Showing papers in "Annual Review of Anthropology in 1991"

The politics of reproduction.

Abstract: PIP: The topic of human reproduction encompasses events throughout the human and especially female life-cycle as well as ideas and practices surrounding fertility, birth, and child care. Most of the scholarship on the subject, up through the 1960s, was based on cross-cultural surveys focused on the beliefs, norms, and values surrounding reproductive behaviors. Multiple methodologies and subspecialties, and fields like social history, human biology, and demography were utilized for the analysis. The concept of the politics of reproduction synthesizes local and global perspectives. The themes investigated include: the concept of reproduction, population control, and the internationalization of state and market interests (new reproductive technologies); social movements and contested domains; medicalization and its discontents; fertility and its control; adolescence and teen pregnancy; birth; birth attendants; the construction of infancy and the politics of child survival; rethinking the demographic transition; networks of nurturance; and meanings of menopause. The medicalization of reproduction is a central issue of studies of birth, midwifery, infertility, and reproductive technologies. Scholars have also analyzed different parts of the female life-cycle as medical problems. Other issues worth analysis include the internationalization of adoption and child care workers; the crisis of infertility of low-income and minority women who are not candidates for expensive reproductive technologies; the concerns of women at high risk for HIV whose cultural status depends on their fertility; questions of reproduction concerning, lesbians and gay men (artificial insemination and discrimination in child rearing); the study of menopause; and fatherhood. New discourse analysis is used to analyze state eugenic policies; conflicts over Western neocolonial influences in which women's status as childbearers represent nationalist interests; fundamentalist attacks on abortion rights; and the AIDS crisis.

The Gender and Labor Politics of Postmodernity

Abstract: The literature on export-industrialization and the feminization of industrial work challenges theory to catch up with lived realities. Reports from the new frontiers of industrial labor reveal a widening gap between our analytical constructs and workers' actual experiences. This puzzle arises from our limited theoretical grasp of the ingenuity of capitalist operations and the creativity of workers' responses in the late 20th century. Modernization models of capitalist development (33, 85) predicted an increasing adoption of mass-assembly production (Fordism; see 35:279-318) and the gradual decline of cottage industries in the Third World. Yet, since the early 1970s, mixed systems based on free-trade zones, subcontracting firms, and sweatshops have come to typify industrialization in Asia, Central America, and elsewhere. Lapietz (55) argues that the current mix of mass production, subcontracting, and family-type firms represents a new regime of accumulation worldwide. Since the 1973 world recession, new patterns of "flexible accumulation" (55, 42) have come into play as corporations struggle in an increasingly competitive global arena. Flexible labor regimes, based

Making National Cultures in The Global Ecumene

Abstract: What is at stake in the anthropological study of nations and nationalism? On the one hand, the concept of culture itself, and on the other, the prospects for conceptualizing cultural differences in world historical terms. Over the past two decades, a definite shift has occurred in the way anthropologists formulate their central concept of culture. Long-standing assumptions about shared systems of symbols and norms have not been abandoned, despite challenges to think of culture as an organization of nonshared, distributed meanings (74). But questions about social agents and agencies, rather than about the structural logic or functional coherence of normative and symbolic systems, now orient cultural inquiry. More and more often culture is treated as the changing outcome of "practice"-interested activity not reducible to rational calculation (124, 125). The production and reproduction of collectively held dispositions and understandings-the work of making culture-is taken to be problematic rather than automatic, the site of multiple contests informed by a diversity of historically specific actions and intentions (34, 35). This perspective has prompted consideration of nations as cultural pro­ ducts, and of nationalism as a cultural process of collective identity formation (e.g. 64, 64a). Accordingly, the discursive practices of intellectuals and state officials in promoting national-cultural identities have been given close scru-

Human Behavioral Ecology

Abstract: Human behavioral ecology may be defined as the study of the evolutionary ecology of human behavior. Its central problem is to discover the ways in which the behavior of modern humans reflects our species' history of natural selection. During the last two decades this approach has grown rapidly, involving researchers from all the major branches of anthropology, as well as from other behavioral and social sciences and from the humanities. This article focuses on the growing body of empirical behavioral ecological re­ search on behavior in non-Western, primarily nonindustrial societies. Studies that have brought new insights to areas of traditional concern among an­ thropologists, such as population regulation, foraging, reciprocity, redistribu­ tion, kinship, marriage, descent, child care, and sociocultural change are emphasized . The evolutionary biological study of human behavior has been given many other names besides human behavioral ecology, including evolutionary ecolo­ gy, biosociology, biocultural science, biosocial science, human ethology, sociobiology, socioecology, evolutionary biological anthropology, and evolu­ tion and human behavior studies. Many researchers now avoid the con­ troversial term "sociobiology" because it is often wrongly equated with kin selection theory (93), which is actually just one aspect of the approach, and because they wish to distance themselves from popular and speculative works that use the label.

