bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
necesidad: notes on the discourses of urban politics in the Ajusco foothills of Mexico City
Authors: BARRIGA MIGUEL DÍAZ
Published: November 2004

In this article I explore the ways in which participants in urban movements in the Ajusco foothills deploy the concept of necesidad (necessity) to describe social conditions and the possibilities of grassroots organizing. Participants in urban movements—which were organized by the urban poor to gain land tenure and urban services—articulate the concept of necesidad in their criticisms of state policy. Using Nancy Fraser's notions of “needs talk” as a starting point, I outline how necesidad is implicated both in the construction of social identities—including class and gender—and in the processes through which hierarchical social relations are criticized and reinforced. I conclude the article by explaining the relevance of the concept of necesidad for understanding Mexican urban culture and for more broadly constructing an anthropology of urban social movements. [social movements, urban social movements, urban anthropology, Mexico]
myths that divide: immigrant labor and class segmentation in the Belizean banana industry
Authors: MOBERG MARK
Published: November 2004

Since 1980 thousands of immigrants have fled to Belize from political and economic crises elsewhere in Central America. The country has since witnessed growing confrontation between Afro‐Belizeans and Hispanic immigrants. This article examines how national identity is reproduced by the recruitment of labor in the Belizean banana industry, where most Afro‐Belizean workers have been replaced by immigrants. Myths of ethnicity rationalize the displacement of Belizeans from farm labor in terms of supposed cultural and innate attributes of the region's ethnic groups. Recruitment of immigrant workers suggests revisions of class segmentation theories of ethnic conflict, notably the need to examine workers' responses to discrimination through everyday forms of resistance. [immigrant labor, class segmentation, Belize, banana industry, ethnic conflict, resistance]
chasing the blood tie: surrogate mothers, adoptive mothers and fathers
Authors: RAGONÉ HELENA
Published: November 2004

This article examines the ways in which surrogates, fathers, and adoptive mothers negotiate the novel terrain that came into existence with the advent of surrogate motherhood. It is suggested that women who choose to become surrogate mothers do so as a means of transcending the limitations of their roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers while concomitantly attesting to the importance of those roles and to the sense of satisfaction they derive from them. Like surrogates, commissioning couples who enter into a surrogate arrangement focus less on the aspects of surrogacy that depart from tradition than they do on those that are consistent with American kinship ideology, most notably in their emphasis on the importance of family and nurturance. [reproduction, parenthood, family, kinship, nurturance]
The Sakalava Poiesis of History: Realizing the Past Through Spirit Possession in Madagascar
Authors: Lambek Michael
Published: November 2004

Using a broadly Aristotelian framework I propose poetic form as a means for distinguishing historicities. I analyze Sakalava performances of possession by royal ancestors as the creative production of a kind of history, distinguish it from a dominant occidental model of history, and elaborate the chronotope on which it is based and the heteroglossia and historical consciousness it enables. I argue that Sakalava spirit possession has a strongly realist bent and suggest the interest of poiesis for anthropological analysis and comparison more generally, [historical production, historicity, spirit possession, mimesis, poiesis, Aristotle, Madagascar]
Flagellation and Fundamentalism: (trans)Forming Meaning, Identity, and Gender Through Pakistani Women's Rituals of Mourning
Authors: Hegland Mary Elaine
Published: November 2004

In addition to the expansion of their ritual involvement resulting from the growth of religious transnationalism, Shi'a Muslim women in Peshawar, Pakistan have increasingly faced restrictive ritual constructions of femininity and fundamentalist ideology. In mourning rituals they have encountered symbolic complexes that reinforce men's role as repositories of holy power and succor and remind them of their own unworthiness to shed blood on behalf of Imam Husein and his cause. Because of binding ties to family, religious group, and representatives of the sacred, the women have not been inclined to protest overtly male authority and dogma. Rather than denying or contradicting symbolic and verbal deprecations of femininity outright, they have devoted themselves to the commemorative rites for the Shi'a martyr, Imam Husein. They have used these rituals to develop their own self‐confidence, performance abilities, entertainment, fame, and social support, disclosing through the performative aspects of their ritual activity their agency and transformative achievements. When we examine what individuals make of religion and rituals in practice, self‐flagellation and religious fundamentalism may present potential for agency and individual creativity, together with renewal of cultural and power structures, [gender, ritual performance, Pakistan, Shi'a Muslims, the body, agency, fundamentalism, religious transnationalism]
Coming to Terms with Navajo Nádleehí: A Critique of Berdache, "Gay," "Alternate Gender," and "Two‐spirit"
Authors: Epple Carolyn
Published: November 2004

In this article I assess what premises underlie the categories berdache, "alternate gender," "gay," and "two‐spirit"; and whether these premises are relevant to the ways in which many Navajos construct the "alternate gender" of those known as nádleehí. Proponents of these categories often extricate traits from their contexts and perceive male and female as mutually opposed, absolute values. Many Navajos, however, describe traits as inseparable from the universe and view male and female as situational values. [Native American, Navajo, gender, sexuality, worldview]
Book Reviews
Authors: Jain Sarah S. Lochlann
Published: November 2004

