Review Of Anthropology Research Articles

Customs into Customary Law: Marriage and Succession in Kandyan Customary Law - An Anthropological Review

Customs are well-tested in diverse social situations and, as a result, they are efficient, sustainable, and practical. Their conversion into a customary legal system, however, requires a thorough understanding of their socioeconomic and cultural background. Otherwise, customary laws can become rigid, impractical, and sometimes unreasonable. This article discusses the close relationship between customs and customary law in the Kandyan region of Sri Lanka and the risks embedded in the interpretation and application of such laws in the current socioeconomic and cultural milieu. The article discusses a recent judgment of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka that dealt with customary marriage and inheritance rights in the Kandyan region and held that a _diga _(patrilocally) married woman forfeits her inheritance rights to her father’s intestate property. The article argues, using the findings of anthropological studies in the Kandyan region, that the judgment was incompatible with some of the Kandyan customs. In the absence of a codified legal system, at least an Interpretation Guide on Kandyan customary law is needed to help avoid such incompatibilities. Anthropologists and sociologists can provide a socioeconomic and politico-cultural context for the Guide.

Belo Bellen as Compulsory Delivery in Aceh Singkil Wedding; ‘Urf and Islamic Law Anthropology Review

This article aims to discuss belo bellen (big betel) as a mandatory delivery for the groom to the bride in the community of Gunung Meriah District, Aceh Singkil Regency. It is delivered at the time of mengarak (providing the groom to the residence of the bride’s parents) of the wedding reception. This research is qualitative with an ethnographic approach. Data collection techniques were through in-depth interviews and observation supported by relevant literature data. Data were then analyzed qualitatively, namely through data condensation and presentation then and drawing. This research found that mandatory belo bellen delivery has been practiced for a long time and therefore becomes one of the legacies. Belo bellen take and give is made on the second night of the wedding party, attended by women. The function of belo bellen is to fulfill the custom, namely giving souvenirs of big betel to the bride’s family. The tradition is considered as a good deed according to ‘urf (Islamic legal context). In the anthropology of Islamic law, the tradition reflects the legal culture, legal behavior, and legal views of Aceh Singkil people.

Review of Cool Anthropology: How to Engage the Public with Academic Research, edited by Kristina Baines and Victoria Costa

Review of Cool Anthropology: How to Engage the Public with Academic Research, edited by Kristina Baines and Victoria Costa

Dental Anthropology and Its Role in Forensic Anthropology

Dental anthropology is a subdiscipline of biological anthropology that is concerned with the nonclinical study of teeth. As such, the discipline is distinct from that of forensic odontology, yet still of relevance within forensic anthropology and a medicolegal context. This review of dental anthropology differentiates it as a distinct field of study and highlights its role within medicolegal death investigations, particularly the role of the dentition in estimating parameters of the biological profile. The development and history of dental anthropology in relation to forensic anthropology are outlined. The differentiation of the roles of the dental/forensic anthropologist and the forensic odontologist is discussed. The potential role of the dentition in estimating parameters of the biological profile is discussed, as are the relevant biological processes. Finally, the need for advanced training in dental anthropology is emphasized, as is the potential for future research within this emerging field of study.

A Model of Election Supervision Based on Village Judicial Institutions; A Review of Legal Anthropology in Madura

The General Election Law has placed villages at the forefront of the election monitoring system by establishing Village Panwaslu. However, it still needs to be fully able to unravel the complexity of the election monitoring system. This study aims to strengthen the election supervision system so that all electoral issues can be resolved at the village level. This research uses normative legal research methods that focus on the reconstruction and institutionalization of the election supervision system at the village level through the synergy of village judicial institutions. The result of the research is that the design of election supervision at the village level, which only places one member, has yet to resolve the many burdens of election supervision fully. Although Article 448 paragraph (3) of the Election Law authorizes the community to monitor actively, it has proven not optimal because there is no clear legal protection for the participatory monitoring system. The weakness of the monitoring system can be strengthened through 1) The establishment of Village Panwaslu members that involve village judicial institutions consisting of Babinkantibmas, Babinsa, and community leaders; 2) Expanding the authority of the Village Panwaslu to resolve disputes over the election process at the village level.