The anthropology of teaching and learning

Abstract: thought and from collective to individualistic orientations. The disengagement from the everyday world fostered by the decontextualized nature of schooling allows individuals to move beyond the limits imposed by the more restricted environments in which nonschooled (read "primitive") or otherwise "culturally deprived" (read "lower class" or ethnic minority) individuals live. The connections between the great divide and evolutionary approaches discussed in the previous section and the dichotomies and evolutionary leaps discussed here are noteworthy. In this case, fundamental (dichotomous) differences can be overcome by certain (evolutionary) developments, such as those provided by schooling. Recent work in cross-cultural cognition has entailed a move beyond a concern with cognitive properties as static phenomena that people do or do not have in their heads, to a concern with practice and activity-with the embeddedness of cognitive skills in particular interactive contexts rather than in isolated minds. One underlying assumption of this approach is that cognitive skills are inextricably tied to the practices and activities that invoke them (15, 118). This approach also reflects a concern with the methodological and theoretical problems associated with the application of Western-style tests in non-Western contexts, and with the use of tests or tasks per se (15-17, 37, 59, 61, 65, 92, 115, 118). This content downloaded from 207.46.13.128 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 06:19:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms TEACHING & LEARNING 81 Researchers are increasingly emphasizing everyday experience as a phenomenon of interest in its own right, and replacing tests with experiments designed to build on and replicate real life practices. The work of Lave and her colleagues (67, 68) on people's uses of math in real life situations like grocery shopping and dieting, and Scribner's (116) work on the dairy industry, demonstrate the interest and importance of everyday activity. Experiments used in the study of cross-cultural and everyday cognition, moreover, draw on detailed ethnographic analyses of what it is that people actually do, and of the skills connected with these activities (15, 62, 68, 118). The end result is a mutually informative combination of observation and experiment rather than a situation in which observation or experiment is used exclusively

The natufian in the levant

Abstract: The Natufian entity was first identified and described in the early 1930s by D. Garrod (39) following her excavations at the Shukba Cave in the Samaria (Figure 1). Other assemblages identified as Natufian were subsequently uncovered within the boundaries of what was to become identified as the Natufian core area, encompassing the Galilee, Mt. Carmel, and the Judean Hills and Desert (41, 64, 83). Though the original definition of the Natufian complex was based on the characteristics of its chipped stone industry, both Garrod and Neuville (63, 64), who explored the Judean desert Natufian sites, were impressed by the nonlithic finds. This is the first Levantine prehistoric entity with durable architectural remains bearing evidence of intensive building activities. Some of the sites exceed in size anything known before, heralding the appearance of the villages and compounds of the Neolithic cultures to come. Besides an unprecedented abundance (in quantity and variety) of bone implements, there is a wealth of limestone and basalt artifacts. Also, for the first time there appear numerous art objects and ornaments made of a variety of raw materials, both common and exotic. All these components place the Natufian apart from preceding archaeological cultures. Since the early discoveries, sites identified as Natufian have been reported both from the core area (12, 49, 65, 67, 78, 88) and from regions further away, some within different phytogeographic zones: northern Syria (26, 27, 60), north and south Lebanon (19), the Jordan Rift Valley (9, 33, 38), southern Jordan (46, 55, 56), the Syrian-Arabian Desert (20), and the Negev (43, 58, 61) (Figure 1). The abundant data accumulated over the years

