Showing papers in "Annual Review of Anthropology in 2012"
TL;DR: The authors argue that variation constitutes a robust social semiotic system, potentially expressing the full range of social concerns in a given community, and that the meanings of variables are underspecified, gaining more specific meanings in the context of styles.
Abstract: The treatment of social meaning in sociolinguistic variation has come in three waves of analytic practice. The first wave of variation studies established broad correlations between linguistic variables and the macrosociological categories of socioeconomic class, gender, ethnicity, and age. The second wave employed ethnographic methods to explore the local categories and configurations that inhabit, or constitute, these broader categories. In both waves, variation was seen as marking social categories. This article sets out a theoretical foundation for the third wave, arguing that (a) variation constitutes a robust social semiotic system, potentially expressing the full range of social concerns in a given community; (b) the meanings of variables are underspecified, gaining more specific meanings in the context of styles, and (c) variation does not simply reflect, but also constructs, social meaning and hence is a force in social change.
830 citations
TL;DR: A review of recent trends in the study of material culture finds the reasons for this in a conception of the material world and the nonhuman that leaves no space for living organisms, an emphasis on materiality that prioritizes finished artifacts over the properties of materials, and a conflation of things with objects that stops up the flows of energy and circulations of materials on which life depends as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Both material culture studies and ecological anthropology are concerned with the material conditions of social and cultural life. Yet despite advances in each of these fields that have eroded traditional divisions between humanistic and science-based approaches, their respective practitioners continue to talk past one another in largely incommensurate theoretical languages. This review of recent trends in the study of material culture finds the reasons for this in (a) a conception of the material world and the nonhuman that leaves no space for living organisms, (b) an emphasis on materiality that prioritizes finished artifacts over the properties of materials, and (c) a conflation of things with objects that stops up the flows of energy and circulations of materials on which life depends. To overcome these limitations, the review proposes an ecology of materials that focuses on their enrollment in form-making processes. It concludes with some observations on materials, mind, and time.
435 citations
TL;DR: The authors surveys anthropological and other social research on bureaucratic documents and argues that documents are not simply instruments of bureaucratic organizations, but rather are constitutive of bureaucratic rules, ideologies, knowledge, practices, subjectivities, objects, outcomes, even the organizations themselves.
Abstract: This review surveys anthropological and other social research on bureaucratic documents. The fundamental insight of this literature is that documents are not simply instruments of bureaucratic organizations, but rather are constitutive of bureaucratic rules, ideologies, knowledge, practices, subjectivities, objects, outcomes, even the organizations themselves. It explores the reasons why documents have been late to come under ethnographic scrutiny and the implications for our theoretical understandings of organizations and methods for studying them. The review argues for the great value of the study of paper-mediated documentation to the study of electronic forms, but it also highlights the risk of an exclusive focus on paper, making anthropology marginal to the study of core bureaucratic practices in the manner of earlier anthropology.
353 citations
TL;DR: A review of the basic theoretical underpinnings, historical contexts, and a selection of current research outcomes for the ethnoprimatological endeavor can be found in this paper.
Abstract: Humans are literal and figurative kin to other primates, with whom many of us coexist in diverse social, ecological, symbolic, conflictual, and even hopeful contexts. Anthropogenic action is changing global and local ecologies as fast as, or faster than, we can study them. Ethnoprimatology, the combining of primatological and anthropological practice and the viewing of humans and other primates as living in integrated and shared ecological and social spaces, is becoming an increasingly popular approach to primate studies in the twenty-first century. This approach plays a core linking role between anthropology and primate studies and may enable us to more effectively assess, and better understand, the complex ecologies and potential for sustainability in human–other primate communities. Here I review the basic theoretical underpinnings, historical contexts, and a selection of current research outcomes for the ethnoprimatological endeavor and indicate what this approach can tell us about human–other primate...
