Showing papers in "Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1999"
1,693 citations
TL;DR: The authors discuss anthropological work done in places (in refugee camps, on television) or among populations (gays and lesbians, homeless people in the United States) that challenge the traditional boundaries of "the field" and suggest alternative methodologies appropriate for contemporary problems.
Abstract: Among the social sciences, anthropology relies most fundamentally on "fieldwork"--the long-term immersion in another way of life as the basis for knowledge. In an era when anthropologists are studying topics that resist geographical localization, this book initiates a long-overdue discussion of the political and epistemological implications of the disciplinary commitment to fieldwork. These innovative, stimulating essays--carefully chosen to form a coherent whole--interrogate the notion of "the field," showing how the concept is historically constructed and exploring the consequences of its dominance. The essays discuss anthropological work done in places (in refugee camps, on television) or among populations (gays and lesbians, homeless people in the United States) that challenge the traditional boundaries of "the field." The contributors suggest alternative methodologies appropriate for contemporary problems and ultimately propose a reformation of the discipline of anthropology.
707 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyse l'histoire et les consequences des efforts du gouvernement pour promouvoir une culture d'audits dans les universites.
Abstract: La profession d'anthropologue depend particulierement des universites ; or ces institutions, dans tout le monde industrialise, ont subi des re-ajustements majeurs pendant les deux dernieres decennies. L'introduction de mecanismes pour mesurer la performance educative, la qualite de la recherche et l'efficacite institutionnelle a ete centrale a ces reformes. Prenant l'education superieure en Grande Bretagne comme etude de cas, cet article analyse l'histoire et les consequences des efforts du gouvernement pour promouvoir une culture d'audits dans les universites. Il retrace l'origine de l'idee d'audit depuis ses associations originales avec la comptabilite financiere et son expansion dans d'autres domaines, particulierement l'education. Ces nouvelles technologies d'audit sont typiquement definies en termes de qualite, de responsabilite fiscale et d'octroi de droits, comme si elles etaient vraiment emancipatoires et douees du pouvoir de realisation. Nous critiquons ces presomptions en illustrant certains effets negatifs que les pratiques d'audit tels que les Exercices d'Evaluation de Recherche et les Evaluations de Qualite d'Enseignement ont eu sur l'education superieure. Nous suggerons que ces pratiques signalent une nouvelle forme d'intervention gouvernementale coercive et autoritaire. La conclusion de cet article considere les reponses que les anthropologues peuvent donner aux aspects les plus pernicieux de cet agenda inspire du Nouveau Liberalisme, par la pratique d'une reflection politique.
548 citations
TL;DR: A brief introduction to lithic analysis can be found in this article, where the authors discuss the basics of stone tool production and debitage attributes of a stone tool and its relationships with other artifacts.
Abstract: 1. A brief introduction to lithic analysis 2. Basics of stone tool production 3. Lithic raw materials 4. Getting started in lithic analysis: identification and classification 5. Flake debitage attributes 6. Approaches to debitage analysis 7. Approaches to stone tool analysis 8. Artifact diversity and site function 9. Lithic analysis and prehistoric sedentism 10. Concluding remarks.
546 citations
434 citations
TL;DR: In this article, Boas, Linton et al. defendu que les veterans anthropologues, loin d'etre coupables de toutes les abominations prononcees sur eux, avaient des idees sur la culture qui sont encore pertinentes pour comprendre ses formes and processus contemporains.
Abstract: Cette conference traite principalement de la signification continue de la culture en tant que concept anthropologique et de la signification de cette continuite pour les peuples que les anthropologues etudient. Une position est prise contre le rejet facile et fonctionnaliste des revendications de distinction culturelle par les populations (soit-disant l'invention de la tradition) et en defense de l'importance continue des distinctions qui sont faites (la puissance inventive de la tradition). Il est aussi defendu que les veterans anthropologues tels que Boas, Linton et autres, loin d'etre coupables de toutes les abominations prononcees sur eux, avaient des idees sur la culture qui sont encore pertinentes pour comprendre ses formes et processus contemporains. Mais a cette epoque, ils avaient un avantage sur la plupart de nous aujourd'hui : ils n'etaient pas paralyses par la peur de la structure.
