bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
the negotiation of Songhay space: phenomenology in the heart of darkness
Authors: STOLLER PAUL
Published: November 2004

The observation of symbolic space can often be an exercise in perceptual “delusion,” in which the anthropologist observes something that does not correspond to the reality of the people he or she is studying. One of the sources of perceptual “delusion” is the static orientation to (social) science, the ongoing legacy of post‐Socratic Greek philosophy to occidental (social) scientific analysis. One solution to this significant epistemological problem, as my own Songhay case illustrates, is to adopt a more eidetic or phenomenological approach to space in society. In this eidetic approach to the observation of spatial patterns, the analyst considers space as a dynamic conceptual force which can be used in sociopolitical arenas rather than as a static, immutable entity which is “given” and “out there.” By analyzing space from a critical phenomenological perspective, anthropologists are more likely to produce descriptions which correspond to the experience of the ethnographic other. [ethnology, phenomenology, political anthropology, West Africa, symbolism]
powerlessness, exploitation and the soul‐eating witch: an analysis of Badyaranke witchcraft
Authors: SIMMONS WILLIAM S.
Published: November 2004

Conflict between village peasants and the modern state is associated with increased concern with witchcraft. Villagers accuse one another of witchcraft and do not accuse the state bureaucrats with whom they have many unresolved grievances. The argument is that in accusing one another of witchcraft the village peasants are displacing conflicts with more powerful outsiders. [Senegal, religion, witchcraft, social change, symbolism]
Theory of value, labor process and price formation: a study of a Puerto Rican sugarcane hacienda
Authors: WESSMAN JAMES W.
Published: November 2004

Marx's theory of value is applied to the production and circulation of sugar on a Puerto Rican hacienda in 1911. Through a detailed description of the labor process and the relations between the hacienda and its clients, the role of labor in price formation is discussed, as well as the deviations due to supply and demand and the seasonality of hacienda agriculture. [theory of value, Marxism, Puerto Rico, hacienda, sugar]
Omaha terminology and unilateral marriage on the Sepik
Authors: WILLIAMSON MARGARET HOLMES
Published: November 2004

This paper examines the often‐proposed hypothesis that Omaha terminologies and unilateral marriage are necessarily associated. It does so by means of ethnographic evidence from three culturally similar societies of the Middle Sepik region of New Guinea, each of which is characterized by a kinship terminology classifiable as “Omaha.” None of these societies practices unilateral marriage in the conventional sense, and there are important differences in social structure among them that cannot be derived from the Omaha label. An explanation for why the label has no predictive value is offered. [Omaha terminologies, unilateral marriage, symmetrical/asymmetrical marriage relationships, kinship, kwoma, Abelam, latmul]
Violent conflict in Meta‘ society
Authors: DILLON RICHARD G.
Published: November 2004

A critical review of social structural approaches to violent conflict reveals a composite theoretical model that contrasts peaceful conflicting loyalties type societies with violent fraternal interest group type societies. Ethnohistorical data on warfare and fighting from a precolonial African society are used to illuminate relationships between violence and social structure more complex than any envisioned by advocates of the social structural approach. The analysis also yields a number of specific questions to be tested in cross‐cultural research. [law, warfare, political organization, conflicting loyalties theory, Africa]
village agriculture and labor migration: interrelated production activities among the llakla Awa of Papua New Guinea
Authors: BOYD DAVID J.
Published: November 2004

During the initial phase of participation in a cash economy, labor is diverted from local production as people leave the village to enter the wage‐labor market. Given the particular organization of subsistence agriculture among the llakia Awa, periodic undersupply of labor results. Resident villagers respond by altering household gardening strategies to accommodate the loss of local labor. This accommodation, however, becomes burdensome when the number of migrants, especially married men, is high. The intensification of effort required by both the men and the women remaining in the village to maintain sufficient subsistence production is an important factor for understanding the subsequent reduction in the level of participation in wage‐labor migration. [subsistence agriculture, labor migration, domestic economy, sociocultural change, Melanesia]
social strategies and the fiesta complex In an Otavaleño community
Authors: WALTER LYNN
Published: November 2004

The relationship between family and cargo festivals is analyzed in the context of village interaction patterns in Ahuango, an Otavaleño Indian community in northern highland Ecuador. In Ahuango, dyadic relationships of trust and continuity are established, reaffirmed, and enacted in the context of family festivals. Individuals with relatively large land‐holdings tend also to maintain more of these ties (i.e., to have larger “alliances”) than other Ahuangueños do. In the context of cargo festivals, alliances centered on more prosperous individuals act as factions. The fiesta complex is an arena in which individual interests coincide and compete. [social strategies, social networks, fiesta systems, Ecuadorian Indians, Otaveleño Indians]
art and artifice in Belizean Creole
Authors: FRENCH ROBERT , KERNAN KEITH T.
Published: November 2004