185 citations
TL;DR: This article pointed out that the recurrent use of certain laden expressions can have adverse consequences for indigenous peoples, highlighting the theoretical and empirical flaws of the perspectivism model and pointing out that it cannot generalize about thought processes across indigenous Amazonia, resulting in the proposition that nature is the variable whereas culture remains the same.
Abstract: In recent decades, ethnographic research in Brazil has been influenced by a model termed perspectivism that inverts the equation between nature (as a given) and culture (as variable). Focusing on the interaction between humans and animals, this model attempts to generalize about thought processes across indigenous Amazonia, resulting in the proposition that nature is the variable whereas culture remains the same. The model's generality has resulted in a remarkable similarity of ethnographic interpretations, giving the false impression that the Amazon is a homogeneous culture area. This critique of perspectivism highlights its theoretical and empirical flaws and points out that the recurrent use of certain laden expressions can have adverse consequences for indigenous peoples.
159 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that archives can be read subversively, allowing the excavation of the voices (sometimes names) of subaltern and otherwise suppressed others from the archive.
Abstract: Derrida and Foucault provide key starting points to understanding archives. They see archives as hegemonic, characterizing ways of thought, modes of colonization, and the control of citizens. However, they also make clear that archives can be read subversively. With patience, counter-readings allow the excavation of the voices (sometimes names) of subaltern and otherwise suppressed others from the archive. By reading along and across the archival grain, researchers can follow the development of ideas and processes across historical periods. Archives can be seen as orphanages, containing surrogates of performances. Archives (paper and digital) also provide access to the results of anthropological research in ways mandated by ethics codes, but these are subject to controversy. What sorts of consent and what sorts of anonymization should be provided? Archives run by the groups traditionally studied by anthropologists provide models of radical archives that are very different from those conceived of by tradit...
153 citations
TL;DR: A conceptual framework that recognizes both the complexity of the causes of island vulnerability and the constraints and opportunities available to islanders offers an analytical approach to understand islander responses to climate change, including migration.
Abstract: Island communities stand to be among the first and most adversely affected by the impacts of global climate change. Rising sea levels, changing precipitation and storm patterns, and increasing air and sea-surface temperatures stress already limited island resources while climate change policies circumscribe local decision making. Anthropologists make important contributions to understanding island-based knowledge, global causes of vulnerability, local perceptions of risk, and islander agency channeled into adaptive capacity and resilience. A conceptual framework that recognizes both the complexity of the causes of island vulnerability and the constraints and opportunities available to islanders offers an analytical approach to understanding islander responses to climate change, including migration. The framework is used to show that island communities are not merely isolated, small, and impoverished but that they are often deeply globally connected in ways that reject such simple descriptions and will be ...
134 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a review of the impact and efficacy of material thinking in anthropological studies of photographs and photographic practices is presented, where the authors argue that photographs cannot be understood through visual content alone but through an embodied engagement with an affective object world, which is both constitutive of and constituted through social relations.
Abstract: This review considers the impact and efficacy of material thinking in anthropological studies of photographs and photographic practices. Such analytical strategies have moved the analysis of photographs beyond that of the visual alone and illuminated the cultural work required of photographs. After reviewing key analytical positions of social biography, visual economy, and photography complex, I explore the material work of photographs through two registers: the idea of “placing”, in which photographs become active in assemblages of objects, and the processes of material repurposing and remediation of the humble ID photography. These strands are drawn together in the idea of a sensory photograph, entangled with orality, tactility, and haptic engagement. The article argues that photographs cannot be understood through visual content alone but through an embodied engagement with an affective object world, which is both constitutive of and constituted through social relations.
131 citations
TL;DR: The literature on the archaeology of emotion and affect is mostly quite recent and is not extensive as discussed by the authors, and the main lines of approach taken so far and explores how different understandings of what constitutes an emotion underlie the work of archaeologists in this area.