Car Cultures. Daniel Miller. ed. Oxford: Berg, 2001. ix. 250 pp., photographs, index.
In a cup of tea: Commodities and history among Samburu pastoralists in northern Kenya
Authors: Holtzman Jon D.
Published: November 2004

In this article, I explore the 20th‐century history of Samburu pastoralists through the lens of a particular beverage, tea. In classic anthropological analyses, "drug foods" such as tea have been taken as emblematic of the spread of global capitalism. Tea, however, is a rare example of a commodity that Samburu have adopted as a central component of a self‐defined "traditional" culture specifically counterposed to change. Tracing historical transformations in practices and meanings associated with tea use, I consider both the processes underlying its acceptance and their import in explicating broader processes through which Samburu agents have negotiated contexts of change. [Kenya, consumption, pastoralism, food, tea, history]
Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies, and Modern Myths.
Authors: Reddy Deepa S.
Published: November 2004

Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies, and Modern Myths. Chetan Bhatt .Oxford: Berg,2001. viii. 232 pp., bibliography, index.
An Amazonian Myth and Its History.
Authors: Crépeau Robert R.
Published: November 2004

An Amazonian Myth and Its History. Peter Gow. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. ix. 338 pp., plates, maps, appendix, references, index.
Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change.
Authors: Cook Susan
Published: November 2004

Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change. Carol Greenhouse. Elizabeth Mertz. and Kay B. Warren. eds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2002. 439 pp., bibliography, index.
"Camp Pain": Talking with Chronic Pain Patients.
Authors: Finkler Kaja
Published: November 2004

"Camp Pain": Talking with Chronic Pain Patients. Jean E. Jackson. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. ix. 281 pp., appendix, notes, bibliography, index.
Concealment, confession, and innovation in Kwaio women's taboos
Authors: Akin David
Published: November 2004

The extensive anthropological literature concerning menstrual taboos has been dominated by symbolic and structural analyses. I t tells us little about how people actually engage such taboos in their daily lives or about how taboos change through time. I argue that a more historically conscious, practiceoriented approach is needed and employ the Kwaio case to demonstrate how such an approach can reveal taboos as emergent and dynamic creations that both shape and respond to social change. [taboo, menstruation, confession, gender relations, religious change, Melanesia
Cosmopolitanism
Authors: Foster Stephen William
Published: November 2004

Cosmopolitanism. Carol A. Breckenridge Sheldon Pollock. Homi K. Bhabha. and Dipesh Chakrabarty. eds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. 240 pp., photographs, index.
Unconventional Sisterhood: Feminist Catholic Nuns in the Philippines
Authors: Wiegele Katharine L.
Published: November 2004

Unconventional Sisterhood: Feminist Catholic Nuns in the Philippines. Heather L. Claussen. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. ix. 235 pp., notes, references, index.
Never a Viable Coexistence
Authors: Willard William
Published: November 2004

William Fitzhugh. ed. Cultures in Contact: The European Impact on Native Cultural Institutions in Eastern North America, 1000‐1800 A.D. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985, 326 pp., $89.95 (cloth).

Fleurette Henri. The Southern Indians and Benjamin Hawkins: 1796‐1816. University of Oklahoma Press, 1986, 392 pp., $24.95 (cloth).

Winifred Buskirk. The Western Apache: Living with the Land Before 1950. University of Oklahoma Press, 1986, 298 pp., $2.50 (cloth).
Beasts of the Field
Authors: Martin Laura
Published: November 2004

An anthropological linguist leaves home on December 28, 1985, for three months of field work in Barrio Guadalupe, a hillside community on the outskirts of a bustling Mexican town in Chiapas, near the Guatemalan border. Motozintla is home to the handful of Mocho speakers who, in spite of a nearly total transition to the cultural milieu of rural Mexico, still retain their Mayan language. It is Mocho she has come to document, and she intends to do so while living in the household of don Juan Méndez Matías, premier speaker of Mocho. Into a compound of two adobe houses, the Méndez family welcomes dona Laura, whose fluent Spanish and general familiarity with rural Central American lifeways disguise her genuinely alien views about people, animals, and life. Over the several weeks that follow, we discover and rediscover the extent of the resulting conflicts of perception and response. For the linguist, it is the events involving animals that produce an unanticipated epiphany on fieldwork itself.
Personal Ethnography
Authors: Ginn Helen L.
Published: November 2004

Karla Poewe. Childhood in Germany During World War II: The Story of. Little Girl. Studies in German Thought and History, Volume 4. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1988. 222pp. $59.95 (cloth).
Coming to Terms with Witchcraft
Authors: Chernoff John M.
Published: November 2004

Vinigi L. Grottanelli. The Python Killer: Stories of Nzema Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. xii. 223 pp. $24.95 (cloth).
Joyous or Reckless?
Authors: Langness L. L.
Published: November 2004

