Showing papers in "Annual Review of Anthropology in 2004"
TL;DR: It is argued that socioeconomic status (SES) is the nearest human approximation to social rank and that SES dramatically influences health, as well as the varieties of hierarchical systems in animals.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Dominance hierarchies exist in numerous social species, and rank in such hierarchies can dramatically influence the quality of an individual's life. Rank can dramatically influence also the health of an individual, particularly with respect to stress-related disease. This chapter reviews first the nature of stress, the stress-response and stress-related disease, as well as the varieties of hierarchical systems in animals. I then review the literature derived from nonhuman species concerning the connections between rank and functioning of the adrenocortical, cardiovascular, reproductive, and immune systems. As shown here, the relationship is anything but monolithic. Finally, I consider whether rank is a relevant concept in humans and argue that socioeconomic status (SES) is the nearest human approximation to social rank and that SES dramatically influences health.
657 citations
TL;DR: The authors argues that approaches to Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity (P/c) globalization need to recognize that P/c posesses cultural features that allow it, in most cases, to work in both ways at once.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity (P/c), the form of Christianity in which believers receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, is rapidly spreading and can be counted as one of the great success stories of the current era of cultural globalization. Literature on P/c presents a paradoxical picture of the cultural dynamics accompanying its spread. Many scholars argue that P/c is markedly successful in replicating itself in canonical form everywhere it spreads, whereas others stress its ability to adapt itself to the cultures into which it is introduced. Authors thus use P/c to support both theories that construe globalization as a process of Westernizing homogenization and those that understand it as a process of indigenizing differentiation. This review argues that approaches to P/c globalization need to recognize that P/c posesses cultural features that allow it, in most cases, to work in both ways at once. After considering definitional and historical issues and explanations for P/c's spread, t...
646 citations
TL;DR: This paper reviewed the role of Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches (PCCs) in post-colonization African societies, focusing on African Independent Churches (AICs).
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Taking as a point of departure Fernandez's survey (1978), this review seeks to show how research on African Independent Churches (AICs) has been reconfigured by new approaches to the anthropology of Christianity in Africa, in general, and the recent salient popularity of Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches (PCCs) in particular. If the adjectives “African” and “Independent” were once employed as markers of authentic, indigenous interpretations of Christianity, these terms proved to be increasingly problematic to capture the rise, spread, and phenomenal appeal of PCCs in Africa. Identifying three discursive frames—Christianity and “traditional religion,” Africa and “the wider world,” religion and politics—which organize(d) research on AICs and PCCs in the course of the past 25 years, this chapter critically reviews discussions about “Africanization,” globalization and modernity, and the role of religion in the public sphere in postcolonial African societies.
425 citations
TL;DR: Enhancement of thermal sweating was a key innovation in human evolution that allowed maintenance of homeostasis (including constant brain temperature) during sustained physical activity in hot environments.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Humans skin is the most visible aspect of the human phenotype. It is distinguished mainly by its naked appearance, greatly enhanced abilities to dissipate body heat through sweating, and the great range of genetically determined skin colors present within a single species. Many aspects of the evolution of human skin and skin color can be reconstructed using comparative anatomy, physiology, and genomics. Enhancement of thermal sweating was a key innovation in human evolution that allowed maintenance of homeostasis (including constant brain temperature) during sustained physical activity in hot environments. Dark skin evolved pari passu with the loss of body hair and was the original state for the genus Homo. Melanin pigmentation is adaptive and has been maintained by natural selection. Because of its evolutionary lability, skin color phenotype is useless as a unique marker of genetic identity. In recent prehistory, humans became adept at protecting themselves from the environment through clothin...
307 citations
TL;DR: A review of the literature on media and globalization can be found in this article, where the authors suggest that the failure to move beyond this impasse has perpetuated a surprising and debilitating reliance on substantialist and essentialist models of culture, models that are both at odds with the critical thrust of globalization studies and fully complicit with the agendas of public and commercial bureaucracies.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract This chapter reviews the literature on media and globalization. It develops the argument that this literature foregrounds a problem that, ironically, it also largely disavows: namely, the question of mediation as a general foundation of social life. I explore the origins of this contradiction in the emergence of globalization studies out of earlier traditions in media and cultural studies. I suggest that the failure to move beyond this impasse has perpetuated a surprising and debilitating reliance on substantialist and essentialist models of culture, models that are both at odds with the critical thrust of globalization studies and fully complicit with the agendas of public and commercial bureaucracies. The review tracks the recurrence of such thinking in several key strands of globalization studies and proceeds to outline an alternative ethnographic and theoretical strategy on the basis of a general theory of media and mediation.
