Trends In Anthropology Research Articles

Security as a fundamental human right

The article is dedicated to the consideration of the right to security as a fundamental human right. The problems related to the right to security are complex and are determined by the specifics of the current development of society. It is shown that in modern conditions the right to security exists de facto by default, but de jure does not have the status of a fundamental and universal human right. At the same time, the right to security is a legal recognition of the existence of safe conditions of existence for every person and the context for the realization of both individual and the entire complex of human rights. The article proves that the right to security is an integral concept, which is confirmed by a significant number of rights derived from it. It is proven that modern ideas about security are determined by secularization and anthropological trends.
 Today, the content of the concept of "security" emphasizes the individual, not the state. Unlike previous eras, the responsibility for creating and functioning laws and rules for a safe life rest with a person.
 Considerable attention is paid to the modern understanding of the right to security, which has its cultural basis in the form of a change in the normative model of society: the current society is a society of dynamic changes, risks, and conflicts, in which the main social ideal is security, and not equality as it was followed in previous eras. It is also noted that different historical and cultural systems have their ideas about security and specific means of ensuring it.
 The right to security, in an ontological sense, is close to the right to freedom, as it exists in two forms - positive (as a system of measures to counter dangers and threats and ensure stability) and negative (as a state of individual protection from risks and threats). It is emphasized that the right to security is basic (background) for the realization of all other human rights.

Connecting Humans and Non-Humans

A recent trend in public health campaigns has been to include non-human health data to capture all relevant variables related to human well-being. This specific approach is the foundation of the World Health Organization restructuring in the early 2000s as they adopted the “one health” framework. Politically, this movement is influential and draws significant health funding globally. "One health" is characterized by a multi-disciplinary collaboration between medical, veterinary, and health sciences. Similarly, the post-human turn in medical anthropology recognizes that viewing the non-human contributions to the cultural construction of health as symbolic does not adequately address how non-humans and nature independently contribute to human health realities. Ethnographic studies of the non-human perspective shed light on how humans are not the only beings that influence culturally constructed reality, nor are they exclusively in control of cultural phenomena. Theoretical trends in anthropology and public health seemingly converge; however, an artificial academic barrier between the sciences and social sciences remains. As these two disciplines are coming closer together through their data, breaking down structural barriers that prevent the successful integration of knowledge has potential to improve human health outcomes. Methodological concessions will have to occur on all sides to make the inclusion of the social sciences in public health possible. Doing so can bring academia closer to a comprehensive scientific understanding of human health.

Anthropology's Lost Language Syndrome

This article suggests that there has been a decline in attention paid to issues of linguistic difference and translation in ethnography and examines the theoretical trends in anthropology associated with this decline. It analyses problems in ethnographic contexts where Chinese to English translation (particularly in the translation of various words related to the English semantic domain of ‘happiness’), have implications for social life, as well as the recent theoretical trends in the discipline that encourage ethnographers to ignore linguistic structure. Utilising Actor Network Theory and anthropological theorisations of translation, it argues that linguistic structure must be conceived as a significant force in the world and that it must be understood as interacting with other forces in the world.

Irudikapenetik esperientziara: euskal literaturaren ikerketa feministaren hastapenak XX. mendearen bukaeran

From the 80s on, contributions to Basque literary criticism and research from feminist perspectives began to appear. An analysis of this tendency has been made through three publications: Hogoigarren mendeko emakumeak idazle: antologia eta ohar batzuk by Itxaro Borda (1984), the Emakumea eta literatura issue of the journal Jakin (1987) and Linda White’s thesis Emakumeen hitzak euskaraz: Basque Women Writers of the Twentieth Century (1996). Moreover, we have compared these three sources to existing analogous trends in anthropology and art. We emphasize that they proposed a turn from the archetypical to actual experience, based on the diversity of female experiences.

Anthropological constants as the object of futurological analysis

Aim is to analyze a possible image of a person of the future from the perspective of preserving his essence. The article is devoted to the analysis of a person of the future, to the philosophical problems of understanding of the essence of a person and the prediction of possible human changes. Several approaches to the consideration of the essence of man in philosophy are also briefly presented. The interpretations of the ontological boundary in the synergetic anthropology of S.S. Horujy, as well as anthropological constants in the works of L.E. Motorina are considered, the shortcomings of these interpretations are analyzed. In the second part of the article, three sections of futurology were identified as a science engaged in predicting the future based on modern achievements and rational science and existing social, economic and cultural trends. Foresight was noted as one of the main methods of futurology, as well as the complexity of the study of anthropological foresight. Some approaches to the consideration of human images in the future, proposed by experts during the study of anthropological trends under the leadership of S.A. Smirnov, are also noted.
 In conclusion, the concept of anthropological practices is revealed as a possible way to protect a person in the future world of transformations.