Verbal art and performance are highly valued in the Belizean Creole speech community. In this paper we define and describe a number of types of verbal artistic performances that occur in ongoing conversations and show the importance of indirection in Belizean speech. These performances serve functions in addition to the poetic and are similar in both their form and function to verbal performances in other African‐American speech communities. [Creole sociolinguistics, ethnography of communication, verbal art, performance, indirection, African‐American speech]
Lévi‐Strauss, Freud, and the trickster: a new perspective upon an old problem
Authors: CARROLL MICHAEL P.
Published: November 2004

Central to Lévi‐Strauss's well‐known analysis of the trickster figure in North American mythology is an association between the trickster and the animal category “carrion‐eater.” A review of the major tricksters in North America indicates that this association is present in one case (Raven), uncertain in the second (Coyote), and demonstrably absent in the case of other major trickster figures (such as the Algonquian Nanabush) who — if anything—are associated with the category “hare.” Merging some of the general ideas on myths developed by such structuralists as Lévi‐Strauss and Leach with some of the general ideas on myth developed by Freud, this article develops a new analysis of the trickster myths. I suggest that the underlying logic of these myths is concerned with resolving a universal dilemma: although both “uncontrolled sexuality” and “culture” are desired qualities, the first would lead to the destruction of the second. This perspective allows us to account for the trickster's two most notable characteristics: he is simultaneously portrayed as a selfish buffoon and as the culture‐hero who makes human society possible, and he is usually associated with one of three animal categories (coyote, raven, or hare). [myth, Lévi‐Strauss, structuralism, Freud, trickster, theory]
“far, far away my shadow wandered…”: the dream symbolism and dream theories of the Mehinaku Indians of Brazil
Authors: GREGOR THOMAS
Published: November 2004

The Mehinaku Indians of Brazil make a deliberate effort to recall and interpret their dreams. The interpretations, most of which are based on a metaphoric relationship between the dream symbol and its meaning, suggest a concern with the physical and psychological boundaries of the individual. This pattern is part of a larger system of beliefs that reflects the relative absence of bounded social groups and a “person‐centered” system of conferring identity. [dreams, dream interpretation, nature of self, South American Indians]
Ponapean matriliny: production, exchange, and the ties that bind
Authors: PETERSEN GLENN
Published: November 2004

Matriliny is commonly associated in ethnological theory with matrilocality and female subsistence tasks and is assumed to break down when changes occur in residence, land tenure, and the division of labor. Examination of Ponapean matriliny, which has apparently depended upon neither matrilocality nor female subsistence production, suggests that, alternatively, matrilineal organization plays an especially effective role in forging social and exchange ties and does not necessarily disintegrate under pressure from such changes, [matriliny, exchange, division of labor, Micronesia]
women and politics: case of the Kham Magar of western Nepal
Authors: MOLNAR AUGUSTA
Published: November 2004

Current anthropological studies of women in South Asia recognize that women play a more significant role in community decisions and local politics than was previously believed. Such participation in rural areas tends to be informal, that is, outside the formal political institutions. This paper investigates the entrance of women in a Kham Magar community in Nepal into the public arena to protest a ban on the sale of local liquor. The case sheds light on the dynamics of these women's political roles and on future trends in their involvement in politics. [women and politics, formal/informal participation, political anthropology, women's roles, Nepal, Kham Magar]
the etymology of excuses: aspects of rhetorical performance in Greece
Authors: HERZFELD MICHAEL
Published: November 2004

Excuses often take strikingly similar rhetorical forms in widely divergent kinds of situation. These forms, according to 1. L. Austin, may work by evoking ideas about impersonal agencies such as fate through etymological allusion; their conventionality makes them socially acceptable as well as highly adaptable. Using the example of modern Greece, this essay explores some implications of Austin's insight for the study of blame attribution in particular cultures by examining parallels in rhetorical treatment of fate, the national bureaucracy, and the international superpowers as agents of disaster. Particular emphasis i s placed on the retrospective character of blame attribution in all three domains and on the consequent inadequacy of “fatalism” as a descriptive and analytical construct.[etymology, semiotics, symbolism, rhetoric, excuses, cultural construction of events, Greece]
Signs in the social order: riding a Songhay bush taxi
Authors: STOLLER PAUL
Published: November 2004

In any field of experience anthropologists are confronted by spates of signs, many of which they fail to perceive. By way of an analysis of the mundane activities associated with riding a Songhay bush taxi in the Republic of Niger, this article probes the reflexive process through which anthropologist and ethnographic other learn to interpret the signs that comprise the discourse of social action. Having been confronted repeatedly with the signs of the other's universe, anthropologists may not only gain a new awareness of the socio‐cultural systems they seek to uncover but may also realize the limitations of their knowledge. Through what Dilthey called the hermeneutic, anthropologists will be more able to proceed profoundly and accurately toward an understanding of those signs that give substance and order to the complexities of social universes, [ethnology, hermeneutics, fieldwork, Sahelian ethnography, Niger]
personal power careers and the development of domestic structure in a small community
Authors: BIRDWELL‐PHEASANT DONNA
Published: November 2004