THE SYSTEM OF BUYING AND SELLING ARISAN MONEY IN ANTHROPOLOGY REVIEW OF ISLAMIC LAW (Case Study In Toteker Hamlet, West Banuaju Village, Batang-Batang, Sumenep)

The sale and purchase of arisan money in Toteker Hamlet, West Banuaju Village, Batang-Batang District, Sumenep is a practice that has been carried out for generations, not only by members of the arisan from among the farmers, but also by members of community leaders, and the parties involved become the power it is interesting to reveal the reasons and factors behind it, as well as the unclear status of Islamic law. This study aims to analyze the system of buying and selling arisan money in an anthropology review of Islamic law, revealing the identity of the parties involved, the underlying factors, and the reasons for carrying out the practice of buying and selling. This research method uses field qualitative methods with data collection procedures through observation, interviews, and documentation. The results showed that the system of buying and selling arisan money is an act that is forbidden because there is an additional advantage from buying and selling money with the same type of money, this is done under forced circumstances, and there is hilah done by one of the community leaders.Keywords: Anthropology, Buying and Selling, Arisan

White Supremacy and the Making of Anthropology

This review presents a historical and contemporary view of white supremacy as an entrenched global system based on presumed biological and cultural difference, related practices of racism, the valorization of whiteness, and the denigration of nonwhiteness. We center the role of the discipline of anthropology, and contend that the discipline is shaped by, and shapes, structures of white supremacy. In this article, we detail anthropology's role in the development of racial science and the subsequent placement of whiteness at the top of the world's global political and cultural systems of power. We examine the early critiques of anthropology's racializing practices by Black and Indigenous anthropologists, which set the stage for an anti-imperial analysis that addressed how white power was entrenched within the discipline and broader society. Last, we discuss emerging scholarship on the anthropology of white supremacy and the methodological and theoretical shifts that push the discipline and refine the concept.

The Invisible Labor and Ethics of Interpreting

In this review, we call for heightened attention to the labor of interpreters to think more reflexively about our own professional ethics and the paradoxes of global capitalism within which both interpreters and anthropologists work. Like other forms of communicative labor, interpretation is often devalued, unrecognized, and uncompensated—a form of invisible labor. Professional language ideologies, some paradoxically perpetuated by the profession itself, contribute to interpreters’ invisibility in their workplaces. Global and multilingual organizations depend on ideologies of transparency and the assumption that language transmission is easy; examining interpreters’ labor ethnographically troubles these assumptions. Interpreters also confront an ethical tension in their position that mirrors a tension in anthropology: namely, between ideals of professional neutrality and analytic distance versus intentional advocacy. The study of interpreters offers ways to critically assess anthropologists’ own professional practices and dig deeply into the contradictions of global capitalism.

Social Movements, Power, and Mediated Visibility

This article focuses on how the anthropological study of media—through an examination of its production, circulation, and consumption—elucidates issues of social organization, political economy, and alternative visions for political futures. By bringing together the studies of visual media, social movements, and hegemonic power by anthropologists and ethnographers of media since the turn of the twenty-first century, this review article provides a critical understanding of research about our current media environment, where scholarship within anthropology is heading in these domains, and what looking at these three fields together can mean for a more robust understanding of our political, social, and cultural futures.

Security Regimes: Transnational and Imperial Entanglements

This article reviews key theoretical and methodological contributions that anthropologists have made to the study of what we call security regimes. While anthropologists have been instrumental in denaturalizing discourses of security, much of the existing literature on who security actors are or where their work and force are to be found remains focused on the masculinist frontlines and visibly spectacular instances of security state power. We adopt a transnational feminist lens to rethink what we understand security regimes to be and where they are to be found by drawing attention to the multiscalar sites (e.g., home, family, kinship, intimacy) and technologies of rule (e.g., affect, aesthetics, discourse) through which security regimes are constituted, expanded, and challenged. The final section of the review examines methodological and ethical challenges, which are made more complex by the changing profile of the multiply racialized, gendered, nationalized, and classed researchers of security regimes.

