bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Creating a Continuity between Self and Other: First‐Person Narration in an Amazonian Ritual Context
Authors: Oakdale Suzanne
Published: November 2004

This article argues that culturally specific genres of first‐person narration as they are found within social life offer a privileged window on a dimension of the self: the extent to which in certain circumstances self and other have fixed boundaries or can become merged. My focus is a ritual genre of first‐person narration sung by the Kayabi, a Tupi‐Guarani‐speaking people of central Brazil. In this genre, the experiences of past generations become incorporated into the lives of contemporary narrators. How this incorporation is facilitated as well as its importance in the context of Kayabi views on human development are discussed.
A Single Leaf Orchid: Meaning of a Husband's Death for Taiwanese Widows
Authors: Hsu Min‐Tao , Kahn David L. , Hsu Mutsu
Published: November 2004

Based on interviews with 35 Taiwanese widows, the authors analyze indigenous beliefs and meanings associated with spousal death. The most common death‐related beliefs brought up in these widows' narratives were attributing human characteristics to or deifying deceased husbands, fearing ghosts, perceiving the presence of the deceased, describing the idea of a good death, and responding ambivalently to the traditional taboo against crying in the presence of a dying husband. For a significant number of the interviewees, death‐related meanings centered around feelings of incompleteness and opportunities for growth. The authors found that many of these beliefs and meanings contributed to the widows' successful coping and healing processes, and concluded that contemporary death‐related beliefs are still in accordance with traditional Chinese cultural ideology, especially in terms of family continuity and ideal family life.
Boredom, "Trouble," and the Realities of Postcolonial Reservation Life
Authors: Jervis Lori L. , Spicer Paul , Manson Spero M.
Published: November 2004

Perhaps because of its reputation as an inconsequential emotion, the significance of boredom in human social life has often been minimized if not ignored. Boredom has been theoretically linked to modernity, affluence, and the growing problem of filling "leisure time. "It has also been attributed to the expansion of individualism with its heightened expectations of personal gratification. Whether a reaction to the sensation ofunderstimulation or "overload," boredom appears to be, ultimately, a problem of meaning. In this article, we consider the applicability of these notions to the contemporary American Indian reservation context, examining discourse about boredom as expressed in interviews with members of a northern plains tribe. Of special interest is how boredom figures into the phenomenon of "trouble" (e.g., alcohol and drug abuse, violence, and illegal activities). Although boredom is certainly familiar to various strata of contemporary U.S. society—and arguably part of what it means to be human—we propose that the realities of postcolonial reservation life provide an especially fertile and undertheorized breeding ground for this condition, and our examination of the relationship between boredom and trouble suggests that boredom's implications for both individual subjectivity and group sociality are far from trivial.
Never Leave Yourself: Ethnopsychology As Mediator of Psychological Globalization among Belizean Schoolgirls
Authors: Andepson‐Fye Eileen P.
Published: November 2004

How do transnational ideas and images become psychologically salient to youth in local communities? Based on five years of fieldwork among high school girls in a rapidly changing Belizean community, this article investigates how some transcultural symbolic material (e.g., gender‐based maltreatment) becomes psychologically salient in a given society and yet other constructs (e.g., thin body image) can pass by with relatively few consequences in an increasingly transnational world. The ethnopsychological practice of self‐protection among young Belizean women, which girls describe as "Never Leave Yourself, " mediates how girls make sense of and incorporate transnational concepts into their lived experience. The current material realities and particular historic moment in Belize also influence variations in how transnational concepts are incorporated.
From Milah (Circumcision) to Milah (Word): Male Identity and Rituals of Childhood in the Jewish Ultraorthodox Community
Authors: Bilu Yoram
Published: November 2004

In contemporary Jewish ultraorthodox communities, most three‐year‐old male children undergo a twofold ritual sequence in which the first haircut is associated with entering the world of study. Focusing on the paramount value of holy Torah study and its prerequisites, I seek to decode the psychocultural meanings of the haircutting and school initiation ceremonies and their ceremonial antecedent, circumcision, as markers on the male trajectory from milah (circumcision) to milah (word). The ritual sequence is evaluated comparatively against the widespread conception of manhood as a special‐status category of achievement that requires indoctrination and testing. In order to account for the recent proliferation of the rituals, an attempt is made to situate them historically in the current context of contemporary ultraorthodox and Israeli society.
From Good Student to Outcast: The Emergence of a Classroom Identity
Authors: Wortham Stanton
Published: November 2004