Abstract: The literature on the archaeology of emotion and affect is mostly quite recent and is not extensive. This review considers the main lines of approach taken so far and explores how different understandings of what constitutes an emotion underlie the work of archaeologists in this area. A distinction is made between past emotion as a subject of study and examination of the emotional subjectivity of the archaeologist as a method. The potential contribution of archaeology to emotion studies in the future includes bringing a sense of contextual historicity to the discussion and developing our knowledge of how material things and places are involved in shaping and expressing emotion. Inspired by some historians of emotion, a focus on shared emotional meanings, values, and codes seems a more productive direction than the exploration of idiosyncratic personal emotional experience.
119 citations
TL;DR: The authors discuss a range of scholarship, including how words and objects may cosignify meaning and value; practices of embodiment, aesthetics, and style; linguistic objectification and the circulatory possibilities of linguistic forms; and language commodification in global capitalism.
Abstract: Language and materiality have long been considered separate phenomena, but an increasing interest in their convergence suggests the productive potential of considering the linguistic and the material within the same analytic frame Linguistic anthropologists and scholars in allied disciplines have ethnographically investigated how the linguistic and the material are intertwined, focusing on various ways in which this occurs In order to highlight what is shared across these endeavors, we discuss a range of scholarship, including how words and objects may cosignify meaning and value; practices of embodiment, aesthetics, and style; linguistic objectification and the circulatory possibilities of linguistic forms; and language commodification in global capitalism We see these efforts as contributing to an emerging field of scholarship we call “language materiality” that captures both the materiality of language as well as how the linguistic and material may interact to create meaning and value We illustrate
117 citations
TL;DR: A distinctly anthropological approach, with its unique research methods, approaches to theory, and holistic thinking, can utilize insights from the constitution of sport as human action to illuminate important social issues in a way that no other discipline can as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Over the past three decades, the important role that anthropological theory has bestowed on the body, modernity, nationalism, the state, citizenship, transnationalism, globalization, gender, and sexuality has placed sports at the center of questions central to the discipline. New approaches to the body, based on practice theory, view the sporting body as more than just a biological entity, allowing us to observe sports as they “travel” transnationally and illuminating issues relevant to such dynamics as colonialism, globalization, sport mega-events, and labor migration. A distinctly anthropological approach, with its unique research methods, approaches to theory, and holistic thinking, can utilize insights from the constitution of sport as human action to illuminate important social issues in a way that no other discipline can. On this foundation, the anthropology of sport is now poised to make significant contributions to our understanding of central problems in anthropology.
TL;DR: The Chinese Paleolithic chronocultural sequence still remains incomplete, although the number of well-dated sites is rapidly increasing as discussed by the authors, despite almost a century of research, despite the fact that many well-known sites have been found in China.
Abstract: Despite almost a century of research, the Chinese Paleolithic chronocultural sequence still remains incomplete, although the number of well-dated sites is rapidly increasing. The Chinese Paleolithic is marked by the long persistence of core-and-flake and cobble-tool industries, so interpretation of cultural and social behavior of humans in East Asia based solely on comparison with the African and western Eurasian prehistoric sequences becomes problematic, such as in assessing cognitive evolutionary stages. For the Chinese Paleolithic, wood and bamboo likely served as raw materials for the production of daily objects since the arrival of the earliest migrants from western Asia, although poor preservation is a problem. Contrary to the notion of a “Movius Line” with handaxes not present on the China side, China does have a limited distribution of Acheulian bifaces and unifaces. Similarly, Middle Paleolithic assemblages are present in the Chinese sequence. Although the available raw materials have been assume...
TL;DR: In this paper, the archaeological record often incorporates important, sometimes unique, proxy records of climate, of environment, and of change in both, and these proxy records play a role in modeling future climatic and environmental change of potential significance to humans.
Abstract: Recent decades have seen a resurgence of interest in human ecodynamics—the relationship among climate, environment, and culture. Most published research concentrates on the potential causal role of climate and environment in culture change. We approach the issue from the other side: The archaeological record often incorporates important, sometimes unique, proxy records of climate, of environment, and of change in both. We detail four case studies, from South America, Southwest Asia, North America, and the Shetland Islands. In each case, the paleoclimatic and/or paleoenvironmental data resulted from multidisciplinary archaeological projects whose major objective was to understand past human behavior. Nevertheless, in each case, the projects generated important information about the natural world in the past. Often, these data play a role in modeling future climatic and environmental change of potential significance to humans. We note a growing use of archaeological proxy data by climate scientists and pred...