397 citations
302 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, Devisch discusses the cosmology of life transmission in the Umeda Conception of the Self and its relation with the concept of self-love and self-criticism.
Abstract: Introduction: Phenomenology, Radical Empiricism, and Anthropological Critique, by Michael Jackson Honor and Shame, by Lila Abu-Lughod Struggling Along, by Robert Desjarlais The Cosmology of Life Transmission, by Ren Devisch Reflections on a Cut Finger: Taboo in the Umeda Conception of the Self, by Alfred Gell Space and Sociality in a Dayak Longhouse, by Christine Helliwell In Defiance of Destiny: The Management of Time at a Cretan Funeral, by Michael Herzfeld Suffering and Its Professional Transformation: Toward an Ethnography of Interpersonal Experience, by Arthur Kleinman and Joan Kleinman Hand Drumming: An Essay in Practical Knowledge, by Shawn Lindsay On Dying and Suffering in Iqwaye Existence, by Jadran Mimica If Not the Words: Shared Practical Activity and Friendship in Fieldwork, by Keith Ridler After the Field, by Jim Wafer
277 citations
268 citations
TL;DR: Gail Kligman's chilling ethnography of the state and of the politics of reproduction is the first in-depth examination of this extreme case of political intervention into the most intimate aspects of everyday life as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The political hypocrisy and personal horrors of one of the most repressive anti-abortion regimes in history came to the world's attention soon after the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Photographs of orphans with vacant eyes, sad faces, and wasted bodies circled the globe, as did alarming maternal mortality statistics and heart-breaking details of a devastating infant AIDS epidemic. Gail Kligman's chilling ethnography - of the state and of the politics of reproduction - is the first in-depth examination of this extreme case of political intervention into the most intimate aspects of everyday life. Ceausescu's reproductive policies, among which the banning of abortion was central, affected the physical and emotional well-being not only of individual men, women, children, and families but also of society as a whole. Sexuality, intimacy, and fertility control were fraught with fear, which permeated daily life and took a heavy moral toll as lying and dissimulation transformed both individuals and the state. This powerful study is based on moving interviews with women and physicians as well as on documentary and archival material. In addition to discussing the social implications and human costs of restrictive reproductive legislation, Kligman explores the means by which reproductive issues become embedded in national and international agendas. She concludes with a review of the lessons the rest of the world can learn from Romania's tragic experience.
261 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, Strathern discusses the embeddedness of property in Melanesian anthropology and the role of inheritance and industrialization in inheritance and inheritance inheritance in England and Japan.
Abstract: List of contributors Acknowledgements 1. Introduction: the embeddedness of property C. M. Hann 2. 'Sharing is not a form of exchange': an analysis of property-sharing in immediate-return hunter-gatherer societies James Woodburn 3. Property as a way of knowing on Evenki lands in Arctic Siberia David G. Anderson 4. Property and social relations in Melanesian anthropology James G. Carrier 5. The mystery of property: inheritance and industrialization in England and Japan Alan MacFarlane 6. An unsettled frontier: property, blood and US federal policy Paula L. Wagoner 7. Property values: ownership, legitimacy and land markets in Northern Cyprus Julie Scott 8. Property and power in Transylvania's decollectivization Katherine Verdery 9. Property rights, regulation and environmental protection: some Anglo-Romanian contrasts William Howarth 10. Dowry and the rights of women to property Jack Goody 11. Divisions of interest and languages of ownership Marilyn Strathern Notes Bibliography Index.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe a group of young homosexual men who meet to chat, flirt, listen to music, and smoke marijuana in a house in the poor quarter Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico City.
