Showing papers in "Annual Review of Anthropology in 2003"
TL;DR: The extent to which the cognitive demands of bonding large intensely social groups involve aspects of social cognition, such as theory of mind, is explored and is related to the evolution of social group size, language, and culture within the hominid lineage.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract The social brain (or Machiavellian Intelligence) hypothesis was proposed to explain primates' unusually large brains: It argues that the cognitive demands of living in complexly bonded social groups selected for increases in executive brain (principally neocortex). The evidence for this and alternative hypotheses is reviewed. Although there remain difficulties of interpretation, the bulk of the evidence comes down in favor of the social brain hypothesis. The extent to which the cognitive demands of bonding large intensely social groups involve aspects of social cognition, such as theory of mind, is explored. These findings are then related to the evolution of social group size, language, and culture within the hominid lineage.
796 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a critical assessment of the field of common property is presented, with an emphasis on the need to attend more carefully to processes of subject formation and investigate common property arrangements.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract This paper presents a critical assessment of the field of common property. After discussing briefly the major findings and accomplishments of the scholarship on the commons, the paper pursues two strategies of critique. The first strategy of friendly critique accepts the basic assumptions of most writings on common property to show that scholars of commons have discovered far more variables that potentially affect resource management than is possible to analyze carefully. The paper identifies some potential means to address the problem of too many variables. The second line of critique proceeds differently. It asks how analyses of common property might change, and what they need to consider, if they loosen assumptions about sovereign selves and apolitical property rights institutions. My examination of these questions concludes this review with an emphasis on the need to (a) attend more carefully to processes of subject formation, and (b) investigate common property arrangements and associated ...
612 citations
TL;DR: The study of complex adaptive systems, a subset of nonlinear dynamical systems, has recently become a major focus of interdisciplinary research in the social and natural sciences, suggesting that emergence—the idea that complex global patterns with new properties can emerge from local interactions—could have a comparable impact.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract The study of complex adaptive systems, a subset of nonlinear dynamical systems, has recently become a major focus of interdisciplinary research in the social and natural sciences. Nonlinear systems are ubiquitous; as mathematician Stanislaw Ulam observed, to speak of “nonlinear science” is like calling zoology the study of “nonelephant animals” (quoted in Campbell et al. 1985, p. 374). The initial phase of research on nonlinear systems focused on deterministic chaos, but more recent studies have investigated the properties of self-organizing systems or anti-chaos. For mathematicians and physicists, the biggest surprise is that complexity lurks within extremely simple systems. For biologists, it is the idea that natural selection is not the sole source of order in the biological world. In the social sciences, it is suggested that emergence—the idea that complex global patterns with new properties can emerge from local interactions—could have a comparable impact.
597 citations
TL;DR: The scope for an anthropology of mining has been dramatically transformed since the review by Ricardo Godoy, published in this review journal in 1985 as mentioned in this paper, which questions the often-monolithic characterizations of state, corporate and community forms of agency and charts the debate among anthropologists involved in mining, variously as consultants, researchers, and advocates.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract The scope for an anthropology of mining has been dramatically transformed since the review by Ricardo Godoy, published in this review journal in 1985. The minerals boom of the 1980s led to an aggressive expansion of mine development in greenfield areas, many of them the domains of indigenous communities. Under considerable pressure, the conventional binary contest between states and corporations over the benefits and impacts of mining has been widened to incorporate the representations of local communities, and broad but unstable mining communities now coalesce around individual projects. Focused primarily on projects in developing nations of the Asia-Pacific region, this review questions the often-monolithic characterizations of state, corporate, and community forms of agency and charts the debate among anthropologists involved in mining, variously as consultants, researchers, and advocates, about appropriate terms for their engagement.
514 citations
TL;DR: Data from the five long-term sites with neighboring groups show that intergroup aggression is a pervasive feature of chimpanzee societies, including sites where artificial feeding never took place.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract In the 1970s, researchers provided the first detailed descriptions of intergroup conflict in chimpanzees. These observations stimulated numerous comparisons between chimpanzee violence and human warfare. Such comparisons have attracted three main objections: (a) The data supporting such comparisons are too few, (b) intergroup aggression is the result of artificial feeding by observers, and (c) chimpanzee data are irrelevant to understanding human warfare. Recent studies provide strong evidence against these criticisms. Data from the five long-term sites with neighboring groups show that intergroup aggression is a pervasive feature of chimpanzee societies, including sites where artificial feeding never took place. Recent studies have clarified questions about the functional goals and proximate mechanisms underlying intergroup aggression. Male chimpanzees compete with males in other groups over territory, food, and females, base their decisions to attack strangers on assessments of numerical stre...
