Anthropology Research Articles

Ethnicity Matters: An Apology for the Cognitive Potentials of Constructivism

Introduction. The field of ethnicity research in modern anthropology, ethnography, ethnology and ethnosociology is considered through the confrontation of the main cognitive positions, primordialism and constructivism. The purpose of the article is to generalize and to refute the criticism directed at constructivism, as well as to build a perspective for the synthesis of constructivist and primordialist research positions.Methodology and sources. This is a summary of the critique of constructivism to date. Four theses of this criticism are formulated: the faintness of its ontology, the reduction of ethnicity to the individuality, the confusion of definitions of ethnicity with other social categories, and the emphasis on the controllability of ethnic processes. An apologia for constructivism is the result of a consistent analysis of these theses.Results and discussion. It is shown that constructivism has an original ontology based on the interpretation of ethnicity as a type of social relations. The key research objects of constructivism – ethnicity, boundary and classification (categorization) system – are considered, allowing to address the collective dimension of the theoretical model of ethnicity, without closing in on individual processes. An example of a research model in constructivism is presented, showing that the role of ethnicity in social processes remains a meaningful and independent category of cognition. Finally, a distinction between the ontological and epistemological status of ethnicity in constructivism is made, which allows us to conclude that the epistemological position of constructivism is not related to the characterization of the essence of ethnicity, and therefore cannot be used as a basis for concluding that ethnic processes are malleable to external control.Conclusion. This apologia of constructivism allows us to conclude that the flexibility of the constructivist paradigm makes it possible to adapt the sciences of ethnicity to the state of modern society. The prospect of integrating primordialism and constructivism by considering them as phenomena linked by reflexive symmetry is outlined in the conclusion.

Понятие человеческой природы как богословская, историческая и философская проблема

The article problematizes the concept of human nature in three related fields of knowledge: theology, history, and philosophy. The main problem with "human nature" as a theological concept is that it was based on ancient anthropology, primarily Aristotle. However, modern intellectual culture is separated from antiquity by the "anthropological revolution" that occurred at the beginning of the twentieth century thanks to Freud, Heidegger, Lorenz, and others. As a result, a different idea of human nature has emerged, in which, for example, sexuality, mortality, and aggressiveness are understood not as defects of human nature, but as constitutive factors of human personality. From the perspective of modern anthropology, the concept of human nature as a tool of dogmatic theology needs to be rethought. However, this conclusion itself requires historical verification, and meaningful transformations of the concept of human nature require scrupulous historical research. In turn, the historical study of semantic transformations of the concept of human nature is complicated by the uncertainty of its boundaries and content. There are at least five ways of understanding human nature, dating back to ancient philosophy: nature as the antonym of art (technē), nature as a "scheme" of a thing, setting the direction of its transformations, nature as the goal of movement, nature as a measure of perfection, norm, and nature as an ensemble of typologizing signs. In contemporary debates, the validity of the concept of human nature is called into question. Constructivist criticism of essentialism is based on anthropological data, which testify to the diversity of ideas about man and, accordingly, reinforce the thesis that "human nature" is a cultural construct that does not have an ontological status. However, over the past few decades, evolutionary biologists have sought to give stable and "objective" content to the concept of human nature. However, the possibility of using the data of modern biology, which reveals the evolutionarily established species characteristics of a person (including those that are still considered cultural), to identify a cultural norm remains in question.

Construing National and Ethnic Groups Under the Genocide Convention Through Soviet and Russian Narratives on the Ukrainian Identities

Debates on the genocidal nature of Russian atrocities in Ukraine have uncovered various grey zones of the law on genocide. While most contemporary commentaries have focused on the essence and scope of the crime’s central element – the intent to destroy the group in whole or in part – little analysis has been dedicated to defining and understanding the alleged object of the destruction, i.e., protected groups themselves. Even beyond the Ukrainian context, this problem is endemic to contemporary doctrine and jurisprudence, providing a rather cursory or even contradictory analysis of the notions of protected groups seemingly without recourse to other fields studying human identities, such as anthropology. This article aims to address this lacuna by exploring the dichotomy between national and ethnic groups under the Genocide Convention through Soviet and Russian identity narratives. The article summarises the state of contemporary law and jurisprudence relevant to the definition of the protected groups, as well as associated gaps and inconsistencies. It further addresses challenging issues of the groups’ definition and delimitation through the lenses of modern anthropology, where the law is silent. The article stresses the importance of multidisciplinary and contextualised application of the legal concepts under the law of genocide in light of the meaning ascribed to them by other fields of study focusing on group identities and inter-group dynamics. Finally, the article applies relevant findings to the context of Soviet and further Russian narratives on the Ukrainian identities, illustrating the dichotomy between national and ethnic groups.

