HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Millenium (TV Series)
Distribution: world
Date: Fri, 02 Oct 92 07:39:50 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents
Reply-To: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au


In article <1992Oct1.143420.21668@ils.nwu.edu> pautler@ils.nwu.edu writes:

 > On the contrary, I'd wager that at least 80% of the audience was new-agers.

Such statistics are not recognised in the absence of survey data to
support them.

 > The people you are referring to don't watch anthropological and "nature"
 > programs because they're aware that their beliefs would be challenged or

It is not part of Anthropology to challenge or ridicule beliefs. Quite
to the contrary, they constitute a large part of the object of study
and as such merit tremendous respect.

 > ridiculed.  Maybury-Lewis's audience already shared his agenda; it was
 > his responsibility as one of the few professional anthropologists on television
 > to inject some real content into the mix.

It has never been the ambition of Anthropology, or any anthropologist
at all to present everything to everybody at once. Any ethnography,
whatever the medium of its presentation, is ALWAYS written for a
particular audience, else the communication link between the people
involved cannot be established. All of my work is written up, and all
of my training programs are structured in different formats depending
on who I am addressing, but the message is always the same.

That the _Millenium_ format does not suit everyone is not a valid
criticism; perhaps through the Internet we can attempt to communicate
to others what Maybury-Lewis is saying in a format some of you will be
more comfortable with.

 > I was so turned off by the program because I let my expectations run too high.

Please do not turn off completely, yet. Just don't expect to much too
soon, that we will have the chance to get our Internet act together a
little better than it has been.



Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *
From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Australian Religions
Distribution: world
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 13:07:04 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents
Reply-To: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au


In article <1992Sep28.183642.22374@NeoSoft.com> claird@NeoSoft.com writes:

 >         Eliade, Mircea
 >         1973        Australian Religions.  Ithaca:
 >                 Cornell University Press.
 >                 [Gil, is Eliade still respected in
 >                 Australia?  I know his work admits
 >                 correction, but do folks there gen-
 >                 erally see it as a positive
 >                 contribution?]

Eliade's generic "The Sacred & The Profane" is holding its ground
extremely well, although "Australian Religions" is now quite dated.
The former is most useful in its discussion on both temporal and
spatial sanctity, which is quite lacking in other references.

"Zen Flesh, Zen Bones", while not anthropology at all, is a much easier
path for Westerners into The Dreaming, or Traditional Law as it is
referred to here in Western Australia.

I would prefer to pursue that discussion in alt.pagan, however.


Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
From: buchignani@hg.uleth.ca
Subject: Re: communities
Reply-To: buchignani@hg.uleth.ca
Organization: University of Lethbridge
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 14:13:44 GMT

I must say I am a little surprised about the line of responses
to what I would consider to be a very important question about
communities. Historically, community as a general concept has
been central in social thought for a long time; I even teach
a course in it, with a Canadian accent. In the 18th century
people like Ferguson, Millar, Rousseau, etc. did battle over
its nature without using the word specifically. In the 19th,
Robertson Smith, Tylor, etc. made it an essential element of
their studies on religion and ritual. Weber and Durkheim based whole
social theories on it, and Toennies gave us a further clarlification
of the community/society distinction. Fieldwork being essentially
small scale, community was typically the social unit that bounded 
inquiry as this tradition began. The Chicago School made urban communities
central, etc. etc.

I would agree that anthros today tend more often to use community
as a methodological bounding mechanism for their studies than
to centrally study it. Example: I just finished a review of the
ethnographic literature on ethnicity and ethnic relations in Canada.
Most of this literature is on immigrant origin populations that
form urban communities, but not very much of it is on community
structure per se. There is even less synthetic work on community
in general.

    Norm Buchignani/University of Lethbridge/BUCHIGNANI@HG.ULETH.CA
"If we have been accustomed to deplore the spectacle...of a workman occupied
during his whole life in nothing else but the making of knife-handles or pins'
heads, we may find something quite as lamentable in the intellectual class, in
the exclusive employment of a human brain in resolving some equations, or in
classifying insects. [This] occasions a miserable indifference about the
general course of human affairs, as long as there are equations to solve and
pins to manufacture."                                      Auguste Comte
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
From: wuytswin@athena.research.ptt.nl (Wuijtswinkel R. van)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology,soc.culture.netherlands
Subject: Female breast (bosom) experience wanted!
Keywords: femal breast bosom
Date: 6 Oct 92 12:55:23 GMT
Organization: PTT Research

Hello,

I've got a special question for everyone who wants to respond. It may look a
bit strange, but a friend of mine wants to write an article about the
following:

    The femal bosom (breast).

