Showing papers in "Current Anthropology in 2019"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate the moral valence of seven cooperative behaviors in the ethnographic records of 60 societies and find that these seven behaviors are plausible candidates for universal moral rules, and that morality-as-cooperation could provide the unified theory of morality that anthropology has hitherto lacked.
Abstract: What is morality? And to what extent does it vary around the world? The theory of “morality-as-cooperation” argues that morality consists of a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. Morality-as-cooperation draws on the theory of non-zero-sum games to identify distinct problems of cooperation and their solutions, and it predicts that specific forms of cooperative behavior—including helping kin, helping your group, reciprocating, being brave, deferring to superiors, dividing disputed resources, and respecting prior possession—will be considered morally good wherever they arise, in all cultures. To test these predictions, we investigate the moral valence of these seven cooperative behaviors in the ethnographic records of 60 societies. We find that the moral valence of these behaviors is uniformly positive, and the majority of these cooperative morals are observed in the majority of cultures, with equal frequency across all regions of the world. We conclude that these seven cooperative behaviors are plausible candidates for universal moral rules, and that morality-as-cooperation could provide the unified theory of morality that anthropology has hitherto lacked.
256 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a conceptual tool for noticing landscape structure, with special attention to what we call "modular simplifi ciency", is presented. But this tool requires spatial as well as temporal analysis.
Abstract: The Anthropocene deserves spatial as well as temporal analysis. “Patchy Anthropocene” is a conceptual tool for noticing landscape structure, with special attention to what we call “modular simplifi...
167 citations
TL;DR: Results fail to reveal any effects of raw material size, shape, quality, or reduction intensity that could explain the observed details of intersite technological variation in terms of individual learning across different local conditions, which supports the view that relatively detailed copying of toolmaking methods was already a feature of Oldowan technological reproduction at ca.
Abstract: The capacity of Homo sapiens for the intergenerational accumulation of complex technologies, practices, and beliefs is central to contemporary accounts of human distinctiveness. However, the actual...
90 citations
TL;DR: The regular exploitation of large-animal resources—the “human predatory pattern”—began with an emphasis on percussion-based scavenging of inside-bone nutrients, independent of the emergence of flaked stone tool use, leading to a series of empirical test implications that differ from previous “meat-eating” origins scenarios.
Abstract: The habitual consumption of large-animal resources (e.g., similar sized or larger than the consumer) separates human and nonhuman primate behavior. Flaked stone tool use, another important hominin behavior, is often portrayed as being functionally related to this by the necessity of a sharp edge for cutting animal tissue. However, most research on both issues emphasizes sites that postdate ca. 2.0 million years ago. This paper critically examines the theoretical significance of the earlier origins of these two behaviors, their proposed interrelationship, and the nature of the empirical record. We argue that concepts of meat-eating and tool use are too loosely defined: outside-bone nutrients (e.g., meat) and inside-bone nutrients (e.g., marrow and brains) have different macronutrient characteristics (protein vs. fat), mechanical requirements for access (cutting vs. percussion), search, handling and competitive costs, encounter rates, and net returns. Thus, they would have demanded distinct technological and behavioral solutions. We propose that the regular exploitation of large-animal resources—the “human predatory pattern”—began with an emphasis on percussion-based scavenging of inside-bone nutrients, independent of the emergence of flaked stone tool use. This leads to a series of empirical test implications that differ from previous “meat-eating” origins scenarios.
73 citations
TL;DR: This article contributed to a new anthropology of militarism that has crystallized since the end of the cold war. Unlike scholars in mainstream security studies and political science, anthropologist and anthropologist
Abstract: This volume contributes to a new anthropology of militarism that has crystallized since the end of the cold war. Unlike scholars in mainstream security studies and political science, anthropologist...
36 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a heuristic distinction between "model" and "example" modes of articulating thought and action in the Anthropocene has been made, based on the Geertzian sense of "model-for".
Abstract: This paper advances a heuristic distinction between “model” (in the Geertzian sense of “model-for”) and “example” as contrasting modes of articulating thought and action in the Anthropocene. I argu...
34 citations
TL;DR: The authors developed three ethnographic scenes in Hong Kong reflecting three narratives of pandemic influenza as a side effect of the livestock revolution: an expert's view of the Hong Kong territ....