Dark Anthropology and Its Others: Theory Since the Eighties

The article observes several emergent trends in anthropology since the 1980s against a backdrop of the rise of neoliberalism as both an economic and a governmental formation. Those trends are presented as a cluster of three interrelated areas of work: the first area involves the emergence of what the author calls “dark anthropology,” including both theory and ethnography; the second area has to do with the dialectically related emergence of what has been called “anthropologies of ‘the good’”; the third area embraces the re-emergence of the study of “resistance,” which the author treats as an umbrella term for a range of new critical ethnographic and theoretical work. Considering the first area, i.e. “dark anthropology”, the author explains that this is anthropology that focuses on the harsh dimensions of social life (power, domination, inequality, and oppression), as well as on the subjective experience of these dimensions in the form of depression and hopelessness. In doing so, she discerns two main types of “dark anthropologists”: researchers that study neoliberalism as an economical system and those who see it as a specific form of governmentality. The second area, i.e. “anthropologies of ‘the good’”, includes studies of “the good life” and “happiness,” as well as studies of morality and ethics. Researchers involved in this area try to find out how communities of people can lead a meaningful existence and create projects of a better life in dark conditions of neoliberalism. Finally, the author considers what may be thought of as a different kind of anthropology of the good, namely new directions in the anthropology of critique, resistance, and activism. Among those works, author pays special attention to the projects necessitating researcher involvement, i.e. “activist anthropology.”

Истоки методологических дискуссий 20-30-х годов в советской судебной психиатрии

In a historical review with the aim of analyzing the role of psychiatrists in criminological studies of the 1920–1930s, their views on the problems of insanity, social danger and approaches to the study of the personality of a criminal are considered. The correlation of these ideas with sociological and anthropological trends is traced within the framework of the positive school of criminal law, which denied the metaphysical concept of free will and, accordingly, the categories of guilt and sanity. It is shown, however, that uniting these approaches with the subsequent development of forensic psychiatry was the desire to create its natural science foundation.

Possible Applications of Latest Biological and Medical Trends in Anthropology

This brief note highlights the possible, remarkable role that epigenetic and proteomics on the one hand and neurogastroenterology on the other hand, may play in paleoanthropological and paleopathological research.

I giovani di oggi e la domanda formativa

This paper develops the theme of youth education and training by following at least three fields of analysis, which are mutually interrelated. The training process, the role of educational agencies, and pedagogy will be investigated in light of a new interpretation of the image of young people and of the one of youth that is free from rhetoric and clichés. A close look will be taken to the characteristics of current anthropology trends, focusing on the impact that such categories as "fear" and "risk" exert on training processes. The ultimate aim of this investigation will be to outline the main traits of youth crisis from a pedagogical perspective in terms of a crisis of personal development and human fulfilment, which is even more important than professional fulfilment, and of the transformations affecting rational and non-rational dimensions of the person. By referring to the social condition and to the range of interpretive paradigms inherent in current epistemologies, the paper is aimedto findthe source of the demand that young people directly and indirectly express today also through non-verbal languages, alternative "signs" and "images" that do not fall within the traditional pedagogical canon. The function of pedagogy will therefore be redefined both in theory and in practice on the basis of the need to understand the real human reality, thus interpreting its needs. At the same time, the educational operariwill be re-thought, so as to ensure that in today's reflective democracies the purpose regarded by Raffaele Laporta as the "educational absolute" is achieved. This coincides with authentic freedom, with the most accomplished form of humanization and with the highest level of personal existence, identified as essential conditions for the freedom of learning that corresponds to the freedom of life.

