Reader In Anthropology Research Articles

Our Authorial Authority

This article moves from Sir James Frazer, through successive generations (British for the most part) of social anthropologists, and onto the post-modern present-day of James Clifford and Marilyn Strathern, among others, and to the place that an advocacy anthropology may have in it. It enquires, in each case, about (i) the nature of the “authority” which the anthropologist appropriates and (ii) strategies used to persuade and/or assuage readers of anthropology (among whom are included its subjects). It is, then, a commentary on the kind of issues brought to us most notably in Writing Culture (eds. Clifford and Marcus, 1986) and, in particular, on some changes in the presentation of the anthropological “self.”

To the Readers of Current Anthropology

To the Readers of Current Anthropology

To the Readers of Current Anthropology

To the Readers of <i>Current Anthropology</i>

People Moving with Food from and to Northern Europe: Food, Migration and Multiculturalism

This special issue, “People Moving with Food from and to Northern Europe: Food, Migration and Multiculturalism”, is a follow-up of the Nordic Association for Food Studies (NAFS) 2016 interdisciplinary conference entitled “People Moving with Food” held in Oslo. Our objective is to make the discussions from this Nordic seminar available for readers of Anthropology of Food who are interested in the topics of food, migration and the cultural transformation of food. Although the NAFS seminar was h...

How Much of This Is New? Thoughts on How We Got Here, Solidarity, and Research in the Current Moment

This article offers three meditations on the 2016 election of Donald Trump for consideration by the readers of Anthropology &amp; Education Quarterly: first, to query what is “new” about this political era; second, to draw attention to the performance of political opposition and violences of solidarity; third, to document my own navigations of the political present as a researcher and educator with thoughts for others who work with or are marked as “targeted populations.”

Joseph Mitchell—with Variations

Joseph Mitchell—with Variations Richard Handler "Man—with Variations": Interviews with Franz Boas and Colleagues, 1937. Joseph Mitchell, Robert Brightman, ed. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press and University of Chicago Press, 2017. 75 pp. This 75-page Prickly Paradigm Press offering is perhaps the most intertextual text I have ever been challenged to review—which is to say, there are more voices per line of text here than an adventurous anthropological reader will encounter in a month of Sundays. Joseph Mitchell, the iconic, iconoclastic New Yorker writer, was "the chronicler of an earlier New York City's odder citizens," as Robert Brightman puts it in his introduction (1). Mitchell's chronicling combined the strengths of both journalism and anthropology; indeed, Brightman quotes Mitchell asserting that "the most interesting human beings, so far as talk is concerned, are anthropologists, farmers, prostitutes, psychiatrists, and the occasional bartender" (1–2, Mitchell 1938:19). Mitchell left his native North Carolina for New York at the age of 21, arriving there in 1929 intent on becoming a "political reporter" (1938:11). He started out covering what journalists call police beats—in Brooklyn, the West Side of Manhattan, and Harlem. "I liked Harlem best," he noted (1938:13). There he met people like Gilligan Holton, who ran a "honkytonk" where slumming White people got drunk and revealed their secrets, so that "Holton had a quantity of information about them, some of which would gag a goat" (1938:13). Such experiences had a decisive influence on Mitchell: "I was so fascinated by the melodrama of the metropolis at night that I forgot my ambition to become a political reporter" (1938:14). [End Page 837] Joseph Mitchell's "Man—with Variations": Interviews with Franz Boas and Colleagues Mitchell did not become an anthropologist. He became, in the words of his New Yorker colleague, David Remnick, "one of the most popular newspapermen in the city. His picture appeared on the sides of delivery trucks" (2008:ix). He was, according to Remnick, "infinitely curious," and "if he wanted to know a neighborhood better, he would take up residence there in a cheap rooming house" (2008:ix). Not by training an anthropologist, Mitchell was nonetheless akin to one (10), a kinship that was confirmed for Mitchell himself when he interviewed Franz Boas and some of his colleagues for the New York World-Telegram, leading to a six-part series titled "Man—with Variations" that ran November 1–6, 1937, and which is reproduced in the book under review for the first time. The first two articles profiled Boas, sketching the range of his anthropology and focusing on his debunking of the idea of race and its ideological elaborations. Brightman notes that Mitchell "may have despaired of rationalizing [the] unity" of Boasian four-field anthropology (4). His summary of the Boasian critique of race, relying both on quotations from Boas and "excerpts from a written summary" provided by Ruth Benedict (5), was insistently topical; Mitchell emphasized its application both to Hitler's Germany and to US racism and xenophobia. The discussion of race also entailed some general remarks about the environmental (economic, historic, cultural) factors that influence human behavior and well-being. And Mitchell pointedly noted the relevance of anthropological data to ostensible truths upheld by other disciplines: "information gathered tediously in hundreds of obscure cultures…is forcing…philosophers of law, psychologists, sociologists, psychoanalysts, and economists to reevaluate their concepts" (29). The adverb "tediously" is, in Mitchell's lexicon, a word of respect, as evidenced in the final four articles of the series which focused on the research of Boas's students and colleagues: Ruth Landes, Edward Kennard, George Herzog, Alexander Lesser, Gene Weltfish, and (as summarized by Benedict) Reo Fortune. The title of the first of these gives the flavor: "Average Anthropologist Gets a $500 Grant to Do a Miracle—and He Generally Does, Groping for the Ghost of the Past" (39). The "miracle" to which Mitchell referred concerns first of all the depth and quality of ethnographic fieldwork, as compared to "African expeditions organized by well-heeled young gents whose mamas are willing to buy them yachts and tons of Abercrombie & Fitch equipment," resulting in collections of "flea-bitten snake and...