TL;DR: Archaeometallurgy is an interdisciplinary and international field of study that examines all aspects of the production, use, and consumption of metals from ∼8000 BCE to the present, although this review is restricted to mining and metallurgy in preindustrial societies as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Archaeometallurgy is an interdisciplinary and international field of study that examines all aspects of the production, use, and consumption of metals from ∼8000 BCE to the present, although this review is restricted to mining and metallurgy in preindustrial societies Most of this literature was not written with an anthropological readership in mind, but many of its central themes are relevant to some current debates in anthropology Since the 1970s, archaeometallurgists have been concerned explicitly with the materiality of metals and also with the highly variable value of precious metals across time and space Exacting criteria have been developed for distinguishing past technology transfers from independent inventions Archaeometallurgists have also done important work on the social construction of technology in precapitalist economies In short, archaeometallurgy offers much that is of interest to anthropologists who study the growth and spread of knowledge, and of systems of value, before the capita
TL;DR: The anthropogenic global warming is central to these developments, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change obligates the international community of nations to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.
Abstract: The term anthropogenic takes its meaning from an implied contrast to an idealist notion of nature as separate from humans and endowed with a timeless or cyclical equilibrium. In recent decades, however, scientists have concluded that human influences now dominate nature at global and geological scales, reflected in the contention that Earth has entered a new epoch called the Anthropocene. Anthropogenic global warming is central to these developments, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change obligates the international community of nations to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” Scientific debates surrounding anthropogenic impacts on the environment have a much longer history, however, revealing chronic empirical difficulties with the human-nature dualism combined with an inability to overcome it conceptually. Anthropologists have a key role to play in emerging transdisciplinary efforts to understand the anthropogenic across scales from the molecular ...
TL;DR: In this article, a review explores why phenomenology has been such a popular theme in landscape archaeology in the last two decades and why it has also provoked anger and controversy, and concludes that research into landscape and human subjectivity will continue to be a strong research theme, whether or not such work explicitly derives its theoretical approach from phenomenology.
Abstract: This review explores why phenomenology has been such a popular theme in landscape archaeology in the last two decades—and why it has also provoked anger and controversy. The article concentrates less on the philosophical essence of phenomenological traditions than on their practical applications and context, particularly within British landscape archaeology. Criticisms of phenomenological approaches are reviewed and suggestions for future research made. The review concludes that research into landscape and human subjectivity will continue to be a strong research theme, whether or not such work explicitly derives its theoretical approach from phenomenology.
TL;DR: A synthesis of African paleoclimate data suggests that significant events in human origins tended to occur during lengthy eras of strong climate fluctuation, and human adaptability will continue to be tested as societies face the challenges of adjusting to unprecedented change in Earth's environmental dynamics.
Abstract: Understanding the interaction between past environmental and evolutionary change informs scientific and public awareness about natural environmental dynamics. Evidence of dramatic climate variability, cooling, and aridity over the past six million years has stimulated research about whether environmental change has been a major causal factor in the development of our species' defining characteristics. Examples pertaining to the evolution of bipedality, earliest known toolmaking, dispersal of Homo erectus, extinction of Neanderthals, and the global spread H. sapiens all point to the emergence of adaptability in response to environmental uncertainty as a recurrent theme in human evolution. A synthesis of African paleoclimate data suggests that significant events in human origins tended to occur during lengthy eras of strong climate fluctuation. Human adaptability will continue to be tested as societies face the challenges of adjusting to unprecedented change in Earth's environmental dynamics.
TL;DR: This paper reviewed recent anthropological scholarship of Arab-majority societies in relation to geopolitical and theoretical shifts since the end of the Cold War, as well as conjunctures of research location, topic, and theory.