The traditional model of domestic development cycles (or family cycles) often proves problematic because it fails to distinguish the various dimensions (e.g., demographic, residential, economic) of the study unit. An alternative model is proposed which, by tracking the power careers of individual men and women, is able to generate the characteristic forms of family and household and patterns of economy and demography through time. It is suggested that this model might prove useful not only in projecting demographic composition but also in predicting political and economic stress points within small communities. [domestic cycle, social power, women's power, community structure, Middle America]
tapping and defining new power: the first month of visions at Ezquioga, July 1931
Authors: CHRISTIAN WILLIAM A.
Published: November 2004

Newspaper reports of the first month (July 1931) of multiple visions at Ezquioga in the Spanish Basque region provide an opportunity to study the process of negotiation whereby would‐be visionaries are Accepted or rejected, and visions come to have a content significant and appropriate to the preoccupations of the immediate audience and the wider society.
explaining high blood pressure: variation in knowledge about illness
Authors: GARRO LINDA C.
Published: November 2004

This paper examines variation and consensus in knowledge about high blood pressure in an Ojibway Indian community in Manitoba, Canada. Data was collected from 26 individuals, diagnosed as hypertensive, using both open‐ended and true‐false question interview formats. A formal analysis of the true‐false questions provided support for a shared cultural model for knowledge about high blood pressure. A prototypical model is developed using data from both interviews and the nature of variation both within and outside this model explored. [cognitive anthropology, medical anthropology, intracultural variation, knowledge systems, Ojibway Indians]
Images of denigration: structuring inequality between foragers and farmers in the Ituri forest, Zaire
Authors: GRINKER ROY RICHARD
Published: November 2004

Research on forager/farmer interactions has focused largely on relations of material exchange, thereby excluding symbolic and social structural aspects of those interactions. Lese representations of Lese (farmer)/Efe (hunter‐gatherer) cultural differences shape the symbolic incorporation of Efe trading partners into Lese village life. Since the Lese frequently characterize the Efe as female, gender appears to be a principal idiom through which the Lese represent those differences. Gender is a metaphor for relationships of inequality between village insiders and outsiders. The metaphor creates an analogic equivalence between Lese men's wives and the Efe, as village outsiders, and refers to their structural similarities in relation to the Lese villages. [forager/farmer interactions, Africa, Efe Pygmies, Lese, inequality, gender]
from saints to shibboleths: image, structure, and identity in Maya religious syncretism
Authors: WATANABE JOHN M.
Published: November 2004

Local concepts of Catholic saints in the Mam (Maya) town of Santiago Chimalten‐ango in the western highlands of Guatemala reveal that syncretism there represents not an indiscriminate seamless fusion of Maya and Christian religiosity but a highly differentiated recombination of conventional forms that serves primarily to articulate the moral and physical—and thus ethnic—boundaries of the community. The symbolic reassortment of saints with other local images of community, in particular ancestors and “earth lords,” shows syncretism to be an essential property of local identity, not simply a quaint or arbitrary survival of the Maya past. Contrasts with antecedent saint cults in 16th‐century Spain demonstrate the “Mayan‐ness” of this syncretism; comparison with saint cults in other Maya communities relates syncretism more closely to local contexts of community morality than to enduring “deep structures” of some primordial Maya culture or to a “false consciousness” born of persistent colonialist oppression. [Maya religion, religious syncretism, saint cults, Guatemala, ethnic identity]
Walter Newton's history of the world—or Australia
Authors: BECKETT JEREMY
Published: November 2004

How do people whose forebears were overtaken by an expansionary Europe but who still retain a separate identity make sense of conquest and domination? Can they adapt their own traditions to this purpose, and if so, can they speak with authority, or speak at all, in the shadow of the colonists' hegemonic culture? Australian Aborigines seem rarely to have applied their tradition to the task. This article describes one man's attempt to negotiate the impasse as he creates a dialogue between Dreamtime stories and Anglo‐Australian traditions. It suggests how he came to make that attempt and why it was abortive. The analysis is conducted in the light of recent writings about mythical and historical consciousness among non‐Western peoples. [Australia, Aborigines, colonialism, myth, history, narrative, consciousness, Australian Aborigines]
gold, sex, and pollution: male illness and myth at Mt. Kare, Papua New Guinea
Authors: CLARK JEFFREY
Published: November 2004

In 1986 a goldfield was discovered in a high‐altitude valley of the Papua New Guinea Highlands. Hundreds of Huli people from the Southern Highlands Province soon arrived to take advantage of the fortunes that could be made. This article examines the gold's incorporation into Huli mythopoeia, relates it to men's explanations of the illnesses they suffered at the goldfield, and shows how gold became analogous to menstrual blood as an agent of pollution. It is proposed that the polluting aspect of gold provides a metacommentary on the Huli experience of colonialism and new structures of power, and that this experience is interpreted through metaphors of gender. [Melanesia, mythology, gender, social change]
cultural politics in an age of statistics: numbers, nations, and the making of Basque identity
Authors: URLA JACQUELINE
Published: November 2004

