bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Shrub encroachment into grasslands: end of an era?
Authors: Huang Cho-ying , Archer Steven R. , McClaran Mitchel P. , Marsh Stuart E.
Published: September 2018

Shifts in the abundance of grasses and woody plants in drylands have occurred several times during the Holocene. However, our understanding of the rates and dynamics of this state-change in recent decades is limited to scattered studies conducted at disparate spatial and temporal scales; the potential misperceptions of shrub cover change could be remedied using cross spatiotemporal scale analyses that link field observations, repeat ground-level photography and remote sensing perspectives. The study was conducted across a semi-arid landscape in southern Arizona. Local data from long-term transects revealed three distinct chronological phases of shrub cover change: expansion (1961–1991, 0.7% y−1), decline (1992–1997, −2.3% y−1) and stabilization (1998–2012, 22–25% with no net cover change). Twenty-eight years (1984–2011) of broad-scale Landsat Thematic Mapper assessments confirm that shrub cover has been relatively stable in recent decades regardless of grazing regimes and landforms with the exception of the proliferation of succulents at lower elevations (verified by repeat photography acquired in 1987 and 2015) where the physical environment is the harshest, reflecting elevated temperature and winter precipitation deficit. Warmer, drier future climates are predicted to reduce woody plant carrying capacity and promote a shift to xerophytic succulents.
Impacts of climate change on infestations of Dubas bug (Ommatissus lybicus Bergevin) on date palms in Oman
Authors: Shabani Farzin , Kumar Lalit , Hamdan Saif al Shidi Rashid
Published: September 2018

Climate change has determined shifts in distributions of species and is likely to affect species in the future. Our study aimed to (i) demonstrate the linkage between spatial climatic variability and the current and historical Dubas bug (Ommatissus lybicus Bergevin) distribution in Oman and (ii) model areas becoming highly suitable for the pest in the future. The Dubas bug is a pest of date palm trees that can reduce the crop yield by 50% under future climate scenarios in Oman. Projections were made in three species distribution models; generalized linear model, maximum entropy, boosted regression tree using of four global circulation models (GCMs) (a) HadGEM2, (b) CCSM4, (c) MIROC5 and (d) HadGEM2-AO, under four representative concentration pathways (2.6, 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5) for the years 2050 and 2070. We utilized the most commonly used threshold of maximum sensitivity + specificity for classifying outputs. Results indicated that northern Oman is currently at great risk of Dubas bug infestations (highly suitable climatically) and the infestations level will remain high in 2050 and 2070. Other non-climatic integrated pest management methods may be greater value than climatic parameters for monitoring infestation levels, and may provide more effective strategies to manage Dubas bug infestations in Oman. This would ensure the continuing competitiveness of Oman in the global date fruit market and preserve national yields.
Cell-wall-degrading enzymes produced in vitro and in vivo byRhizoctonia solani, the causative fungus of peanut sheath blight
Authors: Xue Cai Yun , Zhou Ru Jun , Li Yuan Jie , Xiao Di , Fu Jun Fan
Published: September 2018

Rhizoctonia solanicauses the disease peanut sheath blight, involving symptoms of maceration and necrosis of infected tissue, mainly caused by cell-wall-degrading enzymes (CWDEs). This study investigated the production of CWDEs including polygalacturonase (PG), polymethyl-galacturonase (PMG), cellulase (Cx) and β-glucosidase byR. solaniin vitro (in liquid culture) and in vivo (in peanut plants). Significant PG, PMG, Cx and β-glucosidase activities were detected in infected tissues including stalk and leaves of Baisha and Silihong peanut cultivars. Extracts of healthy tissue showed little or no such activities. In shaken liquid cultures ofR. solaniin medium containing pectin or pectin plus carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) as the carbon source(s), PG and PMG were notably active. Significant Cx activity was detected in cultures with CMC or pectin plus CMC as the carbon source(s). However, only a very low level of β-glucosidase activity was observed in cultures with any of the tested carbon sources. An increase of pH was recorded in decayed peanut tissues and liquid culture filtrates; the filtrate pH and fungal growth positively correlated. The fungal growth and/or pH were important factors for the production of PG, PMG and Cx in culture with pectin plus CMC as the carbon source. A single active PG isozyme with isoelectric point around 9.2 was detected in culture filtrates and in infected peanut tissues by the method of isoelectric focusing electrophoresis. The crude enzymes extracted from liquid culture ofR. solaniinduced decay of healthy peanut leaves.
The firstCaipirasuchus(Mesoeucrocodylia, Notosuchia) from the Late Cretaceous of Minas Gerais, Brazil: new insights on sphagesaurid anatomy and taxonomy
Authors: Martinelli Agustín G. , Marinho Thiago S. , Iori Fabiano V. , Ribeiro Luiz Carlos B.
Published: September 2018

