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This paper reviews a range of approaches to the analysis of government termination, by any account a very important substantive concern for political science. One essential preliminary matter is the distinction between government duration and government durability--the former an essentially empirical concept, the latter essentially theoretical. It is also important to note that empirical research into government termination is heavily conditioned by the precise definition of what marks the end of one government and the beginning of the next. Approaches to analyzing government termination can be divided into those that are fundamentally empirical and those based on a priori modeling. Both research traditions are reviewed. The empiricist approach has evolved into a body of work that applies increasingly sophisticated event-history models to a dataset that has become to a large extent common within the profession. The a priori approach has developed within the traditions of noncooperative game theory to model the responses of key actors to new information, for example, about the likely results of an election that might be called if the government were to fall. There is clearly unfulfilled potential to merge these two research traditions into a single more comprehensive account of government termination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on anthropological writings on Chicano studies between 1970 to 1984. Anthropologist Octavio Romano, and a sociologist, published a series of papers on the characteristics of Chicano studies which appeared in "El Grito," the Chicano journal they founded. The stance that has become prevalent in anthropological works on Chicanos faces two directions: looking inward toward the academic discipline itself, and looking out outward toward Anglo American society. Researchers have developed broad sketches of the characteristics and boundaries of regions and subregions within the area inhabited by people of Mexican ancestry.

This occasionally biographical paper deals with three cognitive and social patterns in the practice of science (not `the scientific method'). The first, "establishing the phenomenon," involves the doctrine (universally accepted in the abstract) that phenomena should of course be shown to exist or to occur before one explains why they exist or how they come to be; sources of departure in practice from this seemingly self-evident principle are examined. One parochial case of such a departure is considered in detail. The second pattern is the particular form of ignorance described as "specified ignorance"; the express recognition of what is not yet known but needs to be known in order to lay the foundation for still more knowledge. The substantial role of this practice in the sciences is identified and the case of successive specification of ignorance in the evolving sociological theory of deviant behavior by four thought-collectives is sketched out. Reference is made to the virtual institutionalization of specified ignorance in some sciences and the question is raised whether scientific disciplines differ in the extent of routinely specifying ignorance and how this affects the growth of knowledge. `The two patterns of scientific practice are linked to a third; the use of "strategic research materials (SRMs)" i.e. strategic research sites, objects, or events that exhibit the phenomena to be explained or interpreted to such advantage and in such accessible form that they enable the fruitful investigation of previously stub-born problems and the discovery of new problems for further inquiry. The development of biology is taken as a self-exemplifying case since it provides innumerable SRMs for the sociological study of the selection and consequences of SRMs in science. The differing role of SRMs in the natural sciences and in the Geisteswissenschaften is identified and several cases of strategic research sites and events in sociology, explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Morphometrics, the field of biological shape analysis, has undergone major change in recent years. Most of this change has been due to the development and adoption of methods to analyze the Cartesian coordinates of anatomical landmarks. These geometric morphometric (GM) methods focus on the retention of geometric information throughout a study and provide efficient, statistically powerful analyses that can readily relate abstract, multivariate results to the physical structure of the original specimens. Physical anthropology has played a central role in both the development and the early adoption of these methods, just as it has done in the realm of general statistics, where it has served as a major motivating and contributing force behind much innovation. This review surveys the current state of GM, the role of anthropologists in its development, recent applications of GM in physical anthropology, and GM-based methods newly introduced to, or by, anthropology, which are likely to impact future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human brain is one of the most intricate, complicated, and impressive organs ever to have evolved. Understanding its evolution requires integrating knowledge from a variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences. Four areas of research are particularly important to this endeavor. First, we need to understand basic principles of brain evolution that appear to operate across broad classes of organisms. Second, we need to understand the ways in which human brains differ from the brains of our closest living relatives. Third, clues from the fossil record may allow us to outline the manner in which these differences evolved. Finally, studies of brain structure/function relationships are critical for us to make behavioral sense of the evolutionary changes that occurred. This review highlights important questions and work in each of these areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article strives to meet two challenges. As a review, it provides a critical discussion of the scholarship concerning undocumented migration, with a special emphasis on ethnographically informed works that foreground significant aspects of the everyday life of undocumented migrants. But another key concern here is to formulate more precisely the theoretical status of migrant "illegality" and deportability in order that further research related to undocumented migration may be conceptualized more rigorously. This review considers the study of migrant "illegality" as an epistemological, methodological, and political problem, in order to then formulate it as a theoretical problem. The article argues that it is insufficient to examine the "illegality" of undocumented migration only in terms of its consequences and that it is necessary also to produce historically informed accounts of the sociopolitical processes of "illegalization" themselves, which can be characterized as the legal production of migrant "illegality." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For along time anthropology was defined by the exoticism of its subject matter and by the distance, conceived as both cultural and geographic, that separated the researcher from the researched group. This situation has changed. In a few years we may assess the twentieth century as characterized by a long and complex movement, with theoretical and political implications, that replaced the ideal of the radical encounter with alterity with research at home. But "home" will, as always, incorporate many meanings, and anthropology will maintain, in its paradigmatic assumption, a socio-genetic aim toward an appreciation for, and an understanding of, difference. In some cases, difference will be the route to theoretical universalism via comparison; in others, it will surface as a denunciation of exoticism or a denial of its appeal. This review examines different moments and contexts in which an attempt at developing anthropology "at home" became an appropriate quest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review surveys an emergent methodological trend in anthropological research that concerns the adaptation of long-standing modes of ethnographic practices to more complex objects of study. Ethnography moves from its conventional single-site location, contextualized by macro-constructions of a larger social order, such as the capitalist world system, to multiple sites of observation and participation that cross-cut dichotomies such as the "local" and the "global," the "lifeworld" and the "system." Resulting ethnographies are therefore both in and out of the world system. The anxieties to which this methodological shift gives rise are considered in terms of testing the limits of ethnography, attenuating the power of fieldwork, and losing the perspective of the subaltern. The emergence of multi-sited ethnography is located within new spheres of interdisciplinary work, including media studies, science and technology studies, and cultural studies broadly. Several "tracking" strategies that shape multi-sited ethnographic research are considered. The review concludes with observations about the reflexive persona of the ethnographer as "circumstantial activist" in which methodological discussions about multi-sited research in anthropology are now being developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay characterizes "feminist methodology" as a field of inquiry rooted in feminist activism and in feminists' critiques of the standard procedures of social science. Feminist methodologists do not use or prescribe any single research method; rather, they are united through various efforts to include women's lives and concerns in accounts of society, to minimize the harms of research, and to support changes that will improve women's status. Recent writing on feminist methodology has addressed the uses of qualitative and quantitative research tools, possibilities and problems of research relations, epistemologies for feminist research, and strategies for developing more inclusive methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the developments concerning cross-cultural research in anthropology. The approach came under attack from 1950 to 1975, and anthropologists have concluded that the endeavor lacked merit. The method reemerged in the mid-1980s and a review of the theoretical orientations related to this resurgence was conducted. Cross cultural research provides an important component of valid generalizations about human societies. The article likewise reviewed common criticisms of cross-cultural research, areas of progress and remaining problems of method.

The article discusses the context and chronology of early man in the Americas. The theory that Clovis represents the first human population ever to appear in the Western Hemisphere is held by a few. Another theory is the view that humans reached North America between 20,000 and 70,000 years ago. The reasons for believing the second theory, rather than the first, include: the large number of radiocarbon dates older than 12,000 years on archaeological materials excavated from sites throughout the hemisphere, and the great diversity of projectile point manufacturing techniques.