Showing papers in "Annual Review of Anthropology in 2007"
TL;DR: Community forestry refers to forest management that has ecological sustainability and local community benefits as central goals, with some degree of responsibility and authority for forest management formally vested in the community as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Community forestry refers to forest management that has ecological sustainability and local community benefits as central goals, with some degree of responsibility and authority for forest management formally vested in the community. This review provides an overview of where the field of community forestry is today. We describe four case examples from the Americas: Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Bolivia. We also identify five hypotheses embedded in the concept of community forestry and examine the evidence supporting them. We conclude that community forestry holds promise as a viable approach to forest conservation and community development. Major gaps remain, however, between community forestry in theory and in practice. For example, devolution of forest management authority from states to communities has been partial and disappointing, and local control over forest management appears to have more ecological than socioeconomic benefits. We suggest ways that anthropologists can contribute to the f...
349 citations
TL;DR: The concept of ecological nobility in terms of identity, ecological knowledge, ideology, and the deployment of ecological noble savage as a political tool by native peoples and conservation groups is discussed in this paper.
Abstract: Debate around the ecologically noble savage represents two markedly different research threads. The first addresses the issue of conservation among native peoples and narrowly focuses on case studies of resource use of ethnographic, archaeological, or historic sources. The second thread is broader and more humanistic and political in orientation and considers the concept of ecological nobility in terms of identity, ecological knowledge, ideology, and the deployment of ecological nobility as a political tool by native peoples and conservation groups.
226 citations
TL;DR: In the past 25 years, archaeologists have increasingly started to address ritual in their research as mentioned in this paper, arguing that the experience of ritual and ritual symbolism promotes social orders and dominant ideologies, instead of the enactment of religious principles or myths.
Abstract: Archaeologists traditionally assumed that rituals were understood best in light of religious doctrines, beliefs, and myths. Given the material focus of archaeology, archaeologists believed that ritual was a particularly unsuitable area for archaeological inquiry. In the past 25 years, archaeologists have increasingly started to address ritual in their research. Some archaeologists with access to extensive historical or ethnohistorical sources continue to see rituals as the enactment of religious principles or myths. Other archaeologists have adopted a more practice-oriented understanding of ritual, arguing that ritual is a form of human action. In emphasizing ritual practice, archaeologists reject a clear dichotomy between religious and nonreligious action or artifacts, focusing instead on the ways that the experience of ritual and ritual symbolism promotes social orders and dominant ideologies.
190 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the relationship between race and the new genetics by considering whether this "race" is the same scientific object as that produced by race science and whether these race-making practices are animated by similar social and political logics.
Abstract: Critics have debated for the past decade or more whether race is dead or alive in “the new genetics”: Is genomics opening up novel terrains for social identities or is it reauthorizing race? I explore the relationship between race and the new genetics by considering whether this “race” is the same scientific object as that produced by race science and whether these race-making practices are animated by similar social and political logics. I consider the styles of reasoning characteristic of the scientific work together with the economic and political rationalities of neo-liberalism, including identity politics as it meets biological citizenship. I seek to understand why and how group-based diversity emerges as an object of value—something to be studied and specified, something to be fought for and embraced, and something that is profitable—in the networks that sustain the world of (post)genomics today.
189 citations
TL;DR: The praxis-oriented interdisciplinary field of feminist technology studies (FTS) has done most among the social sciences to build a vibrant and coherent school of gender and technology studies as mentioned in this paper. But given their shared commitment to exploring emergent forms of power in the contemporary world, there is surprisingly little dialogue between FTS and mainstream cultural anthropology.
Abstract: The praxis-oriented interdisciplinary field of feminist technology studies (FTS) has done most among the social sciences to build a vibrant and coherent school of gender and technology studies. Given their shared commitment to exploring emergent forms of power in the contemporary world, there is surprisingly little dialogue between FTS and mainstream cultural anthropology. This review begins by outlining FTS and its concepts and methods. I then turn to the anthropology of technology, which also offers useful conceptual frameworks and methods for exploring gender regimes. Then, to highlight the ideological and methodological contrasts between social and cultural analyses of technology and the implications for gender analysis, I discuss the treatment of technology in two leading theoretical fields in the cultural anthropology of modernity and globalization: the anthropology of technoscience, and material culture studies. I conclude by asking which forms of engagement might be envisaged between the fields.
151 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines anthropological research on sexuality published in English since 1993, focusing on work addressing lesbian women, gay men, and transgendered persons, as well as on the use of history, linguistics, and geography in such research.
Abstract: This review examines anthropological research on sexuality published in English since 1993, focusing on work addressing lesbian women, gay men, and transgendered persons, as well as on the use of history, linguistics, and geography in such research. Reviewing the emergence of regional literatures, it investigates how questions of globalization and the nation have moved to the forefront of anthropological research on questions of sexuality. The essay asks how questions of intersectionality, inclusion, and difference have shaped the emergence of a queer anthropology or critical anthropology of sexuality, with special reference to the relationship between sexuality and gender.