Field work conducted by the staff of the Centro de Pesquisas Paleontológicas Llewellyn Ivor Price of the Universidade Federal do Triângulo Mineiro since 2009 at Campina Verde municipality (MG) have resulted in the discovery of a diverse vertebrate fauna from the Adamantina Formation (Bauru Basin). The baurusuchidCampinasuchus diniziwas described in 2011 from Fazenda Três Antas site and after that, preliminary descriptions of a partial crocodyliform egg, abelisaurid teeth, and fish remains have been done. Recently, the fossil sample has been considerably increased including the discovery of several, partially articulated fish remains referred to Lepisosteiformes and an almost complete and articulated skeleton referred to a new species ofCaipirasuchus(Notosuchia, Sphagesauridae), which is the main subject of this contribution. At present, this genus was restricted to the Adamantina Formation cropping out in São Paulo state, with the speciesCaipirasuchus montealtensis,Caipirasuchus paulistanus, andCaipirasuchus stenognathus. The new material represents the holotype of a new species,Caipirasuchus mineirusn. sp., diferenciated from the previously ones due to the following traits: last two maxillary teeth located posterior to anterior edge of infraorbital fenestra, elongated lateroventral maxillo-jugal suture—about ½ the anteroposterior maxillar length—and contact between posterior crest of quadrate and posterior end of squamosal forming an almost 90° flaring roof of the squamosal, among others.C. mineiruswas found in the same outcrop thanCampinasuchusbut stratigraphically the former occurs in the lower portion of the section with no unambiguous data supporting the coexistance of both taxa.
Bisexuality
Authors: Davies Sharyn Graham
Published: September 2018

Bisexuality refers to a desire for sexual activity with people regardless of their sexed body. For most of human history, sexuality has been considered something people do rather than an activity defining identity. In the late twentieth century, drawing on earlier work by anthropologists such as Margaret Mead and Bronisław Malinowski, and propelled in no small part by the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s, sexuality became a reanimated topic of anthropological research. While bisexuality continues to receive limited focus, ethnographic research has shown the diverse ways in which bisexuality is experienced, including as a variously celebrated and discriminated identity and as a way to fulfill same‐sex sexual desire while conforming to heteronormative societal expectations.
EuropeanAssociation ofSocialAnthropologists (EASA)
Authors: Salazar Noel B.
Published: September 2018

The European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) is a professional organization open to all social anthropologists either qualified in or working in Europe. Founded in 1989, the EASA is a self‐governing democratic body. The association seeks to advance anthropology in Europe by organizing biennial conferences, by editing the journalSocial Anthropologyand a book series, by supporting thematic networks, and through communications and discussions on social media platforms. The geographical spread of EASA's activities and the composition of the successive executive committees shows the association's pan‐European character.
Cardosode Oliveira,Roberto (1928–2006)
Authors: Da Silva Cristhian Teofilo
Published: September 2018

The anthropological contribution of Brazilian anthropologist Roberto Cardoso de Oliveira is presented as the result of a double intersection of different traditions and professional practices. The first association is between philosophy and anthropology as disciplines that constituted his intellectual syntax. The second is between indigenism and scholarship as professional practices that shaped his theoretical choices and his unique style of ethnology. The tensions derived from both intersections enabled Cardoso de Oliveira to elaborate his main contributions to anthropology through multiple applications of theories of ethnicity, identity, and hermeneutics.
Association of Social Anthropologists of theUKand Commonwealth (ASA)
Authors: Gledhill John
Published: September 2018

The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth is a learned society that aims to promote the teaching, research, and broader professional application of social anthropology in and beyond the United Kingdom, and at the same time it is a national professional association that seeks to defend and advance the interests of the subject of anthropology and its practitioners. Discussing both aspects of the association's mission, today and in the past, this entry assesses the strengths and weaknesses of an organization whose conferences and publications continue to make an important intellectual contribution to the global development of anthropology but that has undergone profound changes in its organization and ethos in the twenty‐first century.
Couvade
Authors: Rival L. M.
Published: September 2018

The term “couvade” covers a wide range of behaviors and symptoms found in many cultures, all suggesting active male participation in pregnancy. Anthropologists have offered different interpretations of culturally imposed restrictions on the daily routines of expectant fathers, as well as of the various physiological and/or psychosomatic manifestations that often accompany them. The richness of lowland South American ethnographic descriptions of the couvade allows us to understand more fully the diversity of means through which cultures symbolically rework the biological processes involved in human procreation and reproduction. Even more importantly, it illustrates the extent to which ideas about relatedness and shared substance may depart from Western notions rooted in biology and genetics.
Gender and Fieldwork
Authors: Macintyre Martha
Published: September 2018

