization

In the context of an expanding suburb on the edge of a Canadian city, this paper explores the ritual of daily conversation, and the role of individual practice in bringing to fruition common cultural texts. It offers a re-working of the Geertzian notion of texts as cultural control mechanisms, and a reappraisal of Giddens' view of the sociology of action as the study of behaviors which may be legitimately divorced from their individual perpetrators and set alongside other reified social facts. It argues instead for a view of common cultural texts as incomplete: ambiguous shorthands and generalities. It is the practice of individual speakers which personalizes and particularizes them to specific circumstances. This individuals do in diverse fashion. Hence, the meanings which the texts come to express are neither necessarily consensual nor conventional. The form of an anthropological account of such routine occasions, therefore, should be to shuttle between collective text and individual activity, maintaining the general concept and the particular usage in a tension of opposites through which each is seen as affording social life to the other.

Nature and culture inOdysseys

The article gives, as it were, an anthropological account of the Homeric Cyclopes, examining and rejecting the view that their portrayal provides evidence of a deep‐seated concern in early Greece with the notion of opposition between Nature and Culture.

Hume and the God-Hypothesis

154. 1 HUME AND THE GOD-HYPOTHESIS Interpretation of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion has always been contentious. While some think it obvious that Philo is Hume's spokesman, others think it is Cleanthes. Whether or not Philo is Hume's spokesman, he certainly produces the better argument. Nonetheless , that argument is flawed by an assumption which I doubt Hume ever questioned. I want to consider that assumption , but want to make it clear that it is not my intention to defend Cleanthes' position. The second thing I want to do in this paper, which I have not seen done elsewhere, is to connect Hume's arguments in the Dialogues with his anthropological account of religiosity. Perhaps the least contentious thing about the Dialogues is that Demea's a priori position is not taken too seriously, nor is much time spent on the first cause argument , so important from Aristotle to Leibniz. What is given serious attention is what might be described as the 'God-hypothesis', which is more or less the Argument from Design. Philo rejects the argument for reasons we shall review below, but makes a concession. The concession is basically that it is intelligible to contend that the cause or causes of order in the world bear some resemblance to human intelligence. The catch, which is the point driven home against Cleanthes, is that, while intelligible, the idea is utterly pointless. Philo says: If the whole of Natural Theology ... resolves itself into one simple .. .proposition , That_ the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence : If this proposition be not capable of extension. . .If it affords no inference that affects human life... if the analogy ... can be carried no farther. . . (203) then it is without point. Hume is willing to let the theist have his vague analogy, for it serves no point. In fact, the theist cannot 155. win, for to the extent that the God-hypothesis might have explanatory power, it approaches the status of an empirical hypothesis, and as such loses theological import. The Dialogues should be devastating, yet seem to miss the mark. Suppose we look a bit more closely at what is going on. The position Cleanthes elaborates is an hypothesis to the effect that the world exhibits order and that that order is best explained by the postulation of an orderer. Cleanthes' moves are a bit more complicated, as we shall see in a moment , but this is the essential point. The hypothesis is conceived by Hume as either competing with or completing science. In the Enquiry we read that The religious hypothesis .. .must be considered only as a particular method of accounting for the visible phenomena of the universe : but no .just reasoner will ever presume to infer from it any single fact, and alter or add to the phenomena, in any single particular. (237) The passage is virtually a summary of Philo's thesis. There can be no move from an inferred cause to anything further in terms of either facts or properties. Cleanthes may be grudgingly granted his causal supposition, but he is not allowed to use it. Again: And what can you say more, allowing all your suppositions and reasonings? ... (0)ur conduct and deportment in life is still the same... You persist in imagining , that, if we grant that divine existence, .. .you may safely infer consequences from it... You seem not to remember, that all your reasonings ... can only be drawn from effects to causes... (238) The crucial failure is that All the philosophy .. .and all the religion... will never be able to carry us beyond the usual cause of experience , or give us measures of conduct and behaviour different from those which are furnished by reflections on common life. (244) God, as putative cause simply makes no difference, so long as we conform to the standards of rational thought. 156. It is important to be clear that what is being rejected is God as "a fruitful rival to scientific explanatory notions, such as gravity". The rejection of God as explanatory principle turns on the illegitimacy of Cleanthes' moves. As Peter Jones puts it, Cleanthes makes two inferences...

