Showing papers in "International Journal of Anthropology in 2003"

Anthropologies of Art

Abstract: This paper discusses how different conceptions of the idea of ‘anthropology’ entail different views of the ‘anthropology of art’. The prevailing notion of anthropology as the Western study of small-scale non-Western societies leads to a conception of the anthropology of art as dealing with the visual arts of these societies or cultures. Anthropology is sometimes also interpreted as referring to a particular approach that is applicable in examining sociocultural phenomena in whatever culture, including its art forms. Both conceptions of anthropology may be considered subsidiary to a more encompassing view of anthropology as the multidisciplinary study of humankind. Following this view, the anthropology of art becomes the comprehensive examination of art in human existence. As such it would coincide with World Art Studies, conceived as the global and multidisciplinary study of the visual arts.

An investigation of coping skills and quality of life among single sole supporting mothers

Abstract: Recent unprecedented changes to family structures have introduced an increasingly complex role for women in the context of family life and rearing of their children. Presently, single parent families headed by women are a significant demographic factor. This paper reports an investigation exploring the relationship between coping skills and quality of life among single sole supporting mother (N=73). The study identifies high levels of worry and inadequate financial resources as contributing factors towards a reduced perception of quality of life. It also identifies social support as a positive factor that can increase individual perception of quality of life. Although the study considers whether or not single sole supporting mothers aged 30 years and over are better able to cope with being both mother and financial provider than their younger counterparts, there was insufficient evidence to validate this view. Implications of the findings and research methodology for social work, counselling practice and further research are discussed.

Art in global context: An evolutionary/functionalist perspective for the 21st century

Abstract: Regarding the arts as something peopledo — as behaviors, rather than the residue or artifacts of behavior — makes possible a theoretical grounding about their nature and importance, an endeavor that current anthropology of art has largely abandoned. A reconsideration of the suspect and largely discarded terms “functionalism” and “evolutionism” is presented in light of current evolutionary thinking. It is suggested that a contemporary reformulation of these concepts, illustrated by the author's Darwinian or “adaptationist” perspective on art, supports aims and claims of current anthropology of art, and contributes new focus and direction to its endeavors.

High art as tourist art, tourist art as high art: Comparing the New Guinea Sculpture Garden at Stanford University and Sepik River tourist art

Abstract: This paper compares two contemporary aesthetic expressions: tourist art from the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea and the New Guinea Sculpture Garden at Stanford University. Both aesthetic expressions undermine the conventional categories that classify art. Sepik River tourist art is motivated not by the drive to lend individual, subjective experience a material expression but by monetary desire. The New Guinea Sculpture Garden was expressly created so that Sepik artisans could expand beyond the confines of village traditions and create unfettered aesthetic expressions. But seemingly inauthentic Tourist Art actually represents many of the ideals normally ascribed to Western masterpieces, or High Art. Conversely, the High Art of the Sculpture Garden in many respects resembles inauthentic reproductions and the tenacity of traditional forms. Both tourist art and the sculpture Garden, however, have one key quality in common: they rupture conventional artistic cattegories.

Body Composition Characteristics During Puberty in Girls and Boys from Eastern Austria

Abstract: Puberty represents the final stage of sexual differentiation when the individual acquires reproductive capacity. Puberty is not only characterized by maturation of sexual organs and the formation of oocytes and mature spermatozoa, but also by the development of secondary sexual dimorphism. In industrialized countries, the age of puberty has decreased steadily over the last 150 years in association with improved socio-economic conditions. However, the decreased onset of puberty, especially in females, is associated with problematic changes in behaviour such as early onset of sexual activity resulting in high-risk teenage pregnancies. In our study, we analysed the association between body composition (fat tissue and fat-free body mass, estimated by BIA analyses), height, body mass index and fat distribution and signs of puberty such as the timing of menarche in 228 girls and voice breaking and facial hair growth in 191 boys ageing between 10 and 15 years. In both sexes, signs of puberty were associated, highly significantly, with body composition parameters. Nevertheless, marked differences between the two sexes were observed: Female puberty was positively associated with weight status and the absolute and relative amount of body fat, while in males, puberty was positively related with a higher amount of fat-free body mass and a decreased fat mass. Male voice breaking was significantly associated with increased stature, body weight, waist and hip circumference, lean body mass and total body water. In contrast, voice breaking was significantly negatively associated with the fat percentage, the total fat mass and the waist-to-hip ratio. Female menarche was significantly positively associated with increased body weight, weight status, waist and hip circumference and also with increased absolute and relative fat mass, relative hip circumference, lean body mass and total body water. Only the waist-to-hip ratio was significantly negatively associated with the onset of menarche.