Anthropological study involving fieldwork and participant observation is profoundly affected by the gender of the researcher. Conformity or sensitivity to ideals of gender in the host community is crucial to acceptance and incorporation. This was initially not recognized, but since the mid‐twentieth century, when feminism and postcolonialism gained theoretical authority in anthropology, the gender of the researcher has been a subject of reflection and debate. In the late twentieth century, as gay and lesbian research gained ground, this discussion has been extended so that issues of the effects of sexuality and gender in fieldwork have new salience.
Barth,Fredrik (1928–2016)
Authors: Eriksen Thomas Hylland
Published: September 2018

Known chiefly for his theory of ethnicity, Fredrik Barth has made several important contributions to anthropology. Beginning as a political anthropologist concerned with the relationship between individual strategies and social form, he reformulated segmentary lineage theory following fieldwork in Swat. He later wrote about ecological adaptations among nomads in Persia and developed a transactional model of social life inspired by the theory of games, before shifting, around 1970, to the study of cosmologies and knowledge systems, mainly based on fieldwork in New Guinea and Bali. A very prolific fieldworker, Barth has also published monographs from Kurdistan and Oman. He represents a processual view of social life, emphasizing events and interaction rather than structural and historical features of society. As a professor at the University of Bergen from 1961 to 1973, he was the major influence on the development of modern Norwegian social anthropology.
Hinduism and Jainism
Authors: Channa Subhadra Mitra
Published: September 2018

Hinduism and Jainism are ancient religions founded in South Asia. While Jainism claims a definite origin and has “messiah” figures, Hinduism has evolved over the years as a way of life. Hinduism has consolidated some dimensions that are now accepted as doctrine, yet it remains a faith that supports a wide range of beliefs and practices. The Brahmanical version of Hinduism advocates a hierarchical society based upon concepts of purity and pollution but is not necessarily supported by other versions such as the Bhakti movement. Jainism emphasizes withdrawal and asceticism and does not have any internal stratification. While reincarnation and doctrines of
karma
and soul are common to both, the religions differ in essentials about the nature of life, cosmology, and salvation. The similarity perceived between them has often involved the merging of Jainism with Hinduism, and only recently have the Jains attempted to establish a separate identity.
Public Sector versus Private Sector in Development
Authors: Mcleod Ross H.
Published: September 2018

A fundamental development issue is delineation of the appropriate scope of public‐sector economic activity, given that the private sector is capable of providing most of the goods and services the public wishes to consume. The key is to ensure that the public sector plays a complementary rather than a competing role, restricting itself to things that the private sector cannot do or cannot do well. The first category includes the provision of protection for citizens against a range of both manmade and natural threats, while the second encompasses modification of activities that impose costs on third parties. The idea of complementary action also extends to infrastructure services, which can readily be supplied by the private sector, subject to the exercise of governments' power to compulsorily acquire land needed for this purpose. The interests of the poor are most effectively furthered by a public sector with this focus on complementarity.
DNA
, Ancient
Authors: Lalueza‐Fox Carles
Published: September 2018

The ancient DNA (aDNA) field started more than thirty years ago as a promising and sometimes controversial scientific field. The limited retrieval of DNA sequences from extinct hominins such as Neanderthals and also from past modern human populations provided information about hominin phylogeny and past migratory movements, respectively. The advent of massive sequencing technologies after 2005 allowed the retrieval of complete genomes from Neanderthals and Denisovans and also from prehistoric modern humans from Europe, Asia, and the Americas, generating new evidence on evolutionary issues such as adaptation, demography, and interbreeding events. With increasing paleogenomic data from different areas and periods, it will become possible to understand the dynamics of ancient and present‐day population affinities. The upcoming massive aDNA data will trigger a multidisciplinary view of the study of the past and will favor a closer collaboration between archaeologists and molecular biologists.
Genetics of Modern Human Origins and Diversity
Authors: Relethford John H.
Published: September 2018

The fossil record, genetic data from present‐day human populations, and ancient DNA all support a model of human evolution where modern humans arose in Africa 200,000 years ago, and began dispersing throughout the world in the past 100,000 to 50,000 years, along with some interbreeding with earlier human populations, such as the Neanderthals. Patterns of genetic diversity within and between present‐day human populations reflect this history, including higher levels of genetic diversity in sub‐Saharan African populations, a decrease in genetic diversity with increasing distance from East Africa, and a strong correlation of genetic differences with the geographic distance between populations.
Music and Song, Evolutionary Approaches to
Authors: Bannan Nicholas
Published: September 2018