250 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an anthropological and ethnomusicological account of global social and cultural processes is presented, with reference to a review of the last decade of music industry inspired global myth making.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Often music is used as a metaphor of global social and cultural processes; it also constitutes an enduring process by and through which people interact within and across cultures. The review explores these processes with reference to an anthropological and ethnomusicological account of globalization that has gathered pace over the last decade. It outlines some of the main ethnographic and historical modes of engagement with persistent neoliberal and other music industry–inspired global myth making (particularly that associated with world music), and argues for an approach to musical globalization that contextualizes those genres, styles, and practices that circulate across cultural borders in specific institutional sites and histories.
250 citations
TL;DR: Clothing research has attracted renewed interest in anthropology over the past two decades, experiencing a florescence that had been kept within bounds by reigning theoretical paradigms as mentioned in this paper, with a preoccupation with agency, practice and performance that considers the dressed body as both subject in, and object of, dress practice.
Abstract: Clothing research has attracted renewed interest in anthropology over the past two decades, experiencing a florescence that had been kept within bounds by reigning theoretical paradigms. The works have been influenced by general explanatory shifts in anthropology, which inform disparate bodies of clothing research that otherwise have little unity. The most noticeable trend is a preoccupation with agency, practice, and performance that considers the dressed body as both subject in, and object of, dress practice. The turn to consumption as a site and process of meaning making is evident also in clothing research. Dress has been analyzed, by and large, as representing something else rather than something in its own right, although new efforts to reengage materiality suggest that this approach is changing. Little work has been done on clothing production issues, though some scholars examine the significance of dress in the context of the entire economic circuit and the unequal relationships between its actors.
232 citations
TL;DR: A survey of early cities in the regional traditions of Southwest Asia, Egypt, South Asia, China, Mesoamerica, Andean South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Greece, and Rome can be found in this article.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract I survey recent literature about early cities in the regional traditions of Southwest Asia, Egypt, South Asia, China, Mesoamerica, Andean South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Greece, and Rome. Major themes include the importance of theorizing individuals and their practices, interests, and emotions; the extent to which the first cities were deliberately created rather than merely emerging as by-products of increasing sociopolitical complexity; internal structure of cities and the interplay of top-down planning and bottom-up self-organization; social, economic, and political relations between cities and their hinterlands; interactions of cities with their physical environments; and the difficult “city-state” concept. Some axes or dimensions for describing settlements are proposed as better than typological concepts.
230 citations
TL;DR: The role of language in children's peer culture is discussed in this article, where the authors conclude that sociolinguistics gives researchers a way to think about social competence as sets of linguistic practices (e.g., positionings, voicings, participation framework man...).
Abstract: ▪ Abstract According to recent interpretive approaches to the study of children's socialization, meaning creation is an active process by which children playfully transform and actively resist cultural categories, and where language is viewed as social action that helps shape reality (Gaskins et al. 1992). Four ways in which children's peer talk establishes and maintains peer culture are considered: (a) how children elaborate games and codes (and ritualize the basis of inclusion in the peer group) through peer talk, (b) how conflict talk functions to elaborate peer culture, (c) how identities as peer group phenomena are talked into being through peer talk, and (d) how adult culture is resisted through peer talk. Agentive goals of children's peer culture, and the role of language in achieving them, are discussed in each section. I conclude that sociolinguistics gives researchers a way to think about social competence as sets of linguistic practices (e.g., positionings, voicings, participation framework man...
222 citations
TL;DR: A review of methods and theories for the archaeological study of ancient state economies, from the earliest states through the Classical period and beyond, can be found in this article, where the authors suggest that the concept of the level of commercialization provides an avenue for transcending this debate.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract This review addresses methods and theories for the archaeological study of ancient state economies, from the earliest states through the Classical period and beyond. Research on this topic within anthropological archaeology has been held back by reliance on simple concepts and an impoverished notion of the extent of variation in ancient state economies. First I review a long-standing debate between scholars who see similarities with modern capitalist economies (modernists and formalists) and those who see ancient economies as radically different from their modern counterparts (primitivists and substantivists). I suggest that the concept of the level of commercialization provides an avenue for transcending this debate and moving research in more productive directions. Next I review work on the traditional archaeological topics of production and exchange. A discussion of the scale of the economy (households, temple and palace institutions, state finance, cities and regional systems, and internati...
