Showing papers in "Journal of Anthropological Research in 2007"
TL;DR: The debate over the cause of North American Pleistocene extinctions may be further from resolution than it has ever been in its 200-year history and is certainly more heated than ever before.
Abstract: The debate over the cause of North American Pleistocene extinctions may be further from resolution than it has ever been in its 200-year history and is certainly more heated than it has ever been before. Here, I suggest that the reason for this may lie in the fact that paleontologists have not heeded one of the key biogeographic concepts that they themselves helped to establish: that histories of assemblages of species can be understood only be deciphering the history of each individual species within that assemblage. This failure seems to result from assumptions first made about the nature of the North American extinctions during the 1960s.
118 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors demonstrate the diverse paths to immigrant self-employment across a range of immigrant populations through an analysis of interview data and biographies of entrepreneurship, and they address the utilization of ethnic and occupational niches for establishing businesses and the resources that immigrant entrepreneurs draw upon as they move into self employment.
Abstract: Through an analysis of interview data and biographies of entrepreneurship, we demonstrate in this article the diverse paths to immigrant self-employment across a range of immigrant populations. We address the utilization of ethnic and occupational niches for establishing businesses and the resources that immigrant entrepreneurs draw upon as they move into self-employment. By drawing on the concept of biographical embeddedness and by emphasizing the agency of individual actors and their motivational and experiential resources, this article moves the analysis of immigrant entrepreneurs beyond the "disadvantage hypothesis" that has characterized much of the previous work on this subject.
52 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined evidence for behavioral differences between Middle (MP) and Upper Paleolithic (UP) Homo sapiens in the East Mediterranean Levant and found that Middle vs. Upper Pareolithic behavioral differences are clearly germane to research on the origins of uniquely derived human behavior.
Abstract: Archaeological, paleontological, and genetic evidence indicate that Homo sapiens originated in Africa around 200,000-150,000 years ago (200-150 kya). Behavioral differences between earlier and later Homo sapiens populations are clearly germane to research on the origins of uniquely derived (i.e., "modern") human behavior. This paper examines evidence for behavioral differences between Middle (MP) and Upper Paleolithic (UP) Homo sapiens in the East Mediterranean Levant. Levantine archaeological assemblages associated with Homo sapiens between 130 and 75 kya and again between 45 and 25 kya show contrasts in settlement, subsistence, technology, and social organization. Recent explanations for these differences include technological-social evolution, neurogenetic mutation, population growth, and interspecific competition. These hypotheses are each critically examined. None accounts for the particular timing of the MP-UP transition, ca. 45 kya. A new hypothesis explains Middle vs. Upper Paleolithic behavioral ...
42 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors presented measures of personal income and of the monetary value of social capital in a highly autarkic society of swidden farmers, hunters, and gatherers in the Bolivian Amazon.
Abstract: Economists equate economic self-sufficiency (autarky) with low income and stress the economic role of social capital as a form of self-insurance in poor rural areas of developing nations. In contrast, anthropologists speak of the "original affluence" of foragers and see social capital as serving economic and social roles. Economists do not work with highly autarkic peoples such as part- or full-time foragers, and cultural anthropologists have not provided formal, comprehensive estimates of income or of the monetary value of social capital in highly autarkic societies. Drawing on data from 611 adults of 244 households in 13 villages of a highly autarkic society of swidden farmers, hunters, and gatherers in the Bolivian Amazon, the Tsimane', we present measures of personal income and of the monetary value of social capital. Daily personal income reaches US $2.35-3.52, which is above the international poverty line of US $1-2, on a par with the income in the rest of Bolivia, and three times higher than the in...
39 citations
TL;DR: In this article, envy plays a central role in the social interactions of a Teenek community in northeastern Mexico, as it influences the daily behavior of its members and inhibits the accumulation of material excess.
Abstract: Fear of envy plays a central role in the social interactions of a Teenek community in northeastern Mexico, as it influences the daily behavior of its members and inhibits the accumulation of material excess. In this paper, in addition to the socioeconomic explanation of this phenomenon, the symbolic approach to envy provides insights into certain aspects of the group's sociality because the ramification of envy serves to demarcate the Teenek community. Thus, envy could also prove to be a cognitive means of defining an ethnic group.
30 citations
26 citations
16 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the role of Spondylus craft production in the formation of a localized identity in coastal Ecuador has been investigated using an approach that combines both archaeological and ethnographic information.
