Anthropological Analysis Research Articles

Sexbots Playing the Imitation Game

Abstract Anthropologists generally reject philosophical issue-based scenarios such as trolley problems, viewing them as thin and decontextualized in comparison to ethnographic engagement. This article argues, though, that philosophical scenarios and ethnography share a structural homology in that they are both attempts to articulate not only a range of solutions but also the nature of the underlying problem that generates them. It investigates the implications of this homology for anthropological analysis by comparing the Turing Test, here framed as a philosophical scenario, with how secular and religious American transhumanists discuss the possibility of sexual encounters with mechanical or computer-virtual entities.

Films “of Eastern Life” of the 1920s in the Light of Intercultural Communication among the Peoples of the USSR

The article explores various films “about Eastern life” of the 1920s, conducting a historical and anthropological analysis of the content of these films and their reviews from the perspective of intercultural communication. The research methodology is grounded in the semiotic tradition and the communicative model proposed by Yu. M. Lotman. Printed media texts and visual sources (films) were used in the composition of this article. The aim of this piece is to expose the communicative functions of cinematography as a medium for information exchange and to ascertain the cognitive possibilities of silent cinema for the communicative interaction of the peoples of our country.
 Films “from Eastern life” had to conform to certain criteria, taking into account the idiosyncrasies of the national mentality of the inhabitants of the eastern outskirts. The study revealed that legends were employed in scriptwriting as a phenomenon of folk spiritual culture. Films inspired by folklore depict architectural masterpieces and the diverse nature of different regions. The harem theme popular in Western Europe found its way into Soviet films “about Eastern life”, but the quest for the “false exotic of the East” often resulted in communication breakdowns. The “inauthentic” portrayal of the East did not resonate with viewers and film critics.
 Nevertheless, silent films of the 1920s introduced the ethno-confessional characteristics of peoples, their history, traditional way of life, mores, and customs. These films contributed to the broadening of the national worldview, thereby confirming the high cognitive potential and significance of cinema in the intercultural communication within the multi-ethnic landscape of the USSR.

Food and Culture: An Anthropological Analysis

Food is considered as one of the most important foundations of life for all living organisms along with water and air. It satisfies the physiological need of the body and also act as a major component in maintaining the health and well-being of an individual. Apart from its nutritional value, food is said to be one of the significant cultural traits that reflects the identity and the nature of people in a society. To provide evidence to the previous claim, this article intends to shed light on the relationship between food and culture by exploring the role of food in a society and its interaction with other socio-cultural institutions. In addition to that, this article also tried to describe, how the changes in food preferences can in turn affect the socio-cultural institutions in longer-run. Keywords: Culture, Food, Institutions, Taboo.

Speculative Undergrounds

The fraught tectonic history of Anatolia has given oil in Turkey an absent presence. In this article, I examine how oil’s absent presence produces a series of speculations in Turkish public life regarding oil’s alleged abundance and its obstructed production. In particular, I trace widespread speculations that claim that the Treaty of Lausanne, which founded Turkey in 1923, will expire on its centennial anniversary in July 2023. I argue that speculations about the expiration of Lausanne harken back to both anxieties around territorial partition and neo-imperial desires of expansion in contemporary Turkey. Such speculations are further utilized by the AKP government to reinterpret Turkey’s history and to legitimize expansionist and irredentist politics in the present. In this context the ground—what’s under it and who exerts political claims over it—becomes a productive zone in which multiple ethno-nationalist and imperialist notions of territorial belonging, loss, and desire are played out. I conclude that by recalibrating anthropological analyses around the generative powers of the geological, we can better understand how the indeterminacy of the underground entwines with the political legacies of post-imperial collapse and nation-state formation that emerged in the aftermath of World War I.

Open data and quantitative techniques for anthropology of road traffic

What kind of questions about human mobility can computational analysis help answer? How to translate the findings into anthropology? We analyzed a publicly available data set of road traffic counters in Slovenia to answer these questions. The data revealed information on how a population drives, how it travels for tourism, which locations it prefers, what it does during the week and the weekend, and how its habits change during the year. We conducted the empirical analysis in two parts. First, we defined traffic profile deviations and designed computational methods to find them in a large data set. As shown in the paper, traffic counters hint at potential causes and effects in driving practices that we interpreted anthropologically. Second, we used hierarchical clustering to find groups of similar traffic counters as described by their daily profiles. Clustering revealed the main features of road traffic in Slovenia. Using the two quantitative approaches, we outlined the general properties of road traffic in the country and identified and explained the outliers. We show that quantitative data analysis only partially answers anthropological questions, but it can be a valuable tool for preliminary research. We conclude that open data are a useful component in an anthropological analysis and that quantitative discovery of small local events can help us pinpoint future fieldwork sites.

