bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Nonnibutibus: The Sociocultural Messages of the Jamaican Tea Meeting
Authors: Keith Nelson W.
Published: November 2004

An effective tool used by the colonialist against the colonized is language. The colonial language often penetrates the colonized world as a medium imparting universal truth, frequently resulting in a systematic erosion and degrading of the culture of the colonized. This article explores this phenomenon in the case of the Jamaican tea meeting, a colorful verbal spectacle replete with vibrant African imagery and religious symbolism made a target of derision by the educated colonized. It further sketches the process and a retrospective assessment of cultural forms and meanings lost or deformed by this form of mental seduction and menticide.
The Outsider Wife: Integrating a Foreigner into a Bengali Household
Authors: Bhattacharyya Deborah P.
Published: November 2004

This article analyzes the experience of an American woman in her role as a Bengali wife in India. The article explores the integration of the two roles, “outsider” and “wife.” The relationship between the foreign wife and the extended household of which she is a part is viewed as a system within which all participants collaborate in the construction and the maintenance of the role of the “outsider wife.”
Applying Heidegger
Authors: Delaney William
Published: November 2004

Hubert Dreyfus has spent his life digging away, asking questions, trying to make sense out of Heidegger, Merleau‐Ponty, and Kierkegaard. He has redefined the subtlety of human skills, battled the artificial intelligence people, and built a community of dedicated former students and fellow applied philosophers who are critiquing the West at its technological roots. He contends that within Heidegger's work are ideas of immense importance for our age.
Romancing the Stones: Biases, Style and Lithics at La Riera
Authors: Clark G. A.
Published: November 2004

This chapter discusses paradigmatic biases and style in lithic analysis, and presents a case study using a lithic data set from northern Spain. Biases are considered first, since they affect our capacity to perceive pattern in an archaeological record, determine which of a number of alternative approaches is considered to be appropriate, and affect systematics of all kinds and at all levels in a problem domain.

Second, anthropological and archaeological notions of style are outlined and discussed, and an effort is made to identify modal characteristics of archaeological definitions as they bear on the analysis of stone tools and debitage.

Finally, lithic and faunal data from paleolithic deposits at La Riera cave (Asturias, Spain) are examined from a number of different perspectives operationalized through the creation of multiple typologies and the monitoring of variable frequencies, first by simple indices and ratios, and subsequently by multivariate techniques. These procedures allowed for the partitioning of overall assemblage variability into a small number of overlapping but fairly discrete causal vectors. The causal vectors constitute hypothetical explanations for recurrent patterns in the La Riera sequence and at other north Spanish sites. They allow us to create a scenario for the different activities that took place repeatedly in the cave over the Tardiglacial and early Postglacial periods ‐ a scenario that can be generalized to other penecontemporaneous sites in the region.
Lessons from An Alternative View
Authors: Schoenwetter James
Published: November 2004

Kent V. Flannery's recent model of the development of early agriculture in Oaxaca rejects interpretations of ecological change suggested by palynological research undertaken as an aspect of the multidisciplinary research program he initiated in 1965. It also rejects the palynological conclusion that a maize‐like plant was cultivated in Oaxaca prior to and throughout the Naquitz Phase. This paper develops the position that Flannery's alternative interpretations are structured by assumptions which are usually applied in archeological research but which are debatable in the present case, and by his commitment to a particular theoretical position. Two lessons are learned from this analysis: (a) assumptions and theories buried deeply in the matrix of conventional research practices affect even our identification of “observed data,” and (b) some accepted archeological wisdom about the nature and values of multidisciplinary research may be surprisingly naive.
Points and Lines
Authors: Kehoe Alice B.
Published: November 2004

“Social convention,” the application of standard terminology to phenomena, is highly influential in science, including archeology. I examine the application of the term “point” to stone and bone objects recovered from archeological sites. I show how “established social convention” has overridden other foundations for signification. Conventional terminology hid the presence of functional classes of artifacts and the activities they evidence. Expectations derived from strong ethnographic analogies have been systematically excluded from examination by these conventions.
The Industrial Relations Of Rail Unions In Great Britain And West Germany: A Review Article In Comparative Industrial Ethnology.
Authors: Gamst Frederick C.
Published: November 2004

Peter Seglow, Wolfgang Streeck And Patricia Wallace, 1982, Rail Unions In Britain And West Germany, London: Policy Studies Instit.
Book Reviews
Authors: Rothstein Fran , Marshall Bob
Published: November 2004

Rum and Axes: The Rise of a Connecticut Merchant Family, 1795–1850. Janet Siskind. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.