A Taphonomic Perspective on the Archaeology of Human Origins

Abstract: The origins of humanity have attracted scientific and public interest for centuries. Most scientific evidence concerning the earlier stages of human evolution has come from field research in eastern and southern Africa during the last several decades. The major classes of evidence are: 1. hominid fossils (the family Hominidae includes extinct and modem humans); 2. archaeologi­ cal sites, consisting of ancient stone tools and sometimes fossil animal bones, and 3. the geological and paleoecological contexts of classes 1 and 2. We have no archaeological evidence from the first half of the 5 million-year-long record of human evolution, but for the second half such evidence is abundant. The bipedal, small-brained hominids of the period from 5 to 2.5 million years ago represent several species of australopithecines in eastern and south­ ern Africa. Judging from their physical appearance, it is likely that their behavior was more ape-like than human-like (84,85, 135, 138, 144). Indeed, Dart (55) first characterized one australopithecine species, Australopithecus ajricanus, as killer apes, arguing that their violent predatory behavior and use of the bones, teeth, and horns of their prey as tools and weapons are what formed the fossil bone accumulations in several South African caves. Dart's

Sino-Tibetan Linguistics: Present State and Future Prospects

Abstract: Since Sino-Tibetan (ST) is one of the greatest language families in the world-even Indo-European does not have more first-language speakers-it is sobering to realize that ST linguistics is only about 50 years old, and has been a flourishing field of inquiry for only the past 25 years. The more than 1.1 billion speakers of Sinitic (= the Chinese dialects) constitute the world's largest speech community, and scholars have been trying since the mid-19th century to situate Chinese in a wider genetic context. As the relationships between Chinese and Tibetan on the one hand, and Tibetan and Burmese on the other became obvious, vague notions of an "Indo-Chinese" family (34, 79) began to crystallize. The term Sino-Tibetan seems to have been used first by R. Shafer (177, 178), who conceived of it as a tripartite linguistic stock comprising Chinese, Tibeto-Burman (TB), and Tai (= "Daic"). Today most scholars in China take an even broader view of ST (called Ha'n-Zatng in Mandarin), including not only these three branches, but Hmong-Mien (= Miao-Yao) as well. The majority view outside of China is more conservative: ST includes only Chinese (= Sinitic) on the one hand and the Tibeto-Burman languages on the other (see Figure 1). Even taking ST in its narrower sense, we are dealing with a highly differentiated language family of formidable scope, complexity, and time-depth. TB comprises hundreds of languages

The role of genetics in craniofacial morphology and growth

Abstract: The nature of family resemblance and the role of inheritance in craniofacial growth and morphology have comprised a research focus for scientists in biological anthropology, genetics, anatomy, and dentistry since at least the mid-1940s. Research has focused on normal human variation, primate evolution, and the inheritance of craniofacial form for purposes of developmental and evolutionary studies, and to facilitate the prediction, recognition, and treatment of abnormal dental and facial patterns. Studies of craniofacial morphology involve both static morphology and growth. Examinations of craniofacial morphology usually provide a description or analysis of the craniofacial complex at a single stage in the growth process-e.g. adult craniofacial morphology. Alternatively, analyses of craniofacial growth examine the craniofacial complex at different ages to show how adult morphology is achieved. In this review I examine the following issues: how quantitatively inherited traits are analyzed; the most common methods used to estimate the proportion of the observed variation attributable to genetic factors; the history of model-

The State of Ethnohistory

Abstract: The boundaries separating anthropology from history, and ethnohistory from history, were once more clearly drawn than they are at present. At different moments, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Robert Lowie, and Hugh Trevor-Roper all became symbolic of a wide chasm between anthropology and history. In 1929, after ruminating for more than a decade about the conversion of his mentor W. H. R. Rivers to diffusionism and speculative historical reconstruc­ tions (174:267-82), Radcliffe-Brown (244:598) asserted that history , for the most part, "does not really explain anything at all," a remark that came to represent the anti-diffusionist and anti-evolutionist ahistorical bent of British structural-functionalism, both his brand and Bronislaw Malinowski's. By that time, Lowie (183:40) had already proclaimed that one cannot "attach to oral traditions any value whatsoever under any circumstances whatsoever" be­ cause "we cannot know them to be true," which has come to stand not simply for a disbelief in the historicity of indigenous accounts of past events but also for an alleged lack of interest on the part of an entire generation of American cultural anthropologists in history . And decades later Trevor-Roper (304:9) argued that only history of Europeans in Africa was worthwhile-"the rest is largely darkness, like the history of pre-European, pre-Columbian America. And darkness is not a subject for history." We should not, Trevor-Roper continued, "amuse ourselves with the unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant comers of the globe"-a fairly remarkable statement that became more than fleetingly symbolic of the ethnoand Eurocentrism of which many have accused traditional historiography.

