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A great question remains unresolved: What is man? The limits of the Eurocentric techno-scientific worldview, and its theories and models of human nature are examined. An intellectual paralysis prevents progress in the examination of this issue. This paper presents a worldview committed to a specifically human biology that transcends the shortcomings of neo-Darwinian theory. We propose a theory of the essential elements that would allow us to advance in the study of what makes us human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early days of anthropology as a discipline in the nineteenth century, evolutionism and diffusionism supplied anthropologists with 'global' visions. Anthropologists have always been involved with all-encompassing cosmopolitan notions such as humankind and culture. Many have thus endeavoured to explain the world as a whole, and how humans have developed in different historical moments. In the 1980s and 1990s, when the new label 'globalization' generated a field of scholarly preoccupations, anthropologists started to contribute to this growing body of literature. Their most valuable contributions are related to the tensions between local and global forces, and between forces of heterogeneity and homogeneity, as well as to the use of ethnography as a methodological tool. Anthropologists have borrowed notions from other related disciplines such as sociology, history, and geography. This paper situates the anthropological production on 'the global' within this diverse history of borrowings, internal disciplinary debates, and wider historical junctures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss the transformations undergone by the academic institution at global and European level, arguing that contemporary University is both neoliberal and eurocentric. First, we highlight the changes that have affected research practice, conceived as an increasingly "fast", individualist and depoliticized activity; the role (and the subjectivity) of the researcher, constantly pushed to accumulate academic merits and achieve "excellence" and "impact"; and the growing precaritization of both working and life conditions. Then, drawing on our experience of collaborative ethnography with "Stop Evictions Granada- 15M" (Spain), we propose possible "lines of flight" from this situation. Based on our fieldwork, we theorize collaborative ethnography as a way to decolonize research practices. We stress its potential to produce collective knowledge and promote (re)politicization processes and claim that collaboration can help overcome the (currently hegemonic) individualistic and depoliticizing logics in Academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue is meant to discuss the following issues: how can we collectively produce meaning? Whom should we research for/with? What should be the aims of our research? We are particularly interested in tackling the ways in which collaborative ethnographies are being constructed, from different perspectives, and how the multiple decisions affecting them are taken. With the aim of contextualizing the ethnographic experiences discussed in this volume, in this presentation we frame the historical emergence of collaborative ethnography and sum up the main contributions done by Anthropology. Then, we point out the main contents of the articles included in this issue, which is made up of six papers proceeding from ongoing researches, all of them collaborative, engaged and even activist in some cases, undertaken together with different actors in diverse scenarios. Our interlocutors have been Mexican women emigrated to New York, young Indigenous graduated at the Intercultural University of Veracruz, neighbors from marginalized neighborhoods in Lisbon, social movements and platforms for the right to housing in Spain. A great variety of contexts, perspectives and knowledge(s) emerge from this review: even though ethnography is central for all of them, it is accompanied by a plurality of knowledge(s) and practices -- ranging from radio series to ethnomusicology -- paving the way to diverse strategies of knowledge production -- story telling, collective workshops, conversations. A set of core-issues is emerging overall, and we hope it may contribute to the discussion on the tensions, dilemmas and potentialities of collaborative and engaged ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of alternative forms of representation has been a key issue within the social sciences for a long time, as a postmodern response to the limits of positivist science. However, its use in the field of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences is scarce, as in qualitative research. In this paper, we present an ethnography fiction story that attempts to recreate prison life, particularly that in the sports hall. It is based on data from a two‐year ethnographic study in a Spanish prison that emphasizes the meanings participants assigned to sport and physical activity. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to claim the use of ethnographic fiction as a form of representation in qualitative research. Second, to create a new story to give voice to participants and provoke reader's emotions by evoking participants' experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I suggest the possibility of exploring -- diachronic and synchronic -- the evolution of the notion of humanity in the kharisiri's representations. Usually, this figure steals the fat from its victims, making them sick and leading them -- in the overwhelming majority of cases -- to an almost certain death. Through an analysis of historical and contemporary Andean ethnographies, as well as data collected in the department of Puno between 2013 and 2016, I will try to trace a history of the transformations of the notion of humanity between the Aymaras of South Peru, using the figure of the kharisiri as an example of these modifications. Described in the past as incorporeal and ghostly, the successive representations show that this figure has assumed an increasingly tangible character, until becoming so concrete that it can potentially be the neighbour himself. The article aims to demonstrate how the notion of humanity between the Aymaras of the Andean region of Bolivia and Peru is relational and can be better understood in its articulation with the production of identities and alterities that, while changing, do not eliminate the boundaries between the «we» and the «others». [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in the field of health with the participation of social anthropology in Chile is scarce. On the other hand, studies in social sciences, whether funded by the state and / or universities, are usually not linked to concrete problems. In this context, this paper presents an experience of forming an interdisciplinary team that has tried to know the medical models of indigenous origin in the Chilean north and the strategies of attention to the diseases deployed by Aymara families. Its purpose is to address the problems faced by health and social sciences professionals, the constraints generated by specialized training to find solutions in specific situations, and the difficulties that arise for transdisciplinary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the Spanish translation of the article How Dogs Dream: Amazonian Natures and the Politics of Transspecies Engagement, published ten years ago by the anthropologist Eduardo Kohn in the journal American Ethnologist. As a result of the ethnography developed among the Quichua-speaking Runa in Ecuador's Upper Amazon, the work represented a turning point in the discipline by moving the anthropological analysis to a scope beyond human, breaking the perimeter of the object of ethnographic study by expanding the view on the interactions that humans maintain with other beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a proposal for the anthropological analysis of the cargo system, including both indigenous and non indigenous communities. From the understanding of the cargo system as an essentially heterogeneous institution, the paper suggest as main hypothesis that this institution is the origin of other mechanisms in the interaction of the members of the communities. First, the community institutions promote the participation of the largest number of people. Second, interactions' scenes are constantly created and recreated by the community members. Third, the roles' rotation, as a product of a tacit agreement into community members, is fundamental to assure social participation. The proposal is structured in three parts. First, the composition of the cargo system as a continuum which explains the differences between individual and collective behaviour. Second, the idea of community as a fundamental concept to understand the cargo system. As a conclusion, the idea of communitarian project becomes the common characteristic of all the communities -native or no native- in the Mesoamerican area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper collects a set of methodological aspects taken from the doctoral research of the author, which focuses on the construction of social identity in immigrant children at the Catalan coastal region of El Maresme (Spain). The author intends to contribute to the overcoming of methodological restrictions when conducting participant observation among children, which is strongly conditioned by an adult-centric power structure that mediates child-adult relationships in our culture, and considers children as unfinished, future-oriented versions of adults, or adults-in-the-making. Drawing on the author's own experiences this paper discusses some strategic practices that became extremely useful for building the rapport necessary to access these children's cultures and to understand children as an active and creative social group developing their own, and unique, systems of relations and meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attempt of this paper is to contribute to the ethnology about Gypsies, and social anthropology in general for present and future of studies on Gypsies. The article makes an analysis of the social and familiar organization of the Catalan Gypsies (Calós) of Mataro and presents some clues of research and conceptual orientations. The flexible functioning of bilateral kinship networks, the categorizations in kinship terminology and anthroponymy, the forms of individual and family nomination, and the alliance systems provide critical knowledge regarding genuine principles and categories with explanatory power of anthropology in general. Thereby, I try to clarify some productive ambiguities in the ethnography about the social organization of the Gypsies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opposition between the categories of shantytown and neighborhood has been crucial in the disciplinary analyses of popular habitat in Argentina. The urbanization of a shantytown in Great Buenos Aires enables us to refresh this discussion, setting the categories into motion. The ethnographic analysis of the category of neighborhood in the urbanization of Villa Torres (La Matanza) will help to explore how this shantytown is constructed as “emblem" for public policies, receiving various resources. In fact, this paper will