354 citations
TL;DR: Anthropological approaches broaden and deepen our understanding of the finding that high levels of socioeconomic inequality correlate with worsened health outcomes across an entire society as mentioned in this paper, and anthropologists argue that this finding should be understood within a theoretical framework that avoids the pitfalls of methodological individualism, assumed universalism, and unidirectional causation.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Anthropological approaches broaden and deepen our understanding of the finding that high levels of socioeconomic inequality correlate with worsened health outcomes across an entire society. Social scientists have debated whether such societies are unhealthy because of diminished social cohesion, psychobiological pathways, or the material environment. Anthropologists have questioned these mechanisms, emphasizing that fine-grained ethnographic studies reveal that social cohesion is locally and historically produced; psychobiological pathways involve complex, longitudinal biosocial dynamics suggesting causation cannot be viewed in purely biological terms; and material factors in health care need to be firmly situated within a broad geopolitical analysis. As a result, anthropological scholarship argues that this finding should be understood within a theoretical framework that avoids the pitfalls of methodological individualism, assumed universalism, and unidirectional causation. Rather, affliction ...
238 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the convergence of recent anthropological interests in gender, labor, and globalization, and explores the diverse meanings and practices that produce a gendered global labor force, incorporating the perspectives of men and women, masculinities and femininities.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract This review examines the convergence of recent anthropological interests in gender, labor, and globalization. Attention to gender and gender inequality offers a productive strategy for the analysis of globalizing processes and their local variations and contestations. Contemporary ethnographic research explores multiple dimensions of labor and gender inequalities in the global economy: gendered patterns of labor recruitment and discipline, the transnational mobility and commodification of reproductive labor, and the gendered effects of international structural adjustment programs, among others. New and continuing research explores the diverse meanings and practices that produce a gendered global labor force, incorporating the perspectives of men and women, masculinities and femininities, and examines how these processes of gender and labor inequality articulate with other structures of subordination (such as ethnicity and nationality) to shape lived experiences of work and livelihood, exploitat...
219 citations
TL;DR: This article examined urban poverty and welfare-state restructuring in relation to the ascent of neoliberalism, including the rise of market-oriented assumptions about social value, productivity, and investment that dominate civic life and public policy.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Anthropological research on welfare restructuring differs from most poverty research conducted by US policy analysts and many other social scientists by its situating the study of welfare “reform” within an examination of the production of poverty and inequality at the center of the global system of advanced capitalism In this review we examine urban poverty and welfare-state restructuring in relation to the ascent of neoliberalism, including the rise of market-oriented assumptions about social value, productivity, and investment that dominate civic life and public policy We focus primarily, though not exclusively, on the United States After a brief review of four theoretical frameworks that inform ethnographic research on welfare, we explore five approaches or themes in anthropological studies of welfare restructuring in the United States: (a) the ethnographic challenge to claims of policy success by documenting an unfolding crisis in social reproduction for the poor; (b) deconstructing t
198 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a review traces some of these developments and outlines how frameworks of analysis have become more integrated and multidimensional, as ethnographic strategies have come into vogue again.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract What causes urban street gang violence, and how can we better understand the forces that shape this type of adolescent and youth behavior? For close to a century, social researchers have taken many different paths in attempting to unravel this complex question, especially in the context of large-scale immigrant adaptation to the city. In recent decades these researchers have relied primarily on data gathered from survey quantitative approaches. This review traces some of these developments and outlines how frameworks of analysis have become more integrated and multidimensional, as ethnographic strategies have come into vogue again. For the last couple of decades, either a subculture of violence (i.e., the values and norms of the street gang embrace aggressive, violent behavior) or a routine activities (i.e., hanging around high crime areas with highly delinquent people) explanation dominated the discussion. To broaden and deepen the picture, many other factors need to be considered, such as eco...
160 citations
TL;DR: Of particular importance are revelations that bony morphology is largely determined by pattern formation, that growth foci such as physes and synovial joints appear to be regulated principally by positional information, and that variation in these fields is most likely determined by cis-regulatory elements acting on restricted numbers of anabolic genes downstream of selectors.