    - What is so fascinating about it?
    - What can you say about the sexological aspects?
    - What can you say about the sociological aspects?
    - What can you say about the anthropological aspects?

Please give you view about this. It should be non-medical!
Give you own thoughts, opinions or other reactions to the e-mail address below:

If somebody already published about this subject, please let me know.

You may also FAX to the following number: +31 40 53 51 85.

Greetings Ronald.

-- 
Ronald van Wuijtswinkel                       PTT Research,         
Telephone: +31 70 3325017.                    P.O.Box 421, 
Telefax: +31 70 3326477                       2260 AK Leidschendam.
E-mail: R.C.vanWuijtswinkel@research.ptt.nl   The Netherlands. 
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
From: nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson)
Subject: Re: Distance Education?
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 13:59:47 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Chelmsford, MA

In article <717760326snx@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au> gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au writes:
>
>Students would need to buy text-books, however, while assignments
>can be returned directly via e-mail for grading. Otherwise, if any
>academics or teachers out there are interested in forming a college
>to supervise such a program I would be very interested to hear from
>you also.

  Actually, just suggesting textbooks might be a good start.  
  
  What would be a good college-level anthro text, preferably one
  that sticks to pretty-well-agreed-upon models and theory? (I
  mention this only because in general I'm dismayed at the extent
  to which ideology seems to pervade the social sciences, e.g., 
  in economics )


---peter
From: ph111-bx@violet.berkeley.edu (;;;;7202)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Re: homosexuality and evolution
Date: 28 Sep 1992 06:00:41 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
NNTP-Posting-Host: violet.berkeley.edu

In article <witta.717643882@sfu.ca> witta@fraser.sfu.ca (Darren Witt) writes:
[stuff deleted]
}the point is that homosexuality may at one time have been an adaptive
}behaviour that in actuality, increased an individual's reproductive
}fitness over time.

Please give an example of how this may have been so.
From: witta@fraser.sfu.ca (Darren Witt)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: homosexuality and evolution
Date: 28 Sep 92 01:31:22 GMT
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada

having taken one whole semester of evolutionary psych i feel arrogant enough to put in a belated post on the subject.

evolutionary psychologists (at least my prof) base their hypotheses on the idea that mankind's culture and society has been changing so much and so quickly from the time when we were hunter-gatherers that evolution has not yet been able to "react" to the new selection pressures.  as a result, our brains will sometimes react in decisively unbeneficial ways due to situations or stimuli that resemble those that our ancestors dealt with.

in an attempt to clarify that last paragraph (which i am painfully aware is somewhat incomprehensible) i'll throw out the one example i can recall:

one of the proposed explanations for anorexic behaviour in females is that at some time in humankind's evolutionary history such behaviour was beneficial to the individuals longterm fitness.  for instance, when female-female competition was particularly high, an anorexic female may benefit from delaying pregnancy until child rearing was a more viable option.

today, the comparitively high population densities can wreak havok with environmentally initiated behaviours such as anorexia. instead of fasting until the stimulus has abated, women with anorexia are faced with a continual, intense stimulus that prolongs the behaviour dangerously.


the point is that homosexuality may at one time have been an adaptive behaviour that in actuality, increased an individual's reproductive fitness over time.  now however, homosexuality, like anorexia has (according to this approach) become a maladaptive behaviour that seriously decreases ones total reproductive fitness.

of course the inference that i immediately draw from this is that homosexuality is therefore "out of control" in today's society (due to the aforementioned rapid societal changes) - a concept that not a few homophobes (and christians - my brother included) would love to grab on to and say "see, look, even they say its abnormal"  .

its a losing battle anyway.

hope that all made sense.

dw

dwitt@sfu.ca
From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Your Australian connection.
Distribution: world
Date: Mon, 05 Oct 92 06:28:16 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents

It had not fully occurred to me before that many of the readers of
sci.anthropology may not be aware that the network we are using at
this end is the Australian & Academic Research (Computer) Network
(AARNet), which links into Internet through a line from our national
hub at Melbourne University.

Most of us here I believe expect that the network will be used for
publishing material of general academic & research interest, although
much of the highly technical matter pertaining to a given project
will probably be circulated via e-mail.

We are putting in quite a lot of effort at this end developing public
access facilities, in particular to support industry and agriculture,
and to assist in community development as a national strategy. At an
international level it does seem appropriate that a high standard be
maintained. This is not a hobby or recreation; we have work to do here
which is extremely important to us.

I regret if the Americans feel this to be patronising, although any
further discussion within Anthropology would be greatly appreciated.