James F. Weiner. The Heart of the Pearlshell: The Mythological Dimension of Foi Sociality. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1988. 322 pp. $40.00 (cloth).
Learning the Ropes
Authors: Ellis Carolyn
Published: November 2004

Michael Coy. ed. Apprenticeship: From Theory to Method and Back Again. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. xv. 298 pp. $17.95 (paper); $54.50 (cloth).
On Native Ethnographic Texts
Authors: Reck Gregory G.
Published: November 2004

H. Russell Bernard and Jesus Salinas Pedraza. Native Ethnographer:. Mexican Indian Describes His Culture. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications, 1989. 648 pp. $75.00 (cloth).
Sitting Buddha in a Mississippi Golf Course: Constructing Anthropology in Exotic and Familiar Settings
Authors: Durrenberger E. Paul
Published: November 2004

Anthropologists view the subject matter of anthropology variously as an abstract panhuman mentality, irreducible local cultural manifestations and histories, and a single system of power, among others. It is somehow the exotic that catches our attention sufficiently to demand explanation. The more people share our own cultural assumptions, the less problematic their behavior and language, and the more the challenge to see past our own assumptions to create a sense of distance and question.
Déjà Vu!
Authors: Schweitzer Mary
Published: November 2004

This is a story of resilience and persistence. In 1989–90, my son accompanied me for the second time on a fieldwork trip in Peru. When he “hit the wall” my initial response was surprise and panic. But then I recognized a pattern from the previous visit, of revealing growing tension, crises, and crises successfully met.

Why are we always willing to come back for more? Self‐searching questions of sadism, self‐destruction, stupidity, and amnesia may be important. It may come down simply to a decision of committing ourselves to the task at hand. Ultimately, I think it is a matter of our willingness to risk our fragility for the possibility of learning more deeply what it means to be human.
Farm Team
Authors: Kushner Gilbert
Published: November 2004

Jean Simonelli and Charles Winters. Too Wet to Plow: The Family Farm in Transition. New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1990. 127 pp. $25.00 (cloth).
Dreaming in Russia
Authors: Tedlock Barbara , Tedlock Dennis
Published: November 2004

This is the account of two anthropologists who went to Moscow for a conference on dreaming in 1991 and found themselves caught up in the August Revolution. Their colleagues from Russia, Lithuania, Armenia, and America ventured a wide range of reactions to the events, by way of opinions, anecdotes, jokes, rumors, fairy tales, and dreams.
The Rodina
Authors: Wilson Tamar Diana
Published: November 2004

“The Rodina” is the story of a woman agricultural worker whom I came to know while doing Ph.D. research from 1988 to 1991 on patterns of migration to a Mexicali squatter settlement. The incidents in her life, as recorded in the story, are those which she reported to me when I interviewed her in Colonia Popular, Mexicali, or which were revealed in subsequent conversations with her. “Lilia” (apseudonym) invited me to Salinas while she was cutting lettuce there, and took me to Watsonville to show me where she had previously lived, before and after meeting her current husband. I worked with her and others who appear in the story in the lettuce fields in the Salinas region for five days. All incidents in the story I witnessed first hand, or Lilia told me about; all the people in the story are real people. There are no composite characters.
What Does An Observation Mean In Archeology?
Authors: Gibbon Guy
Published: November 2004

This chapter explores the relationship between social imagery and observation in archeology. Several examples are provided which indicate that what archeologists “see” in/as the archeological record is more closely linked to shifting fashions in their own cultural contexts than generally imagined. If correct, this raises interesting questions concerning the nature of knowledge in archeology.
Evidence for the Antiquity of Gender Roles in the Central Plains Tradition
Authors: O'Brien Patricia J.
Published: November 2004

Using the Direct‐Historical‐Approach Pawnee gender roles are traced back to 1300 A.D. in the Central Plains tradition. The roles' ideological foundation, the deities Morning Star and Evening Star, are documented using lodge layout and solar alignment, tool distribution and faunal remains. Also, information from a gardening, meat processing and hide cleaning area (historic female activities) has tools associated with those actions, especially knives and endscrapers although male tools, broken arrowheads from the carcasses, are present with hammerstones and chert debris. Flint knapping is traditionally interpreted as a male activity, but the most parsimonious explanation would have women making their own tools as well as resharpening and reworking them on the spot rather than waiting for males to perform those tasks. Such an interpretation would mean that flint knapping was not a male activity per se as it is traditionally seen, but an action performed by women in one context and men in another.
The Biological Consequences of the Mississippian Expansion into the Western Great Lakes Region: A Study of Prehistoric Culture Contact
Authors: Sullivan Norman C.
Published: November 2004