198 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors review multiple recent lines of evidence that suggest hominin dispersals from Africa in the earliest Pleistocene, if not the latest Pliocene, correlated with the appearance of hominins typically referred to as Homo erectus (sensu lato) who carried with them an Oldowan tool technology.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract The worldwide distribution of our species, Homo sapiens, has its roots in the early Pleistocene epoch. However, evidence has been sufficient only in the past decade to overcome the conventional wisdom that hominins had been restricted to Africa until about 800,000 years ago. Indeed, the idea that hominin dispersal was technologically mediated, and thus must correlate with changes in stone tool technology seen at the Olduwan/Acheulean transition, has proven to be a persuasive hypothesis despite persistent claims for an early Pleistocene hominin presence outside Africa. We review multiple recent lines of evidence that suggest hominin dispersals from Africa in the earliest Pleistocene, if not the latest Pliocene, correlated with the appearance of hominins typically referred to as Homo erectus (sensu lato) who carried with them an Oldowan tool technology. Changes in body plan and foraging strategy are likely to ultimately underlie these dispersals.
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TL;DR: A review of recent literature in anthropology and related disciplines pertaining to the cultural construction of the inscribed body can be found in this paper, with a focus on the body as a marker of identity in terms of gender, age, and political status.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Inscriptions on the body, especially tattoo, scarification, and body paint, have been part of ethnographic literature since before the birth of anthropology as a discipline. Anthropology's origins as the study of the exotic Other can be seen in the early descriptions of the body art of non-Western peoples. Anthropologists have generally focused on how the inscribed body serves as a marker of identity in terms of gender, age, and political status. More recently, scholars interested in this subject have looked also at issues of modernity, authenticity, and representation. The recent focus on the inscribed body responds to postmodern theory, the importance of body art in contemporary Western culture, reflections on the meaning of representations of the exotic, and an interest in the visible surface of the body as the interface between the individual and society. This article reviews recent literature in anthropology and related disciplines pertaining to the cultural construction of the inscribed body.
TL;DR: A review article as mentioned in this paper provides an overview of these dominant theoretical approaches in the context of recent scholarship on body ideals and, in particular, the body beautiful as a primary site for the construction and performance of gender, and specifically of femininity.
Abstract: The prominence of the body in popular culture has prompted intense academic interest in recent decades. Seeking to overturn a naturalistic approach to the body as a biological given, this broad literature redefines the body as a sociocultural and historical phenomenon. Within anthropology, two primary theoretical orientations toward the body have emerged: the body as “symbol” and the body as “agent.” This review article provides an overview of these dominant theoretical approaches in the context of recent scholarship on body ideals and, in particular, the body beautiful. The review explores also the body beautiful as a primary site for the construction and performance of gender, and specifically of femininity, with examples drawn from the abundant literature on women's bodies.
TL;DR: The body emerges as a changing relationship that, at the same time, unfolds as an ethical horizon and challenge for the (un)making of self, identity, and belonging.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract During the past twenty years the human body evolved from a rather marginal social fact into a notion of central concern to current social and cultural anthropology. But recent studies question the idea of the body as a given physical entity. They focus on the experience or threat of finiteness, limitation, and vulnerability and also raise doubts regarding the individuality of the self: Instead they emphasize its fragmentary character and focus on the embodied uncertainties (such as hybridity or irony) of human existence. In three main sections (respectively, on the social body, embodiment, and subjectivity) this review eclectically explores an anthropological debate that also betrays a more generalized and rising concern in Western society with bodiliness and bodily appearance. From the discussion, the body emerges as a changing relationship that, at the same time, unfolds as an ethical horizon—and challenge—for the (un)making of self, identity, and belonging.
TL;DR: The first migration of ancestral Amerindian originated in south-central Siberia and entered the New World between 20,000-14,000 calendar years before present (cal yr BP) as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract A number of important insights into the peopling of the New World have been gained through molecular genetic studies of Siberian and Native American populations. These data indicate that the initial migration of ancestral Amerindian originated in south-central Siberia and entered the New World between 20,000–14,000 calendar years before present (cal yr BP). These early immigrants probably followed a coastal route into the New World, where they expanded into all continental regions. A second migration that may have come from the same Siberian region entered the Americas somewhat later, possibly using an interior route, and genetically contributed to indigenous populations from North and Central America. In addition, Beringian populations moved into northern North America after the last glacial maximum (LGM) and gave rise to Aleuts, Eskimos, and Na-Dene Indians.
