Showing papers on "Biological anthropology published in 1992"

Biocultural synthesis in medical anthropology

Abstract: Medical anthropology has developed distinct and separate biological and cultural approaches to the study of health and disease in human populations. Within cultural anthropology a major focus has been the ethnomedical perspective that analyzes the process of defining disease and describing the social response to disease. In biological anthropology, an ecological perspective considers the interaction of the population, the insult and the environment at the core of the disease process. There has been limited success in integrating the cultural and biological perspective. Some cultural anthropologists claim that the ecological perspective relies on a biomedical model and therefore is not useful in studying non-Western societies. Others are critical of the adaptivist perspective that they believe fails to consider political economic factors that affect the disease process. The lack of a biocultural integration has hindered the systematic analysis of health and disease in contemporary traditional and non-Western groups. An ecological model that addresses these problems will provide a biocultural integration of the disease process.

The Collecting of Bones for Anthropological Narratives

Abstract: Responding to a question directed to him by Francois Barbe Marbois, secretary of the French ligation in Philadelphia, regarding Indian monuments, Thomas Jefferson wrote of his investigations in opening an Indian burial mound, "I conjectured that in this barrow might have been a thousand skeletons." Although Jefferson may have been the first to dig into a burial mound, both Americans and Europeans were preoccupied with the study of racial differences between American Indians and Caucasians. The search for answers led, especially in the nineteenth century, to the collection of Indian remains and the development of American archaeology and physical anthropology.' So any story about collecting Indian remains is also a narrative about these two sciences and the shifting, value-laden cultural context in which they developed. Historian of science Donna Haraway reminds us that physical anthropology is a political discourse about the body, with multiple representations; to a lesser extent, this description also may be attributed to archaeology. Accordingly, both physical anthropology and archaeology produce multiple narratives "adapted to engage in particular kinds of social struggles . . . .'I Both fields create "contentious constituencies'' where, at times, certain stories or plots are privileged, while others are no longer acceptable.* In recent writing, anthropologist Clifford Geertz holds similar views and acknowledges that anthropological stories-perhaps even text building itself-should be subjected to critical scrutiny. Ac-

Physical anthropology and Human Evolution in Denmark and other Scandinavian Countries

Abstract: In Scandinavia the development of physical anthropology and studies on human evolution seem to fall into several stages: I: A speculative, religious and philosophical stage, lasting until the 18th century. II: A stage in which classifications in Natural History are predominant, lasting from the middle of the 18th century until the 1830’s. III: An archaeological/craniological stage with an emphasis on «racial origin», lasting until late in the 19th century. This stage developed into viz. the osteological (VI) and the following (IV): IV: Evolutionary/«social Darwinian» thoughts transformed into eugenics by the 1930’s, when on the one hand it progressed into extreme racism and on the other developed into: V: Human genetics and genetic counselling based on the study of hereditary diseases. Parallel to stage IV, the osteological studies developed further into: VI: Traditional physical anthropology including descriptive palaeopathology. A branch of osteology developed into archaeozoological studies on Man’s environment. VII: The recent interdisciplinary and analytical studies of human biology of ancient populations.

The fitness of human sociobiology: the future utility of four concepts in four subdisciplines.

Abstract: Reported here are the results of a survey inquiring into the rate of acceptance of four sociobiological concepts in regard to their usefulness for future research. Included in the survey were members of four subdisciplines: animal behavior (biology), biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, and developmental psychology. Three types of institutions were included: universities, four‐ and five‐year colleges, and community colleges. A total of 1,631 responses are reported with the degree of acceptance varying from highest to lowest as follows: biology, biological anthropology, developmental psychology, and cultural anthropology. These variations are related to the central concepts of each subdiscipline.

Japan and human evolutionary research

Abstract: The trends in evolutionary research in Japan have largely changed through the introduction of new methodologies such as molecular genetics and multivariate statistics since the 1960’s. The development of ecology and primatology brought another new wave into fields of physical anthropology. This paper reviews briefly general trends in anthropological research now on-going in Japan. Microevolutionary studies of the Japanese and neighboring populations which have a long history in Japan will be reviewed in more detail.

The development of physical anthropology and human evolutionary studies in Western Europe since World War II and after

Abstract: Aim of the present paper is to trace a short excursus on the recent history of anthropological thought in western Europe in the last half century. The most important anthropological studies, researches and discussions developed by different schools, and their contributions to the progress of anthropology, are reported. A classification of disciplines related to anthropology is proposed.

Anthropological structure and culture adaptive strategies of the Neolithic Populations in Central Europe

Abstract: The present work is the outcome of both biological anthropology and prehistoric research. The theses of cultural ecology became the basis for research on biological and cultural changes of human groups. More than 80 human bones series from the Neolithic cultures of Central Europe have been used here. The role of economic processes (ie: the additional role of cultural system) within the general picture of a given system has been stressed here. As far as anthropological analysis is concerned, the estimation of biological population state and dynamics and the morphological characteristics including the skull morphology, have been used in the present work.