Men of Uncertainty: The Social Organization of Day Laborers in Contemporary Japan. Tom Gill. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.
Visual Review
Authors: English‐Lueck I. A. , Kingsolver Ann
Published: November 2004

Secrets of Silicon Valley. Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman, directors and producers. 60 min. Color. Oley, PA: Bullfrog Films, 2001

Tobacco Blues. Christine Fugate, director. Eren McGinnis and Christine Fugate, producers. 58 min. Color. New York: Filmakers Library, 1998.
Attempting to Close the Sacred Circle: The Endeavor of the American Indian Movement
Authors: Bigony Beatrice A.
Published: November 2004

The American Indian Movement has had an important impact on American society. It has been variously described as part of the ethnic consciousness movement and as a class phenomenon. An analysis of the history of the movement's emergence and its development suggest, however, that instead it is a supra‐ethnic phenomenon. The very special historical circumstances which have formed the relationship between Native Americans and American Society, the impact of AIM on the larger society, and the attraction of AIM to Indian peoples is analyzed.
Culture Shock, Positive Face, and Negative Face: Being Polite in Tlaxcala
Authors: Hill Jane H.
Published: November 2004

Recent work on politeness by Lakoff (1973) and Brown and Levinson (1978) provides some underlying principles which allow us to provide an account of contrasting cultural styles which are often a source of major difficulties in cross‐cultural understanding. The examples in this paper are largely drawn from the experiences of myself and my husband, who went into the field in Tlaxcala and Puebla convinced that we were warm, friendly, outgoing people. We turned out, however, in contrast to the people among whom we worked, to exemplify an extraordinarily “up‐tight” cultural style which is probably widespread among professional‐managerial North Americans, including a good many anthropologists. An understanding of politeness principles proposed here may allow other field anthropologists working in similar contexts to modify their behavior to avoid many of the problems of misunderstanding and genuine full‐blown “culture shock” which we experienced.
The Effects of Differential Government Policies on Social Integration in One Region of Mexico: A Historical Perspective
Authors: Finkler Kaja
Published: November 2004

The focus of this paper is on differential government policies in the agricultural context in one rural region of Mexico and the resultant effect of these policies on the vertical integration of two village communities within the region. The specific governmental policies to be examined bear on land distribution and investment in agricultural development particularly relating to the expansion of irrigation. Using a diachronic perspective, I shall argue that community integration along with community development is largely a function of the interaction between government policies and the linkages such policies generate between a community and the nationstate. The historical dimension illuminates the ways in which Mexico's pre‐revolutionary land tenure patterns have influenced subsequent national investment strategies which in turn have produced different linkages of two communities with the national sector Socio‐structural variation resulting from differential integration is reflected in community development and is associated with the presence and absence of power brokers who play a crucial role in village integration into the nation‐state.
On Distinguishing Functional Ecology and Evolution in Cultural Theory
Authors: Diener Paul
Published: November 2004

As a legacy from Julian Steward, cultural anthropology has moved “away from the preoccupation with issues of origins that was characteristic of the earlier evolutionary outlook” (Miller and Weitz). Indeed, some have maintained that the distinction between functional ecology and evolution “dissolves” in the dynamics of ecological operations (Rappaport). However, a firm distinction is made in biological theory between the “operation” problem and the “origin” problem. This distinction between functional ecology and evolution is also emphasized by “new evolutionists” (Diener, Nonini, and Robkin 1978, 1980). In this paper, documentation is provided demonstrating that a more adequate understanding of complex systems structures, complex systems processes, temporal process, systemic history, and rapid change is available if we begin by recognizing functional ecology and evolution as “distinct, but related.” We need to return to the evolutionary viewpoint once so influential in American anthropology, and use it to complement ecological analyses.
The Anthropology of Malaria Control
Authors: Heinrich Michael
Published: November 2004

With Mexico as example, this article discusses various problems associated with attempts to eradicate malaria. It is shown that present methods do not even provide sufficient control of the disease. It is suggested that the interaction between the eradication program personnel and the inhabitants of the community be studied. In such future studies, emphasis should also been given to the knowledge of the people in the community about the disease, its cure, and prevention. Such studies might enable the development of a better approach to long‐term malaria control.
Anthropological Research in Major Corporations: Work Products of the Industrial Domain
Authors: Baba Marietta L.
Published: November 2004

Employment patterns in anthropology have shifted markedly over the past 25 years, with increasing numbers of professionals working full‐time in a wide range of non‐academic settings. Recent survey results show that more than one‐half (51%) of employed, newly graduating Ph.D's now work as non‐academic practitioners. As part of an overall effort to learn more about the work of practitioners, and to increase understanding and communication between the academic and practitioner arms of the discipline, the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA) recently sponsored an invited symposium entitled “Anthropological Research in Major Corporations” (held at the 1985 Annual Meetings of the American Anthropological Association in Washington D.C.) The specific objectives of the symposium were to explore the application of anthropological methods and concepts in modern industrial research, to generate interest in business and industrial anthropology, and to demonstrate the relevance of such work to important organizational and social problems.