140 citations
TL;DR: Anthropologists' selections of topics and field sites have often been shaped by militarism, but they have been slow to make militarism especially American militarism an object of study as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Anthropologists’ selections of topics and field sites have often been shaped by militarism, but they have been slow to make militarism, especially American militarism, an object of study. In the high Cold War years concerns about human survival were refracted into debates about innate human proclivities for violence or peace. As “new wars” with high civilian casualty rates emerged in Africa, Central America, the former Eastern bloc, and South Asia, beginning in the 1980s anthropologists increasingly wrote about terror, torture, death squads, ethnic cleansing, guerilla movements, and the memory work inherent in making war and peace. Anthropologists have also begun to write about nuclear weapons and American militarism. The “war on terror” has disturbed settled norms that anthropologists should not assist counterinsurgency campaigns, and for the first time since Vietnam, anthropologists are debating the merits of military anthropology versus critical ethnography of the military.
134 citations
TL;DR: This article surveys the literature to explore a number of interrelated topics, including the changing economies of the rural West and the production and destruction of space across Western landscapes; institutional contexts of resource control on public lands; ideological clashes and political maneuvering among interest groups who claim access to those lands; and the struggle to move beyond polemics and dualities and mobilize, in the words of the Quivira Coalition, a “radical center committed to “foster ecological, economic, and social health on western landscapes.”
Abstract: The modern American West is one of the most contested landscapes in the world, yet anthropologists are just beginning to grapple with its dynamic political ecology. Since World War II, the West has been transformed from an overwhelmingly rural landscape dominated by extractive industries to an overwhelmingly urban landscape characterized by explosive urban, suburban, and ex-urban growth. This review surveys the literature to explore a number of interrelated topics, including (a) the changing economies of the rural West and the production and destruction of space across Western landscapes; (b) the institutional contexts of resource control on public lands; (c) ideological clashes and political maneuvering among interest groups who claim access to those lands; and (d) the struggle to move beyond polemics and dualities and mobilize, in the words of the Quivira Coalition, a “radical center” committed to “foster ecological, economic, and social health on western landscapes.”
99 citations
TL;DR: This paper found that many of the themes found in symbolism and daily practice at Catalhoyuk occur very early in the processes of village formation and the domestication of plants and animals throughout the region, including a social focus on memory construction; a symbolic focus on wild animals, violence, and death; and a central dominant role for humans in relation to the animal world.
Abstract: This review aims to show how the new results from Catalhoyuk in central Turkey contribute to wider theories about the Neolithic in Anatolia and the Middle East. I argue that many of the themes found in symbolism and daily practice at Catalhoyuk occur very early in the processes of village formation and the domestication of plants and animals throughout the region. These themes include a social focus on memory construction; a symbolic focus on wild animals, violence, and death; and a central dominant role for humans in relation to the animal world. These themes occur early enough throughout the region that we can claim they are integral to the development of settled life and the domestication of plants and animals. Particularly the focus on time depth in house sequences may have been part of the suite of conditions, along with environmental and ecological factors, that “selected for” sedentism and domestication.
93 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a comparative analysis focusing on a series of generic interactional issues or problems and the way they are solved through the mobilization of local resources (grammar, social categories, etc.) is sketched.
Abstract: Conversation analysis initially drew its empirical materials from recordings of English conversation. However, over the past 20 years conversation analysts have begun to examine talk-in-interaction in an increasingly broad range of languages and communities. These studies allow for a new comparative perspective, which attends to the consequences of linguistic and social differences for the organization of social interaction. A framework for such a comparative analysis focusing on a series of generic interactional issues or “problems” (e.g., how turns are to be distributed among participants) and the way they are solved through the mobilization of local resources (grammar, social categories, etc.) is sketched. Comparative studies in conversation analysis encourage us to think of interaction in terms of generic organizations of interaction, which are inflected or torqued by the local circumstances within which they operate (Schegloff 2006).
67 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the pragmatic ways that progress has been achieved in applying scientific solutions to interpreting the past and highlight key arenas that encourage this process of information flow and discussion: interdisciplinary field work, new scientific techniques, new archaeological questions, and education.
Abstract: Much of the literature on the integration of science and archaeology has tended to focus on mistakes, tensions, and problems. Many scholars have also been obsessed with definitions and delineating the boundaries between varieties of archaeologist. In this article we aim to move away from this by discussing the pragmatic ways that progress has been achieved in applying scientific solutions to interpreting the past. Progress has not been dependent on overcoming supposed fundamental differences between the humanities and sciences; instead it has been based around cooperation on the vast tracts of common ground. This article highlights key arenas that encourage this process of information flow and discussion: interdisciplinary field work, new scientific techniques, new archaeological questions, and education. What is increasingly important in archaeology is how we can encourage researchers to contribute to group solutions of problems and cross outdated disciplinary boundaries.
TL;DR: The authors have used generative modeling to identify the empirical processes that, in their aggregate, shape social and cultural forms in the Middle East, New Guinea, Indonesia, and the Himalayas, as well as Norway.
Abstract: My main efforts in anthropology have sought to unite ethnographic and theoretical work by using empirical findings as provocations to critique received theory and raise unasked questions. I have used generative modeling to identify the empirical processes that, in their aggregate, shape social and cultural forms. Much of my time has been spent in ethnographic field studies in the Middle East, New Guinea, Indonesia, and the Himalayas, as well as Norway. This review traces the reflections and opportunities that connect these activities.