The business of anthropology and the European refugee regime

ABSTRACTMetaphors of flooding and “flows” are often applied in the public sphere to the phenomena of displacement and migration, but there are also “waves” and “tides” of humanitarian actors, “voluntourists,” and researchers now focused on refugees. Humanitarian, security, and anthropological interventions in the European “refugee crisis” of 2015–16 often operate according to a shared logic of urgency and crisis. Key problems and pitfalls in current anthropological trends in the study of displacement on Europe's doorstep are linked to the business dimensions of anthropological work. The business of anthropology reinforces the European refugee regime, which makes border crossers into targets of policing, intervention, and study. [crisis,refugees,displacement,anthropology,Greece,Europe]

La antropología oscura y sus otros. Teoría desde los ochenta

En este artículo considero varias tendencias emergentes en la antropología desde los 80, en el contexto de ascenso del neoliberalismo en tanto formación económica y gubernamental. Considero primero el giro hacia lo que llamo “antropología oscura”, es decir, la antropología que se enfoca en las dimensiones difíciles de la vida social (poder, dominación, desigualdad y opresión), como también en la experiencia subjetiva de esas dimensiones, en forma de depresión y desesperanza. Considero luego un abanico de trabajos que se presentan como una reacción explícita o implícita a este giro oscuro bajo la rúbrica de “antropologías de lo bueno”, incluyendo estudios de “la buena vida” y la “felicidad”, como también estudios de moralidad y ética. Finalmente, considero lo que podría ser pensado como un tipo diferente de antropología de lo bueno, es decir, nuevas direcciones en la antropología de la crítica, la resistencia y el activismo.

Antropologia minimalna i świadectwo. Józefa Tischnera filozofia wychowania

The article contains a new interpretation of Jozef Tischner’s philosophy of education. It consists of two elements: ‘minimal anthropology’ and testimony. Tischner’s ‘minimal anthropology’ contains criticisms of erroneous anthropological trends and an indication of the values that must be taken into account in order to build an adequate anthropology. The role of the testimony is to show how these values can be realized. Tischner not only proposed the philosophy of education, but also was a philosopher-educator. His Christian-inspired philosophy of education and the testimony of life can be a valuable inspiration for all those who reflect in this area.

Colonial time in tension: Decolonizing temporal imaginaries

This article argues that colonial time is fractured, uneven, and co-constituted by tension. Despite coercive violence and instruments of temporal control, non-internalized alternative conceptions of time can/do exist, hybridize, and transform autonomously. We explore these tensions through an examination of post-revolution Iran's attempt to project colonial time through the prison system, and the persistence of non-internalized temporal alternatives as articulated through prisoner memoirs and narratives. Prisons and imprisonment, by removing bodies from the body politic, functions to colonize time to erase, homogenize, and mediate past, present, and future – thereby reproducing ideational-material governance. Yet prisoner memoirs and narratives reveal this process to be incomplete as the agency of individuals to retain, create, and testify provide indications of non-internalized decolonial temporal imaginaries. In taking into consideration our case study and recent trends in anthropology, we inject into the field of International Relations an understanding of colonial time as tension, which can be applied to political-economic and cultural contexts in which time is actively being colonized.

The Many Faces of the State

Reconsidering the trend in anthropology to conceptualize the multifaceted nature of the state and to focus on the local social dynamics beneath the institutional framework of the state, we argue that “state” is not a single governing entity but rather a multilayered body of practices at various levels of the society. We configure “state” as constructed, imagined, and negotiated by people in their everyday life in four dimensions: zones of limited statehood depicted as “peripheries,” “local state” by which the center governs locales, “public discourse” that represents dominant notions of “stateness,” and ambivalent positioning of political elites who represents state in the margin. This argument is substantiated with the reference to the case of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, a southeastern part of Bangladesh.