Abstract: Mema's house is in the poor quarter Nezahualcoyotl, a crowded urban space on the outskirts of Mexico City where people survive with the help of family, neighbours, and friends. This house is a sanctuary for a group of young homosexual men who meet to chat, flirt, listen to music, and smoke marijuana. Among the group are sex workers and transvestites with high heels, short skirts, heavy make-up, and voluminous hairstyles; and their partners, young, bisexual men, wearing T-shirts and worn jeans, short hair, and maybe a moustache. Mema, an AIDS educator and the leader of this gang of homosexual men, invited Annick Prieur, a European sociologist, to meet the community and conduct her fieldwork at his house. Prieur lived there for six months between 1988 and 1991, and she has kept in touch for more than eight years. As Prieur follows the transvestites in their daily activities - at their work as prostitutes or as hairdressers, at night having fun in the streets and in discos, on visits with their families and even in prisons, a story unfolds of love, violence, and deceit. Prieur analyzes the complicated relations between the effeminate homosexuals, most of them transvestites, and their partners, the masculine-looking bisexual men, asking why these particular gender constructions exist in the Mexican working classes, and how they can be so widespread in a male-dominated society, the very society from which the term \"machismo\" stems. Weaving empirical research with theory, Prieur presents new analytical angles on several concepts: family, class, domination, the role of the body, and the production of differences among men.
TL;DR: This article examined how sexual practice and sexual meanings have been constructed across cultural borders in Thailand, the Philippines, Burma/Myanmar, Japan, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Polynesian islands.
Abstract: This is an examination of erotic encounters between European, Asian and Pacific people. These essays explore how sexual practice and sexual meanings have been constructed across cultural borders in Thailand, the Philippines, Burma/Myanmar, Japan, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Polynesian islands. Regarding sexuality as embedded in a complex social and political world structured and saturated by gender, race and class relations, these scholars challenge the categories with which sex and gender have been named and studied. They examine these sites of desire through specific historic and cultural circumstances, from the first explorations of Europeans, through colonial power, to the contemporary issues of sexual tourism, prostitution and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The book also suggests that the history of sexuality in the West was shaped by myths of the legendary Orient and the exotic "other".
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored the extent and significance of Boas' roots in the German intellectual tradition and late-19th century German anthropology, and showed that Boas came to the United States from Germany in 1886.
Abstract: Franz Boas, the founding figure of anthropology in America, came to the United States from Germany in 1886. This volume in the History of Anthropology series explores the extent and significance of Boas' roots in the German intellectual tradition and late-19th century German anthropology.
TL;DR: Stimpson as mentioned in this paper described the three Bears, The Great Goddess, and the American Temperament: Anthropology without anthropologists. But they did not consider the role of women in these plays.
Abstract: List of Illustrations Foreword by Catharine R. Stimpson Acknowledgments Prologue: Hidden in Plain Sight Ch. 1: Anthropology and American Morality Plays Ch. 2: The Three Bears, The Great Goddess, and the American Temperament: Anthropology without Anthropologists Ch. 3: Wild Women Don't Have the Blues: The American Pragmatics of the Primitive Woman Ch. 4: The Dusky Maiden and the Postwar American Imperium Ch. 5: Every Woman Her Own Anthropologist: Gender, Revanchism, and the Fissioning Public Sphere Ch. 6: Patterns of Culture Wars: Place, Modernity, and the Contemporary Political Economy of Difference Notes Index
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyse les mecanismes de prelevement et de distribution des aumones dans plusieurs societes musulmanes contemporaines, and plus particulierement en Jordanie and en Palestine (West Bank).
Abstract: Cet article s'inscrivant dans un projet de recherche dont l'objectif est d'etudier la charite dans une perspective comparative, l'A. considere le precepte coranique qui enjoint de faire l'aumone (zakât). Ce precepte joue un role important dans le discours islamique caracterisant la fin du vingtieme siecle, parfois en opposition directe avec les politiques gouvernementales des pays musulmans. Zakât, qui se rattache de pres a la priere, est cense purifier ceux qui pratiquent l'aumone et les biens dont ils se separent dans des actes charitables. L'A. analyse les mecanismes de prelevement et de distribution des aumones dans plusieurs societes musulmanes contemporaines, et plus particulierement en Jordanie et en Palestine (West Bank). Apres avoir montre que zakât se rattache a l'enseignement religieux, il s'interroge sur la specificite musulmane de cette forme traditionnelle du don charitable. Il en vient a conclure que si toute forme de charite s'inscrit dans un contexte ideologique dont la fonction est en partie de justifier les interets particuliers des bienfaiteurs, elle devient neanmoins la source d'imperatifs moraux. La tension existant entre ces deux aspects est decrite et analysee au sein des organisations non-gouvernementales jordaniennes.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the lives of three significant figures of the late nineteenth century -a tribal khan, a Muslim saint, and a prince who became king of the newly created state.