This article examines the public uses of language surveys and census data by militant and moderate Basque nationalist language organizations during the first few years of Basque political autonomy. As part of a modern regime of truth that equates knowledge with measurement, statistics occupy a privileged position of authority that gives them heightened rhetorical power in a context of competing political ideologies. Analysis focuses on how specific ways of categorizing and displaying data on Basque speakers create an image of the Basque nation “at risk” and, at the same time, introduce new ways of envisioning the language community, the Basque speaker, and his or her duties to the nation. I conclude by discussing the implications that minority uses of statistics may have for theorizing resistance and the social construction of identities. [statistics, modernity, language revival, ethnic identity, nationalism, resistance, Basque country]
controlling births and bodies in village China
Authors: GREENHALGH SUSAN
Published: November 2004

This article seeks to deepen the understanding of reproductive politics by conjoining a feminist analytics of reproductive control with a demographic dissection of reproductive process and outcome, as well as a political‐economic enquiry into state domination and accommodation. Focusing on China's one‐child‐per‐family birth control program, it argues that women are not only victims but also agents in the practice of controlling births and making population policy in China's villages. In Shaanxi Province, peasants have contested policy elements they do not like, forcing local officials to negotiate the terms of policy implementation. Resistance to the policy has had contradictory effects, however: while increasing the number of children allowed, it has put women's bodies at risk and reinforced their social subordination. Ironically, resistance has worked to reproduce the very state control over childbearing that women have contested. [reproductive politics, the body, feminism, demography, political economy, China]
suffering and the work of culture: a case of magical poisoning in Toraja
Authors: HOLLAN DOUGLAS
Published: November 2004

In this article, I use Obeyesekere's concept of the work of culture to examine a case of magical poisoning among the Toraja (South Sulawesi, Indonesia). I argue that episodes of suffering must be situated not only culturally but also within the context of the individual sufferer's life experience, and suggest that we must consider carefully why only certain symbolic transformations of painful emotions may “work” for a given individual, why a symbolic transformation that “works” for one person may not for another, and why even apparently successful transformations of suffering may bring only temporary relief. [suffering, work of culture, magical poisoning, Toraja, Indonesia]
from darkness to light in the George Brown Jubilee: the invention of nontradition and the inscription of a national history in East New Britain
Authors: ERRINGTON FREDERICK , GEWERTZ DEBORAH
Published: November 2004

In this article, we examine the reasons that Duke of York Islanders in Papua New Guinea's East New Britain Province were greatly amused by their own annual “Jubilee” performance, one incorporating remarkably racist imagery about their ancestors. During the performance, which celebrated the 1875 arrival of the first Methodist missionaries, the ancestors were depicted as bumbling savages who were then “civilized,” brought from darkness to light Contrasting the performance we witnessed in 1991 to several described in the late 1920s, we demonstrate that the play frame had changed: that which was funny in 1991 had not been so before. The change entailed a repositioning of the present with respect to the past in response to shifting power relations from the period of colonial domination to that of nation formation. [Papua New Guinea, nationalism, performance, humor]
until death do us part: marriage/death in anthropological discourse
Authors: BORNEMAN JOHN
Published: November 2004

Anthropology has represented marriage as the definitive ritual and universally translatable regulative ideal of human societies. Its relation to the assertion of privilege, to closure, death, abjection, and exclusion are rarely examined in anthropological analyses. In this article I analyze the specific and changing representations of marriage in anthropological literature. I ask what forms of inclusion and exclusion are derived from the use of marriage as a universal equivalent. I argue that there has been a metaphysical privileging of the categories marriage, gender, heterosexuality, and life, which obtain their privilege by functioning as part of violent hierarchies in occasions of symbolization. Given the high political stakes in this imagining of marriage in the age of AIDS, I conclude that anthropologists should pay more attention to variability and instability as well as to that which is denied articulation in the occasions of reiteration of marriage. [marriage, death, AIDS, kinship, gender, sex]
household organization and budget structures in a Purepecha pueblo
Authors: ACHESON JAMES M.
Published: November 2004

In Cuanajo, Michoacan, Mexico, where the local furniture industry has undergone substantial expansion, households vary widely in size, financial practices, and levels of economic success. Households use three different kinds of funds: General, Personal, and Obligated Funds. Each has different characteristics. Households of different sizes and levels of business success use different kinds of funds, which are combined in different ways. In this article I argue that these different ways of structuring budgets contribute to or detract from business success by influencing transaction costs within households. [budgets, household organization, Mexico, craft production, Purepecha]
the aesthetic of the sublime: an interpretation of Rawa shell valuable symbolism
Authors: DALTON DOUGLAS M.
Published: November 2004

An examination of shell objects and their presentation, exchange, and roles in ritual self‐decoration among Papua New Guinea Rawa speakers relates them to a sublime aesthetic combination of pleasure and pain involving an indigenous ethos of pathos and sorrow and a sense of the inadequacy of symbolic shell images to convey the ideal concepts they embody. This sense is exacerbated in a colonial context, and the analysis of the sublime shows shells to be simultaneously repositories of indigenous meaning and influenced by colonial processes. In Melanesia the sublime is thus a colonially situated, corporeally located phenomenon of present absence. [shells, Melanesia, aesthetics, self‐decoration, exchange, colonialism, change]
Shakespearean Interviews
Authors: Brock Philip K.
Published: November 2004

A number of scenes in Shakespeare's plays in which one character “interviews” another are analyzed to reveal familiar discourse features including deception, indirection, ambiguity, and asymmetry of status. Riddles are briefly discussed and the problems of working through an interpreter displayed. The lifechanging potential of certain interview is also remarked upon.
In The Field
Authors: Anderson‐Levitt Kathryn M.
Published: November 2004

John L. Wengle. Ethnographers in the Field: The Psychology of Research. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1988. [pp. xiv. 198]. $21.95 (cloth).