The Marikana Massacre, labour and capitalism: Towards a Ricoeurian alternative

The purpose of this article is to critically discuss the tragedy that occurred between 11 and 16 August 2012 at the Lonmin Mine in Marikana, South Africa. Although the events leading up to the Marikana massacre were complex and not one single factor was responsible for the tragedy we will focus on the philosophical and anthropological aspect that may have influenced the breakdown of engagement between the management of Lonmin and workers. It will be argued that this breakdown may have been the result of reductionist anthropological trends that arise in capitalism. These trends selectively utilize modern economic principles to advance the profit motive of business and dehumanises workers. This dehumanisation is clear in the view of workers by the Lonmin management and breakdown of communication. In order to provide an alternative anthropology the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur with special reference to his work Fallible man (1986) is explored and applied as an alternative anthropology for the reductionist trends related to labour that sporadically arise in capitalism. This offers a balanced view that incorporates the aim of responsible business to make profit with that of a sustainable labour market. Die doel van hierdie artikel is om ‘n kritiese bespreking te doen van die tragedie wat tussen 11 en 16 Augustus 2012 afgespeel het by die Lonmin-myn in Marikana, Suid-Afrika. Hoewel die gebeure wat aanleiding gegee het tot die Marikana-slagting kompleks is en nie gereduseer kan word tot een enkele faktor wat verantwoordelik was vir die tragedie nie, sal ons fokus op die filosofiese en antropologiese aspekte wat gelei het tot die ineenstorting van die kommunikasie tussen die bestuur van Lonmin en die werkers. Daar sal aangevoer word dat hierdie ineenstorting die gevolg kon wees van reduksionistiese antropologiese neigings wat binne die raamwerk van kapitalisme ontwikkel. Hierdie neigings maak op ‘n selektiewe basis gebruik van modern ekonomiese beginsels om die winsmotief van besighede te bevorder, en dit lei tot die ontmensliking van die werker. Hierdie ontmensliking is duidelik sigbaar uit die oogpunt van die werkers teenoor die agtergrond van die Lonmin-bestuur en die ineenstorting van kommunikasie tussen die partye. Om ‘n alternatiewe antropologie voor te stel, word ondersoek ingestel na die filosofie van Paul Ricoeur, met spesifieke verwysing na sy werk Fallible man (1986) en dit word toegepas as ‘n alternatiewe antropologie vir die reduksionistiese neigings wat saamhang met arbeid soos wat dit sporadies in kapitalisme opduik. Dit bied ‘n gebalanseerde gesigspunt wat die doel van verantwoordelike besighedspraktyke (om wins te maak) inkorporeer met ‘n volhoubare arbeidsmark.

Antropologia comprometida, Antropologias de Orientação Pública e descolonialidade. Desafios etnográficos e descolonização das metodologias .

RESUMO: As Antropologias comprometidas têm vindo a tecer uma série de tendências e de novas perspetivas teórico-metodológicas que contribuem para um debate aberto sobre o papel da antropologia perante os movimentos sociais e a defesa da diversidade cultural na globalização. Entre estas tendências, a antropologia de orientação pública, entendida como uma pluralidade, articula-se quer a partir do compromisso dos movimentos sociais nas lutas políticas contemporâneas perante as tendências etnocidas da globalização, quer a partir de uma linha descolonial que coloca a necessidade ineludível de descolonizar as metodologias etnográficas e a produção antropológica, assim como o compromisso de transferir e partilhar com os sujeitos que constroem o conhecimento antropológico. Neste artigo, mostramos as principais tendências do debate entre os diferentes autores, e as propostas para superar as tensões e cismas entre estas tendências comprometidas, para a construção de uma Antropologia com maiúscula e descolonizada, a partir do diálogo da diversidade de antropologias do mundo, que, de forma sempre situada, produzem conhecimento face ao autismo do elitismo científico, que tende a esterilizar este campo do conhecimento.

Dark matter: Toward a political economy of indigenous rights and aspirational politics

This article shines a critical light on a trend in anthropology that has both mirrored, and, not inconsequentially, shaped, a broader preoccupation with rights-making and rights-claiming as the foundational strategies behind what Karen Engle called the “elusive promise of indigenous development.” The article uses recent ethnographies of legal implementation and state-capital appropriation to think more generally about the history of indigenous rights in relation to what Tania Li has aptly described as the “dynamic specificity” of global capitalism. The article concludes by arguing for the development of an ethnographic political economy of indigenous rights and aspirational politics that reflects an analytical shift from what James Scott called the “symbolic balance of power” to questions of redistribution, state-capital interdependence, and the cooptation of indigenous rights as a new form of capital accumulation.

Dark anthropology and its others

In this article I consider several emergent trends in anthropology since the 1980s against a backdrop of the rise of neoliberalism as both an economic and a governmental formation. I consider first the turn to what I call “dark anthropology,” that is, anthropology that focuses on the harsh dimensions of social life (power, domination, inequality, and oppression), as well as on the subjective experience of these dimensions in the form of depression and hopelessness. I then consider a range of work that is explicitly or implicitly a reaction to this dark turn, under the rubric of “anthropologies of the good,” including studies of “the good life” and “happiness,” as well as studies of morality and ethics. Finally, I consider what may be thought of as a different kind of anthropology of the good, namely new directions in the anthropology of critique, resistance, and activism.