Art as a Cultural System

The paper is one of the four central texts where Clifford Geertz summarized his ideas. Geertz suggests an understanding of art as a social phenomenon and gives a social anthropological account of aesthetic experience. In opposition to structuralism, which analyzes art as a closed sign system developing according to its inherent logic, and to radical functionalism, which attempts to study art as if its main function was to maintain established institutions of culture, Geertz proposes to view a work of art as a symbolical expression of the significant experience of its creator. In this case the ability of aesthetic perception of the work of art is treated as the ability to recognize the symbols it contains - the ability that results from involvement in the relevant cultural (religious, commercial, ceremonial, etc.) practices. Author illustrates his argument by the examples from the studies of that time: studies of Abelam tribe of New Guinea, Yoruba people of Western Africa, Quattrocento Italia, and modern Morocco.

A New View of the History of the Aleutians

Account of work conducted during preceding three summers by parties of anthropologists, archeologists and medical workers, at Nikolski village on Umnak Island, at Atka on Atka Island and at St. Paul Island in the Pribilofs. The results of this work are correlated with those of earlier investigators in a summary account of the physical anthropology, archeology, ethnology and linguistics of Aleuts. Conclusion: the Aleuts appear to have moved from the Alaskan mainland in two waves, one beginning 4,000 years ago, the other within the last 1,000 years and still continuing at the time of the Russian discovery of the area. The culture of the entire span of occupation was continuous. The great numbers of Aleuts and other Eskimos in southern Alaska possibly arose through a "population explosion" brought about by very favorable living conditions existing here when the first proto-Eskimos came south, along the west coast of Alaska. Of the 16,000 Aleuts estimated to have lived in the area prior to the white man's penetration, only 1,200 remain. Early massacres, exhaustion of marine resources, diseases, etc., all caused by Europeans, contributed to the decline of the population, which still continues. Bibliography (14 items).

Scientific Serials

L' Anthropologie,tome iv. No. 3.—The current number contains four papers of much interest. Dr. R. Collignon contributes an article on the proportions of the trunk among the French, whom he divides into three classes: (1) the Celts, in the sense in which Broca used that term, that is to say, a short, dark, brachycephalic and mesorhine people, such as those found iu Auvergne, Limosin, and the centre of France generally; (2) the tall, fair, dolichocephalic Kymris, found in the north-eastern or Belgic departments of France; and (3) those who are really cross-breeds. The measures of the trunk are five in number:—(1) The total height, in the sitting position, from the inter-clavicular notch to the seat; (2) the maximum bi-acromial diameter; (3) the maximum bi-humeral diameter; (4) the maximum bi-iliac diameter; (5) the maximum bi-trochanteric diameter. The following measures of the thorax are also taken: (1) the distance from the superior border of the clavicle to the inferior border of the false ribs, measured on a perpendicular line passing over the nipple; (2) the transverse width, and (3) the antero-posterior width, at the height of the nipples; (4) the circumference just below the nipples; (5) the circumference about 3 c.m. below the nipples. Observations were made on sixty Celts, seventy Kymris, and eighty Celto-Kymris. It appears that there is a regular gradation between the three classes. Among the brachycephalic Celts, the trunk and thorax are shorter than amongst the dolichocephalic Kymri, whereas in all other respects the measurements of the Celt exceed those of the Kymri. The people of mixed blood occupy an intermediate position. When the total height or the length of the trunk is taken as a standard, the same general results are obtained, but the length of the thorax as compared with that of the trunk is greater in the Celts than in the Kymri. A comparison with similar measurements of various races of Tunis, negroes of the Soudan, and a single bushman, leads the author to the conclusion that in any given race all the measures of the body increase in absolute length and diminish in relative length as the stature increases, and vice versâ.—In a paper on the Matriarch ate in the Caucasus, Maxime Kovalevsky adduces facts which tend to prove that the ancestors of the mountaineers who live in the high valleys of the Caucasus at the present time practised what Morgan and Fison have called “group marriage.”—Dr. H. Ten Kate gives an account of his researches in Malaysia and Polynesia during a scientific mission promoted by the Royal Geographical Society of the Netherlands, in the course of which he examined 999 Malaysians of different races, and 314 Polynesians. The predominant colour of the skin among the Malaysians is brown and dark brown, while among the Polynesians it is light brown and yellow. The Malaysians have generally wavy or curly hair, but straight hair is a characteristic of the Polynesians. The Malaysians are mesocephalic; the Polynesians brachycephalic. Among the Malaysians the nose is concave or retroussé, while the Polynesian noses are straight and aquiline in about equal proportions. As regards stature, the Malaysians are below middle height and the Polynesians tall.—Dr. P. Topinard gives an interesting account of Anthropology in the United States, where the subject has received so much attention durinar the last few years. The question of the antiquity of man in North America is discussed at some length, and the general conclusion arrived at is that it does not exceed 15,000 years. Dr. Topinard proposes to continue the examination of American questions in future numbers of L'Anthropologie.