Pidgins and Creoles: The Blurring of Categories

Abstract: In the conclusion of the article he wrote on "Pidgin and Creole Languages" for the 1976 issue of Annual Review of Anthropology, Derek Bickerton (20) claimed that despite the achievements of the previous ten years "the field still has a long way to go." Fifteen years later, pidgin and creole studies have come a long way. They have been transformed into one of the most dynamic and theoretically challenging fields of contemporary linguistics. During the past 15 years, Bickerton himself has done much to project pidgin and creole studies to the forefront of academic debate. His controversial but thoughtprovoking Language Bioprogram Hypothesis (22, 23) has generated vibrant discussions among scholars in a range of fields interested in the human language faculty. Can the study of creoles reveal the role played by the universal faculties of language in language formation and interlingual communication? Bickerton's challenge has catalyzed theoretical interest and brought focus and direction to a field of studies that had become extremely dispersed. As if to answer Bickerton's call, a number of important general books on pidgin and creole linguistics have appeared recently: Holm's (89, 90) ambitious and highly successful survey, balancing the role of universals and substrates in the formation of Atlantic creoles; Muhlhausler's (133) carefully crafted generalizations on pidgin and creole linguistics, from the standpoint of a universalist theory; Romaine's (155) meticulous introductory manual pro-

Prehistoric Exchange in Western Melanesia

Abstract: The ubiquity and diversity of complex external exchange systems is virtually a hallmark of Melanesia (see 105:521-63 for an overview). The kula of the Massim, the hiri of Papua, the tee and moka of the New Guinea Highlands, the Siassi middlemen of the Vitiaz Strait, and the red-feather "money" trade of Santa Cruz are among the ethnographically better-documented of many complex exchange networks that linked hundreds of islands and communities throughout Melanesia. The ethnographic literature on Melanesian exchange is rich and of high quality. We are not surprised, however, to find it strongly biased toward the sociopolitical aspects of exchange, rather than the economic or material. Although some ethnographers consider historical records, most analyses of Melanesian exchange are also ahistorical and synchronic. Ex­ change as comprising dynamic, fluid sets of linkages is a neglected topic. Nor is it a surprise, given the dominant synchronic orientation, that ethnographers have usually advanced post hoc functionalist explanations when they have occasionally speculated on the origins and development of exchange networks in prehistory (94:5-8). Archaeology is still a relatively new endeavor in Melanesia: significant excavations and surveys did not commence until the 1960s (133, 135). In just

Directions in the Anthropology of Contemporary Japan

Abstract: A third front has recently been opened in the assault on the edifice of ethnography. Having deconstructed ethnographic form and historicized the ethnographic subject, some have now turned to regionalizing its conceptual claims. Their presumption is that all ethnography is regional, a local transposition of general disciplinary concerns. It must be read critically for the problems it highlights through the mutual adaptation of anthropological dis­ course and locally prominent features and issues: prestige economy in Melanesia, marriage rules in Australia, lineage in Africa, caste in South Asia. "Localizing strategies" is Fardon's felicitous phrase (81) for the complicated dialectic of region and problematic, which was illustrated so effectively in Abu-Lughod's review (2) of "zones of theory" in Arab world anthropology. Some of the work I consider in this essay may be so analyzed. I Yet I argue

The Mesolithic of Northern Europe

Abstract: The subject of this essay is 5,000 years of the early postglacial prehistory of northern Europe, from approximately 10,000 until 5,000 years ago. This part of the past is of interest in its own right, but also in a much broader context. Current evidence suggests that rather large and sedentary groups of hunter­ gatherers were present in northern Europe during the early Holocene. This information leads to two important messages for this paper: 1. The European Mesolithic was a period of dynamic change and innovation, rather than a time of cultural degeneration as it has often been portrayed; and 2. large and sedentary groups of hunter-gatherers are likely more typical of late Pleis­ tocene and early Holocene adaptations than the small and mobile ones de­ scribed for much of the ethnographic and archaeological record. This chapter begins with a discussion of the climatic, environmental, and chronological background of the northern European Mesolithic. I then focus on recent archaeological evidence before returning to the two points made above. For purposes of this essay, northern Europe includes all or parts of those countries that share the coasts of the Baltic Sea and Kattegat, including northern Poland and Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the northwestern comer of the Soviet Union, and the Baltic Republics (Figure 1). This is an immense area; it is further from one end of Norway to the other than