Abstract: Archaeologists have long noted the importance of Spondylus in the archaeological record of Ecuador. However, no one has attempted to understand contemporary Spondylus use and its relation to the precolumbian past. This research attempts to understand contemporary Spondylus use in coastal Ecuador by focusing on issues of craft production and identity formation. Using an approach that combines both archaeological and ethnographic information, this paper attempts to understand the role of Spondylus craft production in the formation of a localized identity.
15 citations
TL;DR: The chimpanzee leads the way in cultural primatology, both observationally in nature and experimentally in captivity, and new data on elementary technology employed in extractive foraging show that prevailing ideas of environmental versus cultural determinism are simplistic.
Abstract: Cultural primatology has matured in recent years from natural history to ethnography to ethnology, but new techniques of analysis and interpretation are needed to deal with new findings. Studies of the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) lead the way, both observationally in nature and experimentally in captivity. New data on elementary technology employed in extractive foraging (e.g., ant dipping) show that prevailing ideas of environmental versus cultural determinism are simplistic. Cultural primatology yields both behavioral diversity and universals. As with humans, cultural change can be maladaptive (e.g., pestle pounding, crop raiding) as well as adaptive. The future of cultural primatology depends on the ongoing survival of wild populations of primates.
15 citations
TL;DR: This article showed that red-painted vessels were made in one locality along the Gila River, thereby supporting the idea that a reliable and efficient mechanism for commodity exchange was extant at that time, possibly in the form of periodic marketplaces associated with ritual ballgames.
Abstract: Recent advancements in determining the production sources of prehistoric Hohokam pottery from the Phoenix basin, Arizona, have shown that ceramic manufacture was highly concentrated during the Sedentary period (ca. AD 950-1100). For example, nearly all of the bowls and small jars consumed in the lower Salt River valley were decorated red-on-buff pots imported from the middle Gila River valley to the south. An analysis of the sand temper in the buff wares showed that many, if not most, of these red-painted vessels were made in one locality along the Gila River, thereby supporting the idea that a reliable and efficient mechanism for commodity exchange was extant at that time, possibly in the form of periodic marketplaces associated with ritual ballgames. The pottery results imply a level of dependence on ballgame-related transactions that had not been recognized before, indicating their central importance to the Hohokam Sedentary period economy.
15 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider an atypical example of masculine identity by describing intimate interpersonal relationships between Australian commercial shark boat skippers and their young deckhands and consider this bond in the context of the Australian ethos of masculinity, in which displays of "individuality" are key.
Abstract: Anthropological discussion of individuality, as a component of masculinity, has tended to focus on either the performance and championing of autonomy in the West (e.g., Kapferer) or the manner in which people in non-Western contexts become explicitly manifest through relationships with others (e.g., Strathern). In this paper, I consider an atypical example of masculine identity by describing intimate interpersonal relationships between Australian commercial shark boat skippers and their young deckhands. As in other Western fisheries (e.g., Icelandic), economic success and physical safety are promoted through synergism among fishers. In the Australian case, however, the degree of corporeal cooperation is so extreme that deckhands resemble living prostheses of their skipper, embodying their peripheral socio-productive status. I consider this bond in the context of the Australian ethos of masculinity, in which displays of "individuality" are key. However, for young deckhands, their prosthetic role can compromise their passage into manhood.
TL;DR: In less than two decades, female ceramic artisans of Santa Maria Atzompa, Oaxaca, Mexico (Atzompenas), have become integral political and economic actors in their community as a result of a dialectic that has allowed a redefinition of motherhood and a renegotiation of traditional maternal responsibility to family and community as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In less than two decades, female ceramic artisans of Santa Maria Atzompa, Oaxaca, Mexico (Atzompenas), have become integral political and economic actors in their community as a result of a dialectic that has allowed a redefinition of motherhood and a renegotiation of traditional maternal responsibility to family and community. They have been able to accomplish this by invoking a responsibility toward reproduction that moves beyond the biological and places emphasis on the social and economic as their production has moved from household craft to the work of global artisans. In recent years, a threat to their autonomy and power has developed from the exceedingly high levels of lead in the green glaze that dominates their ceramic production. This threat is currently being mediated through a discourse rooted in a contradictory political and moral economy that views the obtained power and status of women as having more value than the current health and, in many cases, the lives of their children and families.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors assess the concept of serial migration by focusing on four layers of identity: the community, the dual division between locals and non-locals, lineages, and households.