TL;DR: In this paper, a review of the use of electronic mediation for revitalizing the practice of lesser-used languages is presented, emphasizing how practices of electronic mediated enabled by such technologies both shape and are informed by linguistic ideologies, which in turn influence the possible revived use or abandonment of linguistic varieties.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Recently, language activists and linguists have begun using new technologies in projects aimed at revitalizing the practice of lesser-used languages. This review explores related work, emphasizing how practices of electronic mediation enabled by such technologies both shape and are informed by linguistic ideologies, which in turn crucially influence the possible revived use or abandonment of linguistic varieties. New technologies are treated as part of cultures of electronic mediation, connecting sociocultural valuations to mediated discourse. Their use often has important political implications, given that projects of language revitalization are often linked to claims of ethnolinguistic recognition. Finally, because documentation of lesser-used languages using digital technologies also results in the production of new cultural objects to be stored, displayed, and circulated, attention is also focused on the forms of sociality sustained by the creation and exchange of such electronic artifacts.
TL;DR: A review of the literature on language endangerment and death can be found in this paper, where a longer history of population movements and contacts has been invoked to give a broader perspective on the mechanisms of language birth and death and on the ecological factors that bear on how they proceed.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Since the late 1980s, language endangerment and death have been discussed as if the phenomena had no connection at all with language birth. More recently the phenomena have been associated almost exclusively with the intense and pervasive economic globalization of same period, a process that some authors have reduced too easily to the McDonaldization phenomenon. Moreover, the relation of globalization to different forms of colonization has been poorly articulated. As a matter of fact, little of the longer history of population movements and contacts since the dawn of agriculture has been invoked in the literature on language endangerment to give some broader perspective on the mechanisms of language birth and death and on the ecological factors that bear on how they proceed. This review aims to remedy these shortcomings in our scholarship.
TL;DR: This paper reviewed the anthropology of male and female circumcision over the past century and discussed the moral, political, and scientific obligations of anthropology to a cultural practice that is increasingly vilified in Western popular culture and jurisprudence.
Abstract: This chapter reviews the anthropology of male and female circumcision over the past century. After surveying classic sociocultural and psychodynamic interpretations of male circumcision, I shift to the biblical and Jewish rite, focusing on gender symbolism and counter-hegemonic practice within European-Christian society. The chapter then reviews the relationship between male circumcision in sub-Saharan Africa and reduced rates of HIV. Next, I address female circumcision, focusing again on symbolism but especially on highly impassioned debates over cultural relativism and human rights, medical complications, criticism and imperialism, and female agency versus brute patriarchy. What are the moral, political, and scientific obligations of anthropology to a cultural practice that is increasingly vilified in Western popular culture and jurisprudence? Should anthropology advocate eradication, contextualize Western opposition, or critique one's own bodily practices? Finally, I critically analyze the growing move...
TL;DR: The authors reviewed anthropological approaches to cannibalism and suggested that we may now be in a position to exorcise the stigma associated with the notion of the primitive, and to contribute to dislodging the savage/civilized opposition that was once essential to the formation of the modern Western self and Western forms of knowledge.
Abstract: The discourse of cannibalism, which began in the encounter between Europe and the Americas, became a defining feature of the colonial experience in the New World, especially in the Pacific. The idea of exoticism, like that of the primitive, is also a Western construct linked to the exploring/conquering/cataloguing impulse of colonialism. We now live in a world where those we once called exotic live among us, defining their own identities, precluding our ability to define ourselves in opposition to “others” and to represent our own culture as universal. This chapter reviews anthropological approaches to cannibalism and suggests that we may now be in a position to exorcise the stigma associated with the notion of the primitive. If we reflect on the reality of cannibal practices among ourselves as well as others, we can contribute to dislodging the savage/civilized opposition that was once essential to the formation of the modern Western self and Western forms of knowledge.
TL;DR: In this article, the earliest states in Mesoamerica and how they developed were examined and the archaeological data bearing on early state formation in Oaxaca, the Southern Gulf Coast, the Southeastern Lowlands, and the Basin of Mexico.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract In this review, we examine the earliest states in Mesoamerica and how they developed. We present a definition of the state and explain why first-generation or primary states have special significance in anthropology and archaeology; we also discuss how anthropological archaeologists can detect the emergence of state organization in the archaeological record. We review the archaeological data bearing on early state formation in Oaxaca, the Southern Gulf Coast, the Southeastern Lowlands, and the Basin of Mexico. Although we acknowledge that more data are needed from all regions, we conclude that Oaxaca currently provides the most compelling evidence of primary state formation in Mesoamerica.