Secondary Compounds in Plants (Allelochemicals) as Promoters of Human Biological Variability

Abstract: Human biological variability, in conjunction with specific aspects of cultu­ ral diversity, provides a dynamic template upon which natural selection continues to operate. Contemporary human biological diversity may reflect the differential exposure of various ancestral and modem groups to diverse environmental constraints, including variable exposure to plant-derived secondary compounds. As omnivores, ancestral as well as contemporary human groups have been in regular contact with an array of plant chemicals. The usual human diet has facilitated our exposure to many of these toxic compounds. Given the ubiquity of such compounds in most of the very plants we depend upon for subsistence and the common persistence of toxicity even after extensive processing, it is unlikely that human dietary contact with plant chemicals has been without biological and behavioral consequences. More likely, chronic exposure to

The Continental Population Structure of Europe

Abstract: Structure in populations refers to inhomogeneity of various population proper­ ties. These inhomogeneities may range over demographic, morphological , genetic, cultural , and social variables. Population structure is of inherent interest from a descriptive point of view, but its principal importance is that it leads to inferences about the processes that have engendered the structure and permits us to support or reject various hypotheses about the populations concerned. Most population structure is studied with respect to spatial di­ mensions, temporal structure being more difficult to observe. The types of structure observed and inferences drawn depend on the scale at which observations are taken. Small-scale studies of single villages or relatively small regions, which predominate in the literature, address questions of inbreeding, mating patterns, local selection, genetic drift, and similar prob­ lems of great interest to population geneticists. Large-scale studies have been relatively rarely carried out, partly because data adequate for such studies are hard to accumulate, and partly because the types of questions answered at this scale differ from those fashionable in recent decades in population genetics (7) . These questions concern large-scale genetic differences, ethnic origins and admixtures, and the effect of unique events in history. Such studies have been made on various continents and parts thereof (e.g . 13a, 26, 44, 49, 50).

Statistics in linguistics

Abstract: Thirty years ago there were few comers of linguistics where statistics was thought relevant. Linguists were then concemed mostly with developing theoretical frameworks in which to describe the various levels of languagesphonology, morphology, syntax, and so forth. Languages themselves were generally approached as monolithic entities, with most attention paid only to their standard forms, and without regard for individual speaker performance. Even where variation was studied (e.g. in dialect geography), empirical data was usually nonquantitative and derived from simple introspection or single informants. Statistics were rarely needed, and it was very much a case of "Those who count, don't count" (45). Two notable exceptions were glottochronology (often overnarrowly referred to as lexicostatistics) and early work on frequencies of linguistic units, especially words. The former (24, 30, 52) examined the relationship between time and the number of words that change their meaning or are lost in familiar languages. The proposal was made that core vocabulary items, such as words for "I" and "sun," alter their meaning or are lost from languages at a uniform rate at different times and in different languages (19% per thousand years, in a standard 200-word core vocabulary list)-i.e. decay of language, like that of carbon 14, is exponential. Mathematical formulas were derived to model the shared retention in two languages originating from one source and then decaying independently. These were then used in situations where the vocab-

Recent developments in population genetics

Abstract: In a Workshop sponsored by the United States National Institutes of Health in 1983 it was pointed out (51) that "Since 1974, theoretical population genetics has treated increasingly complex models, but sometimes with decreasing biological relevance." With the increasing emphasis and interest in molecular studies, the character of population genetics has changed considerably. "The subject has changed from one that is rich in theory and poor in data to one that is almost the opposite" (13). There has also been a shift from the bitter debates over the selective/neutral dichotomy. With the increasing availability of DNA sequence data, there is unequivocal evidence in favor of the neutral theory. The observed rates and patterns of DNA base substitutions are generally in concordance with the predictions of the neutral theory (35, 36, 42). This, of course, does not imply that all mutations are neutral; evidence for positive Darwinian selection at the molecular level has also recently been found (92). The theoretical and empirical studies of the last two decades have made it abundantly clear that the forces of mutation and random genetic drift are much more important in the creation and maintenance of genetic variability in populations than had previously been envisaged. Many important theoretical population genetic results, incorporating mutation and drift, on ages of alleles, sampling distributions of functions of allele frequencies, statistics for