Tony Larry Whitehead and Mary Ellen Conaway. eds. Self, Sex, and Gender in Cross‐Cultural Fieldwork. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986. xvi. 312. $39.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper).

Joan Cassell. ed. Children in the Field: Anthropological Experiences. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987. xiv. 270. $27.95 (cloth).
A Choreography of the Universe: The Afro‐Brazilian Candomble as a Microcosm of Yoruba Spiritual Geography
Authors: Walker Sheila S.
Published: November 2004

The Candomble, the basis of Bahian spiritual and cultural life, is based on Yoruba religion recreated in Brazil. Nineteenth‐century civil wars made the Yoruba in West Africa especially vulnerable to enslavement, and the particularisms of the Yoruba religious presence reflects the results. The Orishas, the spiritual beings of the Yoruba, were associated with natural features and localized human groups in Africa. In Brazil they were grouped together in religious institutions based on new organizational principles created in the alien context of slavery.

The Catholic church unwittingly contributed to the perpetuation of Yoruba religion. In attempting to Christianize the Africans, the church provided them with the camouflage of the saints for the continuation of the worship of the Orishas. This practice continues in the form of public festivities for the saints, the real meanings of which are based on the Candomble.
History and Persistent Symbols in Jamaicans' View of Small Farming
Authors: Bims Hamilton
Published: November 2004

Contemplating unexpected attitudes of rural Jamaicans, this article envisions certain kinds of maladaptive patterned acts as reflecting the persistence of a nonexplicit view of life conditioned by this peasant sector's special past. While symbols figure prominently in understanding rural life, more interesting are linkages uniting them as systems which determine people's actions to the detriment of real interests. Freed from slavery in the 1830s, Jamaicans forged a yeoman life supported by assistance from nonconformist activist religious missions. The yeomen's own symbolic view of what a private parcel meant (independence) fused with those of Christian thought and Victorian‐style morality to generate a powerful though largely “hidden” guide for action.
The Individual and Beyond: Reflections of the Life History Process
Authors: Blackman Margaret B.
Published: November 2004

The life history, a narrative form which has a substantial if fragmented history in anthropology, is enjoying a resurgence of popularity, both as an end product and as a genre inviting reinterpretation and analysis. For the narrative ethnographer the life history offers rich ground for examination and discussion. Focusing upon ongoing life history research in northern Alaska by the author and others, this article explores some of the current dimensions of life history studies.
Steps in a Scholarly Revolution
Authors: Gossen Gary H.
Published: November 2004

Elizabeth P. Benson and Griffin G. Gillett. eds. Maya Iconography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. xvi. 379 pp., illustrations. $80.00 (cloth).
Esoteric and Exoteric Images of Islam
Authors: Warren D. Michael
Published: November 2004

Akbar S. Ahmed. Discovering Islam: Making Sense of Muslim History and Society. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988. + 251 pp. £25.00 (cloth).
Mitigating Circumstances
Authors: Kendall Martha B.
Published: November 2004

An anthropological linguist teaching English in Kuwait discovers that both faculty and students in this Arabian Gulf nation construct grades as socially negotiable items rather than as objective signs of merit. Returning home, she reflects on this revelation, only to find that her own and her colleagues' academic forms of knowing and evaluating others are much less straightforward than she had previously surmised. From these experiences she constructs a parable about the nature of truth and how its categories get jumbled.
Heideggerian Views of the Built Environment
Authors: Jopling Carol F.
Published: November 2004

David Seamon and Robert Mugerauer. eds. Dwelling, Place and Environment. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. vi. 310 pp. $15.00 (paper).
Haitian Odyssey
Authors: Glazier Stephen D.
Published: November 2004

Harold Courlander. The Bordeaux Narrative. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990. ix. 192 pp. $21.95 (cloth).
Light, Culture, and Humanism
Authors: Hopgood James F.
Published: November 2004

Harold B. Barclay. Culture: The Human Way. Calgary, Alberta: Western Publishers, 1986. 130 pp. n.p. (paper).

Dennison Nash. A Little Anthropology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989. vi. 202 pp. $22.00 (paper).