TL;DR: The authors considers the legacies of Derrida in and for Anglo-American sociocultural anthropology and explores the competing claims made by these discourses in relation to deconstruction.
Abstract: This article considers the legacies of Jacques Derrida in and for Anglo-American sociocultural anthropology. It begins with a survey of Derrida's own engagement with themes that have historically been foundational to the field: (a) the critique of sign theory and, with it, the questions of language and law in Levi-Straussian structuralism; (b) the question of the unconscious; (c) the critique of the performative and its consequences for the idea of ritual; (d) the rereading of Marcel Mauss's concept of the gift, and of economy more generally; and (e) the analysis of the metaphysical basis of law, in both religious and ostensibly secular formations. It then considers the state of the field at the time when it was being infused with different forms of poststructuralism and explores the competing claims made by these discourses in relation to deconstruction. Finally, after tracing the convergences and divergences between Derridean deconstruction and theory in sociocultural anthropology, it treats two main ex...
TL;DR: Anthropological research has produced a number of robust findings about organized labor as mentioned in this paper, including that workers do not accept management paradigms of shared interest; the organization of production promotes worker self-organization; discussion among workers is possible; unions show members how to address problems with space, ideology, and management manipulations of emotions; and unions draw on community contacts and social relations beyond the workplace.
Abstract: Anthropological research has produced a number of robust findings about organized labor. National and state policies are the chief determinates of unions' power to organize workers for concerted action to redress the imbalance between those who provide labor and those who control its use through ownership or management of capital. Unions are effective when workers do not accept management paradigms of shared interest; the organization of production promotes worker self-organization; discussion among workers is possible; unions show members how to address problems with space, ideology, and management manipulations of emotions; and unions draw on community contacts and social relations beyond the workplace. Unions are ineffective when they are corrupt, racist, and inattentive to change. Servicing and organizing functions of unions are contradictory. These and other findings leave many topics that anthropologists have not ethnographically explored and define an agenda for future research.
TL;DR: In this paper, a review explores recent research within the territory of modern Sudan and Nubia, focusing on the role of the Nile corridor as a zone of interaction between diverse cultural traditions linking sub-Saharan Africa, Egypt, and the Mediterranean world.
Abstract: This review explores recent research within the territory of the modern Sudan and Nubia. One special interest of this region’s history and archaeology lies in its role as a zone of interaction between diverse cultural traditions linking sub-Saharan Africa, Egypt, the Mediterranean world, and beyond. The exceptionally early development of large-scale polities in the Middle Nile also offers remarkable opportunities for exploring the archaeology of the development of political power as well as for exploring research topics of a wide significance, both within and beyond African archaeology, such as the development of agriculture, urbanism, and metallurgy. The unique opportunities offered by the Nile corridor for trans-Saharan contacts have also ensured that the region’s archaeology provides an extraordinary scope for exploring the interplay and interaction of indigenous and external cultural traditions, often very obviously manifested in the material worlds of the region: from their encounters with Pharaonic Egypt to the incorporation of Nubian kingdoms into medieval Christendom and the creation of new Arab and Muslim identities in the postmedieval world.
TL;DR: A draft sequence of the chimpanzee genome is now available, providing opportunities to better understand genetic contributions to human evolution, development, and disease and a few examples of interesting findings resulting from genome-wide analyses, candidate gene studies, and combined approaches.
Abstract: The genome consists of the entire DNA present in the nucleus of the fertilized embryo, which is then duplicated in every cell in the body. A draft sequence of the chimpanzee genome is now available, providing opportunities to better understand genetic contributions to human evolution, development, and disease. Sequence differences from the human genome were confirmed to be ∼1% in areas that can be precisely aligned, representing ∼35 million single base-pair differences. Some 45 million nucleotides of insertions and deletions unique to each lineage were also discovered, making the actual difference between the two genomes ∼4%. We discuss the opportunities and challenges that arise from this information and the need for comparison with additional species, as well as population genetic studies. Finally, we present a few examples of interesting findings resulting from genome-wide analyses, candidate gene studies, and combined approaches, emphasizing the pros and cons of each approach.
TL;DR: The presence (Insertion, I allele) rather than absence (Deletion, D allele) of a DNA segment in the gene encoding angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) has been associated with fatigue resistance/endurance, and the D-allele with strength gain.
Abstract: Environmental stimuli interact with common genetic variants to determine individual characteristics including physical performance: ∼80% of variation in arm eccentric flexor strength and grip strength may be genetically determined. However, many physical characteristics and physiological processes determine physical performance, and each is regulated by a large number of genes: strong genetic influences on maximum exertional oxygen uptake, heart size, lean mass, skeletal muscle growth, and bone mineral density have all been described. To date few variants strongly influencing global performance have been identified. One such is the presence (Insertion, I allele) rather than absence (Deletion, D allele) of a DNA segment in the gene encoding angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE): The I allele has been associated with fatigue resistance/endurance, and the D-allele with strength gain.