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I would like to note the following from the outset here. Academics are, by definition, supposed to be experts within some knowledge area. Such expertise typically means a research program [...]

ABSTRACT: Bruno Latour has identified the 'great novel' as a site for revealing the complex nature of agency in the Anthropocene. As it traces cause and effect through numerous, interrelated [...]

Abstract Using a 2010 trip to Hanoi, Vietnam, this article looks at the ways that disorientation is used as a trope within the urban environment and to create the traveling [...]

By reading the works of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Jameela Siddiqi, and M. G. Vassanji, this article sets to show how and why food mediates the experience of displacement in literary enactments of Indian East African migrations. It examines what the symbolism of food conveys about the contests that characterize the lives of the African Indians and how food enables writers to imagine possible worlds beyond social antagonisms. Food in the literature acts as an index of the changing social status of Indian East Africans in the journeys that take them through Africa, and their eventual migrations to Europe and the Americas. It encodes histories of resistance, accommodation, and cultural exchange in contexts marked by racialism, violence, expulsions and inequality. It is thus, for the writers, a useful tool for mediating personal and communal stories, and an important focus of feelings of nostalgia, loss, and longing., What people eat or drink provides in Indian East African literature what may be called, following Arjun Appadurai, 'a peculiarly powerful semiotic device' ('Gastro-politics' 494). Not only do food and [...]

In the 1930s Paul Radin argued that Franz Boas refrained from generalizing, claimed that the time was not ripe because all the data were not yet available, and believed that once all the data were available they would speak for themselves. This characterization was applied in the 1940s by Clyde Kluckhohn and his student Walter Taylor to the work of culture historian A. V. Kidder. Processual archaeologists obtained the idea that culture historians in general used the unripe time argument based on philosopher of science Carl Hempel's description of the first step of inductive reasoning as 'gathering all the facts,' and they used Kluckhohn's and Taylor's characterizations as substantiating evidence. Processualists likely reasoned that because culture historians operated inductively and thus sought to gather all the facts before they interpreted the archaeological record, culture historians also called upon the unripe time argument to warrant their hesitancy to draw conclusions. Evidence that culture historians in fact said they needed more data before drawing conclusions is rare, and in many cases possible evidence is readily interpreted as an unrigorously developed concern for sample sufficiency in the modern sense of a statistically representative sample. The unripe time characterization of pre-1960 archaeology served as one of several warrants for abandonment of the culture history approach in favor of processual archaeology and facilitated the rapid adoption of processualism. key words: American archaeology, Culture history, Data, Processualism, Unripe time

The paper is structured around a sequence of autobiographical accounts of engagements with policymakers. Each of these encounters elaborates on the challenges anthropologists face in engaging policy because of the nature of United States policy goals, the relative power of anthropologists vis-a-vis policymakers, and the incompatibility of ethnographic knowledge with the epistemological demands of policymaking. I embrace instead a call for collaborative engagement with activist, community-based, and issue-based movements as well as the more complicated work of collaborating with marginalized communities that may not envision themselves as activists but who have community goals for how to define their place in the broader society. I focus on the particular constraints and strengths of academic anthropologists for working with activists, communities, and issue-oriented networks to affect policy. Key words: policy, public anthropology, advocacy, engagement, collaboration

It is believed that sincerity and humor are linked ways of politicizing the interactions that support all ethnographic encounters. This politicization is contrasted with traditional anthropological preoccupations with authenticity. Several anthropologists now call for a renewed guildwide investment in the political implications of their efforts.

Significant differences in views on race (once a core anthropological concept) occur between scientists from different countries. In light of the ongoing race debate, we present the concept's current status in Europe. On three occasions in 2002-03, we surveyed European anthropologists' opinions toward the biological race concept. The participants were asked whether they agreed that there are biological races within the species Homo sapiens. A dependence was sought between the type of response and several factors. Three of these factors--country of academic education, discipline, and age--were found to be significant in differentiating the replies. Respondents educated in Western Europe, physical anthropologists, and middle-aged persons reject race more frequently than respondents educated in Eastern Europe, people in other branches of science, and those from both younger and older generations. The survey shows that the views of anthropologists on race are sociopolitically (ideologically) influenced and highly dependent on education. [Keywords: human races, race concept, physical anthropology, Europe]

Abstract: This article argues a case against the theory of the sacred put forward by the French anthropologist Rene Girard. in particular, Girard seems to have obliterated one of the [...]