On the issue of secular trends in modern anthropology

Long-term trends are classically represented by the dynamics of body length and weight. However, in order to solve practical problems associated with the development of a regulatory framework regulating the “man-machine" system, the production of clothing and personal protective equipment, including for military activities, it is necessary to create a holistic picture of the changes.Purpose: to systematize data on long-term trends in morphofunctional indicators of practically healthy individuals in combination with data from anthropometric studies. The selection of literary sources over the past 20 years was carried out in the E-library, Pubmed and Scopus databases. The exclusion criterion was the age of subjects under 16 years. The main long-term changes are associated with an increase in body mass index due to body weight, against the background of stagnation in its length. Changes in the last two decades include developmental retardation, debrachycephalization and leptoprosopia, changes in body shape, sex inversion, decreased aerobic tolerance, decreased agility, decreased certain blood biochemical parameters, cellularity of body fluids and cognitive abilities, as well as increased activity of the sympathetic nervous system. Thus, it can be stated that a wide range of organs are involved in secular trends, which requires targeted research from the standpoint of systemic anatomy.

Unruly subjects: The subaltern struggle for media justice, multimodality, and autoethnography in academia and beyond

Abstract In this autoethnographic article, I explore the “crisis of representation” and the struggle of subaltern people for reparative representation and media justice. I argue that the field of visual anthropology and its multimodal programs have emerged from the margins to be at the forefront of decolonizing media and representation in the academy and beyond, but more work still needs to be done to achieve parity. I highlight the work and programs of leading scholar‐practitioners and their methodological and theoretical approaches that have shifted the paradigm of modern anthropology and representational politics and practice more generally. I focus on the trajectory of Faye Ginsburg's scholarship and media activism working with Indigenous, disability, and reproductive justice movements and show its impact on my work in the media worlds of the United States and Afghanistan and on Middle Eastern and Asian contexts and studies more broadly.

Lord Jim: Between Shame and Guilt

Trying to classify the cultural patterns of behaviour, modern anthropology offers the distinction between “shame cultures” (which rely on external sanctions for good behaviour) and “guilt cultures” (which internalize the conviction of sin). Correspondingly, shame and guilt create specific ethos and therefore could be treated as factors indicating cultural meaning and function of the notion of honour in different cultural contexts. The article is an attempt to analyse the role of guilt and shame phenomena in the creation of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim.

Complexity in the perspective of the ontological turn in modern anthropology

The article examines the forms of representation of the idea of the diversity of being that have developed outside Western European philosophy and science. The paper presents an analysis of the proposed F. Descola, E. Cohn and E. V. de Castro reconstructions of “Indian” ontologies, which are positioned as an alternative to the West «metaphysics». The models constructed within the framework of anthropological reconstructions are based on a number of ontological assumptions (multi-naturalism, reinspectivism, multimodality), which are considered as forms of representation of diversity. The author examines the boundaries of the decentered ontology of diversity, the peculiarities of the relationship between objective and subjective complexity in the mythology of Indian collectives. In the context of the described theoretical models, complexity is considered as a relational, transversal category relevant for describing the processuality of existence, the diversity of human experience, the relationship between man, society and culture. The article also presents a comparative analysis of the ideas of diversity that have developed in “Indian” metaphysics and in the directions of modern philosophy (“new ontologies”) and science (synergetics).

Empathy and Self-Empathy in the Anthropological Dimension of Modernity

Purpose. In the article, the author questions rethinking the phenomena of empathy and self-empathy as modes of self-understanding of humanity and the inner intention to self-exploration of human spirituality. Theoretical basis. The research is based on the phenomenological dimension of modern anthropology and axiology. Originality. The change of the traditional intersubjective approach in the understanding of empathy to an introsubjective one and the affirmation of self-empathy as one of the defining existences in human beings, which is adjusted by the altruism-egoism value scale and forms the skills of unconditional empathic action towards the Other as a mode of self-exploration in the spiritual essence of a person are argued. Conclusions. The commonplace in a wide palette of research views on empathy is the construct for the Self – Other disposition and the intersubjective approach emphasizing the object of empathy. Transformation of the intention vector of empathic consciousness from the object to the subject of empathic action opens up deep possibilities of spiritual improvement as a way of self-awareness in the human essence. The transformation of the intention vector of empathic consciousness from intersubjective (I in the Other) to introsubjective (I through the Other) has the potential for spiritual development according to the altruism-egoism value scale. Empathy as an introsubjective position of self-exploration is inseparably connected with self-empathy, which in the mutual integration of its three main components – benevolence towards oneself, reflexivity towards one’s own experience and a tendency to understand one’s fate as common to all mankind – forms an important regulator of self-understanding of a person’s spiritual potential and the possibility of the practical extrapolation for these skills to an empathic way of communication at all levels of anthropo-being. Anthropological accentuation on the inner essence and meanings of human existence is carried out through intuition and self-altruism as the fading of pragmatic interest in the socially conditioned Self (Ego) and immersion in the essential Self – the bearer of the universal spiritual in a person. Self-empathy is considered in the context of the ideas of Stoicism as a deep self-immersion in the human essence and sensitivity to immediate emotional internal states, as a construct of emotional intelligence and a way of realizing individual uniqueness in the context of the metamodern concept of atopy. Self-empathy is defined as one of the key existences in human beings, which forms the skill of altruistic (unconditional) implementation of empathy.