The current volume of Central Issues in Antrhopology features four papers that initially were presented as part of the NAPA symposium. These papers reflect anthropological practice in several major industries (e.g., automobile manufacture, computer technology, health care) and represent the work of practioners across a range of subdisciplines (e.g., cultural, linguistic, and biological anthropology.) This introductory overview by the symposium organizer provides background information and a rationale for the symposium, and considers the four papers as products of contemporary anthropological research in industry. Special attention is given to several differences between academic and industrial research (i.e. differences in research objects, locus of authority, and system of peer evaluation), especially as such differences are reflected in the present collections. Differences in university and corporate environments account for much of the variance in research products emerging from these two domains, however it is concluded that anthropologists across domains share the mission of inductive discovery through unique approaches to the conceptualization of problems, the elicitation of data, and the interpretation of social phenomena.
Logical Assumptions in Contemporary Discourse Analysis
Authors: Hamill James F.
Published: November 2004

Scholars from anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and linguistics, as well as other academic disciplines approach the questions of discourse analysis. While there is wide variability in these approaches, most agree that internal coherence is one of the most important features of discourse and that some variety of the propositional calculus is the most appropriate means for accounting for that coherence. I present data that suggests that propositional reasoning varies with culture and thus it is a poor candidate for the basis of a universal discourse structure. On the other hand, syllogistic structures seem relatively consistent across language and culture boundaries and therefore indicate that such a universal structure is possible.
A Homegrown Mass Transit System in Lima, PeruA Case of Generative Planning
Authors: Uzzell Douglas
Published: November 2004

The Institutionalization of "microbuses" as the mainstay of Lima's transit system is used as a case to illustrate how informal institutions evolve in Peru through a dialectic between popular and dominant sectors, each employing a distinctive style of planning: "generative planning" for the popular sectors and "regulative planning" for the dominant sectors. The two planning styles are described paradigmatically. Though generative planning is common among the popular sectors, the dominant sectors employ it in their own informal institutions and private affairs—and where the government lacks coercive force, its regulations are implemented informally in ways that resemble the generative planning of the popular sectors, [informal sector, urban planning, political economy, public transportation, Peru]
Guugu Yimithirr Cardinal Directions
Authors: Haviland John B.
Published: November 2004

Speakers of Guugu Yimithirr (GY) make heavy use in discourse of four roots that mean north, south, east, and west. Describing location with cardinal directions involves principles strikingly different from systems based on the anatomies of reference objects, including speakers and hearers themselves. Nonetheless, the relational and situated nature of cardinal term systems has been insufficiently appreciated. This article explores the linguistic details of the GY cardinal term system, to expose the internal logic of the elaborated set of directional terms, to analyze the conceptual and ethnographic underpinnings of their use, and to demonstrate the anchored and deictic nature of GY directional discourse generally.
Women of Prague: Ethnic Diversity and Social Change from the Eighteenth Century to the Present
Authors: Skiffington Kerry K.
Published: November 2004

Women of Prague: Ethnic Diversity and Social Change from the Eighteenth Century to the Present by Wilma A. Iggers, Berghahn Press 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Authors: Street Pamela Bolin
Published: November 2004

Ganja in Jamaica: A Medical Anthropological Studyof Chronic marijuana Use. Vera Rubin and Lambros Comitas.
ARTICLE
Authors: Appel Ted C.
Published: November 2004

The nature and delivery of native medicine was studied among the Miskito Indians of eastern Nicaragua. Two types of practitioners were interviewed: the curandero (herbalist) and the sukya (shaman). Both were found to deliver similar health care, with the major differences being that the former uses dreams to ascertain the proper herbs for treatment, whereas the latter makes use of ceremonial chants for this purpose. Several specific therapies are reviewed, and it is suggested that many constitute partially or totally effective treatment, while others which show limitations of knowledge may be detrimental. It is suggested that better communication is needed to modify the relative inadequacies of Western and native practitioners alike.
BEATITUDES, BEASTS, AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL BURDENS
Authors: Stoller Paul
Published: November 2004

Man Cures God Heals: Religion and Medical Practice among the Akans of Ghana. Kofi Appiah‐Kubi

Human Spirits: A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte. Michael Lambek

Ecstasy and Healing in Nepal: An Ethnopsychiatric Study of Tamang Shamanism. Larry Peters
Therapy Management: Concept, Reality, Process
Authors: Janzen John M.
Published: November 2004