New research methods have during the last thirty years focused increased attention on the role of music in culture and its place in the field of anthropology. One model of the evolution of human communication proposes that song may have been the precursor of language. Musical communication may have been the means by which the vocal instrument attained the capacity for the fine‐tuned acoustic productivity necessary for the development of language. But music is still with us, both in its vocal form and in performance on the wide variety of musical instruments that human ingenuity has devised from available resources in the different environments that our species adapted to occupy. Whether through singing, playing, or a combination of the two, humans make music for a variety of purposes across the life cycle: social ceremonies, calming, arousing and healing, commemoration of predecessors, civic events. Music helps to define who we are.
Mental Representations
Authors: Jacob Pierre
Published: September 2018

All cultural information is mentally represented information but not all mentally represented information is cultural. Cultural information is information that has been repeatedly metarepresented in the minds of members of a human population distributed across space and time. A metarepresentation is a representation of the content of another representation. But what is a representation in the first place? How can one thing stand for another or for itself? Public representations (e.g., words and pictures) are physical things. Are mental representations (e.g., ideas and images) physical too? Whether mental or public, all representations have content or intentionality: some have propositional content, others pictorial content. Is content a physical property of a representation? Can content have effects on the physical world?
Informal Sector
Authors: Seligmann Linda J.
Published: September 2018

This entry examines the origins of the concept of the informal sector and reviews how it has been defined, the methodologies proposed to investigate its operations, and the relationship between formal and informal sector activities. It discusses tensions among anthropologists, policy makers, and economists with respect to the appropriate unit of analysis of informal‐sector employment and workers and their contributions to national economies. It also traces sociocultural and political dimensions associated with informal economies and how they have undergone transformations in light of globalization processes.
Ethnomedicine
Authors: Briggs Charles L. , Nichter Mark
Published: September 2018

Ethnomedicine, a subdiscipline of medical anthropology, was first driven by interest in the history of medicine, ethnobotany, folk medicine, comparative medical systems, and approaches to healing that anthropologists in the early to mid‐1900s viewed as a transformation from mystical to rational approaches to medical problem solving. Critics challenged how such binary contrasts neglect complex interrelations between explanatory models and treatment modalities and can fuel forms of cultural reasoning that rationalize structural inequalities. Scholars later expanded the scope of ethnomedicine to include biomedicine, examine global influences, analyze performative and embodied dimensions of healing, and assess sources of effectiveness beyond narrow perspectives on bounded treatment modalities.
Dependency Theory and Underdevelopment
Authors: Arce Alberto M. G.
Published: September 2018

The relation between dependency theory and underdevelopment brings to the fore theraison d'êtreof a contemporary social anthropology of development. The downfall of the main counterdiscourse to modernization theory, namely dependency theory, lured social anthropologists to embark on the ethnographic study of the inner workings of colonial administrations and capitalist markets, the process of labor migration, and urbanization. Over time this led to an interest in the interplay of “expert” and “local” knowledge interventions in development.
Nomads/Pastoralists and Development
Authors: Schareika Nikolaus
Published: September 2018

Pastoral development constitutes an interface between two different, difficult to reconcile, sociocultural systems: that of pastoral nomads as opposed to that of nation‐states and development agencies. Pastoral development originated in colonial policies and projects to boost the livestock sector, organize the colonial economy, and sedentarize mobile people. It initially opposed key values and requirements of pastoral nomads such as mobility and socially restricted livestock marketing. By now, pastoral development has turned to initiatives that shall support pastoral livelihoods, reduce poverty, promote social equality, and allow for participation. Pastoral development has come to acknowledge nomadic mobility and opportunistic resource management as an integral part of pastoral systems and concentrates on global issues that threaten nomadic livelihoods. These include environmental degradation, population growth, climate change, land privatization, and political marginalization. Given the magnitude of problems in pastoral societies, livelihood diversification, increased market participation, and education are promoted strategies.
B
oehm,
B
rigitte (1938–2005)
Authors: Orozco Claudio Garibay , Roth‐Seneff Andrew
Published: September 2018

Brigitte Boehm was a noted Mexican ethnohistorian and an important collaborator in the institutionalization of anthropology in Mexico during the second half of the twentieth century. Her pioneering work culminated in an ethnographic approach developed from the point of view of political ecology and focused on capturing the complexity of landscape organization, history, economy, power, ideology, and politics as reflected in changing social group practices operating within larger regional processes of control over both natural resource management and exchange.
Obesity
Authors: Lieberman Leslie Sue
Published: September 2018

Obesity, or excess body fat, has reached pandemic proportions in the early twenty‐first century. Anthropologists study both the biological and the sociocultural causes and consequences of obesity. Throughout human evolution, selection favored physiological adaptations for efficient fat storage and energy use under conditions of periodic food shortages and high energy expenditure. Many populations are experiencing reduced energy expenditures as a result of mechanized transportation and energy‐saving devices, and increased energy consumption of highly processed, energy‐dense foods. These lifestyle transitions facilitate weight gain and obesity. The consequences of obesity concern health, with increased risk for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and other conditions. Cross‐cultural responses range from embracing obesity as attractive, socially prestigious, and healthful to viewing obesity negatively, with stigmatizing attributions affecting social, educational, and occupational opportunities. Culturally tailored interventions address the increasing global prevalence of obesity.
Finance
Authors: Ortiz Horacio
Published: September 2018