Analysis of the impact of complex societies on small societies has rarely been addressed in the archeological record. This is done here in a case study from the prehistoric midwest with documentation of contacts between Middle Mississippians and indigenous peoples of the western Great Lakes region. Human skeletal remains have been analyzed in order to demonstrate the introduction of new subsistence practices and diseases into the upper midwest from the Mississippian core. Skeletal remains have also been analyzed for evidence of inter‐group conflict. These data are synthesized by modeling the demographic impact on populations of the upper midwest.
Mississippian Elites and Solar Alignments: A Reflection of Managerial Necessity, or Levers of Social Inequality?
Authors: Smith Bruce D.
Published: November 2004

Two alternative, but not necessarily mutually exclusive interpretive perspectives on Mississippian alignments are discussed. From the managerial necessity perspective of Peebles and Kus, among others, such solar alignments and “observatories” such as the Woodhenges of Cahokia, would be viewed as integral to the chiefly management and scheduling of complex maize‐centered agricultural economies and the monitoring and controlling of the annual cycle of field clearing, planting and harvesting. In contrast, from the perspective of Anthony Giddens, such solar alignments or “observatories” can be alternatively viewed as structures of domination–containers of authoritative resources involved in the control of social time‐space that provided powerful levers of social inequality.
Communal Societies and the Emergence of Elites in the Prehistoric American Southeast
Authors: Nassaney Michael S.
Published: November 2004

The emergence of elites in the prehistoric American Southeast takes place within the context of communal societies. Incipient elites exacerbate contradictions that appear under conditions of population growth, subsistence intensification, decreased mobility, and technological reorganization within the communal mode of production to undermine egalitarianism and consolidate their positions of status. Archaeological data from the Plum Bayou culture of central Arkansas suggest that the elite had not completely transformed communal life despite attempts at accumulation and monopolization. Their strategies of aggrandizement were effectively resisted by non‐elites and communalism was ultimately restored in the region. The dynamic that pushes egalitarian, kinbased societies towards inequality in the Southeast appears to be cyclical rather than linear.
Fort Ancient Has No Class: The Absence of an Elite Group in Mississippian Societies in the Central Ohio Valley
Authors: Griffin James B.
Published: November 2004

Diligent search of publications dealing with late prehistoric societies in southern Ohio, northcentral and northeastern Kentucky and western West Virginia, identified by archaeologists as Fort Ancient, did not identify any behavioral patterns that might represent the presence of an elite group. Personal communications from authoritarian figures in Fort Ancient archaeology confirm the absence of identifiable practices that could represent the presence of an upper class in this Mississippian society.
Powhatan's Pursestrings: On the Meaning of Surplus in a Seventeenth Century Algonkian Chiefdom
Authors: Barker Alex W.
Published: November 2004

The implicit tension in chiefly economies–between a political economy predicated on surplus supplied by a domestic economy content with sufficiency–is explored, and an example of its political and processual consequences discussed. Comparison of ethnohistoric narratives with estimation of annual agricultural production for the seventeenth century Powhatan chiefdom suggests that the expansion and increasing complexity of the Powhatan political system was not due to overpopulation but was instead a response to sudden depopulation following establishment of the Spanish mission at Ajácan. There were not enough producers to generate the agricultural surpluses necessary to drive the political economy while maintaining the necessary relations of power supporting ranked structural positions in the social and political hierarchy.
In the Best of Health? Disease and Trauma Among the Mississippian Elite
Authors: Powell Mary Lucas
Published: November 2004

Comparisons of skeletal data on diet, disease, and trauma in elite and non‐elite population samples from Mississippian sites throughout the Southeast have yielded a variety of patterns, some contradictory and some paralleling expectations based upon ethnohistoric accounts of elite sumptuary behaviors. Although trace element analyses of human bone from Alabama and Tennessee sites suggest that elites ate relatively more meat than their presumed social inferiors, non‐elite health does not seem particularly compromised. The high prevalence of trauma in elite males at Chucalissa may reflect the role of warfare in male status advancement. The lords of the Southeast and their families may have been in effect ‘overnourished’ relative to everyone else, but probably not to the extent of historically documented African and Polynesian chiefly lineages whose literally weighty embodiment of superior social status impressed visiting travellers and ethnographers alike.
Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Mexican/Chicano/Hispano Workers and the North American Labor Market: Part 1 ‐ History, Sociology, Geography
Authors: Weil Jim
Published: November 2004

Mexicans in the Midwest, 1900‐1932 Juan R. Garcia. Tucson: University of Arizona Press,1996

Desert Capitalism: Maquiladoras in North America's Western Industrial Corridor Kathryn Kopinak. Tucson: University of Arizona Press,1996

Environmentalism and Economic Justice: Two Chicano Struggles in the Southwest Laura Pulido Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996
On the Relational Perspective
Authors: Yeganehlayegh Judith Lee Gardner
Published: November 2004

This article describes a new synthesis of social science theory, the “relational perspective,” which is a holistic, cross‐cultural, and interdisciplinary approach focusing on the phenomenology of personal and relationships as key factors influencing the development of culture and identity in folk and urban societies. Four ideal types (the tribe, peasantbased society, early modern society, and the bureaucratic planning system) are briefly described. Futher, it attempts to illuminate the “urban bias” of modern social science.
The Political Economy of Skyscrapers An Anthropological Introduction to Advanced Industrial Cities
Authors: Plotnicov Leonard
Published: November 2004