“Therapy management” (diagnosis, selection, and evaluation of treatment, as well as support of the sufferer) and “therapy management group” (the set of individuals who take charge of therapy management with or on behalf of the sufferer) are two concepts developed in medical anthropological research in Central Africa and reported in The Quest for Therapy in Lower Zaire (Janzen 1978). The concepts are described in terms of their historical development, subsequent reception by reviewers, and use by later researchers in the analysis of a range of subjects in medical anthropology. “Therapy management” holds promise for contextually sensitive analyses of the relationships among cultural assumptions and values, behavioral processes, and social and economic structures that influence the therapeutic process.
Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome in Urban Brazil
Authors: Parker Richard
Published: November 2004

This article contributes to the cross‐cultural understanding of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) through a detailed examination of the AIDS epidemic in contemporary Brazil. Since 1983, when the first verified case was reported there, the number of AIDS victims has grown rapidly enough to place Brazil high on the list of countries with the largest number of confirmed cases. Yet the pace of this epidemic has received relatively little attention from either the international community or the Brazilian government. In addition, the model used for understanding the transmission of the disease has been developed in the rather different social and cultural contexts of Western Europe and the United States. This article draws on the author's research on Brazilian sexual culture and suggests its relevance for understanding the transmission of AIDS in Brazil. It calls for a more active and culturally appropriate response to the disease in Brazil, as well as for an increasingly sophisticated understanding of cultural differences that influence the AIDS epidemic internationally.
Obstetric Training As a Rite of Passage
Authors: Davis‐Floyd Robbie E.
Published: November 2004

In this article I interpret obstetric training as an initiatory rite of passage through which nascent obstetricians are socialized into the technological model of birth, the core value and belief system of American obstetrics. Interviews with obstetricians and obstetrical residents, as well as published accounts by physicians, are used to examine both the fundamental knowledge imparted in the rituals of hospital delivery and the process by which medical students become psychologically transformed into obstetricians. I conclude by examining the challenge that both the humanistic and the holistic models pose for the dominant technological model of birth, and the effects that this challenge is having on the behavior of obstetricians and their patients.
Knowledge, Practice, and Power: Court‐Ordered Cesarean Sections
Authors: Irwin Susan , Jordan Brigitte
Published: November 2004

Medical specialists command particular respect in this society, and the application of their specialized knowledge carries considerable weight. In obstetrics, expert knowledge is constituted as authoritative through a complex process in which actual social relations are obscured or misrecognized by the actors. When obstetric advice is actively rejected, birthing becomes an arena of struggle and these relations become more visible. Refusal by a woman to undergo cesarean section involves a challenge to medical authority, a challenge that may be overruled by legal orders supporting the practice of medicine and further legitimating medical knowledge. We review nine cases of court‐ordered cesarean section to illustrate how medical power and privilege are maintained in cases of individual resistance.
On the Origin of Humoral Medicine in Latin America
Authors: Foster George M.
Published: November 2004

For the past half‐century humoral medicine has been recognized by anthropologists to be the most important and widespread ethnomedical system in Latin America. While most scholars believe this system is largely a simplified folk variant of classical Greek and Persian humoral pathology, a small minority—particularly Audrey Butt Colson and Alfredo López Austin—argues for a New World origin. In this paper the author supports the former hypothesis by tracing the well‐documented history of classical medicine from Greece and Persia to Latin America, where it was disseminated via formal medical education, hospitals and missionary orders, home medical guides and pharmacies. The fallacies in the arguments of Colson and López Austin are also pointed out.
Elements of Charismatic Persuasion and Healing
Authors: Csordas Thomas J.
Published: November 2004

Therapeutic efficacy in religious healing is typically analyzed by extrapolating from ritual procedure to expected effect, without specifying conditions for success or failure in terms of the concrete experience of participants. Taking such experiential data as primary in therapeutic process should allow for definition of minimal conditions of therapeutic efficacy, including incremental change and inconclusive results. Two cases of Catholic Pentecostal ritual healing are discussed, with emphasis on participants' reports of therapeutic process. The analytic focus includes the orientation of participants within the healing system, their experience of the sacred, the negotiation of possibilities, and the actualization of change. Alongside the anthropological question of how meaning shapes the illness experience, I pose the clinical question: how may religious encounters influence an illness career? Consideration of these questions suggests that detailed experiential analysis of therapeutic process can lead to a more balanced and pragmatic conceptualization of healing than is available in studies that emphasize either ritual or clinical dimensions of healing.
Mechanism and Morality in Patients' Views of Illness and Injury
Authors: Harris Grace Gredys
Published: November 2004

In this article I examine the ways in which patients discussed illnesses and injuries as life events in structured, open‐ended interviews. I show how explanation (identifying cause) and interpretation (identifying reason) were brought together, linking mechanism with morality. Respondents, rather than merely juxtaposing or contrasting mechanism and morality, joined them by using a psychologized view of human beings centering on the notion of “stress.” I claim that “stress” as a coupling element is now a culturally available medico‐moral concept in the United States that allows “fact” and “value” to interpenetrate. Although some physicians and stress researchers use “stress” as a medico‐moral term, they appear to desocialize it, whereas the study's respondents implicated “stress” in actions and interactions evaluated as undesirable or wrong. As a bridge‐symbol, “stress” parallels multivocal ritual and sacred symbols.
Poisoned Apples and Honeysuckles: The Medicinal Plants of Native America
Authors: Moerman Daniel E.
Published: November 2004