Abstract: This article reviews recent anthropological scholarship of Arab-majority societies in relation to geopolitical and theoretical shifts since the end of the Cold War, as well as conjunctures of research location, topic, and theory. Key contributions of the subfield to the larger discipline include interventions into feminist theorizing about agency; theories of modernity; analyses of cultural production/consumption that destabilize the culture concept; approaches to religion that integrate textual traditions with practice, experience, and institutions; and research on violence that emphasizes routinization and affect. Emerging work in the areas of race and ethnicity, secularism, law, human rights, science and technology, and queer studies has the potential to strengthen anthropology of the region as well as to contribute to the discipline more broadly.
TL;DR: The authors assesses the contribution that a holistic, multisited, and multiscalar anthropology can make to the investigation of climate change and its impact on various human-animal assemblages.
Abstract: This review assesses the contribution that a holistic, multisited, and multiscalar anthropology can make to the investigation of climate change and its impact on various human-animal assemblages. Anthropologists have a long-standing interest in animal management under changing environmental conditions. I focus on recent material that investigates the impact of anthropogenic climate change on human-animal relations using ethnography from Africa, Amazonia, and the circumpolar rim. I argue that the value of juxtaposing work in diverse settings and across various scales is to highlight the asymmetry of encounters between different perceptions of climate change and the responses they require. Anthropology's critical, holistic approach is especially valuable in places where people, animals, landscapes, the weather, and indeed climate change itself are aspects of an undifferentiated, spiritually lively, animate environment.
TL;DR: In this paper, a review focusing on the critical centuries of the Iron Age to examine how thinking about colonialism and migration in the Mediterranean has changed in recent decades is presented, and a brief survey of potential connections between migration studies and Mediterranean col...
Abstract: People and their material culture have moved across the Mediterranean since early prehistory. By the early first millennium BC, a crucial change occurred when people began to establish permanent settlements overseas and migrated in substantial numbers. This review focuses on the critical centuries of the Iron Age to examine how thinking about colonialism and migration in the Mediterranean has changed in recent decades. Because Mediterranean and Classical archaeology have always paid more attention to the colonial settlements founded than to the people who migrated, this review begins with an examination of colonial terminology to assess its conceptual roots and the influences of modern colonialism and nationalism. This leads to a discussion of approaches to migration and colonialism in recent decades and consideration of present postcolonial views of colonial situations and (material) culture. The review concludes with a brief survey of potential connections between migration studies and Mediterranean col...
TL;DR: Ardipithecus now provides abundant information that the LCA differed substantially from chimpanzees, both anatomically and behaviorally, and exhibited many characters that are more similar to those of modern humans than to any living ape.
Abstract: Chimpanzees are our closest living genomic relatives, but they lack the bipedal locomotion, markedly enlarged brains, and advanced communication skills of humans. This has led many to view them as “primitive” and to presume that their behavior and anatomy are also primitive. If true, they could serve as models of our last common ancestor (LCA), i.e., a territorially aggressive knuckle walker, reliant on vertical climbing and below-branch suspension to access the high canopy as a ripe-fruit frugivore. Ardipithecus now provides abundant information that the LCA differed substantially from chimpanzees (as well as bonobos and gorillas), both anatomically and behaviorally, and exhibited many characters that are more similar to those of modern humans than to any living ape. This major extension of the hominoid fossil record contravenes strict referential modeling based on the extant chimpanzee and greatly improves our ability to reconstruct the LCA more accurately, but only when viewed within the broader contex...
TL;DR: The authors surveys recent research on language-music: the unified expressive field comprising sounded and textual signs whose segmentation into "language" and "music" is culturally constructed, and argues that approaching language music semiotically will promote a greater holism in anthropological practice if coupled with the joint effort of attending to textuality while decentering its primacy.
