Showing papers in "Annual Review of Anthropology in 1987"

Chiefdoms in archaeological and ethnohistorical perspective

Abstract: The term chiefdom is used to characterize social complexity in stateless societies. Despite pointed criticism of evolutionary typologies, the chiefdom and related formulations provide a framework for comparative studies of evolution aimed at understanding the development of central decision-making hierarchies and social inequalities. Over the past 10 years, our understanding of chiefdoms has fundamentally changed as a result of substantial historical and archaeological studies. Research has shifted away from schemes to classify societies as chiefdoms or not, towards considerations of the causes of the observed variability. As the details of analysis have sharpened, the basic concerns with economy and adaptation have broadened to consider political and ideological matters. This review seeks to capture an emerging consensus on the nature of chiefly societies and the causes of their evolution.

The Relation Between Written and Spoken Language

Abstract: or logical thought, it is not because they are incapable of such thought but because they do not deem it appropriate to talk in that way in such a situation. Thus the cognitive corrective shades into the ethnographic one. The ethnographic corrective holds that the principles and concerns of the ethnography of speaking should be applied to the study of writing [Basso (9)], reading [McDermott (157)], and literacy [Szwed (223)]. Most fully developed and frequently cited is the work of Shirley Brice Heath (118-129) exploring the ways written materials are integrated into social interaction. Heath, like Graff (107), Ogbu (174), Pattison (184), and D. Smith (215), demonstrate that the dominant view of literacy as encoding and decoding skills belies its true nature and complexity, and that the acquisition of such skills does not ensure economic advancement as it is generally believed to do. Studies have examined the transformation of discourse between spoken and written modes in particular settings. For example, Cicourel (56, 57), Frankel (91), and Wallat & Tannen (253) compare talk exchanged in a medical setting with what is written in medical records, showing a complex and discontinuous relationship between them. Walker (252) shows that the "verbatim" transcript of a deposition, which becomes the basis for legal decision-making, cannot capture the meaning of oral testimony but is differentially interpreted depend­ ing upon the ad hoc transcription conventions variably employed by court

Economic and Ecological Approaches to Land Fragmentation: In Defense of a Much-Maligned Phenomenon

Abstract: Land fragmentation, also known as pulverization (Clout 1972: 106), morcellement (De Vries 1974: 11-12), parcellization (Roche 1956), and scattering (Farmer 1960), is the type of land ownership pattern where "a single farm consists of numerous discrete parcels, often scattered over a wide area" (Binns 1950: 5). Another phenomenon, also known as land fragmenta­ tion, is the division of land into small farms (Clout 1972a: 41; Jacoby 1971: 265). In this paper I discwis the former. Fragmentation is described by agricultural policymakers as "the blackest of evils, to be prevented by legislative action as one would attempt to prevent prostitution or blackmail" (Farmer 1960: 225; cf CEC 1982: 4 1-42; Marsh & Swanney 1980: Ch. 3). Economists, on the other hand, have suggested that land fragmentation is adaptive under certain circumstances but becomes nonadaptive as technology and relative factor costs change (McClosky 1975a,b; O. Johnson 1970). Europeanist geographers, especially those who incorporate historical mate­ rial into their work, tend to agree with the economists. They see fragmenta­ tion as outdated. The size, shape, and distribution of Europe's fields are of medieval origin, and not well-suited to twentieth century machines and labor costs (Thorpe 1951 ; Houston 1953; Clout 1972 a,b; 1984; Schmook 1976; C. Smith 1978; O'Flanagan 1980; Grigg 1983). Non-Europeanist geographers (with anthropologists) usually stress the adaptive, functional role of land

The Anthropology of Cloth

Abstract: Cloth spans many categories of human want and need. Modem machine­ manufacturers distinguish apparel for the body from the coverings of walls and furniture, and from such "industrial" products as storage bags and filters. Hand-made cloth supplies equally varied domains. Within each domain, moreover, some fabrics meet practical exigencies while others communicate meanings or express artistic taste. In historical complex societies, several cloth traditions coexisted, from the domestic weaving of rural populations to court and urban industries. Contemporary complex societies show a similar range as home workers and cooperatives coexist with factories. In this essay, I review the role of cloth consumption in the consolidation of social relations and in the expression of social identities and values. I also attempt to relate cloth production to the mobilization of power by such units of social action as classes, dynasties, cities, religious institutions, and ethnic and gender sodali­ ties. That cloth is relevant to power is suggested by the relationship of stylistic change to political and economic shifts. Some understandings of style obscure this link, in particular the ones that view style as the homogeneous and uncontested expression of a discrete culture's worldview, or as propelled by its own logic-for example a tension between representational and geometric patterning. My approach is instead continuous with that of the art historian Meyer Schapiro, whose essay on style Kroeber included in Anthropology Today. According to Schapiro, political and economic shifts in great transre­ gional systems of interaction "are often accompanied or followed by shifts in the centers of art and their styles. Religion and major worldviews are broadly coordinated with these eras in social history" (194:310). To explore this