Abstract: This article develops three ethnographic scenes in Hong Kong reflecting three narratives of pandemic influenza as a side effect of the livestock revolution: an expert’s view of the Hong Kong territ...
34 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine some of the evidence for Upper Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic structures in Europe and Southwest Asia, offering insights into their complex "functions" and examining perceptions of space among hunter-gatherer communities.
Abstract: In both Southwest Asia and Europe, only a handful of known Upper Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic sites attest to aggregation or gatherings of hunter-gatherer groups, sometimes including evidence of hut structures and highly structured use of space. Interpretation of these structures ranges greatly, from mere ephemeral shelters to places “built” into a landscape with meanings beyond refuge from the elements. One might argue that this ambiguity stems from a largely functional interpretation of shelters that is embodied in the very terminology we use to describe them in comparison to the homes of later farming communities: mobile hunter-gatherers build and occupy huts that can form campsites, whereas sedentary farmers occupy houses or homes that form communities. Here we examine some of the evidence for Upper Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic structures in Europe and Southwest Asia, offering insights into their complex “functions” and examining perceptions of space among hunter-gatherer communities. We do this through examination of two contemporary, yet geographically and culturally distinct, examples: Upper Paleolithic (especially Magdalenian) evidence in Western Europe and the Epipaleolithic record (especially Early and Middle phases) in Southwest Asia. A comparison of recent evidence for hut structures from these regions suggests several similarities in the nature of these structures, their association with activities related to hunter-gatherer aggregation, and their being “homes” imbued with quotidian and symbolic meaning.
33 citations
TL;DR: The Terminal Classic Period (AD 750-1000) collapse of lowland Maya social, economic, and political systems has been temporally correlated with severe and extended drought in regional paleoclimate r...
Abstract: The Terminal Classic Period (AD 750–1000) collapse of lowland Maya social, economic, and political systems has been temporally correlated with severe and extended drought in regional paleoclimate r...
32 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, an analysis of the way that the colonial-era model of plantation production in Southeast Asia disciplined plants and people and, of most importance, the way production relations betwee...
Abstract: This is an analysis of the way that the colonial-era model of plantation production in Southeast Asia disciplined plants and people and, of most importance, the way that production relations betwee...
31 citations
TL;DR: Anthropology has an ambivalent relationship with its core disciplinary concept: culture as discussed by the authors, and beyond the vague but important notion that culture is shared and learned, there is little agreement a...
Abstract: Anthropology has an ambivalent relationship with its core disciplinary concept: culture. Beyond the rather vague but important notion that culture is shared and learned, there is little agreement a...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors follow marabou storks through Kampala's ever-shifting waste frontier: the postconsumer equivalent to the extractive frontier that subtends the capitalist fantasy of endless growth.
Abstract: Thousands of marabou storks occupy Kampala, nesting in the city’s green spaces and eating up to 2 kilos of organic matter daily, mostly rotting garbage found in the city’s open dumps. Weedy birds, they flourish amid Kampala’s garbage crisis. Storks are both waste infrastructure and waste themselves, rendered disposable by the same state-centric views of infrastructure that make informal waste pickers precarious, and cast out from the imaginary of a clean, green, urban future. Theorizing animal and informal infrastructures together as “para-sites,” this paper follows marabou storks through Kampala’s ever-shifting waste frontier: the postconsumer equivalent to the extractive frontier that subtends the capitalist fantasy of endless growth. Kampala’s topography, hydrology, and class structure ensure that trash flows downhill, accumulating in slums where it leads to flooding and outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, and other waterborne illnesses as well as to endemic malaria. Waste with wings, marabou storks remake the urban waste landscape, undermining efforts to stabilize the city’s ultimate sinks in landfills, slums, and wetlands as they flourish in filth and defecate in the heart of greenness.
TL;DR: The complex urban polities developed in the Old World (5500-3500 BP) had several structural features in common, particularly their scale, their cereal agrarianism, and their environmental patternin this paper.
Abstract: The complex urban polities developed in the Old World (5500–3500 BP) had several structural features in common, particularly their scale, their cereal agrarianism, and their environmental patternin...
TL;DR: In this article, the dynamics of gender, corporeality, and gender-specificity in military checkpoints are examined. But, they are inherently unstable technologies of rule due to their contradictory functions of blocking as well as sorting bodies.
