Showing papers in "Annual Review of Anthropology in 1994"

The Politics of Space, Time and Substance: State Formation, Nationalism, and Ethnicity

Abstract: What is the relationship between common sense categories of experience and analytical concepts developed in order to understand the processes that produce such categories and effect their taken-for-grantedness? This question is crucial for those working on nationalism, ethnicity, and state formation. Much of the misplaced concreteness that bedevils this scholarship results from an uncritical reproduction of common sense that poses intellectual as well as political problems_

SPIRIT POSSESSION REVISITED: Beyond Instrumentality

Abstract: Spirit possession commonly refers to the hold exerted over a human being by external forces or entities more powerful than she. These forces may be ances­ tors or divinities, ghosts of foreign origin, or entities both ontologically and ethnically alien. Some societies evince multiple spirit forms. Depending on cultural and etiological context such spirits may be exorcised, or lodged in relatively permanent relationship with their host (or medium), occasionally usurping primacy of place in her body (even donning their own clothes and speaking their own languages) during bouts of possession trance. Possession, then, is a broad term referring to an integration of spirit and matter, force or power and corporeal reality, in a cosmos where the boundaries between an individual and her environment are acknowledged to be permeable, flexibly drawn, or at least negotiable. Recent studies (e.g. 39, 114, 173, 210) suggest that spirit possession rests on epistemic premises quite different from the infinitely differentiating, rationalizing, and reifying thrust of global material­ ism and its attendant scholarly traditions. Because it appears dramatically and intransigently exotic, unrecognizable to those so schooled (but see 1, 34, 79, 103, 104; also 147: 132), possession continues to hold the anthropological gaze despite heroic attempts to tame it, render it harmless or understood. In contrast to anthropological accounts of the body (145) or of time (162), spirit posses-

Music and Language

Abstract: In recent years, work in ethnomusicology has moved decisively toward a fully anthropological perspective. Rhetorically evolving from an anthropology of music (229) to a musical anthropology (297), from the study of music and or in culture, society, and history to the study of music as culture, society, and history (28, 34, 35,70,91, 116, 127,230,250,265,268,272,298,346,347), ethnomusicological perspectives are increasingly social, linking the structure and practice of musical performances and styles with music's deep embedded­ ness in local and trans local forms of social imagination, activity, and experi­ ence. These shifts parallel similar movements in linguistic anthropology that emphasize the social, pragmatic, and emotional constitution of linguistic struc­ tures emerging in discourse, performance, textuality, and poetics. Although these latter shifts have been well chronicled recently (e.g. 17, 18,25,47,99, 109, 119,217,218,354), it has been twenty years since the last review of developments in ethnomusicology and musical anthropology appeared in this journal (227). In that review, McLeod predicted that the relationship between musical and linguistic approaches to culture would be crucial to a future of more rigorously contextualized ethnographic descriptions of musical behavior. The descriptive and analytic issues she raised, however, have developed both beyond and

The Northwest Coast: Complex Hunter-Gatherers, Ecology, and Social Evolution

Abstract: Northwest Coast cultures have long held a central place in anthropology. Recently, the coast has become important in two major topics of theoretical interest: 1. the existence and socioeconomic evolution of complex hunter-gatherers (74) and 2. the origins and evolution of permanent forms of social inequality (3). The coast’s culture history also has intrinsic value to its native and non-native peoples. This review focuses on recent developments in the coast’s archaeology relevant to theories and questions about its culture history and the evolution of social complexity among hunter-gatherers.

Violence, Terror, and The Crisis of The State

Abstract: Among the primary goals of the modem, post-Enlightenment state are assimi­ lation, homogenization, and conformity within a fairly narrow ethnic and political range, as well as the creation of societal agreement about the kinds of people there are and the kinds there ought to be. The ideal state is one in which the illusion of a single nation-state is created and maintained and in which resistance is managed so that profound social upheaval, separatist activity, revolution, and coups d'etat are unthinkable for most people most of the time. The state thus attempts to ensure conformity to encompassing unitary images through diverse cultural forms and an array of institutions and activities that, taken together, help determine the range of available social, political, ethnic, and national identities (2, 12, 66). The crisis of the contemporary state springs from its differentially success­ ful monopolization of power and the contradiction between it and the demands of peripheralized people(s) who through resistance have created new subject positions that challenge fundamentally the definitions of who and what ought to be repressed. To phrase it differently, the ways in which nation and state are constlUcted and the manner in which those constlUctions enter into social knowledge have to do with consensus about what is and what is not legitimate. When consensus fails, ethnic or political opposition, which is otherwise sup-

Advances in human reproductive ecology.