The anthropology of finance has developed following the growing importance of the financial industry in the distribution of monetary resources worldwide since the 1980s. It concentrates on the bureaucratic settings and commercial practices that organize relations between employees and between companies. The analysis of everyday practice shows that the technical operations most often make sense, for those who carry them out and for the regulatory framework, as part of the neoliberal moral and political project of organizing society through markets, with the ideal horizon of efficiency and an optimal allocation of resources. These imaginaries accompany and legitimize the global hierarchy in the access to monetary resources managed by the financial industry.
Sharing
Authors: Widlok Thomas
Published: September 2018

Sharing plays a major role in the current rhetoric of imagining alternatives to a world dominated by commodity exchange. The social practice of sharing as described in the ethnographic record has a distinctive profile whereby others are allowed access to something of value without specific obligations of return transfers. As such, sharing can be clearly distinguished from other forms of social transactions such as gift exchange, reciprocity, pooling, and redistribution. Most ethnographic examples of sharing are from hunter‐gatherer societies, where sharing is the dominant way of acquiring and allocating goods. Sharing is also prominent in many evolutionary debates because it challenges selection models premised on human action as maximizing fitness and optimizing individual benefits. At the same time, the ethnographic record of sharing practices underlines that generosity is not a necessary condition for sharing, while demand sharing is its prototypical form.
Infanticide
Authors: Sommer Volker , Minocher Riana , Lowe Adriana
Published: September 2018

The killing of immature conspecifics (fetuses, infants, children, dependent offspring) by adult males or females, both unrelated and related, is not an uncommon occurrence among human and nonhuman animal societies. Although not universally accepted, adaptationist approaches attempt to explain why infanticide may provide a reproductive benefit to the perpetrator. These hypotheses focus on resource competition (improving access to food or care for own infants), parental manipulation (terminating investment in children that compromise lifetime reproductive prospects, often leading to biases against a particular sex), sexual selection (eliminating competitors' offspring to avoid misdirected parental investment), and exploitation (cannibalism). Given that infanticide is a predictable response to certain ecological and psychosocial circumstances, social engineering may be an effective tool in reducing its frequency among human societies.
Assisted Reproductive Technologies
Authors: Inhorn Marcia C. , Birenbaum‐Carmeli Daphna
Published: September 2018

In 1978 in vitro fertilization (IVF) was introduced in England to overcome the problem of infertility. In the nearly four decades since then, many other assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) have been developed. Some are simple variants of IVF, while others are complex innovations, involving related fields such as human genetics. As ARTs have evolved over time, they have also traveled widely, leading to the birth of 5 million babies around the globe. Yet, ongoing problems of ART access have led to a low‐cost IVF movement. ARTs have also had profound impacts on gender, kinship, and family life, especially as third parties (egg and sperm donors, gestational surrogates) and cryopreservation (freezing) have been employed to facilitate conception. Diverse moral and religious responses to these ART innovations have led to increasing regulation. Medical anthropologists have studied all of these issues, showing how ARTs are a key symbol of our changing times.
Homosexuality, Biosocial Theories of
Authors: Sommer Volker , Lowe Adriana
Published: September 2018

The biological basis of homosexuality is the subject of ongoing investigations. Researchers in this field explore potential causes through two complementary approaches. On the one hand, there is a focus on mechanisms that generate the trait (proximate causes), with evidence for a multifacetted influence of genes and intrauterine hormones. On the other hand, researchers also consider the functions that might have favored the evolution of homosexuality (ultimate causes). Several functional hypotheses can be applied to bisexual behavior (substitution or practice for heterosexual activities; alliance formation through homosexual interactions). Exclusive homosexuality, however, requires different explanatory perspectives (e.g., kin selection, i.e., homosexuals reproduce indirectly; parental manipulation, i.e., parents turn younger offspring into helpers for older siblings; balanced polymorphism, i.e., male homosexual behavior is a by‐product of selection for other traits, such as higher fecundity of female relatives). Such multiplicity of explanatory approaches reflects the diverse nature of same‐sex sexual behavior.
Marriage: Approaches from Evolutionary Ecology
Authors: Rauch Kristin Liv
Published: September 2018

