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This paper explores how the Japanese inhabitants of a densely populated urban neighbourhood negotiate proximity and distance in their social relationships. Based on ethnography of a community salon in the city of Osaka, the paper explores how topics and styles of conversation, modes of interaction between salon‐goers, are constituted with respect to a pervasive concern for manners and for the emotions of others. Focusing on the importance of ‘form’ and its relevance for morality, I argue that formality serves as an enabling device for creating new relationships among older Japanese, preserving sociality while protecting oneself and others from the burdens of emotion and excessive proximity. By focusing on the ethics of ‘doing things properly’ (chanto suru) I explore the relationship of manners and care. By taking manners into account, I turn my attention in this article to those relationships crafted and maintained amongst those to whom one is not very close, and with whom one may not wish to become intimate. In this way I explore the question of how to treat well those towards whom one wishes to maintain distance: in other words, how to care for those who are not one's friends? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction places the papers of this Special Issue within the context of a brief overview of previous literature on the subject of masculinities in the Pacific, and especially of Melanesia. The particular focus on Melanesia is discussed in terms of the colloquia from which the papers originated and is also linked to a discussion of the regionalism of applied social science in Australia. In acknowledging the current link between academic research into gender and the aid and development industries, this introduction critically discusses how understandings of Pacific men and masculinities have presented a 'problem' to both of these areas. Indeed, while assessing particular instances in the changing situation of Pacific men's lives, the papers in this Issue also provide a timely critique of the shared dilemmas of anthropology and development within the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper replies to Porpora, King, and Varela's responses to my earlier paper “For Emergence”, focussing on the relationship between the concepts of social structure and social relations. It recognises the importance of identifying the mechanisms responsible whenever we make claims for the emergence of causal powers, and discusses the mechanism underlying one case of social structure: normative institutions. It also shows how critical realism reconciles the claims that both social structures and human individuals have emergent causal powers that combine to produce actual social events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a conceptual investigation into the notion of a network as a form of social organization for the production of excellent research. This metaphor has been particularly attractive to social scientists and managers of cooperative research, because it seems to connote what is organic, flexible and libratory in communication and in the philosophy of language. The paper criticizes this preconception. In particular, it shows that, while Wittgenstein's philosophy may indeed encapsulate the virtues that partisans for the networking trope admire, they are mistaken in thinking that they can claim his authority for the use they make of this figure. The thought that they can do so results from inattention to features of the development of his ideas about language, particularly his fervent anti-scientism. I conclude that an over-stretched use of the metaphor obscures its constraining signification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has benefited greatly from the time that I have recently spent working on the Committee of Section H of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. I am particularly grateful to David Shankland and Malcolm Smith, both of whom have served as Recorders for Section H, for generously sharing their knowledge and reminiscences of the Section with me. The paper further benefited from comments received at the recent 2004 Festival of Science in Exeter at which I presented it in a session entitled‘Anthropology after Darwin: The role of the BA’. I also acknowledge the helpful comments of three anonymous reviewers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the origins of the functionalist perspective as it was used by American social scientists to explain social inequality during the first four decades of the twentieth century. The author then argues against the assumption that the basis for development of the perspective is found in the work of Parsons and his students who applied Parsons' general framework to studies of social inequality in complex industrial society. Instead, it is suggested that the research of social anthropologists, such as Robert and Helen Lynd and W. Lloyd Warner, was equally important to the development of the functionalist perspective. The author further argues that early twentieth-century British social anthropology, with its strong ties to Durkheimian functionalism, greatly influenced the direction of studies on social inequality. The paper concludes with a discussion of the intellectual ancestries between these theoretical pioneers and Parsonians and offers an explanation why Parsons' work dominated sociology during a critical period of the discipline's development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the paper of sociologist Serge Moscovici on social psychology. Moscovici believes that social psychology was once becoming an influential crossroads discipline, one that could shape and nurture other social sciences such as economics, anthropology and sociology. Moscovici's solution to the problem of how to become a powerful discipline seems to be along the lines of getting back to basics. Throughout his paper, Moscovici urges other social psychologists to consider the importance of creating rich descriptions garnered through careful, painstaking observations. In various ways an inductivist model of science within a positivist-empiricist framework informs Moscovici's views of the ideal social psychology. Moscovici seems to believe that the positivist-empiricist mode of scientific method is unchallenged within social psychology and sciences more generally. The author stresses the similarities between Moscovici's philosophy of science and that of the most traditional mainstream laboratory social psychologist.

A conference paper about the General Anthropology Division (GAD) Distinguished Lecture delivered at the American Anthropological Association meeting held in 2014 on the production of anthropology, is presented. Topics include presentation of living cultural heritage, exhibition of material culture, and saving of endangered cultural heritage.