Abstract: Human reproductive ecology pertains to reproduction biology and changes due to environmental influences. The research literature relies on clinical epidemiological and demographic analysis. The emphasis is on normal nonpathological states and a broad range of ecological conditions. This review focused on the importance of age and energetic stress from ecological conditions rather than dieting or self-directed exercise in changing female fecundity. The literature on male reproductive ecology is still small but growing. J.W. Wood provided a comprehensive overview of the field. Natural fertility as defined by Henry is the lack of parity-specific fertility limitation. There is evidence that fertility can vary widely in natural fertility populations. There are consistent age patterns among different natural fertility populations. Doring found that there was higher frequency of anovulatory and luteal insufficiency in cycles during perimenarche and perimenopausal periods. Infertility studies have shown declines in pregnancy rates in women over the age of 30 years. Ovum donation evaluations have found both uterine age and ovarian and oocyte age to be related to the probability of a successful pregnancy. Basal follicle stimulating hormone and the endometrial thickness are important predictors of ovarian capacity and related to age and declining fecundity. Much of the literature on fecundity is derived from women with impaired reproductive physiology. In Lipson and Ellisons study of healthy women average follicular and average luteal estradiol values declined with increasing subject age. Low follicular levels were correlated with smaller follicular size low oocyte fertilizability reduced endometrial thickness and low pregnancy rates. Comparisons across populations have shown that populations experience declines in luteal function with age but levels of luteal functions varied widely. Chronic conditions which slow growth and delay reproductive maturation may impact on lower ovarian function throughout adult life. There is a range of ovarian function along a continuum due to energetic stress. Evidence from the Lese in Zaire the Tamang of Nepal and Polish farm women outside Crakow suggest that workload affects ovarian function. Luteal function and ovulatory frequency is lower when women are losing weight. Among the Tamang losing weight between seasons there was evidence of lower ovarian function during the monsoon season. Polish farm women who work very hard in summer had lower ovarian function. The effect of lactation on amenorrhea appears to be due to the energetic stress on the mother in the intensity and duration of suckling. Women in poorer nutritional status may require more intense suckling. Seasonality of energy balance may be related to seasonality of female fecundity and conceptions.

Old Age: Cultural and Critical Perspectives

Abstract: Despite numerous review articles and programmatic essays surveying the social and cultural anthropology of old age (2, 13, 14,41,47,53,55,79,82, 99, 102, 103), a theme in many of them is the relative paucity of anthropologi­ cal attention to the topic. In 1967 Clark made the classic observation that "if one is to judge from typical anthropological accounts, the span of years be­ tween the achievement of adult status and one's funerary rites is either an ethnographic vacuum or a vast monotonous plateau of invariable behavior" (13). Clark's criticism, opening anthropology's future while closing its past to old age, was soon routinized into a requisite lament preceding many essays on the anthropology of aging (79). This gerontological lament did not, however, correlate with the writing of actual monographs. In 1980, after thirteen years and much productive research by many scholars, Fry could still begin her edited anthology by noting that "anthropology has a long history of being interested in age, but not in aging or the aged" (41). Similarly, in 1981 Amoss & Harrell offered an anthology to "help to remedy a massive neglect of old age by the discipline of anthropol­ ogy" (2); and in 1984 Keith & Kertzer began their introduction to another anthology by again drawing attention to the need in anthropology to "pay more systematic attention to the role of age in human societies and cultural sys-

LEGAL LANGUAGE: Pragmatics, Poetics, and Social Power

Abstract: Recent work in linguistic anthropology has generated new and exciting per­ spectives on the vital role of contextualization in language meaning and func­ tion. At the same time, scholarship on legal language has begun to develop a more social and constructionist vision of the way linguistic processes affect the workings of the law at many levels. This review places some of the scholarship on legal language within the context of current linguistic-anthro­ pological understandings of language use and contextualization, to develop a framework for further work on language and law. It also draws on work in legal scholarship that has illuminated the politics of legal discoursc, to dcmon­ strate how this kind of approach can enliven anthropological understandings of the social grounding of language.