The process of social identification draws on heterogeneous resources from several levels of explanation. This article illustrates how, by describing the identity development of one student across an academic year in a ninth‐grade classroom. Analyses of transcribed classroom conversations show teachers and students drawing on multiple resources as this student goes from being identified as one of many good students to being identified as a disruptive outcast. This case provides a counterexample to simple theories of identity development that do not recognize the multiple, heterogeneous resources involved in social identification.
Growing Up Girl in Working‐Poor America: Textures of Language, Poverty, and Place
Authors: Hicks Deborah
Published: November 2004

This article explores the psychosocial histories of three girls growing up in an urban neighborhood with historical ties to rural Appalachia. The article adopts a discursive lens for understanding class‐specific identities in the life histories of these young subjects. Central to the analyses that shape the paper are close studies of language. At the same time, it situates the study of discourse and subjectivity within the textures of landscape and narrative, an analytical focus influenced by the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin. The result is a novelistic understanding of how material landscape, class‐specific discourse, emotional response, and imaginative reinvention become refracted dimensions of voice and subjectivity. Such understandings are offered as an apt starting point for pedagogy that addresses the tensions experienced by girls living in working‐poor America.
Materials for a Confrontation with Genius as a Personal Identity
Authors: Mcdermott Ray
Published: November 2004

From 1650 to 1900, the idea of genius shifted from a momentary gift of inspiration to a kind of person with inherent intelligence that directs great accomplishment. This article tracks early confrontations with the ascription of genius and the injustices sometimes enacted in genius touting. The historical materials are used to comment on the contemporary genius that crowns a hierarchy of terms for aptitudes, abilities, and disabilities in schools and workplaces that aggressively sort a best from the rest. Terms glossing and evaluating how individual minds work are only occasionally descriptively adequate, but the terms are always situated activities among people positioning each other inside cultural identities.
Some Notes on the Origin of Ethos
Authors: GOLDSCHMIDT WALTER
Published: November 2004

This article offers some documentation on the manner in which Ethos came into being and became the official journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, based on the author's recollections.
The Weight of the Past in the Experience of Health: Time, Embodiment, and Cultural Change in Morocco
Authors: MACPHEE MARYBETH
Published: November 2004

Over the past thirty years, the introduction of new technologies into household life in southeastern, Saharan Morocco has decreased both the labor and time needed for the daily tasks of cooking and cleaning. Despite these benefits, Saharan housewives view the changes in diet and food preparation as the cause of an increase in fatigue and poor digestion. They construct this etiology by means of historical metaphors, which locate health in the aesthetic and moral virtues of life in the past. This article examines this example of collective memory from the perspective of cultural phenomenology, focusing on the relationship between habitus and culture change. P. Bourdieu argues that habitus has a “hysteresis effect,” (1977:78, 1990:59) in which the disproportional weight of early experience in the generation of embodied dispositions creates a temporal lag in the logic of practice. In the Moroccan case, the persistence of embodied structures of the body in time from the premodern past fuels a moral discourse that links unrefined food, manual labor, and Islamic practice to meanings of health.
The Brazilian Thumbs‐Up Gesture
Authors: Sherzer Joel
Published: November 2004

The thumbs‐up gesture, of probable European origin, is extremely common in Brazil where it has a variety of uses. A combined social interactional and ethnographic approach is used to show that the various uses of the thumbsup gesture are systematically related. The core paradigmatic meaning of the thumbs‐up gesture is "good," "positive," or "OK," and the core syntagmatic meaning is "social obligation met." Other meanings emerge from particular contexts in which the gesture is situated.
Book Reviews
Authors: Foster Morris W.
Published: November 2004

Western Apache Language and Culture: Essays in Linguistic Anthropology. Keith H. Basso. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990. 195 pp. $32.50 (cloth)
Book Reviews
Authors: Hill Jane H.
Published: November 2004

Discursive Practices and Linguistic Meanings: The Vietnamese System of Person Reference Hy. Luong. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1990. 213 pp. $53.00 (cloth)
Amazonian Linguistics: Studies in Lowland South American Languages.
Authors: Basso Ellen
Published: November 2004

Amazonian Linguistics: Studies in Lowland South American Languages. Doris L. Payne ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. 573 pp. $42.50 (cloth)
Current Approaches to African Linguistics, Vol. 5 and Current Approaches to African Linguistics, Vol. 6
Authors: Moshi Lioba
Published: November 2004