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGISTS HAVE MADE great progress advancing the study of human behavior by developing detailed methodologies to make their research more scientific. There is, however, one subject where concerns for [...]

I The peculiarity of culture is that you know it only by doing it. You know what culture is only by knowing what it is for. In this sense, culture [...]

Recognized as a principal figure in ecological anthropology, Roy Rappaport is best known for his study Pigs for the Ancestors (1968). His work in the anthropology of religion has received Less attention. Least acknowledged is Rappaport's role in defining an 'engaged' anthropology. Drawn from interviews Tom Fricke conducted with Rappaport in the year before his death in October 1997, this article gives insight into these three facets of his professional life. Beginning with an account of Rappaport's fieldwork with the Tsembaga Mating, the discussion takes up his core themes, ideas that evolved out of his early field experience and with which he was 'engaged as he worked to finish his final book, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (1999). [Roy Rappaport, interview, biography, Maring fieldwork, ecological anthropology, anthropology of religion, engaged anthropology]

As one of the first women to embark on a career in anthropology, Matilda Coxe Stevenson was, and still is, "famous and infamous" (Parezo 1993:46). Countless colorful portrayals of her […]

Several processes of change and of human development affect the process of fieldwork over time. The concerns, issues, interests, relationships, coping strategies, motivations, and even personality of a mature adult are not the same as those of a younger adult. Consequently, fieldwork conducted on Pollap Atoll in Micronesia in 1998-1999 differed from dissertation research conducted in the same place eighteen years earlier. Changes since 1980 in the Pollapese way of life, their relationships with outsiders, and their understandings of anthropology contributed to a different experience, as did my heightened sense of confidence, decreased anxiety, and increased faith in participant observation.

Authors of three studies (Leonard Lieberman, Blaine W. Stevenson, Larry T. Reynolds, and Matt Cartmill) agree that the concept of race has approached its lowest level of acceptance in a century. However, one of the studies (that of Cartmill) seems to show no significant change from 1965 to 1996. We analyze this paradox in terms of possible differences in the populations studied. [Keywords: race, physical anthropology, variation]

Views of the Australian anthropologist A.P. Elkin on reformed missionary policy and cultural assimilation of Aborigines are discussed. Topics include missionary conversion, context and inspiration for Elkin's ideas, and his approach to cultural continuity.

Claude Levi-Strauss played an important role in the development of French anthropology in particular and of human sciences in general. His brand of anthropology adheres to the strict principles of science and is at the same time regarded as a new kind of humanism with a broader grasp of humanity. Levi-Strauss maintained a 'neolithic' affinity with the traditional societies he studied to bring out the profound in his field and to serve as a manifestation of the concepts and values that give shape to his thoughts.

When did a human being first utter the name of a god, whether in fear or awe or love? When did a tribe or clan of humans first gather together [...]

An anthropologist analyzes the conflicting discursive authority of western researchers who construct tradition and indigenous scholars who deconstruct them. The invention of the Warao tradition focuses on the political-economic constraints of metadiscursive actions associated with the subject positions in the process of inventing the nahanamu. The social power thus created defines access to and use of metadiscursive practices with authority. While native activists and invention scholars debate on discursive authority, invention literature should be valued for its vast metadiscursive practices.

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.

Native Americans and anthropologists have been in conflict for many years, and the relationship between Native Americans and archaeologists has been particularly difficult, yet each group has much to offer the other. The Navajo Nation Archaeology Department is offered as one example of how anthropologists and Native Americans can attain mutual goals through reciprocal education, interaction, and research.

'IF YOU CAN BELIEVE THAT INDIVIDUALS OF recent African ancestry are not genetically advantaged over those of European and Asian ancestry in certain athletic endeavors, then you probably could be [...]