Statistical analyses of a very large sample of uses of medicinal plants by Native Americans demonstrate a method by which we can determine which sorts of plants they were most or least likely to select for use as medicines. Comparison of the patterns of use of Poaceae (grasses), Ro‐saceae (apples and others), and Caprifoliaceae (honeysuckles) suggests why some plants are of medicinal value and some are not and how people were able to gain this knowledge.
Uvulectomy: A Common Ethnosurgical Procedure in Africa
Authors: Katz Sydney S.
Published: November 2004

The partial or complete removal of the uvula is a procedure considered almost obsolete by cosmopolitan physicians. Antibiotic therapy is now accepted as the treatment of choice for most enlarged, infected uvulae, and modern medical evaluation is considered essential to rule out the possibility of life‐threatening conditions such as tuberculosis or cancer as the underlying cause of symptoms. However, traditional African practitioners continue to perform uvulectomies at the request of their patients and to claim safe alleviation of symptoms, despite severe complications noted by physicians. I postulate that uvulectomy, a procedure recognized by Africans to be therapeutic rather than religious, may have been beneficial when modern health services were unavailable and may have been the treatment of choice in pre‐antibiotic days.
Biomedical Anthropology in a Multidisciplinary, Multi‐institutional Research Project: The Albany Lead Study
Authors: Schell Lawrence M. , Stark Alice D.
Published: November 2004

Biomedical research is often a collaborative effort involving anthropologists, epidemiologists, and clinically based medical researchers and care givers. In multidisciplinary, multi‐institutional research projects barriers to successful research collaboration multiply easily, in part because different disciplines conceptualize study design and other research issues differently. Institutional requirements for research (human subjects' approval, for example) also differ. When research activities are performed by clinical personnel at clinical institutions, research must give way to care giving. Strategies to overcome these and other problems are based on the professionalism of clinical and medical research staff and involve awareness of each host institution's reward systems and hierarchies. Practical, concrete solutions to these problems exist and are described.
Sending Sickness: Sorcery, Politics, and Changing Concepts of AIDS in Rural Haiti
Authors: Farmer Paul
Published: November 2004

In this article I trace the emergence of a collective representation of AIDS in a village in rural Haiti. I initiated investigation of local understandings of AIDS years before the advent of the illness to the community itself and continued documenting the subsequent elaboration of a fairly detailed and widely shared cultural model of the new disorder. Through following serial interviews with the same persons over a period of six years, one can discern the rate at which consensus was achieved, the events which led to it, and the significance of preexisting interpretive frameworks for current understandings of AIDS. This case contributes to the anthropological study of cultural meaning information and transformation.
Male Clients of Female Street Prostitutes: Unseen Partners in Sexual Disease Transmission
Authors: Leonard Terri L.
Published: November 2004

Semistructured interviews about sex behavior and attitudes were conducted with 50 male clients of female street prostitutes in Camden, New Jersey. Both duration (from three months to 20 years) and frequency (twice per year to 16 times per month) of prostitute contact were reported. Almost half the client respondents also dated prostitutes in other cities and states. Fellatio was the most popular sex act performed with prostitutes, followed by vaginal intercourse, kissing, and other acts. Twenty men out of 49 reported using condoms for commercial sex, but only five were carrying a condom at the time of interview. Clients reported cleanliness, inexperience, and lack of drug use as desirable traits of sex workers. Participants discussed reasons for nonuse of condoms, preference for fellatio, condom negotiation, and beliefs about preventing AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
Biocultural Models in Studies of Human Health and Adaptation
Authors: McElroy Ann
Published: November 2004

Biocultural studies, defined as research on questions of human biology and medical ecology that specifically includes social, cultural, or behavioral variables in the research design, offer valuable models for studying the interface between biological and cultural factors affecting human well‐being. Two models of biocultural research predominate in health studies: one which integrates biological, environmental, and cultural data, and a second, more segmented model in which biological data are primary and data on culture and environment are secondary. Although critics have claimed that biological studies ignore the role of social and political systems in health, the studies included in this issue counter such criticism with research models that include cultural and political stressors. To illustrate an additional dimension of the integrative biocultural approach, I discuss models for understanding morning sickness, perception and tolerance of pain in labor, and depression in the postpartum period. Though these phenomena are clearly both biologically and culturally determined, they are usually studied by anthropologists only in their cultural dimension and by medical researchers in their biological dimension. Biocultural study of reproduction and of other aspects of women's health will contribute to transdisciplinary collaboration and, it is hoped, will also reduce the fragmentation of medical anthropology.
Social System Effects on Local Level Morbidity and Adaptation in the Rural Peruvian Andes
Authors: Carey James W.
Published: November 2004