Pulse Diagnosis in Early Chinese Medicine: The Telling Touch by Elisabeth Hsu (review)

Reviewed by: Pulse Diagnosis in Early Chinese Medicine: The Telling Touch by Elisabeth Hsu Michael Nylan Elisabeth Hsu . Pulse Diagnosis in Early Chinese Medicine: The Telling Touch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. xv + 404 pp. Ill. $120.00 (978-0-521-51662-4). This book is a welcome if odd contribution to the expanding field of Chinese medicine. Elizabeth Hsu is a reader in social anthropology at Oxford, and her previous publications include the well-received books titled The Transmission of Chinese Medicine (1999) and Innovation in Chinese Medicine (2001). Hsu's translation of Sima Qian's Shiji "biography" of Chunyu Yi appears in volume 9 of William Nienhauser's The Grand Scribe's Records (2011). By her own telling, Hsu has been working since 1987 on this text, which is mainly a medical casebook detailing twenty-five case histories and eight dialogues on medical rationale and transmission. This protracted history may account for some of the book's oddities, since the field of early China studies has made great strides recently, not all of which are reflected in this volume. (Few items in the bibliography postdate 2002 anyway.) Still, a contribution to the field of pulse diagnosis, especially one comparing the contents of excavated manuscripts with this well-known Shiji chapter, is bound to excite considerable interest. My chief concern is that the book does not (cannot possibly?) deliver on its initial promise to provide a study free of anachronisms and ethnocentricity. The book's undeniable strengths include these: Hsu does a memorable job of separating Chunyu Yi the historical actor from Chunyu Yi the exemplary healer portrayed in Sima Qian's chapter, proving the formulaic nature of the these case histories in three parts, the (1) disorder's name, (2) disorder's cause, and (3) diagnostic quality indicating the disorder. Hsu should be applauded, too, for insisting that Chunyu Yi's treatments are not "primitive magic" (in the style of Frazer), nor "occult thought" (contra Harper), nor "natural philosophy" (despite legions of scholars) (pp. 7, 17), since all the foregoing characterizations presuppose the superiority of modern Western modes of thinking supposedly premised on rationality and reason. Hsu posits three overlapping ways to view the body: (1) the rather static "bodily architecture" of muscles and skeleton; (2) what Hsu calls "the body ecologic," which presumes seasonal change and humoral transformations; and (3) her "sentimental body," whose two main sentiments of grief/joy and anger are generated in the heart and liver respectively, which organ systems then produce the feelings we moderns tend to dub "psychological." Sense perception, especially touch (with visual perception cast as contact/impact in early China),1 plays a key role not only in guiding the body's workings but also in making it readable to technical experts and diagnosticians.2 Equally useful, [End Page 115] if perhaps somewhat overdrawn, is Hsu's observation that Chinese technicians are more interested in synchronicity and cycles than in mechanical causation. ("Knowing how" meanwhile trumps "knowing that.") Crucially, Hsu realizes that qi in Sima Qian's account does not always refer to something that permeates the entire universe; often it operates more locally. At the same time, there are undeniable weaknesses in this book. First, there is a paucity of references to modern Chinese and Japanese secondary literature on classical-era medical treatises, aside from the original reports of excavated finds. Second, having noted—quite correctly—that Chunyu Yi's biography is not really a medical treatise, Hsu quickly proceeds to treat it as such when fashioning her analysis. Far too often she resorts to external evidence from the Huangdi neijing medical compendium for determining the right way to read her text of centuries earlier, when reference to closer analogues, for example, other Shiji chapters, early legal casebooks, and the vast literature devoted to the technical arts, might have shed greater light on the preoccupations threading through in Chunyu Yi's "biography." Third, Hsu is more positivist than the extant sources allow; as we have but one-one thousandth of what once existed, by some estimates, one is inclined to query such definite statements as "the inner aspect of the 'sentimental body' comprised only two feelings, joy/grief and...

Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar: Cultural Narratives, Colonial Legacies, and Civil Society

For centuries, Burmese have looked to the authority of their religious tradition, Theravada Buddhism, to negotiate social and political hierarchies. Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar examines those moments in the modern history of this Southeast Asian country when religion, culture, and politics converge to chart new directions. Arguing against Max Weber's characterization of Buddhism as other-worldly and divorced from politics, this study shows that Buddhist practice necessitates public validation within an economy of merit in which moral action earns future rewards. The intervention of colonial modernity in traditional Burmese Buddhist worldviews has created conjunctures at which public concerns critical to the nation's future are reinterpreted in light of a Buddhist paradigm of power. Author Juliane Schober begins by focusing on the public role of Buddhist practice and the ways in which precolonial Buddhist hegemonies were negotiated. Her discussion then traces the emergence of modern Buddhist communities through the colonial experience: the disruption of traditional paradigms of hegemony and governance, the introduction of new and secular venues to power, modern concerns like nationalism, education, the public place of religion, the power of the state, and Buddhist resistance to the center. The continuing discourse and cultural negotiation of these themes draw Buddhist communities into political arenas, either to legitimate political power or to resist it on moral grounds. The book concludes with an examination of the way in which Buddhist resistance in 2007, known in the West as the Saffron Revolution, was subjugated by military secularism and the transnational pressures of a global economy. A skillfully crafted work of scholarship, Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar will be welcomed by students of Theravada Buddhism and Burma/Myanmar, readers of anthropology, history of religions, politics, and colonial studies of modern Southeast Asia, and scholars of religious and political practice in modern national contexts.

A reader in medical anthropology: theoretical trajectories, emergent realities – Edited by Byron J. Good, Michael M.J. Fischer, Sarah S. Willen, &amp; Mary‐Jo DelVecchio Good

A reader in medical anthropology: theoretical trajectories, emergent realities – Edited by Byron J. Good, Michael M.J. Fischer, Sarah S. Willen, &amp; Mary‐Jo DelVecchio Good