Abstract: In the southwestern United States, Pueblo migration traditions hold the key to understanding the identity of migrants in what Bernardini (2005) calls "serial migrations." Using data from Grasshopper Pueblo, this study assesses the concept of serial migration by focusing on four layers of identity: the community, the dual division between locals and non-locals, lineages, and households. These four layers of identity are explored by focusing on the building behaviors of these various groups as they settled into the Grasshopper community in the early part of the fourteenth century AD. This paper demonstrates that the concept of serial migration, combined with a focus on the architectural correlates of social group identity, helps to explain the formation of large aggregated communities in late Southwest prehistory.
TL;DR: The authors present ethnographic documentations of Israeli Palestinian women without men who seek out married men and use the notion of polygyny to make moral sense of their non-normative heterosexual relationships.
Abstract: This paper presents ethnographic documentations of Israeli Palestinian "women without men," who seek out married men and use the notion of polygyny to make moral sense of their non-normative heterosexual relationships. The women's presentations of self are construed against popular attitudes to polygyny as practically negligible and morally anachronistic. Following a political-economic approach to gender as constructed, historical, and embedded in multiple structures of power, the cases are interpreted as providing a lens into the structural contradictions that inform the lives of Palestinians inside Israel. It is argued that the women's uses of an explicitly traditional and patriarchal script of gender morality to legitimize lifestyles that are easily stigmatized as immoral have a quality of social poetics. These day-to-day subversions of norms expose the strategic nature of "big" power structures of state, nation, religion, and community.
TL;DR: Examining in instant messaging, a particular mode of computer-mediated communication, how individuals with different kinds of knowledge interpret online interaction finds that concepts in anthropological usage and those used in other disciplines help to address that gap.
Abstract: ONLINE AND OFFLINE, PEOPLE INTERPRET BEHAVIOR BY PLACING IT IN CONTEXT. However, different people contextualize the same behavior in different ways, thereby attributing different meaning to it. This is especially evident in the ways in which people attribute meaning in instant messaging (IM), a particular form of computer mediated communication (CMC). In this paper I examine contexts that shape the interpretation of such messages, focusing on the kinds or levels ofknowledge shared (or not shared) by correspondents. In doing so, I want to draw anthropological attention to this new mode of communication (since anthropologists have paid little attention to it) and to complement the ways in which other researchers approach the study of computer-mediated communication.
TL;DR: In this article, the UAW local studied as a kind of jural family arising out of a specific, path-dependent history, a family which brings with it rights and obligations, but also a social imagination of those rights, to the shop floor.
Abstract: Familism, as used by Don Kalb, is a process whereby companies shape families to reproduce a flexible labor force. Familism, I argue, is inseparable from how we imagine the family: the family at work and the work of the family. This paper looks at how familial relatedness, namely union siblingship, played a role in conflict over a two-tier wage system being implemented in a Detroit-area auto plant. Engaging with recent ideas about kinship, social and psychological anthropology, and theories of the imaginary, I treat the UAW local studied as a kind of jural family arising out of a specific, path-dependent history--a family which brings with it rights and obligations, but also a social imagination of those rights and obligations, to the shop floor.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose a network model that focuses on social relations and examine aspects of the social organization of Belen, a rural community in Tlaxcala, Mexico and demonstrate how the social networks of compadrazgo (ritual kinship) and marriage can be reconstructed back into the seventeenth century.
Abstract: Wolf's dichotomy between open and closed corporate communities has become axiomatic for the study of social organization in rural communities in Mesoamerica. In this paper I argue that this dichotomy is of limited use for understanding the vital dynamics behind the evolution of social groups typically classified by anthropologists as peasants. To overcome the conceptual limitation of Wolf's original classification I propose a network model that focuses on social relations. This approach can more adequately capture the variability and complexity we observe in everyday practice in rural communities in past and contemporary times. The paper examines aspects of the social organization of Belen, a rural community in Tlaxcala, Mexico. Using data from parish registers and two ethnographic surveys, I demonstrate how the social networks of compadrazgo (ritual kinship) and marriage can be reconstructed back into the seventeenth century. Since the beginning of the eighteenth century Belenos have formed most of their...