James L. Peacock. The Anthropological Lens: Harsh Light, Soft Focus. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. xii. 124 pp. $24.95 (cloth); $6.95 (paper).
From the Research Assistant's Point of View
Authors: Gujar Bhoju Ram , Gold Ann Grodzins
Published: November 2004

Among anthropologists' recent extensive efforts at self‐scrutiny, one neglected topic has been the practice of training members of a community under study to act as research assistants in the field. Central to this article is a narrative account by one such assistant of the ways in which working for foreigners transformed his inner and outer worlds. A preface and afterword by one of his former employers sets this account in recent debates on problems of power and knowledge raised by the interpersonal nature offieldwork, sketches her own recollections of working with this assistant, and considers how such relationships affect ethnography and lives.
The Gift of an Anthropologist A‐Juma‐Wi/Atsuge‐Wi Lessons and Legends
Authors: Wilson Darryl Babe
Published: November 2004

I have implied that Susan Brandenstein Park has returned a “gift” to me and to my people, but it is much more than that to me. She could not have known that whenever I study her notes I remember being a small child sitting in the dust at the feet of my elders, listening to their thoughts that spilled over into a narration—of the creation, of Silver Grey Fox, of Coyote, of the coming of the first white people.

My father always moved me closer toward them, gently nudging me in the back. After I put my fingers into their huge, soft hands, they usually patted me on the head, then continued their conversations. An unexplainable feeling wrapped itself around me, and I listened.

As an adult that same feeling consumes me whenever I am greeted by an old person who is genuinely happy to see me. It is almost like having a surprise for a birthday that I forgot, or like looking into the eyes of my children when they were first born. I cry. Not of pain, but of completeness.

To explain a fragment of this emotional encounter is one of the purposes of my present effort. Should the greater public look upon my people as a very necessary part of the puzzle of life and understand that we have been systematically and unnecessarily dehumanized by the thrust of Manifest Destiny and progress, then I will consider both Susan's and my efforts as partially satisfied.

Consulting with my elders and poring over Susan's original field notes with her, I have attempted to present the voice of my people. Should academics receive these narratives with enthusiasm, then both Susan and I shall consider ourselves as a team that began mending a basket, abandoned as the cavalry rode into our nation and a careless horse crushed its design.

That we alone can re‐create that design is doubtful, but with the combined efforts of my concerned people, we can. And we cannot begin that re‐creation without the assistance of sincerely committed individuals of our society and concerned academics who, with the power of words and language, have the capacity to move the most stubborn event to action.
The Utility of Production Trajectory Modeling as a Framework for Regional Analysis
Authors: Johnson Jay K.
Published: November 2004

Lithic assemblage from seven regions in Mississippi are analysed using flake and biface classifications designed to measure activity at different stages in the production trajectory. All seven industries are based on gravel resources with restricted geological distribution. The factors responsible for differences in biface production strategy are examined. These include differences in access and settlement strategy.
Recognizing Women in the Archeological Record
Authors: Bumsted M. Pamela , Booker Jane E. , Barnes Ramon M. , Boutton Thomas W. , Armelagos George J. , Lerman Juan Carlos , Brendel Klaus
Published: November 2004

Primary sexual characteristics are usually absent in the archeological record. The recovered secondary sex markers in bone morphology or mortuary context reflect the lifelong integrated biocultural experience of the individual man or woman. Internal patterns of variability within and between sexes can be recognized but are too frequently masked by traditional descriptive and univariate analyses. Fortunately, a detailed picture of life experience is gained by analyzing chemical composition (isotopic and elemental) of hard tissues using an analytical anthropology approach and by examining the variation in novel ways.
Political Offices and Political Structure: Ethnohistoric and Archaeological Perspectives on the Native Lords of Apalachee
Authors: Scarry John F.
Published: November 2004

Ethnohistoric accounts of the Apalachee provide information about native political structure, and describe offices with a variety of political, military, and religious duties. Unfortunately, the Apalachee were transformed by incorporation into the Spanish colonial system, and the degree to which named offices correspond to precontact offices is unknown. Archaeological data suggest the existence of several offices in the late prehistoric Apalachee chiefdom, although we cannot address the nature and scope of authority and power tied to those offices. Although archaeological data provide little insight here, theoretical models suggest that the historic offices could have existed in similar form before contact.
The Reign and Ruin of the Lords of Cahokia: A Dialectic of Dominance
Authors: Pauketat Timothy R.
Published: November 2004

The intellectual roots of and archaeological evidence for a “climax” of the late‐prehistoric Cahokia polity are reconsidered. The increased sacralization of chiefly authority seems apparent at the same time that the political economy may have stagnated during the late 11th century A.D. This apparent quandary may be resolved if we recognize the dialectical relationship between chiefly political structure and a chiefly ideology. Centralization and decentralization are opposing tendencies of the same process.
Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Mexican/Chicano/Hispano Workers and the North American Labor Market:: Part 2 ‐ Dialectics of Domination and Discourses of Resistance
Authors: Weil Jim
Published: November 2004

The Terror of the Machine: Technology, Work, Gender, and Ecology on the U.S.‐Mexican Border. Devon G. Peña. Austin: CMAS Books (Center for Mexican‐American Studies, University of Texas), 1997, iv. 460 pages.
Studying Those Who Study Us: An Anthropologist in the World of Artificial Intelligence/ Weaving Work and Motherhood/ Who Supports the Family? Gender and Breadwinning in Dual–Earner Marriages/ Learning from Saturn: Possibilities for Corporate Governance and Employee Relations.
Authors: Hakken David , Marquez Patricia , DeRoche Constance P.
Published: November 2004

Studying Those Who Study Us: An Anthropologist in the World of Artificial Intelligence. Diana E. Forsythe. Edited with an Introduction by David Hess. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press,2001.