Human Rights: An Anthropological Reader by Mark Goodale

<i>Human Rights: An Anthropological Reader</i> by Mark Goodale

Kings of the forest: the cultural resilience of Himalayan hunter-gatherers

In today's world hunter-gatherer societies struggle with seemingly insurmountable problems: deforestation and encroachment, language loss, political domination by surrounding communities. Will they manage to survive? This book is about one such society living in the monsoon rainforests of western Nepal: the Raute. Kings of the Forest explores how this elusive ethnic group, the last hunter-gatherers of the Himalayas, maintains its traditional way of life amidst increasing pressure to assimilate. Author Jana Fortier examines Raute social strategies of survival as they roam the lower Himalayas gathering wild yams and hunting monkeys. Hunting is part of a symbiotic relationship with local Hindu farmers, who find their livelihoods threatened by the monkeys' raids on their crops. Raute hunting helps the Hindus, who consider the monkeys sacred and are reluctant to kill the animals themselves. Fortier explores Raute beliefs about living in the forest and the central importance of foraging in their lives. She discusses Raute identity formation, nomadism, trade relations, and religious beliefs, all of which turn on the foragers' belief in the moral goodness of their unique way of life. The book concludes with a review of issues that have long been important to anthropologists - among them, biocultural diversity and the shift from an evolutionary focus on the ideal hunter-gatherer to an interest in hunter-gatherer diversity. Kings of the Forest will be welcomed by readers of anthropology, Asian studies, environmental studies, ecology, cultural geography, and ethnic studies.

Human rights: an anthropological reader. edited by Goodale, Mark

Human rights: an anthropological reader. edited by Goodale, Mark

Social movements. An anthropological reader edited by Nash, June

Social movements. An anthropological reader edited by Nash, June

Social movements: an anthropological reader – Edited by June Nash

Social movements: an anthropological reader – Edited by June Nash

Book Review: Social movements: an anthropological reader

Book Review: Social movements: an anthropological reader

Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader (review)

Robert Parkin & Linda Stone (eds.), and Family: An Anthropological Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004.496 pp. stated purpose of this collection of readings is to trace ...the development of mainstream kinship theory... (viii) and to provide intellectual genealogy of its treatment. To accomplish this purpose, two original contributions and 22 previously published materials are provided along with a general introduction, four separate section introductions, a glossary, and an index. contributions are organized into two major parts: as Social Structure: and Alliance and as Culture, Process, and Agency. first part primarily concerns anthropological kinship from its inception to the 1970s while the latter focuses upon its decline and subsequent resurgence since then. Each part contains two sections. Part One is divided into Descent and Marriage and Terminology and Affinal Alliance. second part is divided into the sections; The Demise and Revival of Kinship and Contemporary Directions in Kinship. Although loosely organized along historical lines, the readings do not provide the reader with a full historical tracing of influential thoughts and concerns in kinship. selection of materials is fairly restricted. In the first part, the focus is upon descent and alliance theories. Here, early as well as post1970 materials are included to principally provide a critique of these theories. second part principally deals with Schneider's critique of kinship and the contemporary focus upon culture as a symbolic system in understanding fundamental social relations. In this part, the editors see culture ...as a better way of understanding indigenous notions of kinship or 'relatedness' than the more analytical schools of the (ix). There is little attention paid to recent evolutionary biological explanations of human social behavior. In any collection of readings, one expects that editorial decisions to include or exclude materials will not agree completely with those someone else may choose. However, it was still surprising to me to discover that writings of past luminaries such as Morgan, Malinowski, and Radcliffe-Brown, were absent. While the editors have included some interesting readings by authors not as well known, the absence of the writings of important contributors to the history of kinship, Morgan's work, for example, seems inexcusable. editors obviously recognize the importance of his work since there is a detailed discussion of Morgan's contribution to kinship in the general introduction. Approximately 20% of the twenty-page general introduction is directly concerned with Morgan. There are also descriptions of the reactions to his ideas in this introduction. Furthermore, throughout the book there are over three dozen references to Morgan's work and influence. Since Morgan's contribution is clearly significant, why isn't there a sample of his work? Isn't it appropriate for a student to see original material and let it speak for itself? An original document would be preferable to lengthy references to the work by an editor. Isn't the purpose of a Reader to allow the student direct access to the ideas of the original author? editorial role, it seems to me, should be primarily choosing the readings and providing the necessary background for this material. It should not be to write exegeses of the significant contributions to kinship that have been omitted from the collection of writings. Those should be kept for a separate book. reason Morgan's and others' writings have been omitted from the collection of readings can be deduced from the editors' choice of readings for the first section. This section, misleadingly titled Descent and Marriage, begins with a discussion of social groups and a critique of Morgan's evolutionary scheme by Robert Lowie. He, using a range of ethnographic examples, argues that the distribution of matrilineal and patrilineal systems is not due to some simple evolutionary sequence or differences in the intellectual capabilities of people but is the expression of responses to cultural environments. …