Anthropologists comprehensively study marriage practices because of the cross‐cultural consistency of marital institutions and their consequential influence on many aspects of human societies, including social, political, economic, and biological realms. The evolutionary ecology approach attempts to understand the wide‐ranging variation in marriage practices in terms of adaptive cultural strategies in local ecologies. Observed variation across and within societies in marriage systems, conflict between men and women, arrangement of marriages, marital property exchange, and postmarital residence reflects differences in fitness‐enhancing behaviors and strategies under different environmental conditions.
Asylum Cases, Role of Anthropology in
Authors: Haas Bridget M.
Published: September 2018

This entry reviews anthropological and related research on asylum cases. The broader context of asylum adjudication is first discussed, with particular attention to the tensions between security concerns and humanitarian imperatives, and between discourses of human rights and humanitarianism. Specific emphases of asylum research are outlined, including: issues of credibility; the crafting and performance of asylum narratives; cross‐cultural misunderstandings and communicative breakdowns; the role of advocates and experts; and “evidence” as a contested category. Emergent foci of anthropological inquiry into asylum cases are also noted.
Development Agencies
Authors: Stirrat R. L.
Published: September 2018

The development industry rose to prominence in the years after World War II. Anthropologists have been involved in this industry both as development practitioners and as critics and analysts. A dominant theme was an approach which talked in terms of the “discourse of development” but more recent approaches have criticized such monolithic approaches and stressed the internal dynamics of development agencies. This has led on to ethnographies of both policy formation and project implementation as well as studies focusing on development personnel.
Ritual and Cognition
Authors: Kavanagh Christopher
Published: September 2018

Research into the mental processes that are involved with both the performance and the observance of rituals has a long history but it was not until the 1990s, with the resurgence of evolutionary and cognitive approaches to examining culture, that this developed into an active field of research. The distinctive feature of cognitive approaches to examining ritual is that they try to address how ritual performances interact and are shaped by the features of the human mind. The dominant topics of research in cognition and ritual have explored how rituals are linked to early‐developing overimitative tendencies; preexisting cognitive systems for avoiding hazards, encoding salient memories, and parsing action sequences; and how participation in harsh or traumatic rituals functions as a form of costly signaling of commitment to a group and encourages prosocial behavior from observers and participants.
Gell,Alfred (1945–97)
Authors: Hirsch Eric
Published: September 2018

Alfred Gell made important and innovative contributions to key areas of anthropology—including art, ritual, tattooing, and time—for over twenty‐five years before his tragic death at the age of fifty‐one. This entry traces the nature of these contributions and how Gell's interests and focus were transformed, especially those concerning diagrammatic imagery and art. In particular, Gell jettisoned his early concern with language‐like meaning as the prime quality of art objects. He came to adopt a cognitive, nonlinguistic theory to account for the manner in which art objects have value in unique ways for both the producers and audiences of art.
Development and Forced Displacement
Authors: Jeffery Laura
Published: September 2018

Development‐induced displacement and resettlement (DIDR) is the compulsory removal of people from areas earmarked for development. Globally, hundreds of millions of people have been forcibly displaced as a result of DIDR, and the numbers are rising, from an average of over 10 million per year in the final two decades of the twentieth century to an average of over 15 million per year in the first decade of the twenty‐first century. Anthropologists have been at the forefront of critiques of DIDR, which tends to further marginalize the already marginalized. In the 1970s and 1980s, anthropologists modeled the ideal phases of DIDR. Since the 1990s, anthropologists have identified the factors that compound impoverishment. More recently, anthropologists have shown that DIDR works best when well planned in advance in consultation with the affected communities, and have argued that DIDR should be required to effect social and material improvements in the lives of those displaced and resettled.
Race and Racisms
Authors: Schwarcz Lilia Moritz
Published: September 2018

Racism as a language is as old as humanity itself. There is no society or social grouping that does not reflect or issue judgments upon the variations present between groups in terms of skin color, ethnicity, generation, gender, and origin. At the same time, on another level, while the perception of difference between humans and the groups that they compose may be common to all humanity, it cannot simply be concluded that racism is an innate phenomenon, much less a single, universal one. In fact, this is a type of social manifestation that shifts throughout history; it is relational in the sense that it always functions in certain delimited contexts and emerges as a political response to specific situations. Analyzed from this angle, racism can be understood as a social and plural phenomenon—as racisms.
Categories and Taxonomies
Authors: Medin Douglas , Herrera Amanda
Published: September 2018

Categories and taxonomies are critical components in uncovering how humans categorize and reason about the world. This entry reviews research in anthropology and psychology to provide cross‐disciplinary insights on conceptual organization of natural kinds. It also summarizes evidence on the use of categories in reasoning to support the proposition for a shift in orientation from a singular focus on taxonomic reasoning to viewing taxonomic and ecological reasoning (and their interactions) as possible conceptual strategies that may be differently activated depending on the context, environment, or culture. This orientation complicates questions about cognitive universality or variability, suggesting that researchers may productively adopt scientific theories and practices that incorporate multiple perspectives and epistemologies.
Ethnobiology
Authors: Ellen Roy
Published: September 2018