Abstract: Military checkpoints are inherently unstable technologies of rule due to their contradictory functions of blocking as well as sorting bodies. This paper examines the dynamics of gender, corporealit...
TL;DR: Coffee was introduced to Mexico in the late eighteenth century, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that wealthy European immigrants purchased unregistered land and invested in coffe...
Abstract: Coffee was introduced to Mexico in the late eighteenth century, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that wealthy European immigrants purchased “unregistered” land and invested in coffe...
TL;DR: A 16-year-long ethnography of mass grave exhumations in contemporary Spain is presented in this paper, which deals with the tortuous, painful, much-disputed, and incomplete unmaking of a concrete and massive militaristic inscription of Spain: that related to its last internal war (1936-1939) and subsequent dictatorship (1939-1975).
Abstract: This paper is based on a 16-year-long ethnography of mass grave exhumations in contemporary Spain and deals with the tortuous, painful, much-disputed, and incomplete unmaking of a concrete and massive militaristic inscription of Spain: that related to its last internal war (1936–1939) and subsequent dictatorship (1939–1975). To understand this process and its historical roots, the paper first dissects the formation of a “funerary apartheid” in the country since the end of the war. Second, it analyzes the impact on the social fabric of the mass grave exhumations of Republican civilians that started in the year 2000. Third, it traces how these disinterments have intersected with Spain’s most prominent Francoist stronghold, the Valley of the Fallen, and threaten the dictator’s burial place. Finally, it discusses the parallel dismantling of the dictatorship’s official statuary that once presided over prominent public spaces in many cities and some military quarters. It argues that rolling back militarization by dismantling war-derived cartographies of death, challenging military burial arrangements, or degrading statues of generals necessarily involves a certain level of remilitarizing by other means. I call this mirroring and deeply embodied memorial backfiring “phantom militarism.”
TL;DR: Indigenous peoples around the world are exploring indigenous epistemology with the aim to reassert the validity of their own ways of knowing and being as discussed by the authors, and this assertion is taking place not only among...
Abstract: Indigenous peoples around the world are exploring indigenous epistemology with the aim to reassert the validity of their own ways of knowing and being. This assertion is taking place not only among...
TL;DR: Van Gennep's rites of passage is one of anthropology's enduring models and is still much used by archaeologists to explain ritual behavior as discussed by the authors. But despite their ubiquity, there are problems with rites...
Abstract: Van Gennep’s rites of passage is one of anthropology’s enduring models and is still much used by archaeologists to explain ritual behavior. But despite their ubiquity, there are problems with rites...
TL;DR: The authors consider how the ideas of the patchy Anthropocene forwarded by the editors of this special issue provide a way to do anthropology otherwise by reversing the relationship between the background and foreground.
Abstract: I consider how the ideas of the patchy Anthropocene forwarded by the editors of this special issue provide a way to do anthropology otherwise by reversing the relationship between the background an...
TL;DR: In the name of cleaning up Kampala's political institutions and public space, a new municipal body, the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), was established in 2010, replacing an elected city cou...
Abstract: In the name of cleaning up Kampala’s political institutions and public space, a new municipal body, the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), was established in 2010, replacing an elected city cou...
TL;DR: The authors compare the challenges in organizing collective action for warfare in small-scale societies with those for peacemaking, and identify the man who is the leader of a group of men in Papua New Guinea.
Abstract: Drawing on data from the Enga of Papua New Guinea, I (1) compare the challenges in organizing collective action for warfare in small-scale societies with those for peacemaking; (2) identify the man...
TL;DR: Although the Viking Age (ca. 750-1050 CE) is often characterized as a time of violence, significant questions remain regarding how conflict was conducted during the period as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Although the Viking Age (ca. 750–1050 CE) is often characterized as a time of violence, significant questions remain regarding how conflict was conducted during the period. For example, there have ...
TL;DR: The authors investigates the moral content and epistemological utility of scholar-informant solidarity in ethnography and supports efforts to highlight the potential for immoral outcomes when ethnography is used.
Abstract: This article investigates the moral content and epistemological utility of scholar-informant solidarity in ethnography. It supports efforts to highlight the potential for immoral outcomes when ethn...