Uncovering the Geo-Location of the Grand Mosque of Melaka Sultanate

Historical records make note of a magnificent stone-built mosque, renowned throughout the region, within the city of the Melaka Sultanate. According to these accounts, the mosque was said to have been dismantled after the 1511 war, and its stones were repurposed. Scholars have debated its likely form, ornamentation, and symbolism based on the visual precedents of mosques from that era. However, until now, there has been limited effort to pinpoint its exact location within the contemporary geographical context. This study represents a crucial step towards its objective of furnishing vital data for potential empirical investigations, using ground-penetrating scanning technology to explore the mosque's remains for the first time in over five centuries. The rationale for this research is rooted in the belief that a grand stone-built mosque would almost certainly have an extensive stone-built foundation, making its complete removal an exceedingly challenging task. This study employs two methods of analysis: i) Narrative analysis, which examines historical texts containing descriptive clues about the mosque's nature, location, and its significants. ii) Visual anthropological analysis, which investigates historical visuals pertaining to city planning during the colonial era. The latter phase of the investigation is centered on a singular objective: the identification of structures depicted in the municipal plans of Portuguese and Dutch Melaka, guided by the 'qibla test,' a geospatial mapping technique that scrutinizes the alignment between (i) structures in the municipal plans, (ii) satellite imagery of the location, and (iii) the qibla direction. This research has unveiled a corresponding structure in a relatively uncommon Dutch Melaka municipal plan. It comprises two square shapes that exhibit remarkable accuracy in alignment with the qibla: (i) a larger square site, conceivably representing the primary structure of the mosque, and (ii) a smaller square site, potentially indicative of the minaret. The identified geographical location corresponds to the parking lot of Melaka's History and Ethnography Museum. Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of this study, which include reliance on English translations for Portuguese ancient manuscripts, as well as the utilization of colonial Melaka municipal plans instead of those from the Sultanate period. Nevertheless, the study presents a compelling case for identifying the specific site of the historical mosque, which warrants further verification and reconstruction studies aimed at historical tourism, aligning with Sustainable Development Goals 8.9 and 11.4.

Virtual assessment of a possible meningioma in a Roman-period cranium

Diseases have accompanied human populations since prehistoric times. Knowing the paleopathologies and their consequences derived from them can help us to understand their impact and how have been decisive in our ancestors' ways of life. Taphonomic and paleopathological studies are key to understanding how injuries occurred; they can provide information on causes of death, analyzed populations behaviour, such as the existence of interpersonal conflicts or how they took the care of the sick. Those studies also confirm the existence of certain diseases, mentioned in the archaeological record. This paper explains the analysis of four lesions found in a Roman-era cranium from Sima de Marcenejas, located in Northern Spain. An anthropological analysis of this cranium has revealed that it corresponds to an adult male individual. This work focuses on the differential diagnosis of the lesions, to be able to discern the most likely aetiologies. The following techniques have been implemented: classical morphological analysis, forensic taphonomic analysis and virtual analysis. MicroCT and 3D microscopy have been used as essential tools for the virtual analysis of the cranium and its lesions. The results obtained revealed the existence of a tumour and three exocranial traumas, all of them antemortem. The location of the tumour, as well as its morphology together with other aspects, support the meningioma as the most probable tumour type. This possible ancient meningioma represents the first case for these chronologies on the Iberian Peninsula, where there are few documented cases. The three traumatic lesions reveal the existence of injuries produced by both, blunt and sharp objects, related to events of interpersonal violence. By applying virtual 3D analyses, the researchers have demonstrated that it is viable to identify tumours in those internal cranial regions, where the lesion is not visible, thus providing new comparative data for the paleopathological record of past populations. Highlights: Meningiomas are rare in the archaeological record which complicates tracing themin ancient human populations. The use of computerized microtomography (MicroCT) and virtual 3D models makes it possible to identify tumoursin those internal cranial regions where the lesions are not visible. Paleopathological analysis of a Roman cranium has revealed, in addition to cranial trauma, a new possible case of meningioma.