Explanatory accounts of the emergence, spread, storage, persistence, and transformation of knowledge face numerous theoretical and methodological challenges. This paper argues that although anthropologists are uniquely positioned to address some of these challenges, joint engagement with relevant research in neighbouring disciplines holds considerable promise for advancement in the area. Researchers across the human and social sciences are increasingly recognizing the importance of conjointly operative and mutually contingent bodily, cognitive, neural, and social mechanisms informing the generation and communication of knowledge. Selected cognitive scientific work, in particular, is reviewed here and used to illustrate how anthropology may potentially richly contribute not only to descriptive and interpretive endeavours, but to the development and substantiation of explanatory accounts also. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much anthropological literature regards ‘knowledge’ as an unproblematic accumulation of what people claim to know about the world, their social relations, cosmology, and practices. The flip-side to knowledge, namely ignorance, however, is rarely considered. To speak of knowledge deprived of its relation to ignorance is like speaking of velocity devoid of a notion of distance. The paper explores what an anthropological conception of ignorance might look like. It reflects on the problem of ignorance in anthropological theories of knowledge, and illustrates the issues with a case study of the knowledge practices of Senegalese craftspeople and French colonial officers and administrators in West Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Material objects call to us and structure our being. They are not passive, while we are active--rather, they embroil us in their lives as much as we engage them. Hence, sociality is not solely a human function but necessarily involves environments and artefacts. The notion of material poetics is, in this sense, a mutually shaping matrix that affects social life and thought. This philosophy is explored through an encounter with a Malay house. The house is in many ways liminal--a place in which thought and image dwells. It is traditional, yet unique; it holds and expresses history, yet that history is elsewhere and legendary; is Malay but with Chinese decorations, which articulate hybridity; is specifically local, yet involved in national and international flows. It embraces both oscillation and direction. The house is made of wood. This paper takes up this element, showing how the wood not only shelters, but also leads us to venture out to a garden of trees and a dream of jungles where encounters with things, stories and myths subvert our normal categories and expectations. The house leads us places and clears things for us, leading us into a new social field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the link between truth and sight, and the implications of this link for our understandings of the concept of evidence. I propose to give an example of precisely how we might attempt to generalize about a phenomenon such as the recurrence of the association between truth and sight without ignoring important anti-universalist points. In doing this, I hope to give one example of how anthropology, in the original sense of the term, is a still possible enterprise, in spite of the criticisms such an approach has had to face in the last thirty years. Résumé L'auteur examine le lien entre vérité et vision et ses implications pour notre compréhension du concept de preuve. Il propose un exemple de la manière dont nous pourrions tenter de généraliser un phénomène tel que la récurrence de l'association entre vérité et vision, sans négliger d'importants arguments anti-universalistes. Par la même occasion, l'auteur espère donner un exemple de la façon dont l'anthropologie, au sens originel du terme, est encore une entreprise possible malgré les critiques que cette approche a essuyées au cours des trente dernières années. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a systematic exposition of what Wittgenstein took to be the fundamental error committed by James George Frazer, author of the classic anthropological work The Golden Bough, in his account of ritual practices. By construing those rituals in scientific or rationalistic terms, as aimed at the production of certain effects, Frazer ignores, according to Wittgenstein, their expressive and symbolic dimension. It is, moreover, an error to try to explain the powerful emotions evoked even today by traditions such as fire festivals (which may once have involved human sacrifice) by searching for their causal origins in history or prehistory; the disquieting nature of such practices needs to be understood by attending to the inner meaning they already have in our human lives. Certain important general lessons are drawn about the necessarily limited power of scientific and causal explanations when it comes to alleviating many of our fundamental perplexities not just in the area of anthropology but in philosophy as well. 1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the presence of anthropological reports and data in the National Archives at Kew in England. Preservation of unpublished materials in the archive that provide some interesting sidelights on the history of anthropological studies in Great Britain; Proliferation of items relating to anthropology in the Colonial Office papers; Relationship between anthropologists and government officials in the country.