Ethnobiology is concerned with understanding how human populations interact with and use fauna and flora, and more particularly with how cultural knowledge of the natural world is classified, constructed, and applied. A robustly interdisciplinary subject, it is mainly practiced through its subcomponents, such as ethnobotany. However, there are good reasons for looking at how humans relate to the diversity of other living organisms as a connected whole. Ethnobiological studies have made major contributions to cognitive anthropology, through the empirical examination of the relationship between categorical universals, ecology, and local cultural particularities. They have added significantly to our understanding of knowledge transmission, have played an important role in the development of participatory approaches and techniques of elicitation, and have contributed to the recognition of the practical relevance of indigenous knowledge and the ethical implications of its use.
Oral Literatures
Authors: Finnegan Ruth
Published: September 2018

Oral literature refers to works of art produced, transmitted, and/or performed without writing. It is found in many contexts, both “industrial” and “nonindustrial,” and in multiple genres, many of them overlapping or interacting with those of written literature. Contrary to some perceptions, oral literary forms are not just something of the past or far away, practiced among so‐called exotic peoples, but realized here and now and in a variety of forms and for many purposes. In the past the emphasis was on prose forms, especially narrative, but this is now plentifully supplemented by collections and analyses of poetry and song.
Animal Management and Stock Keeping
Authors: Dransart Penelope
Published: September 2018

Animals as stock are a reproducible, living resource. Herbivores can be kept in herds or flocks in considerable numbers, sometimes ranging over extensive pasture grounds, while omnivorous animals tend to be kept in smaller numbers, typically closer to the homestead. For millennia, people in different parts of the world have learned to work with or “manage,” their animals' particular characteristics. Herd animals supply raw materials, food, and labor service; people also value their companionship and sometimes regard them as intermediaries between mortal beings and divinities. In pastoralist and agricultural societies, livestock management is often accompanied by ritual practices intended to ensure the wellbeing of the animals. Everyday management of herds focuses on ensuring access to adequate pasture, often in marginal environments. Under ranching conditions, extremely large numbers of animals may be stocked and owners tend not to develop the systems of respect and close communication possible between herders and livestock in subsistence economies.
Symbolic Power
Authors: Cohen Susanne
Published: September 2018

Symbolic power is a type of power associated with symbolic systems and their ability to impose a particular vision of the world. Developed by Pierre Bourdieu, the concept describes how cultural categories that make certain things thinkable and other things unthinkable become instruments of domination that naturalize a given social order.
Rationality and Belief
Authors: Day Abby
Published: September 2018

The apparently dichotomous, yet mutually constitutive, relationship between rationality and belief has a history particular to anthropology. As anthropologists studied people in, initially, colonial environments their questions reflected those of their era. Nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century anthropology concerned itself with whether the so‐called primitives were using rational, reasoned, evidence‐based cognitive apparatuses or continued to cling to apparently false beliefs. As the discipline moved through the twentieth century, the themes shifted to interrogating belief itself as an unstable, and Christian‐centric, category. The interdependence of rationality and belief became unsustainable with a postmodern turn to reflexivity and nondualism.
Smell
Authors: Low Kelvin E. Y.
Published: September 2018

Previously occupying a low status in Western thought and culture, smell has since been studied vis‐à‐vis a wide‐ranging spectrum of sociality and through its differentiated vocabularies, including personhood and self‐presentation, social memory‐making, group membership, kinship, cosmology, morality, ethics, ethnicity, and religion. Whereas historical smellscapes comprising odoriferous substances emanating from both places and bodies were considered a source of threat to sanitation, public hygiene, and morality, smell in the contemporary context is about simulation and imitation, manufactured to cater to consumerism. Studying and articulating smell experiences require innovative methodologies such as smellscape walkabouts and varying writing techniques in presenting olfactive and other sensory data.
Top‐Down and Bottom‐Up Approaches in Development
Authors: Kassam Aneesa
Published: September 2018

In development theory and practice, “top‐down” and “bottom‐up” approaches refer to two modes of inducing economic, social, political, and technological change in non‐Western societies. They have also been described as “mainstream” and “alternative” approaches. The mainstream approaches began to be applied by Western governments and international institutions between the 1950s and 1960s while the alternative ones emerged in the 1980s in response to the criticisms made by Southern and Northern scholars. Although these two approaches are often opposed in the literature, both can be seen as pursuing the common goal of modernization, albeit based on different methods and understandings of democracy. As a result of complex politico‐economic factors, by the late 1990s and early 2000s, these two approaches appeared to have merged.
Pharmaceuticals
Authors: van der Geest Sjaak
Published: September 2018