Abstract: Much of the political turmoil that has occurred in Afghanistan since the Marxist revolution of 1978 has been attributed to the dispute between Soviet-aligned Marxists and the religious extremists inspired by Egyptian and Pakistani brands of 'fundamentalist' Islam. In a significant departure from this view, David B. Edwards contends that - though Marxism and radical Islam have undoubtedly played a significant role in the conflict - Afghanistan's troubles derive less from foreign forces and the ideological divisions between groups than they do from the moral incoherence of Afghanistan itself. Seeking the historical and cultural roots of the conflict, Edwards examines the lives of three significant figures of the late nineteenth century - a tribal khan, a Muslim saint, and a prince who became king of the newly created state. He explores the ambiguities and contradictions of these lives and the stories that surround them, arguing that conflicting values within an artificially-created state are at the root of Afghanistan's current instability. Building on this foundation, Edwards examines conflicting narratives of a tribal uprising against the British Raj that broke out in the summer of 1897. Through an analysis of both colonial and native accounts, Edwards investigates the saint's role in this conflict, his relationship to the Afghan state and the tribal groups that followed him, and the larger issue of how Islam traditionally functions as an encompassing framework of political association in frontier society.
TL;DR: The symptoms of middle age are often defined in terms of lower back pain, mortgages, and an aversion to loud late-night activities as discussed by the authors, which has become an accepted reality to European Americans, and has spread to non-western capitals such as Tokyo and New Delhi.
Abstract: The symptoms of middle age are often defined in terms of lower back pain, mortgages, and an aversion to loud late-night activities. This construction of "midlife", most often rendered in chronological, biological and medical terms, has become an accepted reality to European Americans, and has spread to non-Western capitals such as Tokyo and New Delhi. This study explores the significance of this pervasive cultural representation compared to other cultures where "middle age" does not exist. It examines topics ranging from the Western ideology of "midlife decline", to cultural representations of mature adulthood which ignore middle age. It also looks at the myths surrounding the life span from 30 to 70.
TL;DR: Maurer as mentioned in this paper traces how the British Virgin Islands (BVI) came to be defined, legally and popularly, as a territorial entity, and how BVIslanders came to define themselves as a ''people sharing a ''culture''.
Abstract: If, as many cultural critics have asserted, the world is becoming more like the Caribbean, then the task of charting what we mean by \"the Caribbean\" is an urgent one. This careful study of the British Virgin Islands (BVI) calls attention to the ways in which ideas about nature and choice have come to justify a social order in which half the population is deemed not to belong and is denied legal rights.The BVI, one of Britain's few remaining colonial possessions, has become an important destination point for Caribbean migrants and a center for international financial services. Bill Maurer traces how the BVI came to be defined, legally and popularly, as a territorial entity, and how BVIslanders came to define themselves as a \"people\" sharing a \"culture.\" He argues that law has been central to the construction of ethnic, racial, and cultural differences that create boundaries between peoples and places and that facilitate the exploitation of labor, the exclusion of people from the political process, and the globalization of capital.\"Recharting the Caribbean\" will be important reading for anthropologist, legal scholars, and historians of colonial discourse.Bill Maurer is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of California at Irvine.
TL;DR: In this article, a relecture centree sur le discours and les diverses pratiques religieuses conjointes au sein de societes particulieres is presented.
Abstract: Je considere ici l'oeuvre classique de E.B. Tylor intitulee La Culture Primitive, et plus particulierement les aspects de cette oeuvre qui traitent de l'animisme. Je discute quelques-uns des ouvrages critiques sur l'animisme et demontre que la plupart de ces critiques ont en fait mal interprete les intentions originales de Tylor concernant sa 'theorie des origines' et le sens qu'il donne a la notion d''esprit', entre autres. Ensuite, tournant mon attention sur la theorie du mythe avancee par Tylor et la demarche de son raisonnement sur l'animisme, j'offre une re-lecture centree sur le discours et les diverses pratiques religieuses conjointes au sein de societes particulieres. En conclusion, j'indique la pertinence que peut avoir cette re-lecture de Tylor pour les etudes contemporaines sur l'animisme et les religions modernes.