Abstract: ■ Abstract Our understanding of developmental biology burgeoned during the last decade. This review summarizes recent advances, provides definitions and explanations of some basic principles, and does so in a way that will aid anthropologists in understanding their profound implications. Crucial concepts, such as developmental fields, selector and realizator genes, cell signaling mechanisms, and gene regulatory elements are briefly described and then integrated with the emergence of skeletal morphology. For the postcranium, a summary of events from limb bud formation, the appearance of anlagen, the expression of Hox genes, and the fundamentals of growth plate dynamics are briefly summarized. Of particular importance are revelations that bony morphology is largely determined by pattern formation, that growth foci such as physes and synovial joints appear to be regulated principally by positional information, and that variation in these fields is most likely determined by cis-regulatory elements acting on restricted numbers of anabolic genes downstream of selectors (such as Hox). The implications of these discoveries for the interpretation of both contemporary and ancient human skeletal morphology are profound. One of the most salient is that strain transduction now appears to play a much reduced role in shaping the human skeleton. Indeed, the entirety of “Wolff’s Law” must now be reassessed in light of new knowledge about pattern formation. The review concludes with a brief discussion of some implications of these findings, including their impact on cladistics and homology, as well as on biomechanical and morphometric analyses of both ancient and modern human skeletal material.
142 citations
TL;DR: In this article, cultural selection is shown to shape linguistic structure through invisible hand processes that pattern the unintended outcomes (structures in the system of shared linguistic norms) of intentional actions (particular utterances by individual agents).
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Using Australian languages as examples, cultural selection is shown to shape linguistic structure through invisible hand processes that pattern the unintended outcomes (structures in the system of shared linguistic norms) of intentional actions (particular utterances by individual agents). Examples of the emergence of culturally patterned structure through use are drawn from various levels: the semantics of the lexicon, grammaticalized kin-related categories, and culture-specific organizations of sociolinguistic diversity, such as moiety lects, “mother-in-law” registers, and triangular kin terms. These phenomena result from a complex of diachronic processes that adapt linguistic structures to culture-specific concepts and practices, such as ritualization and phonetic reduction of frequently used sequences, the input of shared cultural knowledge into pragmatic interpretation, semanticization of originally context-dependent inferences, and the input of linguistic ideologies into the systematizati...
TL;DR: The authors used non-recombining genetic marker systems to trace the ancestry of modern Europeans back to the first appearance of agriculture in the continent; however, the question has remained controversial and archaeological research has failed to uncover substantial evidence for the population growth that is supposed to have driven this process.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Who are Europeans? Both prehistoric archaeology and, subsequently, classical population genetics have attempted to trace the ancestry of modern Europeans back to the first appearance of agriculture in the continent; however, the question has remained controversial. Classical population geneticists attributed the major pattern in the European gene pool to the demographic impact of Neolithic farmers dispersing from the Near East, but archaeological research has failed to uncover substantial evidence for the population growth that is supposed to have driven this process. Recently, molecular approaches, using non-recombining genetic marker systems, have introduced a chronological dimension by both allowing the tracing of lineages back through time and dating using the molecular clock. Both mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome analyses have indicated a contribution of Neolithic Near Eastern lineages to the gene pool of modern Europeans of around a quarter or less. This suggests that dispersals bringin...
TL;DR: This paper focused on the primary dimensions of the archaeological record used to describe and explain variation in Mississippian complexity, including the organization of labor, mortuary ritual and ideology, and tribute and feasting.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract During the Mississippian period (a.d. 1000–1500) the southeastern United States witnessed a broadscale fluorescence of polities characterized by impressive earthwork construction, rich mortuary offerings, and intensified agriculture. Research on the nature of complexity in these so-called chiefdoms has been an enduring issue in North American archaeology, even as this research has undergone several paradigmatic shifts. This study focuses on the primary dimensions of the archaeological record used to describe and explain variation in Mississippian complexity—polity scale, settlement and landscape, the organization of labor, mortuary ritual and ideology, and tribute and feasting. Changing perspectives toward the organization of complexity and power have become increasingly pronounced in each of these categories.
TL;DR: A review of the anthropological literature on violence directed toward children reveals a litany of violence to which children may be subjected that includes child abuse and neglect, bullying, violent cultural rites, warfare, and structural violence stemming from poverty and inequality.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Anthropological literature on children and violence has been constrained by similar considerations that have limited an anthropology of childhood more generally, and by difficulties in conceptualizing children both as victims of violence and as violent themselves. A review of the anthropological literature on violence directed toward children reveals a litany of violence to which children may be subjected that includes child abuse and neglect, bullying, violent cultural rites, warfare, and structural violence stemming from poverty and inequality. Aggression in childhood has been the subject of a robust and long-standing literature that has examined socialization for or against aggressive behavior in children. An emerging literature considers children's own violent behavior from the perspective of child agency. Children's own voices and perspectives have been largely absent from the anthropological literature on childhood and violence. This review highlights several issues at the intersection of...