Anthropology looks at pharmaceuticals as social and cultural phenomena. It is interested in the relationship between human beings and the medicines they produce, sell, prescribe, and consume. This entry describes the history of pharmaceutical anthropology, the “biography” and “social life” of pharmaceuticals, and the most prominent concepts and perspectives in the study of pharmaceuticals, including critical medical anthropology, agency, pharmaceuticalization, self‐medication, commodification, globalization, pharmaceutical symbolism, and resistance toward the use of pharmaceuticals. Three long‐lasting debates related to pharmaceuticals are presented: the role of the industry, the placebo effect, and the controversy about the efficacy of traditional/alternative versus biomedical medicines. Lastly, the practical relevance of anthropological research of pharmaceuticals is discussed.
Narrative and Database Analysis
Authors: Lane Justin E.
Published: September 2018

Narrative and database analysis has become an increasingly common tool among anthropologists. Its strengths include affording researchers the ability to quantify and make statistically supported interpretations of their data. This approach also allows researchers to record massive amounts of information about a single culture over a long period of time or even multiple groups longitudinally. This strength is also its weakness as often such quantification methods require that semantic information, which might hold rich meaning, is sacrificed. Furthermore, discrepancies between data‐coding schemes or the perceptions of human coders can result in incompatible datasets that are problematic or not valid if combined to create larger analyses. Nonetheless, when performed rigorously, narrative and database analysis provides a very powerful tool for anthropologists that straddles the boundary between qualitative and quantitative approaches.
Anatomy, Evolution of Human
Authors: Mounier Aurélien
Published: September 2018

The study of the evolution of humans relies mostly on data from comparative skeletal anatomy techniques conducted on Hominini remains. This entry describes the skeletal anatomy of modern humans (
Homo sapiens
) within the framework of human evolution, contrasting modern human specialized cranial and postcranial skeletons with the skeletons of great apes (i.e., gorillas and chimpanzees) and with other species from the Hominini subtribe (i.e.,
Australopithecus
,
Paranthropus
, and other
Homo
species).
International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES)
Authors: Harrison Faye V.
Published: September 2018

The International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) is the world's largest and oldest forum for anthropologists. Founded in 1948 but with predecessor organizations dating back to 1865, theIUAES's activities and membership reflect the broad epistemological and methodological continuum that makes anthropology unique as a discipline situated at a dynamic pluricultural and transnational crossroads of scientific, social–scientific, and humanistic knowledge. The Union's world congresses and inter‐congresses, its commissions, and public engagements have set the stage for the role it has played as the discipline's ambassador within interdisciplinary arenas in the global context.
Agency and Morality
Authors: Sousa Paulo , Manoharan Christopher
Published: September 2018

Cognitive traditions study how human beings utilize naive concepts of agency and morality to make judgments about persons and their actions and how these concepts and judgments are related. We discuss, in particular, how judgments of whether an action is intentional or not affect judgments of moral blame and moral wrongdoing. Cognitive approaches argue that judgments of intentionality constitute a fundamental factor in how humans calculate a person's degree of blame for the occurrence of a bad event, even if some anthropologists have claimed that in many cultural contexts people leave aside questions of intentionality, adhering to a criterion of strict or absolute liability. However, cognitive approaches argue that judgments of intentionality constitute a much less important factor in how humans categorize an action as an instance of wrongdoing (i.e., as a normative transgression), since ordinary norms prohibiting an action often do not specify anything about intentionality.
Dance, Anthropology of
Authors: Wulff Helena
Published: September 2018

The role of dance in social and cultural contexts has been a topic for focused anthropological study since the 1960s. When the Western concept of dance does not work, dance anthropologists look for bounded rhythmical movements but also dance events and dance culture. Dance can drive transition and negotiate both conflict and unity. The anthropology of dance covers all forms of dance, Western and non‐Western, ranging from dance in ritual, folk dance, and diaspora dance to social dance and street dance, as well as staged performance dance, and dancesport. Because of the transient nature of dance, issues of preservation and mediation are at stake. Dance and movement have been analyzed in relation to theories of the body, race, gender, and sexuality, as well as to ethnicity and nationalism, postcolonialism, and globalization.
Authenticity, Cultural
Authors: Kalshoven Petra Tjitske
Published: September 2018

Moving away from ideas on bounded cultures frozen in timeless traditions, anthropology has increasingly problematized an essentialist view of authenticity as grounded in a measurable material substrate by adopting a social constructivist perspective, leading to a focus on human experience and meaning making in which “materiality” has become a relational, social concept. Anthropology's problematizing, nuancing, and hybridizing of cultural authenticities coincides, however, with successful attempts by indigenous communities to harness the concept in more essentialist ways in support of political and economic goals, often, ironically, with anthropologists acting as experts in validating a tribe's or First Nation's existence through time.