Spread of Ideas: The Legacy of Diffusionism School

This comprehensive analysis explores the concept and development of diffusionism throughout the history of anthropology. Diffusionism, a theory that emerged in the early 20th century, posits that cultural elements are assimilated and disseminated throughout multiple nations, leading to transformative shifts in society. The German and British diffusionist schools were the primary institutions that concentrated on the transmission of cultural characteristics across temporal and spatial dimensions. The notion of "culture circles," first proposed by German diffusionism, led by figures like Wilhelm Schmidt and Robert Fritz Craebner, posited that the cultural traits of ancient civilizations spread to the surrounding regions. British diffusionism, spearheaded by Grafton Elliot Smith and V. J. Perry, emphasized Egypt as the birthplace of civilization and attributed cultural advancements to Egyptian origins. Franz Boas, the founder of the US diffusionist school, advocated for a historical-cultural perspective that opposed the idea of linear progress. Boas emphasized the importance of culture as a unified entity shaped by particular historical circumstances and dismissed notions of cultural advancement. Notable American diffusionists include J. Robert Lowie, Edward Sapir, Clark Wissler, and Alfred Louis Kroeber. Kroeber's examination of women's fashion trends and cultural zeniths demonstrates the multifaceted nature of diffusionist analysis. Lowie's study focused on challenging linear evolution ideas and emphasizing the crucial significance of spatial dispersion in understanding cultural events. Wissler concentrated on the biological components of disperse on, whereas Sapir examined how individual personalities shape cultural patterns. While diffusionism is not as common in modern anthropology, it is important for comprehending the intricacies of cultural transmission and societal progress. Diffusionism provides valuable insights into the dynamics of human culture and civilization by examining historical processes, geographic distribution, and cultural interaction.

Research on Political Ethical Alienation in the Space of the Other Starting from Adolf Eichmann

Modern anthropology and spatial politics advocate understanding and studying the other, reflecting on oneself through the other. Great eras demand both theoretical and practical innovation, and political ethics should never be metaphysical in the ivory tower. This article takes the relevant events of Adolf Eichmann, a high-ranking Nazi official during World War II, who indiscriminately massacred numerous Jews, as an example. It reflects and analyzes the breakdown of value rationality and the disregard and trampling of moral ethics under fascist authoritarianism during World War II. Combining relevant behavioral experiments, the study explores the causes of alienation from the perspectives of alienated subjects, motives, and opportunities. This leads to a discussion of solutions to ethical alienation in the process of social development, proposing ideas for overcoming potential political ethical dislocation through emphasis on quality education, balancing social systems and ethical morals, and calling for collective reflection and nurturing a sense of responsibility for others. Maintaining a clear self-awareness under the control of desires in the high-tech era is conducive to avoiding the quagmire of alienation and provides warnings and development ideas for the long-term development of our countrys politics.

Проблема категоризации творчества в методологической призме «антропологии данных»: кейс ChatGPT