Growth attainments of well-off chandigarh children: A mixed longitudinal study

Abstract: Distance and velocity pattern of growth for body weight and height of 134 well-off Chandigarh boys aged 9–17 years, and 109 girls aged 9 to 16 years were studied following a mixedlongitudinal growth study design. For both body weight and height pattern-wise, Chandigarh boys showed close similarity with their American counterparts up to about 13 years of age, while girls did so till 12 years. Where after, Chandigarh children remained lighter and shorter than those of American origin and this differential may be explained on racial grounds rather than nutritional ones since all children included in this study remained free from dietary and other health related constraints. Marginally, higher height growth attainments noticed in Chandigarh children in contrast to their other Indian counterparts during initial years of adolescence shows that Chandigarh children are in process of expressing their genetic growth potential to its full which has not yet been fully achieved.

Conceptualizing World Art Studies. An Introduction

Abstract: This special issue aims to contribute to the conceptualization of World Art Studies. The first two articles offer evaluative views from art history, the third and fourth perspectives from anthropology, the fifth and sixth arguments for including neo-evolutionary and neurological studies in understanding world art as a universal human behavior.

A natural anthropology of art

Abstract: This article discusses the relevance of recent developments in neurobiology for the study of art worldwide. It is argued that both anthropologists and art historians can gain a better understanding of species-specific art and art practices over time and space by broadening their vision and approaches, building on the fundamental and exciting findings concerning art in neurobiology.

Pushing back frontiers: Towards a history of art in a global perspective

Abstract: Traditionally, art history is a discipline focusing on the developments of Western art and architecture. It is time, however, to broaden our perspective. The world is changing, art is changing, somutatis mutandis is art history. This does not happen on its own accord. Art history needs rewriting and art historians have to do it. We need to take a critical look at our premises and points of departure, and we need to change the art historical curricula at universities and art schools. At Leiden University, the Netherlands, the Department of Art History has opted for a new orientation and decided to study the history of art from a global perspective. This means that students will meet with three lines of approach to the visual art and material culture from regions other than the West. Firstly, they are introduced to the art and material culture of Asian, African, and Amerindian civilizations by colleagues from those fields, which Leiden is so fortunate to have. The Faculty of Arts at Leiden University, houses a wide variety of language and culture studies of the world. The second approach focuses on interactions, mutual influences, and interculturalization processes in art and culture. And the third addresses methodical-theoretical reflection on art history in a global perspective. The aim here is to formulate a theoretical framework for the study of art worldwide, thereby pursuing ‘comparative art history’. In order to achieve these perspectives, exchanging ideas and concepts with anthropologists can be very productive.

Children's growth and body mass in the north, sub-Arctic and Arctic

Abstract: There is very little data in world literature concerning the peculiarities of physical development of children in the high-latitude regions. In the meantime, such kinds of research is both of scientific and humanitarian interest. It is important to realize the specifics of growth of children living in the Arctic and sharp continental climate in view of the need to understand the biology of populations of extreme and sub-extreme regions. Such material would be of practical use for evaluation of fitness among children belonging to various ethnic groups of the north. The present paper is a sort of review of the data obtained by us in the course of research of growth and development of children in the northern regions of Russia undertaken since 1986. The whole bulk of material is too big and diverse to be presented in one single article. Part of the material is presented in the publication by A. Kozlov & G. Vershubsky (1999). Right now we shall talk only about age dynamics of body mass and mass-height index for children and teenagers from age 6 through 17.

