Showing papers in "Annual Review of Anthropology in 1982"

The Anthropologies of Illness and Sickness

Abstract: ion. [In this connection, see analogous arguments by Navarro (126) and Assennato & Navarro (7, pp. 224--30) on the social production of knowledge of occupational medicine, and Latour & Woolgar (102) on the social production of biomedical knowledge.] Efficacy and Productivity What is the importance of medical anthropological research for the people about whom medical anthropologists write? EM writers are quite clear on this point: their practical interest is in the issue of medical efficacy. That is, they want to augment the effectiveness of clinical medicine in the context of the healing process. For example, they want to enhance patient educa­ tion, remedy problems of noncompliance, and challenge maladaptive courses of treatment. On the other hand, the writers I have identified with the anthropology of sickness perspective are oriented to a point beyond the healing process, the inner logic of illness, and the consciousness of the individual. Their practical interest is in what can be called medical produc-

Archaeology and Ethnohistory of the African Iron Age

Abstract: The Iron Age in eastern and southern Africa extends over the last 2000 years, and, as a cultural term, designates groups of people who were metal­ using agriculturalists. Our understanding of the nature of Iron Age societies has broadened in the last decade through an upsurge in research and improved methods of ordering ceramic and settlement data. I employ the results of these methods in a review of three long-standing problems: the Early Iron Age and the spread of Bantu speakers; the postulated transition from an Early to a Late Iron Age; and the origins of the Zimbabwe Culture.

Anthropology of the Mediterranean Area

Abstract: Anthropology in the Mediterranean area is nothing new; some of the earliest ethnographies took place there (34, 175). But an anthropology of the Mediterranean area (23, 48) which includes both Christian and Muslim sides is both new and controversial. One reason for this development is the recent upsurge in south European ethnography. Favoring the most mar­ ginal areas of the south, Europeanists have gradually become aware of many affinities between their peoples and those of North Africa and the Levant. These resemblances start with environment but include many "core issues of life" (88, p. 10): male-female relations, community orientations, patron­ client dependencies, and, more recently, a supposedly similar peripheral relationship to the core of industrial Europe. A Pan-Mediterranean focus in anthropology goes back to Redfield's observations in the 1950s about the anomalies of Mediterranean peasant personality (147, p. 66). Shortly afterwards, Julian Pitt-Rivers and Jean Peristiany organized a number of symposia to explore the question of Mediterranean distinctiveness. This collaboration gave rise to a number of collections. Some of these had a unifying theme like "honor and shame" (13 1), while others lacked any connection other than geography (1 321 34, 14 1). In the late 1960s, Wolf ( 180) and Gellner (73) compared society and religious symbolism in Latin Europe and the Muslim Middle East. But their coruscations did not ignite much commentary at the time. In 1971 , Jane Schneider published a theoretical paper on the origins of the Pan-Mediter­ ranean honor-shame complex (156). Her paper was important because it was the first to demarcate a continuum of material variables which hypo­ thetically constituted the basis of Mediterranean unity.

Lineage theory: a critical retrospect

Abstract: The establishment of "lineage theory" or "descent theory" is conventionally traced to the publication in 1940 of African Political Systems, The Nuer, and The Political System of the Anuak ( 15, 16,28). Lineage theory dominated the study of social structure in British anthropology immediately after the end of World War II and retained a central position until the mid-1960s when, like British social anthropology more generally and the British Em­ pire itself, it seemed to lose its impetus and to run into the sands. Yet it did not completely vanish. Elements of the lineage model of political organiza­ tion still embellish phantom protostates in the work of African historians or "the lineage mode of production" in the work of French Marxist an­ thropologists, or they appear simply as part of the trappings, taken for granted, in dozens of ethnographic monographs. This stubborn half-life of lineage theory warrants consideration. I have an historical interest in lineage theory also, for although repre­ sented at the time as a breakthrough, it was rather a transformation of earlier theories in anthropology. Understanding the way in which the trans­ formation occurred helps us to see how and why anthropology developed as it did. The organization of my review is roughly chronological, and I shall sketch the genealogy of lineage theory, a genealogy which predictably has been tampered with (by others) to fi t later political realities. Evans-Pritch­ ard, for example, pointed out that there is a long history of interest in the central themes of descent theory, that is, in "the reciprocal relations be­ tween descent groups and local and political groups, between lineages and

Non-Western Medical Systems

Abstract: I wish to argue that each of the terms in the phrase "non-Western medical systems" contains a built-in hidden assumption. First, "non-Western" is a dubious concept because, historically, Western medicine has long in­ fluenced large regions outside the West, notably Asia and the Americas, and because interchange between these cultural areas (not all one-way) is in­ creasing in scale and intensity at an exponential rate.2 Further, the category "non-Western" is either an arrogant, residual ethnocentrism-merely meaning "not like us"-that has no place in anthropology, or, if it implies that there is something in common between all such systems, is doubly wrong. Secondly, "medical" is unacceptable to the extent that treating bodily ills takes place, in any culture, within a "metamedical" framework of thought. The biomechanistic model within which the professional forma­ tion and deformation of the doctor takes place in our culture, one such metamedical framework, is by no means universal. Finally, the degree of systematicity present in modes of medical treatment is problematic and culturally variable, and is often an "etic" imputation or projection of the anthropologist onto his or her field material. Brian Inglis, in Punch (36), recently noted the growing attraction of various kinds of "alternative" medicine in the West itself: acupuncture, osteopathy, and homeopathy, to name only some of the best known. He