Anthropology and Alcohol Studies: Current Issues

Abstract: Anthropological data, methods, and concepts have contributed significantly over many years to our understanding of the interactions between alcohol and the human animal. Ironically, such contributions appear to be recognized more widely among practitioners and professionals in health and policy fields than within the discipline of anthropology. In this paper, I briefly review the major impacts of anthropologists on the broad field of alcohol studies. I emphasize the striking changes that have taken place since the 1970s, and discuss current issues that are focusing multidisciplinary attention on such work. Brief discussion provides an historical context for both the multi­ disciplinary realm of alcohol studies and the roles of anthropology within it. The specifically anthropological issues within alcohol studies include types of populations studied, links made between alcohol and other factors in cultural context, and the range of research methods used. I note the practical im­ plications of all the foregoing and offer general conclusions, emphasizing the impact of anthropological perspectives.

The Cross-Cultural Study of Human Sexuality

Abstract: Anthropology has long had a love-hate relationship with the study of human sexuality. Although the origins of anthropology were marked by concerns and debates over the topic (275, 356), contemporary anthropologists have gener­ ally moved away from consideration of the "erotic and exotic" into more respectable and less controversial kinds of topics. Meanwhile sexuality re­ mains an intrinsic, if rarely studied, aspect of human experience (124). This essay is a brief review of cross-cultural human sexuality and the typical concerns anthropologists have brought to the study of sexual practices. In order to present the range of areas that anthropologists have investigated, detail has been sacrificed for comprehensive coverage. Following discussions of history, methods, and ethics, the review is divided into a discussion of two major topics: heterosexual behavior and homosexual behavior. Although we have attempted to include examples of the wide-ranging concerns and in­ terests of anthropologists, it has been necessary to neglect equally important approaches. Excluded are discussions of human biology and evolution, repro­ ductive health and hygiene, gender role and status (297), the psychodynamic approach to understanding human sexual behavior, and historical surveys of Western sexual practice (65, 130). Instead we focus on cross-cultural studies of sexual practice that attempt to deal with human sexual arousal, attraction, and customary means of dealing with sexuality in non-Western cultures.

Archaeological Approaches To Hunter-Gatherers

Abstract: subdiscipline, yet it is difficult to define an approach to the study of hunter-gatherers that can legitimately be termed archaeological. Apart from a battery of specialized techniques and tactics (none exclusive to hunter-gatherer research), there is little that separates archaeologist from cultural anthropologist where hunter­ gatherers are concerned and many scholars move back and forth between the study of living and extinct hunter-gatherers without perceptible difficulty. If the concept of an archaeological approach to hunter-gatherers has merit, perhaps it is in the archaeologist's recognition that most of the world's hunter-gatherers are dead, that they must be studied by excavation rather than interview, and that all this has some bearing on the kinds of theories in which students of hunter-gatherers ought to be interested. The archaeologist believes that theories about hunter-gatherers ought to have some chance of being tested in the ground since that is where most of the material they purport to explain currently resides. Because limits on space preclude a comprehensive survey of the field below, other contributions (e.g. 2) better convey a sense of the breadth of recent hunter-gatherer research in archaeology. My purpose here is more specific: to examine recent contributions to archaeological research explicitly derived from theories of limited sets; by this I mean theories that speak to limited sets of behaviors. In contrast to theories of general sets, i.e. general theories, which are by nature highly abstract and sometimes difficult to grasp, theories of limited sets are by design practical and intended for application in the real world: they are theories that have, in archaeological parlance, direct test implications. A detailed treatment of the relationship between general and