Weaving Work and Motherhood. Anita Ilta Garey. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.

Who Supports the Family? Gender and Breadwinning in Dual–Earner Marriages. Jean L. Potuchek. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.

Learning from Saturn: Possibilities for Corporate Governance and Employee Relations. Saul A. Rubenstein and Thomas A. Kochan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Victimizing Whistleblowers
Authors: Johnson Leslie
Published: November 2004

The Killing of Karen Silkwood: The Story Behind the Kerr‐McGee Plutonium Case. Richard Rashke. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.

Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power. C. Fred Alford. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Survival Strategies of Chippewa Drinkers in Minneapolis
Authors: Lang Gretchen Chesley
Published: November 2004

Subsistence and social strategies of Chippeva men in Minneapolis, self‐defined as “drinkers”, are described in an attempt to view behaviors generally classified as “social problem behaviors” within their sociocultural context. A number of characteristics of their urban lifestyle are shared with the larger Indian population as well as with other non‐Indian poor, and it is argued that alcohol‐related problems are part of but not necessarily determinative of the over‐all adaptive patterns that bring individuals into repeated contact with public institutions and rehabilitative programs.
An Anthropological View of Black Spiritual Churches in Nashville, Tennessee
Authors: Baer Hans A.
Published: November 2004

This article focuses attention on an essentially neglected religious movement in the Black community, namely those groups which refer to themselves as “Spiritual.” Since so little is known about Black Spiritual churches, the development and religious beliefs and practices of these groups is briefly examined. It will be noted that Spiritual churches have incorporated elements from a number of religious traditions, including Protestantism, Spiritualism, Catholicism, and Voodooism. As a result of this syncretistic process, they have created an essentially new and unique religious tradition, which for the most part has been overlooked by anthropologists and other social scientists. Based on participant‐observation fieldwork among Spiritual groups in a southern city, this article considers the multifaceted role of Spiritual churches in the Black community.
Cultural Rituals and Obsessive‐Compulsive Disorder: Is There a Common Psychological Mechanism?
Authors: DULANEY SIRI , FISKE ALAN PAGE
Published: November 2004

Our species has distinctive features, genetically inherited, which interact with social conditioning……One of these distinctive human features may be a propensity to the ritualisation of certain of our behaviours.[Turner 1985a:249]
Body and Mind in the Trobriand Islands
Authors: Senft Gunter
Published: November 2004

This article discusses how the Trobriand Islanders speak about body and mind. It addresses the following questions: do the linguistic data fit into theories about lexical universals of body‐part terminology? Can we make inferences about the Trobrianders' conceptualization of psychological and physical states on the basis of these data? If a Trobriand Islander sees these idioms as external manifestations of inner states, then can we interpret them as a kind of ethnopsychological theory about the body and its role for emotions, knowledge, thought, memory, and so on? Can these idioms be understood as representation of Trobriand ethnopsychological theory?
ANTHROPOLOGISTS AND THE “CRAZIES”
Authors: Scheper‐Hughes Nancy
Published: November 2004

Recent Works in Cultural Psychiatry: Making it Crazy: An Ethnography of Psychiatric Clients in an American Community. Sue E. Estroff.

Recent Works in Cultural Psychiatry: The Family Shadow: Sources of Suicide and Schizophrenia. David Reynolds and Norman Farberow.

Recent Works in Cultural Psychiatry: Mental Patients in Town Life: Geel—Europe's First Therapeutic Community. Eugeen Roosens.

Recent Works in Cultural Psychiatry: Cultural Conceptions of Mental Illness: A Comparison of Germany and America. John Marshall Townsend.
Divergence and Convergence in Two Systems of Manual Medicine: Osteopathy and Chiropractic in the United States
Authors: Baer Hans A.
Published: November 2004

Although osteopathy and chiropractic emerged as medical revitalization movements with a similar disease theory during the late 19th century, osteopathy has evolved into osteopathic medicine and surgery, and chiropractic has evolved into a musculoskeletal speciality. In this article I attempt to explain the divergent evolution of these two schools of manual medicine in the United States by considering their respective roles in addressing various structural problems in American health care, their contrasting relationships with biomedicine, organized biomedicine's stance toward the two alternative medical systems, and internal organizational conflicts within osteopathy and chiropractic. It will also show that both osteopathy and chiropractic were forced to some degree to converge with biomedicine both conceptually and therapeutically.
Neonatal Jaundice: A Disorder of Transition or an Adaptive Process?
Authors: Brett John A. , Niermeyer Susan
Published: November 2004