In this article I argue for the desirability of linking data, methods, and theoretical perspectives from sociocultural and biological anthropology, and provide methodological examples for conducting this type of research. I specifically examine the utility of the adaptation paradigm for understanding the health consequences of rural Peruvian social relations. Long‐term historical trends in the Nuñoa District in the rural Peruvian highlands reveal that large‐scale political‐economic and other social forces helped shape a local social structure that creates ongoing adverse living conditions for many segments of the population. Biological manifestations of social stressors are seen in the form of high mortality and poor child growth, especially among economically marginalized populations. Analysis of household morbidity and social characteristics demonstrates strong links between health status and factors such as informal interhousehold social support networks, education, and family demographic composition.
Comments on Four Biocultural Articles
Authors: Pfleiderer Beatrix
Published: November 2004

[Editor's note: Beatrix Pfleiderer was invited to be one of the commentators on the articles on the biomedical approach in the last issue of the journal. Unfortunately we received her response too late to be included with the rest and so have made a special place for it in this issue.]
BOOK REVIEWS
Authors: Roscoe P. B.
Published: November 2004

Book reviewed in this article:

The Bamboo Fire: Fieldwork with the New Guinea Wape (Second Edition). William E. Mitchell.

Magical Curing (VHS Video Cassette Tape). William E. Mitchell.
Safeguarding Women's Bodies: The White Man's Burden Medicalized
Authors: Morsy Soheir A.
Published: November 2004

In the European narration of the Orient, there was a deliberate stress on those qualities that made the East different from the West, exiled it into an irretrievable state of “otherness.” Among the many themes that emerge from the European narration of the Other, two appear most strikingly. The first is the insistent claim that the East was a place of lascivious sensuality, and the second that it was a realm characterised by inherent violence. … [Within the framework of] imperial confrontation … [p]olitical domination and economic exploitation needed the cosmetic cant of mission civilisatrice to seem fully commendatory. For the ideology of empire was hardly ever a brute jingoism; rather, it made subtle use of reason, and recruited science and history to serve its ends. The image of the European coloniser had to remain an honorable one: he did not come as exploiter, but as enlightener. He was not seeking mere profit, but was fulfilling his duty to his Maker and his sovereign, whilst aiding those less fortunate to rise toward his lofty level. This was the white man's burden.
Maternal Time Allocation in Relation to Kind and Domain of Primary Health Care
Authors: Coreil Jeannine
Published: November 2004

In this article I review research questions and findings in the area of maternal time allocation and child health and nutrition as an introduction to more general issues related to time allocation and primary health care. I present an organizing framework for thinking about primary health care activities which focuses on the kind of care required (prevention, management) and the domain in which it takes place (home, clinic, community). I hypothesize that the determinants of people's participation in different health activities vary according to kind and domain of care. This proposition is examined in relation to maternal time constraints by presenting four examples of time‐related studies in Haiti and Rwanda. The examples identify two key factors, child's age and availability of competent caretakers, which influence health behavior across different kinds and domains of care. I conclude by considering the implications of these ideas for new research, study design, and health policy.
Everybody's Got a Little Mental Illness: Accounts of Illness and Self among People with Severe, Persistent Mental Illnesses
Authors: Estroff Sue E. , Lachicotte William S. , Illingworth Linda C. , Johnston Anna
Published: November 2004

Accounts of the nature, cause, and course of mental illness and self‐labeling are explored as interdependent domains with a cohort of individuals diagnosed as having major psychiatric disorders. Explanations and descriptions of mental illness and propensities to self‐label are shown to be interrelated in a multidirectional, multidimensional manner. Normalizing talk and illness accounts that are both patterned and diverse, and both stable and variable over time, pervade the discourse of individuals in the cohort. Sociocultural factors, particularly social race, gender, and type of illness explanation, have a stronger association with self‐labeling than clinical factors, such as formal diagnosis. The concepts of “illness‐identity work” and “illness‐identity talk” are developed as a means for exploring self and sickness among persons with chronic illnesses.
Objects, Processes, and Female Infertility in Chinese Medicine
Authors: Farquhar Judith
Published: November 2004

Focusing on the diagnosis and treatment of female infertility in traditional Chinese medicine's “women's specialty” (fu ke), I examine the relationship between anatomical objects or substances and physiological processes in Chinese medical analysis. After considering the significance of gender in medical perception, I cite field observations, textbook explanations, and published cases to illustrate a bias toward the temporal and the processual in Chinese medicine. Continuities between illness experiences and understandings of women's bodies are explored in relation to these clinical modes of knowing.
Book Reviews
Authors: Mackenzie Margaret
Published: November 2004

Book reviewed in this article:

Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease. Joan Jacobs Brumberg.