Gut Microbial Intersections with Human Ecology and Evolution

Although microbiome science is relatively young, our knowledge of human-microbiome interactions is growing rapidly and has already begun to transform our understanding of human ecology and evolution. Here we summarize our current understanding of three-way interactions between the gut microbiota, human ecology, and human evolution. We review the factors driving microbiome variation within and between individuals and populations, as well as comparative data from nonhuman primates that allow a more direct examination of microbial relationships with host ecology and evolution. Collectively, these data sets can help illuminate generalizable principles governing host-microbiome-environment interactions, the processes contributing to bidirectional influences between the human gut microbiota and the human ecological niche, and past changes in the human microbiome that may have harbored consequences for human adaptation. Developing richer insight into host-microbiome-environment interactions will ultimately broaden our view of human biology and its response to changing environments.

Is a Psychotic Anthropology Possible? Or How to Have Inclusive Anthropologies of Subjectivity and Personhood

Dominant anthropological theories of mind, cognition, and consciousness reify particular ways of being in the world as “normal,” which marginalizes the experiences of people who do not meet normative expectations of personhood or exhibit nonnormative subjectivities. By focusing on atypical forms of communication and self-representation in the ethnographic record, which draws from work in the anthropology of disability and psychological anthropology, we argue for the need to attend to interactions and behavior as the necessary basis for anthropological studies of personhood and subjectivity. These foci, which build on a foundation provided by affect theory and disability studies, stand to open up anthropological conceptions of personhood and subjectivity and resituate the process of attribution in making persons and subjects. We articulate a psychotic anthropology that centers atypical forms of consciousness and seeks to unsettle anthropological assumptions about mind, cognition, and consciousness.

Reconceptualizing Archaeological Perspectives on Long-Term Political Change

In archaeology, along with a large sector of other social sciences, comparative approaches to long-term political change over the last two centuries have been underpinned by two big ideas, classification and evolution, which often have been manifest as cultural history and progress. Despite comparative archaeology's agenda to explain change, the conceptual core of these frames was grounded in the building of stepped sequences of transformation with expectations drawn from synchronic empirical snapshots in time. Nevertheless, especially over the last 70 years, archaeology has seen the generation and analysis of unprecedented volumes of data collected along multiple dimensions and a range of spatial scales. Compilation and comparison of these data reveal significant diversity along various dimensions, which have begun to create dissonance with key tenets, assumptions, and even the aims of extant, long-held approaches. Expanded conceptual framing with a shift toward a focus on explaining variation and change is necessary.

Biological Normalcy

Contesting ideas about what is “normal” human behavior or biology is a core contribution of anthropology. In efforts to provide more inclusive views of what it means to be human, anthropologists challenge judgments about diverse ways of being, which include assumptions about what it means to be normal. Meanings of the term normal encompass the descriptive (statistical) and the evaluative (normative), i.e., judgments about a given characteristic. In biomedicine, “healthy” is often the value ascribed to normal, but embedded in healthy are biases that derive from particular cultural and historical contexts. Here I review how the term normal is understood and used in anthropological and related studies of human biology and biological variation. I propose the biological normalcy framework for understanding how the statistical and normative meanings of normal mutually inform each other and their consequences for human population biology. Several examples provide illustrations of the framework. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 52 is October 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Language and Race: Settler Colonial Consequences and Epistemic Disruptions

This article reviews anthropological paradigms that link language and race with a focus on the United States and other settler colonial nations that continue to use language as a tool of racialization to bolster White supremacy. Enduring colonial ideologies, along with Boas's “salvage anthropology,” which separated race and language, have enshrined White racism in anthropological studies of language as well as in the field of linguistic anthropology. Contemporary studies frame linguistic racialization through markedness theory and use paradigms of language ideology, language materiality, and semiotics to forward discursive and ontological analyses that span communities and institutional spaces. I offer “disruption” as a way to consider the impact of epistemologies that inform academic research agendas as well as institutional power dynamics between BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) scholars and White practitioners in linguistic anthropology and discuss how these disruptions could form the basis from which to decolonize aspects of linguistic anthropology.