TL;DR: In this article, a review explores recent research that moves away from conventional preoccupations with origins and independent innovation in African Iron Age archaeology and highlights the dynamism of political economic arrangements over the last two millennia and reminds us that configurations enshrined in twentieth-century ethnography represent but a moment in the dynamic history of African societies.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract This review explores recent research that moves away from conventional preoccupations with origins and independent innovation in African Iron Age archaeology. Critiques of cultural evolutionary formulations and empirically robust case studies combine to shape new concerns with the following: the variable expressions of complexity in time and space; the mosaic quality of social, political economic, and technological landscapes; and the effects of global entanglements over the last millennium. Ongoing research in western and eastern Africa highlights the dynamism of political economic arrangements over the last two millennia and reminds us that configurations enshrined in twentieth-century ethnography represent but a moment in the dynamic history of African societies.
TL;DR: In this article, the Wellcome Trust Gallery at the British Museum is described as a "museological paradox" where particular objects can point sometimes to very particular values and sometimes to general ones.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract The joint themes of this volume of the Annual Review of Anthropology, the body as a public surface and new technologies of communication, are also woven into the design of the new Wellcome Trust Gallery at the British Museum, inspiring the reflections of this chapter. In the museum setting, moreover, an interesting question of scale arises: how particular objects can point sometimes to very particular values and sometimes to very general ones. This museological paradox is explored here. Taking a cue from the Gallery's focus on well-being, we find a parallel in the contrast between particular medicines used for specific complaints and a more general demand made on medicine as a set of organized practices for promoting health. We also find ideas about the whole person. Attending to the whole person requires its own technology, its own artifacts. And looking at artifacts from different times and places compels us to ask, What kind of “whole” is being imagined? The question is posed with materials ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose two paths to access ancient meaning and sound from graphic notations: detection or reasoned reconstruction of "situation", how graphic notation were used in the past and in what social and cultural setting, and the process of extraction, the hermeneutic scholarship that decodes such messages and establishes the relative plausibility of an interpretation.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Accessing ancient meaning and sound from graphic notations is an immense challenge to archaeologists, whether with respect to marked objects, petrographs, or phonic writing. Two paths clear the way: the detection or reasoned reconstruction of “situation,” how graphic notations were used in the past and in what social and cultural setting, and the process of “extraction,” the hermeneutic scholarship that decodes such messages and establishes the relative plausibility of an interpretation. Situation is easier to study and extraction more likely to occur in cases of phonic writing, where varieties or types, physical inspection, decipherment, origins, and extinction permit multiple inroads into past sound and meaning.
TL;DR: In this paper, the relationship between new communications technologies and language emphasizes linguistic and social differences between online and off-line interactions and the impact of global English on the non-English-speaking world, concluding that computer-mediated communication reproduces the social, political, and economic relations that exist in the real world.
Abstract: ▪ Abstract Research to date on the relationship between new communications technologies and language emphasizes linguistic and social differences between online and off-line interactions and the impact of global English on the non-English-speaking world. These studies conclude, for the most part, that computer-mediated communication reproduces the social, political, and economic relations that exist in the real world. Related areas of research, including ethnographies of global hip hop and studies of urban hybrid language varieties, offer important models for using anthropological approaches to advance our understanding of the interconnections and situated-ness, of language, new technologies, global media, and social change.
TL;DR: In this paper, the area/anthropology intersection is examined for Africa (where race is basic to disputes), Latin America (where the place of culture and race in political economic arguments is central), and Europe (where culture and nation are at issue).
Abstract: ▪ Abstract After 1989, the interpretation of a complex set of disputes and exigencies settled into a conventional narrative of paradigm shift, in which the intellectual past became essentialized as “traditional area studies” and “classic anthropology.” This approach obscures the processes of engagement (including dispute) by which disciplinary change occurred. The Area Studies1 engagement with interdisciplinary colleagues and voices from the “area” has been critically important over several decades. Necessarily, the intellectual terms for addressing other interlocutors about regional conditions and events have differed according to the experience of the area in changing universalist politics and analysis. The area/anthropology intersection is examined for Africa (where race is basic to disputes), Latin America (where the place of culture and race in political economic arguments is central), and Europe (where culture and nation are at issue). During the 1990s a collective approach to areas emerged. Anthrop...