The Changing Urban downtown landscape is explored in relation to the political economy of advanced industrial society. Using Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as a case example, we seek to understand why skyscrapers continue to be built, why they increase in size, and what conditions encourage their clustering in the hearts of cities. The modern American cityscape is a consequence of world economic restructuring and the emergence of new communications and information technology. Industrial location decisions and how corporations and public authorities interact as components of contemporary urban dynamics are also described, [modern American CBDs, political economy, skyscrapers, information technology, Pittsburgh]
Urban GentrificationIdeology And Practice in Middle‐Class Civic Activity
Authors: Sieber R. Timothy
Published: November 2004

Middle‐Class Professionals Who Gentrified a New York City neighborhood during the 1960s and 1970s possessed a coherent vision of community improvement that guided their civic activity. Drawing on many long‐standing Western ant urban notions, their vision centered on themes of renewal, cleansing, and purification of a fundamentally disordered and polluted city, and guided their actions in four main areas: (1) opposition to commercial and industrial development; (2) historic preservation and restoration; (3) beautification greening, and celebration of the "natural"; and (4) political reform. Current urban economic trends in North America, particularly the shift from manufacturing to service‐based economies, support the appearance of this ideology and the associated gentrification practices, [gentrification, housing, New York]
Getting Here from There: The Acquisition of "Point of View" in Mopan Maya
Authors: Danziger Eve
Published: November 2004

A study of the Mopan Maya verb tal (coming) shows that ideal adult usage makes reference to the speaker's own location. Child acquisition, however, proceeds by a process of refinement toward rather than a process of extension from this ideal. The moment at which linguistically expressed "point of view" is understood to be ideally restricted to the speaker is critical in social interactionist developmental accounts. It is only after this moment (in the current data, perhaps around eight years of age) that children might be able to use language to see themselves "through the eyes of the Other."
"Family Support for Individual Effort": The Experience of Schooling in Mexican Working‐Class Families
Authors: Ramos Claudia Lucy Saucedo
Published: November 2004

This article addresses the meaning of schooling for Mexican working‐class families. In my ethnographic research I analyzed narratives of the life courses and school experiences of ten families. I describe one cultural model involved in their relationship with schooling, which I call "family support for individual effort. "Parents emphasize "family support" and, at the same time, encourage individual personality traits in their children. The young men and women take their parents' support for granted while feeling responsible for their own actions and decisions concerning school. The narratives suggest that individuals can construct diverse experiences with schooling on the basis of the same cultural model.
"Espiritus? No. Pero la Maldad Existe": Supernaturalism, Religious Change, and the Problem of Evil in Puerto Rican Folk Religion
Authors: Jacobson G. Jeffrey
Published: November 2004

A life‐history‐based, ethnographic study of first‐ and second‐generation Puerto Rican migrants to Cleveland, Ohio, examined religious and ethnopsychological conceptions of altered states of consciousness and the supernatural. This article describes the unexpectedly rich and complex lexicon of evil and malevolence (la maldad) that emerged in many of the study's 60 interviews. It is suggested that individuals undergoing religious change acquire and use an increasingly radicalized Christian notion of evil to describe, condemn, and replace traditional conceptions of the supernatural (including witchcraft). However, while the social effect may be to stigmatize and eradicate what are perceived as "superstitious''conceptions of the supernatural, variety of liter alistic narratives of encounters with supernatural evil suggest that key psychocultural dispositions may be retained.
Obligation, Error, and Authenticity: Competing Cultural Principles in the Teaching of Corsican
Authors: Jaffe Alexandra
Published: November 2004

This article examines cultural tensions revealed both in popular reactions to Corsican language education and in Corsican language pedagogy. Lack of widespread public support for compulsory Corsican education and the cultural risks and ambiguities associated with defining linguistic error in the classroom are interpreted as evidence of conflict between a dominant Western European model of perfect congruence between language and identity and a plural cultural and linguistic reality.
Being in Being: The Collected Works of Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay.
Authors: Webster Anthony K.
Published: November 2004

Being in Being: The Collected Works of Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay. Robert Bringhurst. ed. and trans. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001. 397 pp.
Professional Communication in International Settings.
Authors: Zilkha Katherine
Published: November 2004

Professional Communication in International Settings. Yuling Pan. Suzanne Wong Scollon. and Ron Scollon. Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 2002. 240 pp.
Discourses of Exclusion: Dominant Self‐Definitions and "The Other" In German Society
Authors: Schneider Jens
Published: November 2004