Contributions of Roman Jakobson

Abstract: ions imposed on the data or of signs standing for something else; they are real, concrete relations. [Some descriptive linguists in America did not heartily embrace Jakobson's binary notions of sound structure. Martin Joos (I50) argued that "polar" opposition is no more than a "metaphor" that Jakobson imported from poetics. In a way this was an astute observation, as we shall see, but not in itself a convincing argument for abandoning the "metaphor. "] Instead of defining features solely according to their manner and place of articulation (d), one can also define them acoustically (138), because the act of communication, as Saussure had already pointed out, involves a speaker and a hearer, an encoder and a decoder of sound-meaning. This acoustic-articulatory definition of features permits us to formulate the opposition between, say, the English stop consonants in a uniform way. The labials (p, b) are lower pitched than the dentals (t, d); correlatively, the velars (k, g) are lower pitched than the palatals (c, j). Higher pitch (acute) tid c/j Lower pitch (grave) plb k/g In addition, the acute stop consonants can be internally differentiated by yet another acoustic feature, compact vs diffuse (noncompact). This feature (±compact) may be roughly described as follows. Some sounds have their bands of energy concentrated in approximately the middle and lower range of the speech-sound spectrum (compact), whereas other sounds have their bands of energy widely separated and dispersed at the upper end of the spectrum (diffuse). The velars and palatals are compact, the labials and dentals are diffuse. Finally, we also have to be able to distinguish between two sets of compact phonemes, c: k: :j: g. Note that the palatals are released with more friction, which shows up as a "noise" pattern in the sound spectragraph. Therefore, we can add another feature (± strident) to our system. Let us stop the analysis at this point, even though we have obviously not completely described the English consonant phonemes in terms of their constituent

Cross-Cultural Surveys Today

Abstract: ANNUAL REVIEWS Ann. Rev. Anthropol. 1987. 16:143--60 Copyright © 1987 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved Further Quick links to online content CROSS-CULTURAL SURVEYS Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 1987.16:143-160. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Access provided by University of California - Irvine on 03/15/17. For personal use only. TODAY Michael L. Burton and Douglas R. White University of California, Irvine, California 92717 INTRODUCTION This review follows the deaths of two major figures in cross-cultural research: George Peter Murdock and Raoul Naroll. Their joint influence on cross­ cultural theory, sampling (73-75, 78, 80, 87), and method (81-84, 86) produced a new era in which the most persistent objections to cross-cultural research were answered. Cross-cultural research came under attack in the period from 1950- 1975, and until the cumulation of replicable results from standard samples (80, 87) many anthropologists had concluded that the endeavor lacked merit. Barnes's (3) criticisms of Murdock's work exemplify the prevailing views of the early 1970s. The pessimism of Murdock's (76) Huxley memorial lecture, while directed to deficiencies of general anthropological theory, also fostered the impression of insurmountable problems in cross-cultural comparisons. Given this background, the recent resurgence of cross-cultural research may seem surprising. We begin this review with an overview of theoretical orientations related to the resurgence. We then review common criticisms of cross-cultural research, areas of particular progress, and remaining problems of method. Last, following upon two recent reviews of cross-cultural research prior to 1980 (55, 63), we review the progress of substantive work since that time. THEORETICAL ORIENTATIONS Cross-cultural research provides an essential component of valid generaliza­ tions about human societies. It relies on continual rethinking and reintegration with other streams in anthropology and comparative social science by prac-

Applied Anthropology in the Post-Vietnam Era: Anticipations and Ironies

Abstract: One of the more revealing remarks concerning applied anthropology has been offered by Claude Levi-Strauss (141) who, while suggesting that applied work ought to be considered the most important aim of the discipline, confessed that he had little personal interest in the subject. Applied endeavor in anthropology is typically viewed as lacking in intellectual rigor, ethically suspect, unimaginative, bereft of theoretical sophistication, and somehow essential to our future. Unfortunately, it has been our tradition to approach applied anthropology as an attitude or employment opportunity, rather than as a major subfield in its own right. This means that application is almost inevitably viewed as a partial and dependent expression of discipline, general­ ly a use of some other perhaps "purer" inquiry, or at best as a "real world" stimulus for the more profound labors of theoreticians and basic researchers. To the extent that this is held to be true, both general anthropology and our applied concerns are left wanting-the one with no way to express its practicality, and the other with no way to advertise its rigor. This observation leads me to a definition of applied anthropology as the field of inquiry concerned with the relationships between anthropological knowledge and the uses of that knowledge in the world beyond anthropology. While applied anthropologists are properly interested in the outcomes of their work (ranging through such professional issues as the employment of their colleagues and the public good of their endeavors) , I maintain that the discipline of applied anthropology ought to be expressed as a scholarly,