Abstract: This review surveys recent research on language-music: the unified expressive field comprising sounded and textual signs whose segmentation into “language” and “music” is culturally constructed. I argue that approaching language-music semiotically will promote—alongside the discipline's emergent “auditory turn”—greater holism in anthropological practice if coupled to the joint effort of attending to textuality while decentering its primacy. I discuss recent scholarship that demonstrates, if often implicitly, the merit of this approach. I organize this work into three overlapping themes of active research: scholarship on chronotopes and soundscapes exploring processes that reconfigure time and place; work on subject creation focusing on voice, emotion, intersubjectivity, and listening; and scholarship on the social dimensions of object creation, including technological mediation, authentication, and circulation. I conclude by discussing future directions in research on language-music and the promise such w...
TL;DR: In this paper, the conceptual foundations of collective memory research from social scientific and semiotic perspectives are outlined, and the role of expert knowledge and embodied performance are highlighted. But, the focus of the review is not on how collective memories are made, remade, and contested through circulation enabled by semiotic processes.
Abstract: This review outlines the conceptual foundations of collective memory research from social scientific and semiotic perspectives. It locates collective memories in publicly circulating signs, merging a semiotic orientation with Nora's (1989) notion of memory sites. It elucidates how collective memories are made, remade, and contested through circulation enabled by semiotic processes of entextualization and erasure that produce cartographies of communicability. It shows how recent analytic work in linguistic anthropology focused on temporality can be mobilized to understand the concrete semiotic and discursive mechanisms by which the past is selectively brought into the present for strategic ends. It concludes by highlighting two promising directions for further inquiry in collective memory research: the role of expert knowledge and the importance of embodied performance. Overall, the review suggests that a semiotic perspective offers an analytically precise way of mapping the processes by which representati...
TL;DR: Three themes in this review bear on the future: the continuing impact of recent, cataclysmic events on modern communities of people, plants, and animals; Madagascar's long and dynamic environmental history; and the complicated history of how people settled and interacted with the island's landscapes.
Abstract: Most of the ancestors of today's human and animal populations reached Madagascar over the last 65 million years, by a variety of routes at a variety of times. Settlers encountered a big, isolated island with an unpredictable climate and a wide array of landscapes. Although patterns of diversification were driven by different mechanisms in humans and animals, the complex interplay between historical contingency and responsiveness to local conditions is evident in both. Global climate change will affect Madagascar, although exactly how remains unclear, and the immediate impact of human activity on the island is overtaking that of gradual global change. Three themes in this review bear on the future: the continuing impact of recent, cataclysmic events on modern communities of people, plants, and animals; Madagascar's long and dynamic environmental history; and the complicated history of how people settled and interacted with the island's landscapes. A deeper understanding of all three can contribute to wise ...
TL;DR: Reconstructions of body mass, lower limb length, and pelvic breadth suggest diverse mobility strategies for different hominin species and may offer some clues about the demographic shifts occurring in the late Pleistocene.
Abstract: In our reconstructions of human evolution, a few key questions consistently rise to the surface. These questions tend to revolve around how the morphology of previous hominin species would have allowed them to gain access to resources during key life-history events, particularly gestation and lactation. Here the data surrounding the interactions between these key issues are assessed, making particular notes of recent advances in the fields of energetics and biomechanics as they relate to locomotion during reproduction. Reconstructions of body mass, lower limb length, and pelvic breadth suggest diverse mobility strategies for different hominin species and may offer some clues about the demographic shifts occurring in the late Pleistocene.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors take a broad approach, ranging from Old World prehistory to twentieth-century ethnography, and explore research into the use of objects as currencies in prehistory; the origins of coined money; archaeological sites illustrating the adoption and functions of coinage in and around the classical Mediterranean; and the study of coins as archaeological artifacts in the more recent past and in non-European contexts.