Obesity and the clustering of cardiovascular disease risk factors in 14-year-old children

Abstract: Although overweight and obesity in childhood are related to risk factors of cardiovascular (CVD), most studies have examined these relationships separately. Internal cut-points were used to examine the relation of overweight (>85th and ≦90th percentile) and obesity (>90th percentile) to risk factor clustering in a sample of 2731 14-year-old children from Lower Silesia, Poland, examined cross-sectionally in 1996–97. All subjects went through anthropometric and blood pressure measurements, and fasting serum levels of lipid, lipoproteins and glucose were estimated. All risk factor (>90th percentile) prevalence increased greatly at higher levels of Body Mass Index (BMI) (kg/m2). Nearly every second obese child had elevated systolic blood pressure and every third child had elevated serum levels of triglycerides. Among overweight boys 24.7% were found to have at least one risk factor, whereas among obese boys every fourth had at least one risk factor. 25% overweight girls and nearly 18% obese girls showed at least one risk factor. Standardized odds ratios for associations between overweight and obesity, and risk factor clustering, indicated that obese boys were 4.8 times more likely to have an elevated level of at least two factors; the probability increasing to 16.1 in the case of three and more factors in comparison to their lean peers. Obese girls showed more then a 7 time higher probability of having three and more risk factors in relation to their lean peers.

An anthropometric comparative study of school children 1990–2000: A retrospective report

Abstract: The general ecological situation of the Silesian population was described as a global catastrophe. In the first stage (1990–1993) of our study, a population of 1810 Silesian children, 7–9 years of age, was compared to a group of 780 children of the same age living in the Beskidy Mts. The second stage (1998–2000) involved similar populations from the same regions. Appearance of incorrect body posture in mountain children is most often encountered when we compare subgroups of mountain children on the basis of their schools' level above the sea: i.e. the higher they live the less frequent the lesions are.

Thinking about artworlds in a global flow: Some major disparities in dealing with visual culture

Abstract: This article will argue that the differences between art history and the anthropology of art not just due to discipline-driven methodologies, though these are certainly a factor, but also occur because art historians and anthropologists are usually asking rather different questions, and finding the answers in quite different places within the culture. As a starting point I will demonstrate these differences of both approach and result, using two acclaimed studies by anthropologists of African expressive culture, one from the Congo (Zaire), the other from Sierra Leone. Although very different from each other, both downplay the importance of affect, and both assume aesthetic practice is transparent, i.e. that it directly reflects the meaning of life or human behavior. No art historian would make such a confident assumption.

Health behaviours of school children in northwestern Poland in 2000

Abstract: The 3568 final class primary school in northwestern Poland were investigated between January and June 2000.

Twelve years after: Child development as related to social, nutritional and cultural changes in the Czech Republic

Abstract: Modifications of social, political, cultural, nutritional and behavioral factors in the Czech Republic during the nineties were not homogeneous, and/or of the same rate and character; however, the effect on child population was manifested. In all former socialist countries social contrasts have increased along with the modifications of the availability of the foodstuffs and changes in food preferences and aversions. In this respect, new commercials and advertising play an important role. Modifications of spontaneous food selection have effects on the development of children, which is already apparent in early age. Body Mass Index of Czech children, which used to be higher than that of Western Europe, has not change since the end of the eighties, and is now nearly identical to them. Prevalence of serious obesity in children, its treatment and prevention has become a more urgent health problem. The level of physical fitness in Czech children on the average tends to decrease, and is more divergent and its lower level in normal hypo-kinetic youth contrasts with small groups of growing subjects involved in certain sport disciplines in which training starts early (e.g. gymnastics, tennis, figure skating etc.).