Physiologic hyperbilirubinemia occurs commonly in term newborn infants in the absence of any underlying pathologic cause. Yet, the jaundice itself is commonly regarded as a problem in the transition to extrauterine life. Contrary to the usual assumption of pathology, there are several lines of evidence supporting an adaptive role for neonatal hyperbilirubinemia. First, experimental and clinical evidence indicate that neonatal enzyme systems are not yet mature at birth; bilirubin has been demonstrated to scavenge potentially toxic oxygen free radicals that in later life are removed by the mature antioxidant enzyme system. Second, presence of bilirubin in mammals, similar patterns of expression of neonatal hyperbilirubinemia in nonhuman primates, and significant interpopulation variation in newborn serum bilirubin levels among humans all suggest that bilirubin production, metabolism, and excretion are under genetic control. Thus, subject to selective pressure, this condition would not be maintained if deleterious.
Requiem for RSI: The Explanation and Control of an Occupational Epidemic
Authors: Reid Janice , Reynolds Lyn
Published: November 2004

The emergence of a “critical medical anthropology” offers a perspective that can complement and enrich the explanatory model (EM) approach, particularly in the case of illnesses that are polysemic and have political and economic implications. Repetition strain injury (RSI), an occupational illness which became epidemic in Australian industry in the early 1980s, became the focus of multiple and disparate biomedical EMs. We argue that the biomedical debates about the etiology of RSI can be understood in terms of the ideological role of medicine in reducing RSI to a physiological or a psychological phenomenon, individualizing the problem, disenfranchising (or blaming) the injured worker, and deflecting attention from those structural conflicts endemic in the workplace (and exacerbated by economic stringencies) which fostered injury, pain, and disability.
Toward an Anthropology of Immunology: The Body as Nation State
Authors: Martin Emily
Published: November 2004

In this article I describe the main imagery currently used in popular and scientific descriptions of the immune system in the United States: the body as nation state at war over its external borders, containing internal surveillance systems to monitor foreign intruders. Although in some respects this is a boundary‐oriented, internally flat system, in other respects it contains suppressed hierarchies that draw on cultural concepts of race and gender. I suggest what kinds of ideological work such imagery may be doing and what uses people make of it. Other models of the body and immune responses that build on different imagery are described.
Book Reviews
Authors: Amoss Pamela T.
Published: November 2004

Book reviewed in this article:

Uneasy Endings: Daily Life in an American Nursing Home. Renee Rose Shield.

Aging in Cross Cultural Perspective: Africa and the Americas. Enid Gort

Aging and Its Transformations: Moving toward Death in Pacific Societies. Dorothy Ayers Counts and David R. Counts
Bodies, Kin, and Flow: Family Planning in Rural Jamaica
Authors: Sobo Elisa J.
Published: November 2004

This analysis of family planning investigates the links between embodied experiences, sociocultural forms, and ethnophysiological concerns. It focuses on the rural Jamaican concept of flow, which appears in ethnophysiological ideas and kinship beliefs and has ramifications for contraceptive practice. The experience of flow both on the somatic level and in social interaction lends structure to the local models concerning general health, reproductive health and procreation, and social reproduction. Cross‐culturally, the flow‐related experiences that women have of and through their bodies form the basis for much traditional health knowledge.
Greek Psychiatry's Transition from the Hospital to the Community
Authors: Blue Amy V.
Published: November 2004

The psychiatric care system in Greece is currently undergoing a transformation of its service network, propelled to a great extent by recommendations and funding from the European Economic Community (EEC). Formerly, mental‐health treatment was provided primarily by large state mental hospitals. The new direction is toward deinstitutionalization and a community‐care approach. This article examines the development of the Greek mental health care system through historical and ethnographic data. The history of the system is described briefly; cultural, governmental, and Greek psychiatric contributions to its development are analyzed; and the present reorganization of psychiatric care and the EEC's role is discussed. The case of Greek mental health care illustrates the dynamic nature of a biomedical specialty.
W. H. R. Rivers Prize Essay (1992). Stories of Pain and the Problem of AIDS Prevention: Injection Drug Withdrawal and Its Effect on Risk Behavior
Authors: Connors Margaret M.
Published: November 2004

This study shows that drug withdrawal can be interpreted as a chronic pain condition that bridges the physical and emotional experiences of pain, especially regarding feelings of rejection, shame, inadequacy, and isolation. The experience of withdrawal among drug users, both in treatment and actively using drugs, in a predominantly working‐class, industrial Massachusetts city of 185,000 was studied through questionnaires, interviews, and ethnographic observation. The results suggest that the physical effects of drug use need to be explored as a symptom of a more extensive chronic condition in which pain is both the reason for and the consequence of drug addiction. This pain condition makes avoiding needle sharing and cleaning injection equipment with bleach difficult for many drug users because tolerance of withdrawal symptoms requires tolerating not only physical symptoms but also a more complex constellation of symptoms. This research suggests that AIDS education may need to address the notion of drug withdrawal and its effect on risk‐taking behavior.