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A number of anthropologists have argued that religious concepts are minimally counterintuitive and that this gives them mnemic advantages. This paper addresses the question of why people have the memory architecture that results in such concepts being more memorable than other types of concepts by pointing out the benefits of a memory structure that leads to better recall for minimally counterintuitive concepts and by showing how such benefits emerge in the real-time processing of comprehending narratives such as folk tales. This model suggests that memorability is not an inherent property of a concept; rather it is a property of the concept, the context in which the concept is presented, and the background knowledge that the comprehendor possesses about the concept. The model predicts how memorability of a concept should change if the context containing the concept were changed. The paper also presents the results of experiments carried out to test these predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though staging an imaginary dialogue between French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and East Javanese informants, the paper explores anthropological processes of knowledge-making regarding the roots of social domination. The employment of an explicitly comparative framework is undertaken with the aim of revealing the frontier areas and outer limits of knowledge production and of cross-cultural translation in general. At the same time, it engages with ‘indigenous’ ways of knowing that emphasize embodied subjectivity and sensorial inter-involvement with others and the ambient world, and that posit the assumption that being a particular person and acting in a specific way are closely connected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the problems arising when culture is teleologized in courts of law, by being treated as ‘objective evidence’ or as the direct cause of persecution or delinquency. It starts by explaining the role of expert witnesses, and the kinds of evidence they can and cannot provide. It then addresses the widespread use, especially in the United States, of the ‘cultural defense’ in cases involving immigrant or minority defendants. It summarizes anthropological approaches to the notion of culture; the ongoing debate between rights-based and culture-based approaches to international law; and the impact upon anthropology of current notions of legal and cultural pluralism. Finally, it briefly addresses the treatment of anthropological evidence in English courts, with special reference to asylum appeals under the rubric of the 1951 Refugee Convention. Résumé Le présent article étudie les problèmes qui surviennent lorsque la culture est téléologisée dans les tribunaux en étant traitée comme une « preuve objective » ou une cause directe de persécution ou de délinquance. L'auteur commence par expliquer le rôle des experts devant les tribunaux et les types de preuves qu'ils peuvent et ne peuvent pas fournir. Il étudie ensuite l'usage très répandu, notamment aux États-Unis, de la « défense culturelle » dans les cas impliquant des accusés issus de l'immigration ou d'une minorité. Il résume l'approche anthropologique de la notion de culture, le débat en cours entre les approches du droit international basées sur les droits et celles basées sur la culture, et l'impact sur l'anthropologie des notions actuelles de pluralisme juridique et culturel. Enfin, il aborde brièvement le traitement de la preuve anthropologique dans les tribunaux anglais, en faisant spécifiquement référence aux appels en matière de droit d'asile dans le cadre d'application de la Convention sur les réfugiés de 1951. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a paper on culture and cultural analysis as experimental systems. The growth of cultural analysis is traced from the start of modern anthropology to the present. It is argued that culture is relational rather than variable, and consists of central anthropological forms of knowledge which ground the self-understanding of humans. The challenge posed by cultural analysis, it is proposed, is to develop mediation and translation tools for helping resolve cultural differences.

The article responds to the paper "Learning From New Orleans: The Social Warrant of Hostile Privatism and Competitive Consumer Citizenship," by George Lipsitz in this issue. The author uses Lipsitz's methodology of critique to strengthen the consciousness of countermemories and alternative social warrants. It is pointed out that learning to listen brings in all the harmonics, virtuosities and counterpoints.

The article responds to the paper "Learning From New Orleans: The Social Warrant of Hostile Privatism and Competitive Consumer Citizenship," by George Lipsitz in this issue. The author considers Lipsitz's work in relation to ethnographic efforts to analyze the characteristics of the complex changes in everyday life. The concept of social warrant is considered to be linked to cultural activism and critique.

The article responds to the paper "Learning From New Orleans: The Social Warrant of Hostile Privatism and Competitive Consumer Citizenship," by George Lipsitz in this issue. The politics of dislocation and relocation and the politics of different mappings of the U.S. are examined. Rap music and murals are declared to be forms of an American cultural critique that employs symbolic-iconic registers and direct political consciousness.

This introduction to the volume argues for the central and integrating role of the subject matter of ethnobiological research in anthropology understood in its widest sense: in its biological, archaeo-historical, and socio-cultural dimensions. The background and current status of ethnobiology are assessed, and its contribution to anthropological issues considered under the following headings: the foundational paradigm of taxonomic orthodoxy; language and the translation of knowledge systems; cognition and culture; the social organization and transmission of knowledge; medical ethnobiology; the applied practice of ethnobiology; and – the meta-theory which binds all this together – the co-evolutionary paradigm as part of a wider ‘biocultural synthesis’. The way in which the collected papers exemplify these themes is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments on the research paper which asks to renew the social and cultural anthropology through wholesale restructuring according to the templates of Darwinian evolution theory. According to the author, the paper does not address to the central concerns of social anthropology from within evolutionary biology. He states that evolutionary biology might be incapable for the understanding of human culture because of the knowledge that cultural evolution does not work in the same way as biological evolution. He discusses the problems to consider between the cultural and the biological evolution.