A revealing scandal: The German transplant scandal between structural failures, moralizing rules, and ambivalent manipulations

IntroductionIn 2012, the German transplant scandal was uncovered and reported in the national and international media. This article offers an anthropological analysis of the scandal and examines its ‘scandalous’ characteristics by taking a close look at its extraordinary and ordinary features. MethodsThe article is based on ethnographic research using multiple methods including participant observation, interviewing as well as media and document analysis. ResultsThe transplant scandal in Germany revealed systemic ‘scandalous’ features of the national transplant system. From a significant lack of transparency in decision making, a weak legal framework for accountability, adherence to moralizing rules about alcohol and abstinence, to media coverage that individualized the scandal. ConclusionsLooking at extraordinary events such as transplant scandals from an anthropological perspective offers an analysis that goes beyond the singular, scandalous event. An anthropological analysis allows to highlight the ordinary and ambivalent ‘scandalous’ features of transplant medicine It examines transplant medicine at the intersection of biomedicine, politics, and morality.

Report from the extended HLA-DPA1 ~ promoter ~ HLA-DPB1 haplotype of the 18th international HLA and immunogenetics workshop.

The primary goal of the HLA-DPA1 ~ promoter ~ HLA-DPB1 haplotype component of the 18th IHIWS was to characterise the extended haplotypes within the HLA-DP region and survey the extent of genetic diversity in this region across human populations. In this report, we analysed single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 255 subjects from 6 different cohorts. The results from the HLA-DP haplotype component have validated findings from the initial pilot study. SNPs in this region were inherited in strong linkage, particularly HLA-DPA1, SNP-linked promoter haplotypes and motifs in exon 2 of HLA-DPB1. We reported 17 SNP-linked haplotypes in the promoter region. Together with HLA-DPA1 and HLA-DPB1 alleles, they formed 74 distinct extended HLA-DP haplotypes in 438 sequences. We also observed the presence of region-specific alleles and promoter haplotypes. Our approach involved phasing extended SNPs including promoter SNPs, HLA-DPA1 and HLA-DPB1 alleles, in a 22 kb region, GRCh38/hg38 (chr6:33,064,111-33,086,679), followed by clustering of these SNPs as one extended haplotype. This hierarchical clustering revealed four major clades, suggesting that haplotypes within each clade may have diverged from a common ancestral haplotype and undergone similar evolutionary processes. The correlation between HLA-DPA1 and the promoter region raises questions about the role of HLA-DPA1 antigen in the heterodimer. This finding requires validation on a larger sample size specifically designed for anthropological analysis. Nevertheless, the results from this study highlight the clinical potential of selecting better-matched donors for patients awaiting haematopoietic stem cell transplants from genetically overlapping groups that share common ancestral haplotypes.

Bureaucracy and distributed vulnerability at a Chinese research institute: beyond the faculty perspective on audit cultures

AbstractBureaucracy and audit are an increasingly pervasive fact of scientific and academic life. In this article, I examine this bureaucracy through the perspectives of non‐faculty staff at a Chinese research institute: the Institute for Farms and Forests (IFF). I build upon the lament of a staff member called Tao that inflexible bureaucracy is the consequence of civil servants’ determination to evade vulnerability. Bringing Tao and her colleagues’ analyses into conversation with the anthropology of gift exchange, I show how a literature that has long informed anthropological analyses of informal bureaucratic back doors provides an equally rich set of resources for understanding bureaucracy's formal, document‐mediated front door. Most especially, I draw upon the anthropology of gifts to illuminate the anxieties and vulnerabilities that shape and are shaped by bureaucratic practice. This approach can help us to understand Chinese bureaucracy in an era of increasing wariness towards informal social connections (guanxi). It can also help us to explore what might be at stake for the non‐faculty colleagues who – despite their indispensable roles – we seldom consider in conversations about academic audit cultures.

Adaptive learning in human–android interactions: an anthropological analysis of play and ritual

Using anthropological theory, this paper examines human–android interactions (HAI) as an emerging aspect of android science. These interactions are described in terms of adaptive learning (which is largely subconscious). This article is based on the observations reported and supplementary data from two studies that took place in Japan with a teleoperated android robot called Telenoid in the socialization of school children and older adults. We argue that interacting with androids brings about a special context, an interval, and a space/time for reflection and imagination that was not there before. During the interaction something happens. There is adaptive learning and as a result, both children and older adults accepted Telenoid, and the children and older adults accepted each other. Using frames of play and ritual, we make sense and ‘capture’ moments of adaptive learning, and the feedback that elicits a social response from all study participants that results in self-efficacy and socialization. While “ritual” refers to the application of what has been learned and “play” means that there are no obvious consequences of what has been learned. This analysis illuminates new understanding about the uncanny valley, cultural robotics and the therapeutic potential of HAI. This has implications for the acceptance of androids in ‘socialized roles’ and gives us insight into the subconscious adaptive learning processes that must take place within humans to accept androids into our society. This approach aims to provides a clearer conceptual basis and vocabulary for further research of android and humanoid development.