Social Movements: An Anthropological Reader:Social Movements: An Anthropological Reader

Social Movements: An Anthropological Reader. June C. Nash, ed. Williston, VT: Blackwell Publishers, 2005. 344 pp.

Book Reviews

Development and ChangeVolume 37, Issue 2 p. 453-474 Book Reviews First published: 26 May 2006 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0012-155X.2006.00485.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 onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Abstract Books Reviewed: Adam Szirmai, The Dynamics of Socio-Economic Development, an Introduction Damien Kingsbury, Joe Remenyi, John McKay and Janet Hunt, Key Issues in Development Robbie Robertson, The Three Waves of Globalization: A History of a Developing Global Consciousness Natalia Dinello and Lyn Squire (ed.)Globalization and Equity: Perspectives from the Developing World William K. Tabb, Economic Governance in the Age of Globalization Elisabeth Mudimbe-Boyi (ed.), Beyond Dichotomies: Histories, Identities, Cultures and the Challenge of Globalization Jozef Ritzen, A Chance for the World Bank Ha-Joon Chang (ed.), Joseph Stiglitz and the World Bank: The Rebel Within June Nash (ed.), Social Movements: An Anthropological Reader Märta C. Johanson, Self-Determination and Borders: The Obligation to Show Consideration for the Interests of Others Deepa Narayan (ed.), Measuring Empowerment: Cross Disciplinary Perspectives Katherine Homewood (ed.), Rural Resources and Local Livelihoods in Africa John Weiss (ed.), Poverty Targeting in Asia Ivo Imparto and Jeff Ruster, Slum Upgrading and Participation: Lessons from Latin America Nicholas P. Higgins, Understanding the Chiapas Rebellion: Modernist Visions & the Invisible Indian Volume37, Issue2March 2006Pages 453-474 RelatedInformation

Frederica de Laguna of Bryn Mawr College

Most readers of Arctic Anthropology know a great deal about Frederica de Laguna's contributions to the many branches of anthropology, but fewer know much about her life-long relationship with Bryn Mawr College. Bryn Mawr was, in turn, her home, school, college, editor, employer, base of operations, source of dismay, source of pride, and much more. Certainly, Bryn Mawr was formative to Freddy's scholarship and personal growth; the college continued as a major presence throughout her career as an internationally known anthropologist. It is important, therefore, to gain a picture of Freddy's life at Bryn Mawr in order to gain a sense of her as a person and her formation as an anthropologist.

Strength in diversity: A reader in physical anthropology. By Anne Herring and Leslie Chan, eds. xiv + 458. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. 1994. $34.95 (Canadian) (paper)

American Journal of Human BiologyVolume 7, Issue 6 p. 770-772 Book Review Strength in diversity: A reader in physical anthropology. By Anne Herring and Leslie Chan, eds. xiv + 458. Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press. 1994. $34.95 (Canadian) (paper) Jack Kelso, Jack Kelso Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado, Boulder, ColoradoSearch for more papers by this author Jack Kelso, Jack Kelso Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado, Boulder, ColoradoSearch for more papers by this author First published: 1995 https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.1310070613AboutPDF 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 Volume7, Issue61995Pages 770-772 RelatedInformation