Anthropology of Knowledge

Abstract: Since the Annual Review of,4nthropology series has not previously contained a discussion of the anthropology of knowledge, this review will look at literature published since the mid-1970s. Volumes sporting phrases such as "anthropology of knowledge" are still comparatively rare (42, 47), despite the fact that such a label is quite appropriate for that rich tradition stemming from Durkheim and Mauss’s work. The work covered below is normally referred to by more familiar labels such as cognitive, categories, classification, universals, ideology, symbolism.1 Some colleagues would no doubt like to see the establishment of a subfield in the discipline called "the anthropology of knowledge." I have not advocated this despite the fact that there exist a "sociology of knowledge" and an "archaeology of knowledge." There have been too many fields enthusiastically developed within anthropology which have grown increasingly remote from the main stream until their oflicianados vanished in their own epistemological spaces. I suggested in 1976 that semantic anthropology (36) is not a subfield but merely a reminder of what anthropology is centrally concerned with. I have taken the theme "anthropology of knowledge" in the same way. After all, some would wish to define our basic concept of culture as a process of acquiring and displaying knowledge--of rules, values, and beliefs. The concepts "knowing" and "knowledge" are definable in a field of contrasts which includes concepts such as action, feeling, ideology, and it could be counterproductive, given the fundamental importance of these matters in the understanding of social life, to set up the anthropology of knowledge

THE PATTERN OF HUMAN EVOLUTION: Studies on Bipedalism, Mastication, and Encephalization

Abstract: The recent and sudden proliferation of hominid fossil discoveries sparks new interest in human evolution, especially in the early part of the story. In the last decade the sample of pre-three-million-year-old australopithe­ cines has multiplied by more than a hundredfold. A decade ago almost the entire East African Plio-Pleistocene hominid fossil record fit in a few cookie tins in a small safe; it now fills an entire room. Instead of isolated bits we now have samples of populations with most skeletal parts represented. What follows is an account of recent refinements and revisions of our l.mderstanding about the pattern of human evolution, specifically the tempo and mode of the evolution of hominid bipedalism, the human dental config­ uration, and encephalization. Taxonomy, ecology, behavior, dating, and other topics have been reviewed recently elsewhere (14, 15, 16, 35, 72, 95, 98, 110, 204, 248, 255-257, 258, 286). For over a century the prevailing view among evolutionists has been that bipedalism preceded encephalization (167). Lamarck (123), Haeckel (73), and Darwin (39) made this clear. The last decade of hominid fossil discover­ ies has made some surprising refinements in this view. Perhaps the most dramatic discovery is the pattern revealed by the 3.7 to 3.0 m.y. old Aus­ tralopithecus afarensis: bipedalism is established, yet absolute brain size is about one third that of modern Homo sapiens and teeth are intermediate between pongid and hominid (110). Does this imply a complete mosaic? When and how did bipedalism evolve and was it completely established before the human pattern of dentition originated? When and through what

Fifty Years in Anthropology

Abstract: The title of this essay seemed appropriate when it was first suggested in 1980. The year was the fiftieth anniversary both of receipt of my doctorate and my first field trip to Mexico, the scene of much of my career. Upon further reflection, I am less satisfied with the title. More than 50 years have elapsed since those events; besides, my contact with anthropology actually began in 1922, 60 years before the date of this publication. Increasingly, too, I realize how much I owe my intellectual inheritance to many predecessors in anthropology and to the idiosyncracies of my early background. Hence this essay is not a formal history of the discipline but rather a partially autobiographical account of how anthropology has appeared to me at various times in my professional life. I will comment on the past, examine the present, and guess at the future.

Sociobiology: Primate Field Studies

Abstract: Sociobiology is concerned with the evolution and adaptive significance of social behavior. Certain kinds of social behavior, such as aggression, are readily explained by Darwin's concept of individual selection. In contrast, until recently acts of altruism seemed to be in direct contradiction to Darwinian thinking [see Alexander (2) for a history of the subject]. The first major step toward the resolution of this apparent paradox came with the development of kin selection theory (52, 65, 67). Today, the cornerstones of sociobiological theory are models explaining the evolution of social be­ havior not only by means of individual selection (e.g. 39, 152) and kin selection (15, 25, 28, 67-69, 70, 95, 100, 154, 158, 169), but also by recipro­ cal altruism (15, 150) and group selection (14, 15, 57, 94, 102, 151, 153, 159-161). Our aims in this review are, first, to survey studies which have tried to apply these models to wild primates and, second, to discuss some of the resulting problems. In the process, we have found it impossible to avoid a certain arbitrariness of organization. To underscore the fact that this is not, emphatically, a review of sociobiological theory as such [excellent reviews already exist (e.g. 15, 89, 97)], but rather an evaluation of the impact of