TL;DR: The authors identifies and reviews key trends and theoretical orientations that have shaped the field of educational ethnography from the period of its inception to the closing decade of the twentieth century, and demonstrates how the growth of the field reflects a growing focus on prescriptive, applied, and reformist research within urban contexts.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract In broad brush strokes, this essay identifies and reviews key trends and theoretical orientations that have shaped the field of educational ethnography from the period of its inception to the closing decade of the twentieth century. It demonstrates how the growth of educational ethnography as a subfield within anthropology reflects a growing focus on prescriptive, applied, and reformist research within urban contexts. It maps the transition from modernist formulations of the field in its formative days, when ethnographies laid claim to being sealed and scientific texts, to the more recent formulations shaped by postmodern and poststructural ideas that undermine earlier meanings of culture and call attention to the explanatory limits of ethnography. This review draws on examples from North America and Britain and makes no claim to being exhaustive of the vast and growing field. Although it delineates what distinguishes successive decades of educational ethnography, the essay argues for understan...
TL;DR: The role of cities in the global system has changed considerably as a result of the time-space compression made possible by new transportation, communication, and organizational technologies as mentioned in this paper, and the implications of the construction and maintenance of relationships across borders for process.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Much of the literature about globalization exaggerates the degree of novelty. In this review, we concentrate on claims about what has changed about cities under late capitalism and globalization. Although we suggest that cities have long been influenced by global forces, we conclude that the roles of cities in the global system have changed considerably as a result of the time-space compression made possible by new transportation, communication, and organizational technologies. After discussing what the global perspective means within anthropology, and how it affects urban anthropological research, our review concentrates on three complex issues. First is whether the global factory and increasing knowledge-intensivity have decreased or increased the utility of the intermediary or brokerage roles that cities play. Second, we examine changes in how people live in globalizing cities. Third, we consider the implications of the construction and maintenance of relationships across borders for process...
TL;DR: A general overview of hunter-gatherer archaeology in South America is given by recognizing the main problems in a South American context as mentioned in this paper, and the environmental framework and Paleoecological changes are summarized.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract A general overview of hunter-gatherer archaeology in South America is given by recognizing the main problems in a South American context. Environmental framework and Paleoecological changes are summarized. Pleistocene and Holocene archaeology is reviewed in terms of these particularities. With respect to the Pleistocene, I review Pre-Clovis human presence in South America, technological differences between North and South America, variability in South American subsistence strategy, colonization and demographic models, and migratory routes. The Holocene archaeology is divided into Early and Late. For the former, I consider establishment of adaptive strategies (as marine adaptations), new artifact designs, and mortuary behaviors. For the latter, I consider exchange networks, emergence of complex hunter gatherers, mortuary behavior, origins of food production, and the contact with European populations.
TL;DR: In this article, the impact of pollution on human biology (mortality, morbidity, reproduction, and development) can be seen, and disproportionate pollutant exposure by socioeconomically disadvantaged groups exacerbates risk of poor health and well being.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract The biocultural approach of anthropologists is well suited to understand the interrelationship of urbanism and human biology. Urbanism is a social construction that has continuously changed and presented novel adaptive challenges to its residents. Urban living today involves several biological challenges, of which one is pollution. Using three different types of pollutants as examples, air pollution, lead, and noise, the impact of pollution on human biology (mortality, morbidity, reproduction, and development) can be seen. Chronic exposure to low levels of these pollutants has a small impact on the individual, but so many people are exposed to pollution that the effect species-wide is substantial. Also, disproportionate pollutant exposure by socioeconomically disadvantaged groups exacerbates risk of poor health and well being.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare the ways anthropologists and archaeologists engage in discussions about the past with both the American public and local communities, and find that the two subfields are quite different in the two fields.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract History is of critical importance for anthropology because, in human affairs, the present is intimately linked to the past. Archaeology is important to the study of history because the material remains of the past supplement and interrogate historical documents. Collaboration between cultural anthropologists and archaeologists will produce a broader knowledge of past worlds and how those worlds have been constructed in historical texts, both past and present. Cultural anthropologists and archaeologists should also compare the ways in which they engage in discussions about the past with both the American public and local communities—discussions that are quite different in the two subfields.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors trace the development of their intellectual and theoretical interests, especially as they relate to culture, and how culture's being learned by individuals and yet apparently shared by members of a community.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract In this brief, autobiographical account, I trace the development of my intellectual and theoretical interests, especially as they relate to culture. How can we account for culture's being learned by individuals and yet apparently shared by members of a community? How do cultures as shared within communities change and evolve? How does what we know about languages, themselves a kind of cultural tradition, contribute to understanding culture and cultural evolution? Are processes of cultural and linguistic evolution analogous to those in the evolution of biological species and, if so, in what ways? How, also, do genetically based behavioral proclivities manifest themselves in social arenas that are structured by language and culture?