Definitions of identity, which describe its dynamic and complex character, were formulated especially by those academic fields which set their focus predominantly, and often exclusively, on minorities or the excluded: e.g. feminist theory, Cultural Studies and antiracism. But the theory of identity politics as a field of struggle for self‐positioning should also apply to dominant and majority identity constructions. Moreover, we can observe a close relationship between minority and dominant discourses of belonging. Taking some results of field research in Berlin as illustration, the article shows, how identity constructions of young German discursive elites' depend on the construction of specific minority groups as 'Non‐Germans. At the same time, these dominant constructions fundamentally structure the field, in which minority groups are obliged to move for their self‐definitions. These self‐definitions thus cannot be fully understood without a close analysis of the role they play within the identity constructions of 'the majority'.
What Was Socialism and What Comes Next?
Authors: Foray Jennifer L. , Kelly Brian C.
Published: November 2004

Catherine Verdery What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. 298pp.
The Cultural Context of Social Support and Support Networks
Authors: Jacobson David
Published: November 2004

Social support promotes mental and physical well‐being. Yet research on it and on the social networks in which it occurs remains problematic. Focusing on the role that culturally based assumptions and expectations play in defining the meaning of social support and in the mobilization of support networks begins to clarify unresolved questions. Studies of support and support networks among the elderly exemplify this perspective.
Theoretical Considerations for the Study of the Doctor‐Patient Relationship: Implications of a Perinatal Study
Authors: Lazarus Ellen S.
Published: November 2004

Two analytical perspectives for studying the problematic doctor‐patient relationship have emerged in anthropology: the “explanatory models” approach and the “critical medical anthropology” approach. Using a case study of interactions between resident‐physicians and pregnant women in a public clinic, this article discusses some important limitations of both approaches. Alternative considerations for the development of theory and methodology appropriate and necessary for understanding the nature of the doctor‐patient relationship are suggested. Notable among these considerations are the distribution of power and knowledge in health care and the inclusion in the analysis of the institutional level that links the dyadic relationship to the broader health system.
The Discourse of Medical Science in the Construction of Consensus Between Corporation and Community
Authors: Nash June , Kirsch Max
Published: November 2004

Concern surfaced in the late seventies about the effects of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) on the health of employees and residents in the area of the General Electric plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. A review of corporate steps taken during the preceding decade to suppress criticism as well as of attempts to halt production and use of PCBs indicates an awareness on the part of corporate leaders of the hazards involved in their use. An epidemiological study begun in 1979 was delayed in reaching the public, and the conclusions were presented in such a way that they denied a scientific basis for making a correlation between exposure and cancer rates. The intervention of employees in the ensuing discourse among corporate spokespeople, community officials, and the epidemiologist provides an insight into the power relations that structure and channel information in our society.
Therapeutic Cauterization of Periodontal Abscesses in a Prehistoric Northwest Coast Woman
Authors: Skinner Mark , McLaren Marna , Carlson Roy L.
Published: November 2004

Severe alveolar resorption due to chronic marginal periodontitis is ubiquitous in prehistoric Northwest Coast skulls. Deliberate burning of infected dental tissue, associated with periodontal abscessing of severely worn mandibular left molars, is described in a female Native American from the Pendar Canal site (DeRt2), British Columbia, dating from 1090 ± 130 B.P. This is the first archeological evidence among prehistoric peoples of cauterization as a medical treatment for infected oral tissues.
Neurophysiology and the Curative Possession Trance: The Chinese Case
Authors: AvRuskin Tara L.
Published: November 2004

Spirit possession healing in prerevolutionary China serves as an example of the more general phenomenon of possession trance. After examining universal features of this form of healing, as revealed in Chinese examples, I review social‐psychological and especially neurophysiological explanations for both trance induction and its healing effects. Questions for further investigation are suggested.
Gramsci, Culture, and Medical Anthropology: Kundry and Parsifal? or Rat's Tail to Sea Serpent?
Authors: Frankenberg Ronald
Published: November 2004

The articles in this theme issue are introduced in the context of the thought of the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci. I suggest that his concept of hegemony is well known to medical anthropologists but not well understood, and an attempt is made to place it in the broader context of his life and work. I particularly emphasize Gramsci's ideas concerning the part played by culture (and by “intellectuals” who develop and transmit it) in all societies in “the late bourgeois world.” Healers are an important type of intellectual, and healing ideologies play an important part in hegemonic struggles. This is well illustrated at the personal level by the material presented in articles on the relationship between popular and biomedical belief among women in Haiti and between stroke patients and their doctors in California. In the public sphere, Islamic clinics in Cairo and curative rituals among the Manjak of Guinea‐Bissau can also be fruitfully seen in these terms. Finally, I draw an analogy between the presentation by Lévi‐Strauss of some mythical figures, who change character as they change spheres of existence, and the way that culture changes its meaning when it is seen from different perspectives in anthropology.
The Land As Body: An Essay on the Interpretation of Ritual Among the Manjaks of Guinea‐Bissau
Authors: Van Binsbergen Wim
Published: November 2004