Fasting Girls: The Surprising History of Anorexia Nervosa. Joan Jacobs Brumberg.

¡Qué Gordita! A Study of Weight among Women in a Puerto Rican Community. Emily Bradley Massara.

Never Too Thin: Why Women Are at War with Their Bodies. Roberta Pollack Seid.
Undocumented Latin American Immigrants and U.S. Health Services: An Approach to a Political Economy of Utilization
Authors: Chavez Leo R. , Flores Estevan T. , Lopez‐Garza Marta
Published: November 2004

This article contributes to an understanding of the use of health services by undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans who work as manual laborers in the United States. Data collected in San Diego, California, and Dallas, Texas, are analyzed from a political economy perspective. The people in the study had lived in the United States for at least one and a half years and were interviewed in 1986, when laws affecting their future legal status (IRCA) were being debated. The study demonstrates the need for a political economy model more attuned to variations among undocumented populations seeking health care. Coverage by private medical insurance significantly influenced the utilization of health services. The uninsured were much less likely than the insured to have used U.S. health services. There was little evidence that hospital services, including emergency rooms, were overutilized by undocumented interviewees. [migration, health, health insurance, Latin Americans]
Female Suffering, Local Power Relations, and Religious Tourism: A Case Study from Yugoslavia
Authors: Bax Mart
Published: November 2004

The Yugoslavian pilgrimage center of Medjugorje has been confronted with a curious problem. Many local women are experiencing fear, illness, and a general uneasiness that make it difficult for them to carry out their daily tasks, including running the lodging houses that cater to the pilgrims. Their conclusion is that an increasing number of devils in the area are causing these problems. Men, including the priests, do not share this diagnosis; they dismiss it as “women's madness.” This article first describes and explains the recent outburst of “diabolical activities” from the perspective of the women involved. It then addresses the issue of the differences in interpretation between men and women. These differences seem to be based on a long‐term power struggle in which religious and psychological means have been used to keep the feuding and physical violence common to the area within certain bounds.
The Body's Insistence on Meaning: Metaphor as Presentation and Representation in Illness Experience
Authors: Kirmayer Laurence J.
Published: November 2004

Illness experience is articulated through metaphors that are grounded in—and constrained by—both bodily experience and social interaction. The bodily grounding of metaphor is based on the hierarchical elaboration of sensorimotor equivalences. The social grounding of metaphor resides in the pragmatics of language where context and intention are inseparable from meaning. Metaphors allow for inventive play, despite the dual constraints of body and society, by requiring only piecemeal correspondences to the world through ostension. The meaning of metaphors is then to be found not in representation but in presentation—modes of action or ways of life. Clinical examples illustrate how a semantics of metaphor can clarify the tensions between the essential irrationality of illness experience and the biomedical presumption of rationality.
Wasted Lives: Tuberculosis and Other Health Risks of Being Haitian in a U.S. Detention Camp
Authors: Nachman Steven R.
Published: November 2004

In 1982, the author interviewed 38 Haitian tuberculosis patients and had informal discussions with nonpatients and medical personnel at Krome, a detention camp for illegal entrants run by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. This article considers health and other conditions at Krome and the reactions of detainees and medical personnel to those conditions. The patients found life at Krome especially difficult. Ambivalent toward their diagnosis of tuberculosis and dissatisfied with their therapy, they accused camp officials of trying to justify exclusionary immigration practices by treating Haitians as disease ridden. But the patients also regarded Krome as an unhealthy environment and complained regularly of illnesses to camp physicians. These often accused their patients of malingering in order to obtain release from Krome. Neither medical personnel nor detainees agreed on what constituted a healthy Haitian. Ultimately, the Haitian desire for freedom and the opposing purpose of camp officials to dictate the terms of Haitian confinement found expression in competing definitions of health and illness.
Gender and Generation in Poor Women's Household Health Production Experiences
Authors: Clark Lauren
Published: November 2004

This study examines women's daily domestic health work in low‐income Mexican American and anglo households with young children in the southwestern United States. The women described the experience of domestic health work as a gendered endeavor reflecting essential differences between women and men. In times of illness, Mexican American women obtained help from female relatives, and conflicts with male partners were frequent. Antagonisms between Mexican American women and their partners were heightened by both cultural beliefs (such as maternal sacrifice) and socioeconomic factors (such as more children and deeper poverty). Anglo women relied more heavily on aid from spouses and less on that of women kin. The private stories of women in poverty supplement the public academic discourse on household health production by emphasizing the culturally linked interplay of gender and generation in health production and therapy management.
Structure and Meaning in Models of Breast and Cervical Cancer Risk Factors: A Comparison of Perceptions among Latinas, Anglo Women, and Physicians
Authors: CHAVEZ LEO R. , HUBBELL F. ALLAN , MCMULLIN JULIET M. , MARTINEZ REBECCA G. , MlSHRA SHIRAZ I.
Published: November 2004