TL;DR: Focusing on the lives and deaths of Pacific Island tree snails, the crafting of apparatuses and practices for their study in laboratory and field, and the diverse people engaged in the work, this do...
Abstract: Focused on the lives and deaths of Pacific Island tree snails, the crafting of apparatuses and practices for their study in laboratory and field, and the diverse people engaged in the work, this do...
TL;DR: The confluence of illegality, counterinsurgency, and marginality in Colombia has led to the militarization of social life, national politics, policy making, and state practices in peripheral areas as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The confluence of illegality, counterinsurgency, and marginality in Colombia has led to the militarization of social life, national politics, policy making, and state practices in peripheral areas....
TL;DR: In this paper, a discourse of military humanism that claims very low rates of civilian casualties and a concern to spare the lives of the innocent is used to justify US drone warfare in Waziristan.
Abstract: US drone warfare in Waziristan has been legitimated through a discourse of military humanism that claims very low rates of civilian casualties and a concern to spare the lives of the innocent. In p...
TL;DR: In this paper, the long-lasting ecological and social impacts of cattle introduced to the New World by Spanish colonists are considered, showing how cattle aided European expansion by occupying Spanish colonies.
Abstract: This article considers the long-lasting ecological and social impacts of cattle introduced to the New World by Spanish colonists. First, it shows how cattle aided European expansions by occupying s...
TL;DR: Investigation of outcomes of participation in one of the world’s most extreme rituals, involving bodily mutilation and prolonged suffering, finds performance of this physically demanding ordeal had no detrimental effects on physiological health and was associated with subjective health improvements, and these improvements were greater for those who engaged in more intense forms of participation.
Abstract: Extreme ritual practices involving pain and suffering pose significant risks such as injury, trauma, or infection. Nonetheless, they are performed by millions of people around the world and are often culturally prescribed remedies for a variety of maladies, and especially those related to mental health. What is the actual impact of these practices on health? Combining ethnographic observations and psychophysiological monitoring, we investigated outcomes of participation in one of the world’s most extreme rituals, involving bodily mutilation and prolonged suffering. Performance of this physically demanding ordeal had no detrimental effects on physiological health and was associated with subjective health improvements, and these improvements were greater for those who engaged in more intense forms of participation. Moreover, individuals who experienced health problems and/or were of low socioeconomic status sought more painful levels of engagement. We suggest two potential mechanisms for these effects: a bottom-up process triggered by neurological responses to pain and a top-down process related to increased social support and self-enhancement. These mechanisms may buffer stress-induced pressures and positively affect quality of life. Our results stress the importance of traditional cultural practices for coping with adversity, especially in contexts where psychiatric or other medical interventions are not widely available.
TL;DR: In this article, a 16-year-long ethnography of mass grave exhumations in contemporary Spain is presented, dealing with the tortuous, painful, much-disputed, and incomplete unmaking of a concrete and mass...
Abstract: This paper is based on a 16-year-long ethnography of mass grave exhumations in contemporary Spain and deals with the tortuous, painful, much-disputed, and incomplete unmaking of a concrete and mass...
TL;DR: It is suggested that participants—through the articulation of indigeneity as experiential and relational in nature and inherently distinct from genetic notions of ancestry—resist much of the challenge presented by GAT in usurping traditional forms of identity while at the same time recognizing the utility of the technology for tracing unknown ancestry and identifying health risks in the community.
Abstract: Genetic ancestry testing (GAT) provides a specific type of knowledge about ancestry not previously available to the general public, prompting questions about the conditions whereby genetic articulations of ancestry present opportunities to forge new identities and social ties but also new challenges to the maintenance of existing social structures and cultural identities. The opportunities and challenges posed by GAT are particularly significant for many indigenous communities—whose histories are shaped by traumatic interactions with colonial powers and Western science—and for whom new applications of GAT may undermine or usurp long-standing community values, systems of governance, and forms of relationality. We conducted 13 focus groups with 128 participants and six in-depth, semistructured interviews with a variety of community leaders examining the perceptions of GAT within indigenous communities across Oklahoma. Our interviews and focus groups suggest that participants—through the articulation of indigeneity as experiential and relational in nature and inherently distinct from genetic notions of ancestry—resist much of the challenge presented by GAT in usurping traditional forms of identity while at the same time recognizing the utility of the technology for tracing unknown ancestry and identifying health risks in the community.