--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
From: maven@kauri.vuw.ac.nz (Jim Baltaxe)
Subject: Re: communities
Organization: Victoria University of Wellington
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 22:21:41 GMT

In article <BvCE39.2u8@apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
>In article <BvB5uA.JGG@comp.vuw.ac.nz> maven@kauri.vuw.ac.nz (Jim Baltaxe) writes:
>>In article <BvB129.Dy0@apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
>
>>>  Why is it so unreasonable to expect references, anway?   Isn't
>>>  the dynamics of communities, what makes them work, what holds
>>>  them together, etc, a pretty major subject in cultural anthro-
>>>  pology?
>>
>>Of course. And the references are there - in bulk - but often
>>discussions of such things as mutual obligation and "social credits"
>>are phrased in terms of their local organising principles, i.e.
>>kinship. The enormous literature on reciprocity and gifts is an
>>example.
>
>   And I've read some of this material too.  But I'm asking a slightly
>   different question.  The literature I've read discusses these 
>   relationships in the context of what's important in the culture
>   under discussion (e.g., (did you really mean "i.e.", above)
>   kinship).

No, e.g. instead.

>
>   What I'm asking is whether any anthropological research has suggested
>   *general* features of cultures that make community possible.  That
>   is, is there any operational definition of "community" that allows
>   it to be studied across cultures?  In other words, is "community"
>   as a general phenomenon accessible to anthropological research?
>   Everything I've read has been very culture-specific.

Try Conrad Ahrensberg's writings on community - incl. his
_Culture_And_Community_. Unfortunately some of it may be getting out
of date. He was one of my own profs. at CUNY when I was a graduate
student; a gracious and insightful man.


-- 
Jim Baltaxe - jim.baltaxe@vuw.ac.nz
Computing Services Centre - Victoria University of Wellington - New Zealand
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Time is such a valuable commodity because they're not making it any more.
Xref: sparky sci.anthropology:982 sci.classics:767
From: claird@NeoSoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology,sci.classics
Subject: [SOC] Re: The Bible In The Context of Its Time
Date: 5 Oct 92 17:26:11 GMT
Article-I.D.: NeoSoft.1992Oct05.172611.10563
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900

In article <1992Oct05.135822.10670@rchland.ibm.com> bechdol@vnet.ibm.com writes:
>
>Greetings !
>
>Does anyone know of any references that approach the Scriptures from a cultural
>anthropology point of view that put the Text in the idioms of the time when it 
>was written?
			.
			.
			.
Edmund Leach is a highest-status cultural
anthropologist who has devoted much of his
thought the least decade or so to Biblical
questions; I understand that serious theolo-
gians do *not* regard him as successful.  In
any case, what he says, and sometimes writes,
certainly entertains.

Note that I've cross-posted this to
sci.classics.  There are fine hermeneutical
scholar in the world with solid anthropologi-
cal educations; one can expect to find in
modern Biblical criticism at least a nodding
acquaintance with ethnologic consciousness.
I expect the sci.classics folks can more
usefully describe the state of Jewish or
Christian theology.
-- 

Cameron Laird
claird@Neosoft.com (claird%Neosoft.com@uunet.uu.net)	+1 713 267 7966
claird@litwin.com (claird%litwin.com@uunet.uu.net)  	+1 713 996 8546
From: rwd4f@poe.acc.Virginia.EDU (Rob Dobson)
Subject: Re: The Bible In The Context of Its Time
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 13:31:09 GMT

In article <BvoI01.G01@nic.umass.edu> s1006420@titan.ucc.umass.edu (If you want peace work for justice) writes:
>In article <1992Oct05.135822.10670@rchland.ibm.com> bechdol@vnet.ibm.com writes:
>>
>>Does anyone know of any references that approach the Scriptures from a cultural
>>anthropology point of view that put the Text in the idioms of the time when it 
>>was written?

>There is a book written by Elaine Pagels, a prof. of religious studies
>at Princeton - The Gnostic Gospels - about the 52 gnostic gospels
>unearthed in 1945 in Hag Hammadi (Egypt) - these are not the Dead Sea
>scrolls - they are gospels such as Gospel of Mary , of Phillip, etc -
>which are early translations of the ones apparently circulating in
>that early period of christian era, but which were deliberately left
>out by the people putting together the Bible, because they
>questioned among other things the authoritarian and androcratic
>structure of the church taking hold of power around 200 a.d.
>
>This is not an anthropological study but you may find it interesting -
>especially because of what it reveals.


What IS 'anthropological'?  I read GNOSTIC GOSPELS for an anthro class.
What is the difference between studying religion in a cultural context,
and studying culture? Can you study culture without studying religion?
Can you study religion without studying culture?

As you can guess, the lines are blurry. There are about a billion books
which focus on the cultural context of the bible, but they may or may not
be considered "anthropology". A better Pagels book than GNOSTIC GOSPELS
is ADAM, EVE, AND THE SERPENT, which focuses more on the scriptures, whereas
GG focuses on works found that were not in the Bible.