Review of Bennet Zon. 2007. Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain . Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press

Bennet Zon’s Representing Non-Western Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain surveys British Primary sources from the “long” nineteenth century that describe, theorize, and react to various types of music from around the world. Zon shows how discourse around non-Western music in this time and place was shaped by and indebted to the broad intellectual trends in anthropology and psychology, as well as musicology and travel literature. Zon states that this study is mean to rectify the lacuna around how composers or the general populace may have perceived non-Western musics, not simply the way they were imagined in classical compositions. A parallel aim of this study appears explicitly in the epilogue, and deals with establishing a history of British ethnomusicology and redeeming previously overlooked innovators as particular agents in that history.

The Spirit of the Laws in Mozambique by Juan Obarrio (review)

Juan Obarrio, The Spirit of the Laws in Mozambique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014. 280 pp.This is an important book not only for Mozambique or Africa, but for any anthropologist concerned with law, politics, sovereignty, and statehood. Engaging the vast canvas of legality, trajectories of state formation, and broader dimensions of sociality in Mozambique, Juan Obarrio oscillates between painting with broad strokes and deploying a more pointillist style. Nevertheless, the book ends comprising a surface that is ethnographically colorful, rich in analytical interpretative possibilities, and reflective of broader contemporary theoretical trends in its literary aesthetic. Simply, Obarrio's book will make a lasting contribution to the of post-colonial law and statehood. There are at least two main reasons why this is so.First, a book entitled The Spirit of the Laws in Mozambique-without any subtitle-necessarily evokes being something of an engagement with the ideas of Montesquieu's classic work, The Spirit of the Laws (L'esprit des lois) (Secondat 1989). Although Montesquieu is only briefly treated in the book, Obarrio nonetheless writes:The of the laws is an image-concept that has constituted the kernel of state sovereignty since early modern times, from its inception in Europe to its dislocated implementation in colonies (and postcolonies) such as Mozambique...Through formulaic rhetoric, theatrical performance, and fetishism, the spirit of the laws reveals the magicality of the mythological genealogies of the state itself. (12)Being a milestone in the development of not only Enlightenment political thought but also shaping legal and political understandings for centuries, Montesquieu's work still attracts considerable scholarly attention revolving around questions of the nature of the state, the division of power, and the essence of sovereignty. It is, therefore, unsurprising that Montesquieu's seminal tome also informs Obarrio's analysis of the complex workings of law and governance in the post-colonial context of Mozambique. However, Obarrio's turn to Montesquieu and the Enlightenment origins of legal thought also mirrors a broader trend in anthropology (and, indeed, the social sciences) in the last few decades, namely the rediscovery of law. For one, this has meant that old classics within the discipline- such as Bronislaw Malinowski's Crime and Custom in Savage Society (1976 [1926]), Henry Sumner Maine's Ancient Law (1963 [1861]), or Max Gluckman's Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society (1967 [1965])-have been revisited in a discipline that seems increasingly to recognize legal orders and practices, and questions of sovereignty, statehood, and justice, as central. One may only mention here the works of Aihwa Ong (2006) or Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat (2005) on sovereignty, the contributions made by John and Jean Comaroff (2006) or Benda-Beckmann et al. (2009a, 2009b) to understanding the dynamics of law and the vagaries of justice in settings of dynamic change (e.g., Goldstein 2012) or in increasingly plural legal orders (Sieder and McNeish 2013). Obarrio's work is definitely keeping with such anthropological reorientation and, indeed, running through the entire book is a desire to engage law at all relevant levels: from the swanky offices and air-conditioned workshop locales of Western NGOs operating in Maputo to transform the government and the legal sector (mainly examined in Part I), to the everyday life of justice and law as they are performed, negotiated, and negated in community courts in and around the city of Nampula, Northern Mozambique (mostly presented in Part II). Throughout, law is seen as integral to all aspects of politics and sociality. Such a legal-centric perspective of historical transformations and contemporary perturbations in Mozambique is, as Obarrio demonstrates, highly useful.Second, Obarrio's book is a successful attempt to not only do research from below but also to heed the by-now-classic call to study up (Nader 1974 [1969]); the text moves deftly between such hierarchical levels on analytic, theoretical, and empirical grounds. …