Ethnobiology has long featured both academic and practical aspects, with its component disciplines tending to favour one or the other, such that anthropology focuses on classificatory and cognitive issues whereas botany concentrates on issues of resource use. Current trends within development, notably interest in indigenous knowledge that has emerged with participatory approaches, to which ethnobiology has contributed significantly, promise a new synthesis of the academic and practical. This paper describes five ways in which we can think of applied ethnobiology in this context, and illustrates each with examples drawn from natural resources management. The first application is assistance in the introduction of exogenous technology, facilitating technical interventions that are central to many development programmes, enabling a better match to cultural tradition, and promoting meaningful participation. The second application is the facilitating of local solutions to development, advocating the use of local knowledge to further development, asking what insider knowledge may have to recommend in advancing development in the face of outside influences. The third application is the furthering of cultural diffusion, seeking to establish if knowledge and practices in one place have relevance elsewhere, offering an innovative approach to development by drawing upon anthropology's cross-cultural comparative tradition in new ways. The fourth application is the advancing of the commercial use of knowledge, conducting research to find intelligence that may be marketable, even new to science, such bio-prospecting relating to the contentious issue of protecting intellectual property rights. Finally, ethnobiology may be used to support alternative development, promote the formulation of alternative views, and critique development as a capitalist imposition; indigenous activism with respect to international conventions indicates the shape of alternative agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental anthropology is an expanding field in Australia. Extensive research on Aboriginal relationships to land and natural resources has provided the foundation for growing anthropological interest in the interactions of other Australians with the biophysical environments they inhabit. Australian-based anthropologists also continue to contribute to research on environmental beliefs and practices in other parts of the world. This paper provides a brief overview of previously explored themes in this field as a precursor to introducing new research and proposing additional areas of research. It is suggested that these could be usefully developed to enhance anthropological contributions to debates about environmental change in Australia and surrounding regions. We argue that there are roles for anthropologists as 'cultural translators' in cross-disciplinary engagements with environmental scientists and natural resource managers; as cultural theorists skilled at documenting and interpreting changing environmental attitudes; and as environmental advocates pursuing the knowledge needed to create more ecologically sustainable human communities. We also suggest that Australian anthropologies of the environment can make valuable theoretical and ethnographic contributions to this important international field of study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the AAA meeting in November 2003, in a panel on‘Anthropological evidence and its uses’, sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. My thanks to Jane Cowan, Nigel Rapport and an anonymous reviewer for their comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores objectification in science education, i.e., the way material is turned into an object of interest to scientists. Drawing on sociological and anthropological drama theory, it examines how objectification does and occur in class rooms and schools. To understand the role and relationship of the object to the scientist, look at current literature from the social studies of science concerning human and nonhuman objects as well as my own ethnographic work on the activism of politicized human research subjects. The paper concludes by how and why a more self-conscious focus on the object of science is important for those concerned with equity in science education, suggesting that such guinea pig pedagogies restore missing historical and ethical dimensions to science education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropology in Australia is at a critical juncture. This paper discusses the way in which the discipline has been challenged at the institutional level, in part due to pressures arising from economic rationalisation within universities. Anthropology, however, must take some responsibility for its condition. Psychology has established itself as the primary 'human' discipline to provide qualifications appropriate for professional employment. At a more scholarly level, anthropology's traditional zones of concern have been taken over by others, including history and cultural studies. Can we, and should we, demystify anthropology and its practices? Can we reposition anthropology with a broader vision of the human experience, and what will happen if we cannot? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropological and ethnohistorical accounts of the Northwest Coast and Southeast Alaska have underemphasized the early and thorough industrialization of the area. This paper describes the transformation of Native fan. lies and community forms by small scale salmon-canning firms m the late 19th and early 20th century, beginning with the building of the first salmon cannery in Klawock, Alaska, in 1878. Attention to the unmaking of past forms of obligation and expectation leads to an understanding of the volatility of specifically local histories in Native villages. Totem poles and tricycle races are both locations of ambiguous cultural production that are tied to these histories in overlapping and complex ways, and as such, they serve as metaphors for the larger processes at work in these towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emile Durkheim has long been viewed as one of the founders of the so-called variables-oriented approach to sociological investigation. This view ignores his considerable achievements using the methodology of "case-based" historical analysis, most prominent among them, his lectures on the history of French education (The Evolution of Educational Thought). In this paper I first outline the intimate relationship that Durkheim envisioned between historical and sociological investigation. I then turn to his work on French education for substantive illustrations of his approach. Finally, I explore certain points of intersection between Durkheim's approach to history and present-day concerns, especially in regard to the role of culture in history and the opposition between prospective and retrospective ("teleological") strategies of historical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human interactions with other animals feature regularly in the pages of Anthropology Today, and academic research focusing on the human-animal relationship is undergoing something of a boom in the social sciences and humanities generally. This comment, prompted by Caplan's paper ‘Death on the farm’ in the last issue of AT, considers the place of human-animal interactions in anthropology through a discussion of the terminology and methodologies employed by scholars within this area. It is argued that such a discussion is instructive because, as the etymology of the term suggests, anthropology is ultimately concerned with ‘understanding humans’. The ways that we, as researchers, choose to distinguish between humans and other animals, and the ways that we choose to represent our informants' interactions with other animals, can provide considerable insight into how all concerned think about what it means to be human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the future planning of the editorial team of the journal "Area." The kind of short, argument-led articles that are published by the journal provides an invaluable insight into the new frontiers of geographical knowledge. However, this task is not merely to evidence diversity. "Area," is beginning to play an important role in drawing environmental and human geography into deeper dialogue. In 2004, 27.3% of the published papers were in physical and environmental geography, in 2003 the figure was 26.5%.

European conference on fieldwork for graduate students and junior researchers, will be held at the University of Oxford, from December 17-19, 2003. This conference on anthropological fieldwork organized by the Oxford University Anthropological Society and Anthropology Matters, drew over 70 postgraduate students from more than 25 British and European universities. There were 36 papers addressing a variety of issues and methodological problems, dominant among which were questions of place and ethical issues. Ethical issues were also raised in accounts of research in conflict situations. In her keynote lecture Judith Okely argued that textbooks and methodology courses often leave the people underprepared for the complexity of life and learning "in the field."