Introduction. The article investigates the peculiarities of the categorization of creativity in today’s mediatization of education. The topicality of this research stems from the fast-paced digitalization of all spheres of modern society. The study aims to specify existing interpretations of the creative matter of educational activity through the data-anthropology approach, a branch of modern anthropology. Сontent. The article substantiates the need for considering data-anthropology in evidence-based studies of mediatization and digitalization of education and presents a review of recently published papers on data-anthropology. Approaches to the use of big data for academic purposes are systematized. The relation between big data and thick data (herein referred to as helping data) in interpreting the socio-cultural context is clarified. Basing on the philosophic and cultural approaches, the authors identify the problem area limiting the categorization of creativity in education in response to human-AI interactions and the rise of neural networks. The notorious case of academic dishonesty and students’ misuse of ChatGPT is analyzed. Conclusions. Given today’s processes of mediatization and datafication of education, analyzing the categorization of creativity clarifies the attitudes towards the problem of agency in human-AI interaction adopted by those involved in such interactions. Creativity as a mark of agency indicates two distinct types of attitudes students take towards the use of ChatGPT. Neural network is considered to be, firstly, an independent entity capable of not only generating, compiling academic texts, but truly creating them (possibly, with occasional errors); and, secondly, an aid in collecting sources and clarifying issues. In the latter case, neural network is seen as having even more agency since it is perceived not only as a sophisticated search engine, but rather a bright human-like interlocutor. On both occasions, minimal agency in the participants’ perception is augmented to the supposedly full agency. Thus, minimal creative agency from the perspective of data-anthropology can be interpreted as a falsifies self-learning, capable of learning from one’s mistakes.

Awareness of forensic anthropology in Switzerland: a survey among forensic practitioners, police, and prosecutors.

Forensic anthropology (FA) as a specialized discipline has been practised in multi-lingual Switzerland for over a decade. A variety of expertise regarding osteological assessments as well as facial image comparison (FIC) is provided by different centres. Nevertheless, information is lacking about the awareness of FA and its benefits for forensic investigations among forensic stakeholders. Therefore, a survey was sent to Swiss anthropologists (AN) and related professions (police officers, prosecutors, and forensic pathologists) to assess three main aspects: (1) the experience of working (biological/forensic) anthropologists within FA; (2) how FA is perceived by other professions within the legal system; and (3) identifygaps (if any) in understanding of FA with the aim to suggest avenues for improvement if necessary. The results show that awareness of FA varies by occupation and cantonal regions. In areas where close collaborations betweenforensic anthropologists (FAs) and other stakeholders have been formally established, be it with focus on osteological analyses or FIC, the awareness of FA competencies was superior to areas where this was not the case. An overwhelming majority of forensic actors expressed interest in continuing education related to the role of FA. These findings indicate that facilitation of communication and collaboration leads to improvement in the awareness of the competencies of FAs and their contribution to forensic investigations.

CONTEXT ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF OBJECTIVITY, ACCURACY AND “OTHER” IN ETNOGRAPHIC CONTEXT

The doctrine of Johannes Fabian and Rigoberta Mençu, which is discussed and discussed in our study, includes a lot of variability in context. If these doctrines and the conceptual terminology, they contain are mentioned; the analysis of Menchú’s work has seems a bit more complex and ambiguous. These ambiguities lie in different aspects of the work: Here, there is a more complex knower-known relationship than the binary opposition between the subject which produces knowledge about the other and the passive object which expects the knowledge to be produced about itself. In relation to this, to employ a genre different from the dominant genres within humanities, particularly in anthropology, and its reliability are questionable according to the current science paradigms. Moreover, the emerging of such contradictory views about the production, reproduction, representation, and reception of Menchú's work -the attempt of producing and representing a different knowledge for and about her own community- brings about questioning of possibility of producing an absolute knowledge/abstract truth about the other communities independent from social, political and economic context. This again draws our attention to the power-knowledge relation, the partiality of knowledge and situated knowledge. Thus, establishing a relation with the other needs to study epistemology of contemporary ethnography willing to produce better understanding, and requires investigating this epistemology embedded within/along broader social relations that locate researcher and researched in different places. This attempt entails to deal with the positivist scientifism inherited by ethnography from modern anthropology that is to say with the dominant assumptions of western modernity project. In our study, these concepts were questioned, interpreted, and discussed.

Rhetoric and Disposition, Temperament and Place: Polykleitan Rules

Abstract: This paper explores the relationships between style and complexion, temperament and disposition, climate and place in seventeenth-century thought. Facility and variation in style not only depend on reason, judgement, and responsiveness, but on the material substrata of the imagination and memory, in turn conditioned by air and temperament, climate and the uneven geographical distribution of environmental and internal, vital heat. This ensemble ofconcernes spurred wide-ranging enquiry in early modern anthropology, ethnography, and rhetoric, which I examine her in order to substantiate the mathematician and rhetorician Bernard Lamy's 1675 claim that "Every Clymat hath its style."