The Boasian Paradox, 1894-1915

Abstract: The Boasian Paradox, 1894-1915During the past four decades several historians and historically-minded social scientists have celebrated the monumental role that Franz Boas played in eviscerating the racist world-view that prevailed in the American social sciences during the years before 1930.(2) While it is true that Boas's antiracism is historically significant, it is also true that Boas made several concessions to staunch racists which muted his affirmation of African American equipotentiality. Although it would be a mistake to go so far as to argue -- as one of his most perceptive critics did in 1926(3) -- that Boas's position on race was static and placated all factions in the American social science community, it is clear that as late as 1915 his thought on the equipotentiality of African Americans was paradoxical. In short, it was marked by the contradiction between the backward-looking, rigid and conservative assumptions of physical anthropology and the forward-looking, left-liberal values of the field of cultural anthropology which Boas was developing.This essay seeks to substantiate two arguments: First, Boas emerged as an enlightened apostle of anti-racism only after he had virtually nullified the significance of anthropometric measurements in his assessment of the capabilities of African Americans. Nevertheless, as late as 1915, Boas's racial vision was restricted by severe limitations. His attempts to make inferences concerning the capabilities of African Americans led him to conclude that there might be slight differences in the direction of the hereditary aptitudes of blacks and whites. Second, I will demonstrate that Boas's analysis of prejudice and his particularistic, rational scientific approach to Africans led him to conclude that prejudiced behavior was the salient variable in American race relations. Indeed, Boas was forward-looking when he attacked the problems of prejudice and argued that individual merit, not race, should determine what class position individual blacks should attain in American society.Put simply, Boas -- albeit grudgingly -- attempted to extricate race relations theory from most of the racist assumptions of nineteenth-century social science. Once Boas had established that white prejudice, not the assumed innate racial traits, was the major obstacle to black progress, it became exceedingly difficult after 1930 in anthropology and sociology to rationalize the castelike system in the United States on the assumed cogential inferiority of people of African descent. In sum, flowing from the Boasian paradox was a prescriptive statement -- that is, in a just society African Americans should approximate, not assume, a distribution proportional to their size in the population in each socioeconomic class in the United States.The father of modern American anthropology was born into a liberal Jewish household in Minden, Westphalia, in 1858, a decade following the republican revolutions that swept Europe. It was clear by his birthdate that the revolutions with their emphasis on liberalism and the creation of democratic republican nations had failed. Nevertheless, Boas's parents, who were the associates of many prominent "forty-eighters," inculcated him with these ideals -- ideals to which Boas held firmly throughout his entire life.Boas attended several universities in his youth, receiving his doctorate at Kiel in physics in 1881. After an uneventful year in the German army and two years of studying and waiting for a teaching position in the increasingly conservative academic community in Bismarck's Germany, Boas went to Baffinland to study the Eskimos, attempting to understand the laws of human nature. Having decided to change disciplines, he sought better career opportunities, emigrating to the United States in 1886. Yet, he suffered tremendous setbacks in his attempts to secure employment in Anglo-Saxon dominated institutions. His post as geographical editor of Science was not funded in 1888; he was forced to resign a position as a docent in physical anthropology at Clark University in 1892; and he was dismissed from a temporary position as chief assistant of anthropology at the World's Columbia Exposition in Chicago in 1894. …

[Hermann Schaaffhausen (1816-1893) and the early history of the profession of anthropology].

Abstract: The most important and best-known merit of Hermann Schaaffhausen is the correct explanation of the Neanderthal man as a fossil human being. Considering his work in the field of paleoanthropology one can designate him as the founder of this anthropological discipline in Germany. Beyond that he was also very active in the "Deutsche Anthropologische Gesellschaft" of the 19th century and played an important role as an editor of the journal "Archiv fur Anthropologie". Thus, Hermann Schaaffhausen can be considered as one of the most important founders of Physical Anthropology in Germany. He belongs to those persons to whom German Anthropology owes its acknowledgement as an academic subject in German universities.

Sport Pedagogy: Anthropological Foundations

Abstract: Sport anthropology deals with the human being in sport. It is not considered a separate sport scientific discipline, but intends to produce fundamental statements about the human engaged in sport under the perspectives of sport, play, body, and movement. It is distinguished from the natural science and biological fields of physical anthropology, which serve more a reference point for sport medicine, and from social science-oriented ethnology and cultural anthropology. Sport anthropology has evolved from findings in modern anthropology, which originated in the early 1920s. Based on studies in behavioral biology (Portmann, Lorenz), medicine (Merleau-Ponty, Uexkull, Von Weizsacker), and ethnology (Benedikt, Mead), philosophical and sociologic considerations (Plessner, Gehlen) and reflections on phenomenology (Marcel, Sartre, Buytendijk), it has formulated a number of basic assumptions regarding the human being. According to them the human is an open-minded, acting and historical being. Despite all genetic and sociocultural circumstances, he is principally free to arrange his life, including play, sport, dance, and aesthetic activities. These basic assumptions have become the foundation for sport anthropology. Sport anthropology provides information for the practice of sport, sport pedagogy, and sport science in spite of its theoretical character and fundamental orientation.

Current Trends in Physical Anthropology

Abstract: The trends in physical anthropology in Japan have largely changed through the introduction of new methodologies such as molecular genetics and multivariate statistics in the 1960s. The development of ecology and primatology brought another new wave into the field of physical anthropology. This paper reviews briefly general trends in research in physical anthropology now on-going in Japan. Mi croevolutionary studies of the Japanese and neighboring populations which have a long history in Japan will be reviewed in more detail.