Anthropological study of european prostitution: experiences and perspectives

This article is an introduction to the journal’s special theme on “Profession and Society: Love for Money” where contributors discuss the place of prostitution in modern culture and everyday life and attempt to examine the phenomenon as viewed locally, in emic perspectives, in various regions of Europe. The canonical model of providing (mostly by women) intimate services for a fee, which became generically known as “national” or “traditional” prostitution, took its distinctive shape in the late 19th century and remained dominant in the market of sexual services up until the recent time. This model, oddly enough, has been understudied in the humanities and social sciences and has received less attention than, for example, some ancient (cult, patriarchal) or modern forms of prostitution (among the latter are “ethnic” forms, which emerged due to the intensification of migration processes, “gender-specific” - such as male or transgender - forms, or various “innovative” forms that have arisen due to the use of webcams, technologies, etc.). The contributors (S.A. Sidneva, A.A. Novik, A.N. Kozhanovsky, A. Maxia, and O.D. Fais-Leutskaia) present an array of viewpoints on the phenomenon of traditional prostitution, offering perspectives grounded in field studies, ethnographic reconstruction, and anthropological analysis of cases examined in a few European regions (Greece, Albania, Spain, Sardinia, and Sicily).

Secretly and openly: the inscrutable ways of the forbidden profession in Albania

The article offers an anthropological analysis of the ups and downs of female prostitution in the western Balkans in the 20th and early 21st centuries. The difficult fate of the region, which managed to change several sociopolitical formations, cultural codes, and centers of civilizational attraction over the course of only three generations, had a huge impact on the public perception of the phenomenon of selling oneself for sexual activities: from a positive assessment of commercial expediency and “good for men” to a sharp condemnation of “bourgeois exploitation” and hopelessness of the unfortunate “victims of feudal relations and predatory capitalism”, from total silence about the very fact of the existence of the phenomenon to secret admiration for the courage of priestesses of love and, as a result, numerous reflections in the media and the social establishment, caused by the need to change the country’s criminal code regarding prostitution under the pressure from the European Union in order to harmonize legislative acts. In Albania, with its numerous patriarchal vestiges still remaining in the outback and “highly advanced” relations between the sexes in the capital region, there are different approaches of representatives of different social strata to the assessment of “love for money”, which is the main focus of my research interest, reflecting the 30 years of my fieldwork in various regions of the Balkans.

How to read a case: Ethnographic lawyering, conspiracy, and the origins of Al Qaeda

AbstractThis article delineates a particular orientation to combining professional legal training and anthropological scholarship that I call ethnographic lawyering. Ethnographic lawyering takes legal form as an object of anthropological analysis, loosely inspired by the Marxist jurist Evgeny Pashukanis's theorization of law as a social relation. If ethnographic method in anthropology entails theorizing from the concepts and experiences of interlocutors, then ethnographic lawyering analytically centers the subjectivities, logics, and relationalities that legal form both presupposes and animates. Ethnographic lawyering brings to light the contingent lives of legal form. To demonstrate this method, the article uses the example of conspiracy in early US court cases involving Al Qaeda, informed by the author's experiences as an attorney and anthropologist in litigation arising from the war on terror. An ethnographic lawyering approach illuminates how conspiracy's distinct forms in criminal law, the law of evidence, and tort law each bring far‐flung subjects, events, and actions together into reified entities even as they atomize and recombine social relations. This dynamic tension resembles the vertiginous nature of conspiracy theorizing in general.

The Role of Anthropology in India's Public Health

Abstract Conducting research on healthcare systems, policy implementation and the impact of health programmes can systematically identify the gaps and challenges in public health service delivery in India. Anthropology is particularly useful for so doing, but the role of anthropologists in health policy and planning needs recognition in India, as they can evaluate the effectiveness of interventions through a cultural lens, informing the development of evidence-based policies. The USA and Europe are more advanced in the use of anthropology in public health, due to their established academic programmes, robust research funding and infrastructure, and effective integration into public health institutions. Anthropological analysis and intervention has the capacity to improve Indian public health practice, particularly in terms of inclusivity and diversity issues.

