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BookDOI

Biosocial becomings : integrating social and biological anthropology

01 Jun 2013-
TL;DR: Palsson et al. as mentioned in this paper describe a collective brain at work: one week in the working life of an NGO-team in urban Marocco, and the habits of water: marginality and the sacralization of non-humans in North-Eastern Ghana.
Abstract: Preface 1. Prospect Tim Ingold 2. Ensembles of biosocial relations Gisli Palsson 3. Blurring the biological and social in human becomings Agustin Fuentes 4. Life-in-the-making: epigenesis, biocultural environments and human becomings Eugenia Ramirez-Goicoechea 5. Thalassemic lives as stories of becoming: mediated biologies and genetic (un)certainties Aglaia Chatjouli 6. Shedding our selves: perspectivism, the bounded subject and the nature-culture divide Noa Vaisman 7. Reflections on a collective brain at work: one week in the working life of an NGO-team in urban Marocco Barbara Elisabeth Gotsch 8. The habits of water: marginality and the sacralization of non-humans in North-Eastern Ghana Gaetano Mangiameli 9. 'Bringing wood to life': lines, flows and materials in a Swazi sawmill Vito Laterza, Bob Forrester and Patience Mususa 10. Humanity and life as the perpetual maintenance of specific efforts: a reappraisal of animism Istvan Praet 11. Ravelling/unravelling: being-in-the-world and falling-out-of-the-world Hayder Al-Mohammad 12. Retrospect Gisli Palsson Notes on the contributors References Index.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors argue that to attribute "ethnographicness" to encounters with those among whom we carry on our research, or more generally to fieldwork, is to undermine both the ontological commitment and the educational purpose of anthropology as a discipline, and of its principal way of working.
Abstract: Ethnography has become a term so overused, both in anthropology and in contingent disciplines, that it has lost much of its meaning. I argue that to attribute “ethnographicness” to encounters with those among whom we carry on our research, or more generally to fieldwork, is to undermine both the ontological commitment and the educational purpose of anthropology as a discipline, and of its principal way of working—namely participant observation. It is also to reproduce a pernicious distinction between those with whom we study and learn, respectively within and beyond the academy. Anthropology’s obsession with ethnography, more than anything else, is curtailing its public voice. The way to regain it is through reasserting the value of anthropology as a forward-moving discipline dedicated to healing the rupture between imagination and real life.

393 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is argued that the postgenomic language of extended epigenetic inheritance and blurring of the nature/nurture boundaries will be as provocative for neo-Darwinism as it is for the social sciences as the authors have known them.
Abstract: In this paper I first offer a systematic outline of a series of conceptual novelties in the life-sciences that have favoured, over the last three decades, the emergence of a more social view of bio...

149 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The underlying rationale for some anthropological lack of engagement with neo-Darwinian approaches is illustrated and a heuristic framework as a set of shared assumptions about human systems is proposed to help frame a sincerely anthropological and emphatically evolutionary approach to the human experience.
Abstract: Seeing bodies and evolutionary histories as quantifiable features that can be measured separately from the human cultural experience is an erroneous approach. Seeing cultural perceptions and the human experience as disentangled from biological form and function and evolutionary history is equally misguided. An integrative anthropology moves past dichotomous perspectives and seeks to entangle the “inside” and “outside,” methodologically and theoretically, to move beyond isolationist trends in understanding the human. In this paper I illustrate the underlying rationale for some anthropological lack of engagement with neo-Darwinian approaches and review contemporary evolutionary theory discussing how, in combination with a dynamic approach to human culture, it can facilitate integration in anthropology. Finally, I offer an overview of the human niche concept and propose a heuristic framework as a set of shared assumptions about human systems to help frame a sincerely anthropological and emphatically evolutio...

127 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The scope of contemporary bioarchaeological studies that illuminate the importance of environmental and behavioral influence on bone morphology is demonstrated, specifically highlighting key recent studies that have used life course approaches to understand the influence of growth, stress, diet, activity, and aging on the skeleton.
Abstract: The duality of the skeleton as both a biological and cultural entity has formed the theoretical basis of bioarchaeology. In recent years bioarchaeological studies have stretched the early biocultural concept with the adoption of life course approaches in their study design and analyses, making a significant contribution to how we think about the role of postnatal plasticity. Life course theory is a conceptual framework used in several scientific fields of biology and the social sciences. Studies that emphasize life course approaches in the examination of bone morphology in the past are united in their interrogation of human life as a result of interrelated and cumulative events over not only the timeframe of individuals, but also over generations at the community level. This article provides an overview of the theoretical constructs that utilize the life course concept, and a discussion of the different ways these theories have been applied to thinking about trajectories of bone morphology in the past, specifically highlighting key recent studies that have used life course approaches to understand the influence of growth, stress, diet, activity, and aging on the skeleton. The goal of this article is to demonstrate the scope of contemporary bioarchaeological studies that illuminate the importance of environmental and behavioral influence on bone morphology. Understanding how trajectories of bone growth and morphology can be altered and shaped over the life course is critical not only for bioarchaeologists, but also researchers studying bone morphology in living nonhuman primates and fossil primate skeletons.

126 citations

Book
19 Jan 2017
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that a solidarity-based perspective can help us to find new ways to address pressing problems and explore how solidarity can make a difference in how we frame problems, and in the policy solutions that we can offer.
Abstract: In times of global economic and political crises, the notion of solidarity is gaining new currency. This book argues that a solidarity-based perspective can help us to find new ways to address pressing problems. Exemplified by three case studies from the field of biomedicine: databases for health and disease research, personalised healthcare, and organ donation, it explores how solidarity can make a difference in how we frame problems, and in the policy solutions that we can offer.

124 citations