This article reports on a study of perceptions of breast and cervical cancer risk factors among 27 U.S.‐born Chicanas, 39 Mexican and 28 Sal‐vadoran immigrants, 27 Anglo women, and 30 physicians in northern Orange County, California. In open‐ended responses explaining why women might be at risk for both cancers, Latinas expressed two general themes: physical stress and trauma to the body, and behavior and lifestyle choices. Interviewees ranked the specific risk factors that they themselves mentioned. Cultural consensus of ranked data revealed that Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants had a model of cancer risks that was different from those of Anglo women and physicians. U.S.‐born Chicanas were bicultural in their views, which overlapped with both Mexican women's and Anglo women's views, but less so with physicians' views. Comparing views about the two cancers revealed that general themes apply across both cancers, that Latina immigrants agreed less on the risk factors for cervical cancer than for breast cancer, and that there is a consistent pattern in the different ways Latinas, Anglos, and physicians perceive risk factors for both cancers.
Introduction
Authors: Davis‐Floyd Robbie , Sargent Carolyn
Published: November 2004

I think that what we need to think about is how we can move from a situation in which authoritative knowledge is hierarchically distributed into a situation where it is, by consensus, horizontally distributed—that is, where all participants in the labor and birth contribute to the store of knowledge on the basis of which decisions are made. In our technocratized systems we need to ask: What would have to happen for the woman to truly become a part of the decision‐making process? What if her knowledge, both bodily and intellectual, were to be accorded legitimate status? What if she had a place in the professional participation structures set up around the birth? Could there be a translation process between what the woman knows and what the staff understands to be the situation? Could there be a mutual accommodation of these divergent ways of knowing such that one single authoritative knowledge structure emerges? This, I believe, is the challenge for the future of childbirth in the technologized Western world as well as in the developing countries of the Third World.
Intuition as Authoritative Knowledge in Midwifery and Homebirth
Authors: Davis‐Floyd Robbie , Davis Elizabeth
Published: November 2004

As defined by Jordan (1992, 1993[1978]), authoritative knowledge motivates decision and action. Based on interviews with 22 white middle‐class midwives in the United States conducted between 1992 and 1993, this article explores the inner knowing that constitutes a primary source of authoritative knowledge for homebirthers but is granted no authority in the realm of technomedicine. The purpose of this article is to call attention to these midwives' utilization of and reliance on intuition as a guide to action and decision making during homebirths. The midwife‐interviewees are highly literate and competent in technological skills and biomedical diagnosis, and are keenly aware of the cultural and legal risks they run when they cannot justify their actions during a birth in logical, rational terms. Nevertheless, the deep value they place on connection, in the context of their holistic model of birth and health care, leads them to listen to and follow their “inner voice” during birth, rather than operating only according to protocols and standard parameters for “normal birth.” The nature of intuition and the reasons for and consequences of the general devaluation of intuitive thinking by the wider society are also considered.
The Social Dynamics of Genetic Testing: The Case of Fragile‐X
Authors: Nelkin Dorothy
Published: November 2004

This article considers a program to screen school children for Fragile‐X Syndrome as a way to explore several features of the growing practice of genetic testing in American society. These include the common practice of predictive testing in nonclinical settings; the economic, entrepreneurial, and policy interests that are driving the development of genetic screening programs; and the public support for genetic testing even when there are no effective therapeutic interventions. Drawing from research on popular images of genetics, I argue that cultural beliefs and expectations, widely conveyed through popular narratives, are encouraging the search for diagnostic information and enhancing the appeal of genetic explanations for a growing range of conditions.
New Bottles, Old Wine: Hidden Cultural Assumptions in a Computerized Explanation System for Migraine Sufferers
Authors: Forsythe Diana E.
Published: November 2004

Sophisticated computer programs known as “intelligent systems” have been developed for use in medical settings for over two decades. Such systems explicitly encode information about task domains, problem attributes, and problem‐solving strategies. They also embody tacit assumptions held by those who build them, reflecting meanings taken for granted in particular cultural and disciplinary arenas. This article examines assumptions built into the design of a patient education system for migraine sufferers, drawing upon extended participant‐observation of the development process. Its designers view the system as neutral, but observation reveals that it embodies a physician's point of view. While intended to support migraine patients by offering useful information not given them by physicians, the system in fact offers information characterized by the same assumptions and deletions as that provided by neurologists. Thus, although intended to empower migraine patients, this system may actually reinforce rather than reduce the power differential between doctor and patient.