Decolonizing Museums: Toward a Paradigm Shift

This review examines the discourses and practices that have produced a lively literature on museum decolonization created by scholars of museum practices and curators. We consider the trajectory of decolonization efforts in museums, focusing especially on the care of Native North American heritage, with comparison to similar trajectories internationally. We begin with a discussion of decolonizing moments in theory and practice, with particular attention to 1990s critique of ethnographic museums and developments after the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). Following this discussion is a review of works on concerns regarding Native American representation and public displays, involvement in collections care, and the varied collaborations that are changing museum practices. The final section foregrounds the fluorescence of tribal museums and their contributions to the decolonization and indigenization of museums, as well as emerging paradigm shifts in both the anthropology of museums and anthropology in museums.

Environment, Epigenetics, and the Pace of Human Aging

The trajectory of human aging varies widely from one individual to the next due to complex interactions between the genome and the environment that influence the aging process. Such differences in age-specific mortality and disease risk among same-aged individuals reflect variation in the pace of biological aging. Certain mechanisms involved in the progression of biological aging originate in the epigenome, where chemical modifications to the genome are able to alter gene expression without modifying the underlying DNA sequence. The epigenome serves as an interface for environmental signals, which are able to “get under the skin” to influence health and aging. A number of the molecular mechanisms involved in the aging process have been identified, although few aging phenotypes have been definitively traced to their underlying molecular causes thus far. In this review, we discuss variation in human biological aging and the epigenome's role in promoting heterogeneity in human longevity and healthspan.

Steps to an Ecology of Algorithms

Anthropological expeditions seeking out algorithms frequently return empty-handed. They are confronted with the challenge of the object: what to study when studying algorithms? In this article, I draw together a number of literatures to outline one possible answer to the question of how to study algorithms in social science. I argue that what we should study are algorithmic ecologies. I sketch five modalities of algorithmic ecologies and review concomitant literatures: ( a) imaginaries, ( b) infrastructures, ( c) interfaces, ( d) identities, and ( e) investments and interests. The speculative propositions offered here are that algorithms are immanent to ecologies and that they are enacted across all the modalities of algorithmic ecologies.

Global Health Interventions: The Military, the Magic Bullet, the Deterministic Model—and Intervention Otherwise

“Intervention” is central to global health, but the significance and effects of how intervention is practiced are often taken for granted. This review takes interventions into health and medicine as subjects for ethnographic inquiry. We highlight three lines of anthropological contributions: studies of global health interventions that serve imperial and military objectives, studies of “magic bullet” interventions arising from laboratory science, and studies of interventions based on deterministic modeling techniques. We then outline examples of “intervention otherwise,” in which people build relations of solidarity and care through global health programming, design interventions to be interactive and adaptable, and use data and modeling to support health justice. Whereas many global health interventions reproduce Western power hierarchies, intervention otherwise draws attention to alternative forms of knowledge, action, and expertise. Our analysis of lively and multivalent practices of intervention has implications for debates about the im/possibility of decolonizing global health.

Rethinking Neandertals

In this article, I first provide an overview of the Neandertals by recounting their initial discovery and subsequent interpretation by scientists and by discussing our current understanding of the temporal and geographic span of these hominins and their taxonomic affiliation. I then explore what progress we have made in our understanding of Neandertal lifeways and capabilities over the past decade in light of new technologies and changing perspectives. In the process, I consider whether these advances in knowledge qualify as so-called Black Swans, a term used in economics to describe events that are rare and unpredictable and have wide-ranging consequences, in this case for the field of paleoanthropology. Building on this discussion, I look at ongoing debates and focus on Neandertal extinction as a case study. By way of discussion and conclusion, I take a detailed look at why Neandertals continue to engender great interest, and indeed emotion, among scientists and the general public alike.