Although neo‐Marxism informed the author's fieldwork on the therapeutic effectiveness of rituals among the Manjaks of northwestern Guinea‐Bissau, the explanatory value of materialist models turned out to be limited. Far from collapsing under the impact of capitalism because of migrant labor to Senegal and France, Manjak society retains an intact symbolic order. Migrants continue to interpret their physical and mental disorders in local terms and to participate in expensive rituals that absorb their capitalist earnings. Thus they submit to the gerontocratic order, restoring their roots in a cosmology in which the orificeless Perfect Body is ultimately the ancestral land itself. Spatio‐temporal belonging, filiation, domestic kinship power, and bodily functions merge, influencing many aspects of illness behavior and its expression in ritual and everyday life. Neo‐Marxism, epistemologically linked to societies under capitalism, scarcely explains this repertoire of symbols, yet helps us to pinpoint its unexpected vitality.
Women, Stress, and Participation in Possession Cults: A Reexamination of the Calcium Deficiency Hypothesis
Authors: Raybeck Douglas , Shoobe Judy , Grauberger James
Published: November 2004

Kehoe and Giletti (1981) have argued that the preponderance of women as patients in curing ceremonies is best explained by a variety of dietary inadequacies, particularly by a deficiency of calcium, resulting in tetany, convulsions, hallucinations, and other disorders that could easily foster a belief that such individuals are possessed. They also discount the likelihood that psychological and social stress play a meaningful role in the manifestation of such symptoms. In this article we accept the probable influence of calcium levels on the manifestation of certain possession symptoms but argue that stress, with its attendant changes in epinephrine and glucocorticoid levels, significantly reduces the body's ability to retain calcium, irrespective of diet. Indeed, we maintain that the stress model, which emphasizes the role of physiological, psychological, and sociocultural variables, can better account for many of the ethnographic examples cited by Kehoe and Giletti than can their own explanations.
Intravenous Drug Use and HIV Infection in Miami
Authors: Page J. Bryan , Chitwood Dale D. , Smith Prince C. , Kane Normie , McBride Duane C.
Published: November 2004

In this article we report the results of a study of needle‐using behaviors in a street‐recruited, noninstitutionalized sample of intravenous drug users (IVDUs) in Miami‐Dade County. Survey data, elicited from 230 IVDUs, indicate a statistically significant relationship between injection frequency and antibody seropositivity for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Self‐reported needle‐sharing behavior and use of safe houses (i.e., shooting galleries) are also related to infection. Observational data, gathered using ethnographic techniques, identify standard cleaning practices, drug sharing between syringes, and accidental punctures as additional risks of HIV infection for IVDUs. In‐depth interview data on values associated with needle use indicate that interventions focused on needle cleaning can be effective in this population.
Touch and Contamination: Patients' Fear of AIDS
Authors: Marshall Patricia A. , O'Keefe J. Paul , Fisher Susan Gross
Published: November 2004

In this study we investigate patients' concerns about HIV transmission from doctors during the course of routine medical care. Patients' fear of AIDS, level of discomfort with medical procedures performed by a physician suspected of having AIDS, and perceived risk of AIDS transmission in physician‐patient interactions were examined among 313 patients attending adult clinics at a university‐based outpatient center in a large Midwestern city. Results of the analysis show that patients who are more fearful of AIDS report higher levels of discomfort concerning procedures conducted by a physician suspected of having AIDS. Fear of touching a person with AIDS is the strongest predictor of expressed discomfort with medical procedures when infection is suspected. Patient concerns regarding susceptibility to HIV infection in routine care, particularly through touching, point to the need for education about transmission of AIDS in the health care context.
Toward a Biocultural Medical Anthropology
Authors: Landy David
Published: November 2004

To study cultures as ideational systems without mapping the complex cybernetic circuits that link them to social systems, to ecosystems, and to the psychology and biology of individuals would turn cultural analysis into an arcane pursuit isolated from surrounding disciplines at a stage when a fantastic burst of scientific knowledge—with human survival as the stakes—is being launched: a burst that should relegate to the realm of Ptolemaic astronomy (or at least preWatson‐Crick genetics) previous theories in ecology, the neurosciences, psychology, and related fields.
Cooptation and Control: The Reconstruction of Inuit Birth
Authors: Kaufert Patricia A. , O'Neil John D.
Published: November 2004

In this article we explore the implications for obstetric policies and practice of methods of recording, retrieving, and evaluating information. More particularly, we are concerned with the use of obstetrical records as a means of communication and surveillance, but also as a source of statistics. Perinatal mortality rates have assumed the status of ritualistic formulae cited in defense of any challenge to the medicalization of childbirth. As illustration we examine the role of the obstetrical record in the extension of medical control over childbirth among Inuit women from the Keewatin Region of the Northwest Territories. The introduction of medical services into the Arctic by the federal government led to the displacement of traditional ways of childbirth and to the evacuation of women to give birth far from their communities in Southern hospitals. Decreases in the perinatal mortality rate became both justification of this policy and a symbol of the beneficence of a government presence in the North.
Reproductive Decisions among HIV‐infected, Drug‐Using Women: The Importance of Mother‐Child Coresidence
Authors: Pivnick Anitra , Jacobson Audrey , Eric Kathleen , Mulvihill Michael , Hsu Ming Ann , Drucker Ernest
Published: November 2004