-rob, double majored in religion and anthro...


Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
From: claird@NeoSoft.com (Cameron Laird)
Subject: Re: communities
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 12:29:57 GMT

In article <BvCE39.2u8@apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
			.
			.
			.
>   And I've read some of this material too.  But I'm asking a slightly
>   different question.  The literature I've read discusses these 
>   relationships in the context of what's important in the culture
>   under discussion (e.g., (did you really mean "i.e.", above) kinship).
>
>   What I'm asking is whether any anthropological research has suggested
>   *general* features of cultures that make community possible.  That
>   is, is there any operational definition of "community" that allows
>   it to be studied across cultures?  In other words, is "community"
>   as a general phenomenon accessible to anthropological research?
>   Everything I've read has been very culture-specific.
			.
			.
			.
Geertz!  I haven't warmed up to him yet as much as he
probably deserves, but perhaps some of the Geertz
corpus is what you seek:

	Geertz, Clifford.
	1956	The social context of economic change:  an
		Indonesian case study.  Cambridge:  Center
		for International Studies, Massachusetts
		Institute of Technology.

	1963a	Agricultural involution; the process of
		ecological change in Indonesia.  Berkeley,
		Published for the Association of Asian
		Studies by University of California Press.

	1963b	Peddlers and princes; social change and
		economic modernization in two Indonesian
		towns.  Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

	1973	The interpretation of cultures; selected
		essays.  New York, Basic Books
		
	1983	Local knowledge : further essays in inter-
		pretive anthropology.  New York:  Basic
		Books.

	1988	Works and lives:  the anthropologist as
		author.  Stanford:  Stanford University Press.

Also, if you seriously want to pursue personal journals as a
documentary source, one person who has thought about them in
the context of what they reveal about communities is Jan Wojcik.
Last I knew, around 1989, Professor Wojcik was teaching English
in a fairly well known university in one of the original thir-
teen states (feel free to chuckle about the vagaries of memory).
-- 

Cameron Laird
claird@Neosoft.com (claird%Neosoft.com@uunet.uu.net)	+1 713 267 7966
claird@litwin.com (claird%litwin.com@uunet.uu.net)  	+1 713 996 8546
From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: communities
Distribution: world
Date: Sat, 03 Oct 92 13:53:53 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <BvI1p7.LI@apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@apollo.hp.com writes:

 >   See this is where we part company.  To me, when we start talking
 >   about "good" and "bad" we are getting beyond science.

Yes, we are. There is much beyond science that science has yet to
begin considering, but which nevertheless frame science within quite
particular cultural expectations.

 >   So this seems to be the answer to my question:  that anthropology
 >   (and therefore sociology?) has NOT discovered any unifying themes,
 >   concepts, etc, across cultures.   

Unifying themes, concepts, etc, across cultures? Well, we have
discovered that there are over 5 billion people across those cultures,
each with an opinion to express each and every day. Over ten days there
are 50 billion opinions. Over a year around 2,000 billion opinions.
What unifying theme might possibly emerge from this chaos, apart from
the models anthropologists and sociologists build in their efforts to
contain it sufficiently to answer the naive questions of science?

Some spend their lives in the endeavour. Some even begin to make a
little sense to their own particular audience. I have myself found it
far more practical to accept the notion of chaos, and warn neonates
that all is far from what it seems.

Foucault is very good. Read "The Order of Things", but please don't
come back and complain to me that he was gay and died of AIDS, as if
the fact somehow alters anything.


Peter, good luck in your research! I really do hope you excel in your
endeavours, and look forward very much indeed to your report to this
group.


--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
   * * Sustainable Community Development & Environmental Education * *
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
From: pautler@ils.nwu.edu (David Pautler)
Subject: Re: Millenium (TV Series)
Organization: The Institute for the Learning Sciences
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 14:34:20 GMT

In article <BvEDM7.H08@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>, wilkr@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (richard wilk) writes:
> On the other hand, lets remember who the audience is, and what
> Maybury-Lewis' agenda is. He is talking to people who DO NOT
> CARE if the Yanomamo live or die, people who accept that the
> destruction of other cultures is just 'the price of progress'
> (as they have been taught in their US History books in high school).

On the contrary, I'd wager that at least 80% of the audience was new-agers.
The people you are referring to don't watch anthropological and "nature"
programs because they're aware that their beliefs would be challenged or
ridiculed.  Maybury-Lewis's audience already shared his agenda; it was
his responsibility as one of the few professional anthropologists on television
to inject some real content into the mix.

I was so turned off by the program because I let my expectations run too high.

	-dp-