analyze how the urbanization is legitimized through an image of the neighborhood, of the urbanization and of the people in charge of it as “gente del barrio" [people from the neighborhood] in order to show how local knowledge is implied in this public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to show the difficulties and methodological and conceptual challenges that contemporary migration pose to social sciences. In this sense, we present the case study of Zapotec migrants from Teotitlan del Valle, a community whose boundaries seem imprecise and deterritorialized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of occupational therapy, as a result of the processes of globalization, there is a growing interest in aspects relating to culture and its relationship to health and well-being. The development of occupational therapy in multicultural contexts proposes to go beyond the terminological questions to deepen and refine new guidelines related to the construction and consolidation of knowledge. Thus, this paper raises a critical analysis of the main assumptions of occupational therapy, referring to the nature of the occupation and the link between occupation, health and well-being, as well as the praxis derived from them. The professional culture of occupational therapy is analyzed through doubly reflexive ethnography, a heuristic three-dimensional model consisting of syntactic, pragmatic and semantic dimensions. This study of the occupational therapy aims to raise the development of the discipline that may be conscious and responsible for the relations of power that are implicit and explicit in the theory and practice of occupational therapy. The co-reflexion with the different actors involved is determinant in the development of an intercultural perspective of occupational therapy that may be therapeutically effective. The concept of etnoccupation may be proposed as alternative to the ethnocentric concept of occupation, proposing a vision of the occupation on economic, social and political aspects which aims at social transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on textile production in the Central Plateau of the Province of Chubut (Patagonia Argentina). This kind of textile production is similar to the one practiced by the ancient inhabitants of the Patagonia region, which is described in historic documents of the 16th Century. Using a combination of ethnographic and historical research methods, I study the main characteristics of current textile production in the Patagonia region, and how these are firmly rooted in the past. In this paper I discuss the technical and instrumental details of textile production, how it is transmitted through generations, and its importance for the economy of the families who practice it, both in the present and in the past. I also examine how identity is created in the process of textile production. I adopt a structuralist perspective on the analysis of textile production, and I depart from a primordialist and static concept of culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I consider how the category of fear is constructed in Buenos Aires-a category, as Hegel would say, that considers a unilateral recognition of the actors involved. It is interesting to examine whether the middle or upper class residents who "confine" themselves within walls or behind fences are the only ones who experience fear in our cities marked by social inequality, or on the contrary whether it is also possible to identify fear in the working class sectors. This last option would be in accordance with the contradictory policies of the local power, which I have called as "schizopolicies". Additionally, I am interested in analyzing how villages, settlements and illegal squatters are perceived by the rest of the society as "usinas". "Usina" refers to an emergence of elements that provoke feelings of fear, uncertainty and disorder. In this article, we will see how culture and nature are covertly constructed from certain political projects as an antithesis to fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a conceptual model of humour as a resource of power, by the use of its communicative elements. These elements may be modified or manipulated by those who exert social power. The model is used to compare some field examples in working environments and exposes how to understand humor in certain political contexts or as a source of cultural capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of a millenarist and messianic movement in the Chorti area of Northern Honduras together with the processes of native ethnogenesis provides an ethnographic framework to analyse and discuss the relationships among the social, religious, political and identity phenomena in the context of globalization in Honduras. The economical, social, educational, public health as well as land claims are worked out from Maya ethnic perspectives, thus acquiring a relevant symbolic value. The tensions, conflicts and contradictions of this native movement have spread to the religious level. In this context, the church of the Nuevo Siglo, of the Nuevo Katum has risen. This paper poses an interpretation of the religious phenomena as engines for change and transformation which is, moreover, much closer to the daily and personal experience of the social agents. The remake carried out by this movement in the economical, social and ideological level go beyond a simple prophetic interpretation of the world by supplying their Chorti followers with practical strategies of effective link with the world and of transformation of the intra and interethnic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]