In this article we examine the influence of personal, social, and cultural factors, in particular continuity of mother‐child coresidence, on the reproductive decisions of HIV‐positive, women drug users. Among these women, decisions to terminate a pregnancy were found to be most significantly associated with continuity of mother‐child coresidence. We explore the policy implications of this finding.
Anthropology and Bioethics
Authors: Marshall Patricia A.
Published: November 2004

The field of bioethics has been dominated by the tenets and assumptions of Western philosophical rationalistic thought. A principles and rights‐based approach to discussions of moral dilemmas has sustained and reinforced a pervasive reductionism, utilitarianism, and ethnocentrism in the field. Recent explorations of casuistry and hermeneutics suggest a movement toward an expanded theoretical and conceptual framing of medical ethical problems. Increased attention to moral phenomenology and a recognition of the importance of social, cultural, and historical determinants that shape moral questioning should facilitate collaborative work between anthropologists and ethicists. In this article, I examine the philosophical orientation of U.S. bioethics and the relationship of the social sciences to the field of medical ethics. Deterrents to collaboration between anthropologists and bioethicists are explored. Finally, I review past and possible future contributions of anthropology to the field of bioethics and, more generally, to medical ethics.
“Side Effects”: Cultural Constructions and Reinterpretations of Western Pharmaceuticals
Authors: Etkin Nina L.
Published: November 2004

This article discusses pharmacotherapeutic “side effects,” the identification and evaluation of which is especially mediated by social and cultural constructs. It argues that the knowledge and management of “primary” and “side” effects of pharmaceuticals are an extension of purposeful interactions of people with both allelochemicals and symbols constituent in medicinal plants. Drawing on research from West Africa and elsewhere, the author illustrates how the interpretation of “side effects” influences the selection, and in some aspects the transformation, of pharmaceuticals as they are rendered through local paradigms of physiology, nosology, and therapeutics. This analysis strengthens the argument for incorporating cultural context of use in the assessment of drug efficacy, introduction, and administration.
Cultural Determinants of Sexual Risk Behavior for AIDS among Baganda Women
Authors: McGrath Janet W. , Schumann Debra A. , Pearson‐Marks Jonnie , Rwabukwali Charles B. , Mukasa Rebecca , Namande Barbara , Nakayiwa Sylvia , Nakyobe Lucy
Published: November 2004

Sixty‐five Baganda women who tested positive for the HIV antibody and 65 who tested negative (mean age = 21 years) in Kampala, Uganda, were interviewed about cultural rules and norms for sexual behavior and HIV‐specific risk behaviors. Traditional Baganda rules for sexual behavior prohibit sex for women outside of marriage except in certain ritual circumstances (e.g., after the birth of twins, at funerals and weddings) or economic circumstances, although males may have multiple partners. Women in this study are complying with risk reduction advice to “stick to one partner.” Fear of AIDS remains high, however, because women fear that their partners have not reduced their sexual contacts. While the potential for risk reduction is high for the women, cultural norms permitting males to have multiple partners limit women's ability to reduce risk by modifying their own behavior.
Historia general de la medicina en México. Tomo I. México Antiguo. Alfredo López Austin and Carlos Viesca Treviño
Authors: de Montellano Bernard Ortiz
Published: November 2004

Historia general de la medicina en México. Tomo II. Medicina novohispana, Siglo XVI. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán and Roberto Moreno de los Arcos
Suffering and the Social Construction of Illness: The Delegitimation of Illness Experience in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Authors: Ware Norma C.
Published: November 2004

The author examines suffering engendered by the socially constituted nature of illness through the delegitimation of illness experience in chronic fatigue syndrome. Cultural meanings of physical and mental illness are shown to be reflected in interactions with others to construct an illness reality in which chronic fatigue syndrome is defined as either nonexistent or psychosomatic. Disconfirmation of the subjective experience of illness leads to suffering arising from the threatened stigma of psychological disorder, the alienation resulting from a decision to keep the illness secret, and the shame of being wrong in one's definition of reality. Patients also develop strategies for contesting the definition of chronic fatigue syndrome as “not real.” Delegitimation merits further exploration as a category for experience‐near analysis of suffering in medical anthropology.
Nerves and Emotional Play in Northeast Brazil
Authors: Rebhun L. A.
Published: November 2004

Current theory on emotion posits that different cultures' emotional vocabularies constitute sets of glosses for negotiated understandings of interpersonal interaction. Folk illness terms can overlap emotion glosses, as in the case of the Northeast Brazilian folk ailment nervos (“nerves”), associated with anxiety and anger. Working‐class women in Northeast Brazil can use their nervos to change others' behavior in social situations in which they otherwise would have limited control. Rather than passively feel emotion or submissively suffer illness, women actively play with emotion and illness roles. A woman's manipulations are more or less successful, depending on her skill at orchestrating perceptions of her situation.