Criticism of the guidelines of cartesian philosophy by Ch. Pierce

The article intends to show the significance of Ch. Peirce’s ideas for the development of contemporary philosophy, to find out the main directions of his criticism of the principles of Cartesian and more broadly modern philosophy (where it comes from Descartes) and to consider the positive program of his philosophy, which he offers as an alternative to Modern philosophy. Peirce starts from a pragmatic and semiotic approach to human nature, consciousness and cognition. Thanks to this approach, he managed to undermine the key ideas of the modern understanding of cognition, human, language, namely: individualism, linguistic atomism, dogmatism, dualism, representationism, nominalism, foundationalism, etc. And, instead, to propose a new theory of knowledge, a new ontology and anthropology. Peirce asserts the indirectness of human cognition by signs (linguistic, cultural, sensory), the impossibility of introspection and intuition, advocates holism, fallibilism, pragmatism, realism, synechism, inferentialism and offers a new understanding of the personality — all this makes him a relevant and contemporary thinker. Peirce’s ideas offer a fresh perspective on modern scientific practice. Peirce’s rethinking of the foundations of knowledge puts him alongside many thinkers of the 20th and 21st centuries. The development of his ideas can be seen in modern anthropology, epistemology, research on artificial intelligence, semiotics, etc. The article is divided into four subsections, which are devoted to the main directions of Peirce’s criticism of Descartes’ philosophy: in the first — against Descartes’ skeptical methodology, Peirce puts the concept of fallibilism and the principle of belief, in the second — Peirce denies the possibility of intuition and proves the indirectness of our cognition by signs, in the third — it is about the advantages of the semiotic and communicative approach over individualism and linguistic atomism, in the fourth — Descartes’ nominalism and dualism, Peirce contrasts the realist approach and his theory of synechism, as well as semiotic anthropology.

:Experimental: American Literature and the Aesthetics of Knowledge

:<i>Experimental: American Literature and the Aesthetics of Knowledge</i>

Maroon justice in Suriname: pasts and presents worth fighting for

ABSTRACT Maroon societies are seriously understudied in the restorative justice (RJ) field, which is odd considering their age-old struggle against retributive justice systems. Precisely because the rise of Maroons can be understood as an attempt to ‘reappropriate conflict’ and bring back legal protection to formerly enslaved African-Americans who had been subjected to the crudest of laws under colonial regimes, we should not forget that history when considering how RJ can contribute to or replace criminal justice systems in the 21st century. In Suriname, a renewed interest in the Maroons has recently boosted the RJ movement. Against the background of a discussion between maximalists and abolitionists, we reactivate the ‘transferability debate’ by asking if and how maroon justice in the country’s interior can be brought to the city and help its criminal justice system to develop RJ. Our answer combines 20th century anthropologists’ work on maroon justice in Suriname with the first steps that we have taken in our own ethnography with ex-detained Maroon and Creole youth in Paramaribo and their receptiveness to hypothetical RJ measures.

Антропология современности: путь от конфликта к сотрудничеству

Антропология современности: путь от конфликта к сотрудничеству

Towards Franz Boas’s linguistic views

Franz Boas (1858–1942) is recognized as the founding father not only in modern anthropology (cultural, biological), but also in anthropological linguistics. Starting with geographical and physical studies at several German universities, he later got insterested in the culture and languages of the indigenous peoples of North America. Boas was particularly interested in the role of apperception in language acquisition. Eventually, he transferred the results of his observations on language perception to the wide field of culture, developing the notion of acculturation analogical to apperception. Already the early Boas’s publications contain the origins of the idea of linguistic relativity, which later will be formulated in the shape of the so-called “Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis”. Extremely interesting and original was Boas’s attitude to the concept of phoneme, which was formed precisely during the years of creative activity and the most striking achievements of Boas’s school. Finally, the peculiarities of the fieldwork style of this American scholar, as well as his “analytism” in work on the grammars of Native American languages, certainly influenced the development of descriptive linguistics in general.

Language, Culture and Worldviews by Twentieth-Century Anthropologists

Twentieth century anthropologists, starting from the 40s-50s were more focused on language and culture. At the turn of the century, Humboldt hypothesized the unique design of each language, which encodes a distinctly distinct view of the world. This idea was further propagated by Edward Sapir, who argued that “the worlds in which different societies live are different worlds, distinct above the world.” Given Humboldt's hypothesis and Edwart Sapir's idea of language and culture, we will try to answer questions such as: Does the language of a people shape the way things are thought and perceived? Is the view of a people coded in its own language and structured by its own grammar unique? The way language is used to communicate in social situations is increasingly becoming the focus of theoretical interest. Thus the theory of transformational linguistics presupposes that the main function of language is that of reference, that is, to make statements about the world. The world is built and operates on cultural diversity and its being. Received: 5 October 2022 / Accepted: 10 November 2022 / Published: 18 November 2022