Abstract: Money is one of the most timeless, all-pervading, and arbitrary inventions in human history. Its ubiquity in time and space offers great scope for comparative archaeological research into its varying material manifestations. This article takes a broad approach, ranging from Old World prehistory to twentieth-century ethnography. First, the development of archaeological approaches to coinage and money is outlined. Subsequent sections explore research into the use of objects as currencies in prehistory; the origins of coined money; archaeological sites illustrating the adoption and functions of coinage in and around the classical Mediterranean; and the study of coins as archaeological artifacts in the more recent past and in non-European contexts. Finally, we suggest some potential ways forward, employing comparative archaeological study to enhance our understanding of the complexity of functions performed by monetary objects, both in the past and in the present.
TL;DR: In 1992, the Valletta Convention to protect archaeological heritage was signed by most European countries as part of the European Council, and it contributed to the strong development of rescue archaeology as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Although archaeological finds have long been unearthed during construction projects, true rescue excavations began in Europe only as recent as the nineteenth century and became systematic only after World War II. Design and operations then began to be systematized, culminating in 1992 with the signing of the Valletta Convention to protect archaeological heritage. This agreement was ratified by most European countries as part of the European Council, and it contributed to the strong development of rescue archaeology (or preventive archaeology). Excavations had long been organized by academic institutions, but from 1980 onward, there appeared, first in the United Kingdom then in other Western European countries, “commercial archaeology,” led by private businesses. A debate among European archaeologists is taking place concerning the most effective system to protect excavations and the study and publication of endangered sites.
TL;DR: A review of sociocultural ethnographies of indigenous Australia from the 1970s to the present explores three trends: ethnographic reckonings with indigenous encapsulation within a liberal-settler state; the influence of international theoretical emphases; and movements toward an anthropology of the otherwise as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: This review covers sociocultural ethnographies of indigenous Australia from the 1970s to the present It explores three trends: ethnographic reckonings with indigenous encapsulation within a liberal-settler state; the influence of international theoretical emphases; and movements toward an anthropology of the otherwise The advent of land repossession, and the ethnographic and employment opportunities this created, indelibly shaped the discipline With their immersion in land rights and native title, anthropologists were also embroiled in the state adjudication of indigeneity Beyond the courts, the discipline struggled to shake the strictures of area studies and its ongoing, if unrecognized, imbrication in statist cultural logics Consequently, indigenist anthropologies have not shifted, but perhaps helped affirm, the West's sense of being the apex of modernity Emergent approaches, which refuse the ossifications of statist logics using forms of immersion and multimedia ethnography, show signs of ways fo
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TL;DR: The recent attention to society and the social production of the disease may portend the end of culture in research on diabetes and culture.
Abstract: Diabetes and its many manifestations articulate well with the four-field approach in anthropology, providing an almost seamless example of the relationship between human biology, behavior, society, and culture in both the past and the present tense. In general, publications on diabetes and culture echo Enlightenment philosophies on change and progress that posit the increasing prevalence of diabetes as a “crisis in human relations” (Bendix 1967, p. 302) for which culture plays a significant role. The undermining of racial approaches due to what now appears to be diabetes-without-borders has also directed anthropological research into the contingent temporal frameworks of history. The recent attention to society and the social production of the disease may portend the end of culture in research on diabetes and culture.
TL;DR: The success with which this integration of approaches has elucidated the nature of primate foraging adaptations is reviewed with respect to ingestive strategies, locomotory strategies, and functional and biomechanical measures of morphological performance.
Abstract: Given that something as fundamental as food acquisition is subject to selection pressure, it follows that morphological and behavioral diversity among primates is reflective of a range of adaptations to diet, feeding, and foraging. The recognition of these adaptations, however, is operationally difficult because it is the interaction between morphological and ecological variables that serves to define the particular adaptation. Researchers have addressed this problem of recognition of adaptation by integrating functional and biomechanical measures of morphological performance with observations of foraging and feeding behavior of primates in natural habitats. These disparate approaches traditionally resided in separate laboratory and field domains, but technological and analytical advances have blurred the distinction between them. The success with which this integration of approaches has elucidated the nature of primate foraging adaptations is reviewed with respect to (a) ingestive strategies, (b) locomot...