Theories and politics in african american english

Abstract: Scholarly research and public attitudes concerning the language behavior of African Americans have evolved throughout the twentieth century, from early theories that described it in relation to various types of US speech spoken by those of British descent (121, 122, 123, 183) to increasing efforts to describe its features, use, and function within or among members of the African Ameri­ can speech community (42, 163, 177) irrespective of other varieties of Ameri­ can English. To explore and critique this evolution, 1 situate much of this review within the theoretical and political arguments that have portended each analytical shift. These arguments, while centered around language , concern the larger question of how to address the multicultural contact fIrst experienced by Africans and their descendants, who were both sold and born into slavery in the United States, as well as how to interpret the role and constitutive elements of African American culture and language in American society today. In the United States, comments about the language of African Americans are consistently linked to comments about African Americans' cognitive abil­ ity and culture (eg. 26, 64, 87, 183), so it is not surprising that some l inguists lament the shroud of controversy often accompanying research on African American varieties (12, 20, 21, 160). This controversy reflects the multilay­ ered political and ideological issues embodying scholarly work with any mar­ ginalized group that is characterized or marked by language use. It also intro-

Changing perspectives on maya civilization

Abstract: The Maya world stands on a threshold between past and future scholarship, and more importantly, between an indigenous people hailed widely as the most advanced in the New World and other cultural traditions not necessarily inter­ ested in the survival or prosperity of Maya civilization. In this age of informa­ tion explosion, electronic wizardry, and the sound bite, it is becoming harder for the complexities of the ancient and diverse Maya cultural tradition to be fathomed by the scholars who attempt to describe and understand it, let alone by the millions of people who set forth on pilgrimages to its holy sites, or who see it represented with varying degrees of inaccuracy on their television screens each day. Although the popularization of Maya civilization has made household words of Tikal, Lord Pacal, and sting-ray spines, it also has made for a great deal of misinformation in the mass media, undue politicization and occasional distortions of scholarship, and the commercialization of Maya cul­ ture and its homeland to an at times frightening degree. This review attempts to strike a balance between the often polarized views of Maya civilization held by various researchers in the past and present, and to highlight the need for scholars to think more carefully about the implications of their research and writings for living Maya peoples and the remarkable land they inhabit.

Biological aspects of menopause: across the lifespan.

Abstract: "This review outlines the biological basics of menopause and then places menopause within the context of a dynamic lifespan. The basic tenets of the lifespan approach maintain that, for each individual, aging and development are lifelong processes from birth to death; biological, psychological, and sociocultural trajectories interweave across the life course; the entire lifespan serves as a frame of reference for understanding particular events or transitions; and the life course can be affected by environmental change.... This review also points to the gap between population-level studies of menopause and studies carried out at the biochemical, cellular, or organ systems level. Filling this gap...offers the most interesting directions for future anthropological research."

Prehistoric Desert Farmers of the Southwest

Abstract: The fact and intensity of their commitment to agriculture is a foremost charac­ teristic that distinguished the prehistoric farmers of the Greater Southwest (82) from their contemporaries to the east, north, and west. As the ultimate mem­ bers of a continuum of agricultural peoples stretching north from Meso­ america, pottery-making c ultivators in the southwestern United States and adjacent northwestern Mexico (see Figure 1) formed an agricultural peninsula with constantly shifting boundaries among North American groups who were predominantly hunters and gatherers. To understand the environmental context and social role of agriculture, then, is to understand the most essential factors that differentiated the Southwest as a culture area and distinctively shaped the lifeways of its inhabitants. This review explores recent advances in the effort to understand the relationship between society and agriculture in southwestern archaeology . To those whose perceptions are conditioned by temperate climates and technology of the industrial era, the original occupants of arid southwestern basins, plateaus, and mountains faced daunting challenges to an agricultural lifestyle. Concepts concerning agricultural marginality have played a central role in the study of societal forms and dynamics, as can be seen in current analytical approaches and interpretive frameworks favored by southwestern archaeologists. As Kohler observes (85), "the effectiveness of various ecologi-

The epidemiology of HIV transmission: trends, structure and dynamics.

Abstract: This review summarizes dynamic processes in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission. A brief overview of current trends in the HIV epidemic is followed by a discussion of the basic components of HIV transmission. Several epidemiologic models are then described that seek to delineate how HIV transmission is structured by human relationships and the implications of those structural relationships for the evolving epidemic. (EXCERPT)