HPV vaccination acceptance and perceptions related to fertility and population control in the Gambia: An anthropological analysis.

This qualitative study using in-depth interviews and focus group discussions is the first to investigate HPV vaccination in The Gambia; it provides an in-depth analysis of uptake, knowledge, and perceptions of HPV vaccination as well as trust in Ministry of Health vaccination advice. Despite high uptake rates, knowledge of HPV vaccination was low, and the most prominent concern was that the vaccine could cause infertility or is a form of population control. Holistic approaches to addressing HPV vaccine concerns relating to fertility that consider socio-political contexts, including colonial histories, could lead to more positive vaccine perceptions, empowered decisions and to increasing vaccine uptake rates in The Gambia and elsewhere.

Socio-cultural practices of human potential development in China

The subject of the study is the human potential in the conditions of transformation of the socio-cultural space of the PRC. The modern anthropological crisis causes the need to search for new value foundations of human potential development and actualizes the study of cultural regional-country specifics of its implementation practices. The heterogeneous nature of the socio-cultural space of the PRC makes it necessary to know specific regional practices for developing human potential. China is forming an effective system for developing and attracting human potential within the country and in interaction with the outside world. The success of the PRC largely determines a new vision of the place and role of man in socio-cultural transformations. Human potential forms a dynamic, rapidly changing image of the socio-cultural environment in China, determining the speed and direction of internal and external modernization processes. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that in the PRC regionality acts as a cultural and spatial characteristic of activity, which in turn has a concrete expression - in practices. The philosophical and anthropological analysis of practices involves an appeal to a regionological approach that contributes to the identification of specifics at the level of regions – "internal" and "external". At the national level, the process of building human potential, which is an element of "soft power", occurs at all levels of the multilevel hierarchy of regional development management, starting from the level of large regions, ending with local-regional communities at the level of cities, towns, villages and individual enterprises.

Out of the ordinary: Everyday life and the “carnival of Mussolini”

AbstractOrdinary life is in many ways the quintessential object of anthropological analysis. Yet little attention has been paid to contexts in which it is important to people themselves that they and their actions are seen to be ordinary and to the work that goes into making something or someone appear ordinary. An exploration of ordinary life in Predappio, Italy, birthplace and grave of Benito Mussolini and premier site of neofascist tourism, reveals just how much effort has to go into producing a scaled sense of ordinariness in this extraordinary place. In this way, ordinary life is exposed as the object, not the site, of such work. This suggests the need to reconsider our usage of ordinary life in order to attend to situations in which the category itself—not just its particular contents—has ethnographic relevance.

Application of the microtomography technique in density studies of prehistoric and historical human skeletal materials

AbstractBone density is not a standard parameter examined during anthropological analysis, although researchers increasingly attempt to assess bone mineral density (BMD) in prehistoric populations. Computed tomography (CT) has great potential in this type of research. Micro CT is a precise and universal tool for bone density measurement based on CT value (attenuation factor of the X‐rays at a given point in space). Thirty‐four archaeological human radial bone samples from four chronologically and geographically different sites from southern Poland were examined here. Real BMD was measured (mass/volume) and compared with BMD obtained with the use of CT value results to verify correlation between those two parameters. The micro CT density values were estimated with an uncertainty of less than 0.03 g/cm3 in more than 75% of samples. This method does not require any special sample preparation and any substitute of soft tissues. This technique enables measurement of the cortical and cancellous bone separately in even partial or damaged bones.

Comparing Genetic and Physical Anthropological Analyses for the Biological Profile of Unidentified and Identified Bodies in Milan

When studying unknown human remains, the estimation of skeletal sex and ancestry is paramount to create the victim's biological profile and attempt identification. In this paper, a multidisciplinary approach to infer the sex and biogeographical ancestry of different skeletons, using physical methods and routine forensic markers, is explored. Forensic investigators, thus, encounter two main issues: (1) the use of markers such as STRs that are not the best choice in terms of inferring biogeographical ancestry but are routine forensic markers to identify a person, and (2) the concordance of the physical and molecular results. In addition, a comparison of physical/molecular and then antemortem data (of a subset of individuals that are identified during our research) was evaluated. Antemortem data was particularly beneficial to evaluate the accuracy rates of the biological profiles produced by anthropologists and classification rates obtained by molecular experts using autosomal genetic profiles and multivariate statistical approaches. Our results highlight that physical and molecular analyses are in perfect agreement for sex estimation, but some discrepancies in ancestry estimation were observed in 5 out of 24 cases.