Current Approaches to African Linguistics (Vol. 5) Paul Newman Robert D. Botne eds. Publications in African Languages and Linguistics, 8. Dordrecht/ Providence: Foris Publications, 1989. 266 pp. $60.00 (paper)

Current Approaches to African Linguistics (Vol. 6) lsabelle Haik Laurice Tuller eds. Publications in African Languages and Linguistics, 9. Dordrecht/ Providence: Foris Publications, 1989. 336 pp. $40.00 (paper)
Categorization and Naming in Children: Problems in Induction.
Authors: Furbee Louanna
Published: November 2004

Categorization and Naming in Children: Problems in Induction. Ellen M. Markman. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989. 250 pp. $27.50 (cloth)
Talk and Social Structure: Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis
Authors: Grimshaw Allan
Published: November 2004

Talk and Social Structure: Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. Deirdre Boden and Don H. Zimmerman. eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. 305 pp. $35.00 (cloth)
Semiotics in the United States
Authors: Anderson Myrdene
Published: November 2004

Semiotics in the United States. Thomas A. Sebeok. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. 173 pp. $29.95 (cloth), $10.95 (paper)
A Discourse‐Centered Approach to Culture: Native South American Myths and Rituals
Authors: Hill Jonathan
Published: November 2004

. Discourse‐Centered Approach to Culture: Native South American Myths and Rituals. Greg Urban. Texas Linguistic Series. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. 215 pp. $35.00 (cloth)
Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture
Authors: Tsitsipis Lukas D.
Published: November 2004

Universe of the Mind:. Semiotic Theory of Culture. Yuri M. Lotman. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990.288 pp. $45.00 (cloth)
Verbal Art in San Bias: Kuna Culture through Its Discourse
Authors: Caton Steven C.
Published: November 2004

Verbal Art in San Bias: Kuna Culture through Its Discourse. Joel Sherzer. Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture, 21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.281 pp. $39.50 (cloth)
The Emergence of Black English: Text and Commentary
Authors: Baugh John
Published: November 2004

The Emergence of Black English: Text and Commentary. Guy Bailey. Natalie Maynor. and Patricia Cukor‐Avila. eds. Creole Language Library. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1991. 352 pp. $70.00 (cloth)
Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture
Authors: Holland Dorothy
Published: November 2004

Uncertain Terms: Negotiating Gender in American Culture. Faye Ginsburg and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. eds. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990. 338 pp. $24.95 (cloth), $16.00 (paper)
Gender and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions
Authors: Narayan Kirin
Published: November 2004

Gender and Power in South Asian Expressive Traditions. Arjun Appadurai. Frank J. Korom. and Margaret A. Mills. eds. South Asia Seminar Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. 486 pp.
Conversational Discourse in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease
Authors: Blonder Lee Xenakis , Kort Eva Deane , Schmitt Frederick A.
Published: November 2004

While there are numerous studies examining brain mechanisms of phonological, syntactic, and lexicosemantic processing, there has been little research directed toward examining the organic basis of sociolinguistic behavior. This may in part result from differences in the philosophical traditions associated with sociolinguistics and neurolinguistics. We compared discourse production in five patients with mild to moderate probable dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) and their five spouses, during open‐ended interviews. We found that DAT patients produced significantly more turns and topic shifts but produced fewer total words, words per turn, unique words, narratives, direct quotes, and figures of speech than did their healthy spouses. Examination of DAT speech samples showed that they were characterized both by a lack of propositional content and illocutionary force, illustrating deterioration in communicative competence. This research is part of an emerging focus in which conversational interaction is considered a window into human brain contingencies.
The Thought of Mikhail Bakhtin: From Word to Culture
Authors: Brody Jill
Published: November 2004

The Thought of Mikhail Bakhtin: From Word to Culture. David K. Danow. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991. 166 pp.
Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages
Authors: Hill Jane H.
Published: November 2004

Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Joshua A. Fishman. Multilingual Matters, 76. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1991. 431 pp.
Development and Structures of Creole Languages: Essays in Honor of Derek Bickerton
Authors: Williams Jeffrey P.
Published: November 2004

Development and Structures of Creole Languages: Essays in Honor of Derek Bickerton. Francis Byrne and Thorn Huebner. eds. Creole Language Library, 9. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1991. 222 pp.
Book Reviews
Authors: Leavitt John
Published: November 2004

Anthropology and Literature. Paul Benson. ed. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993.320 pp.
Girls, Boys and Language
Authors: Kuhn Elisabeth D.
Published: November 2004

Girls, Boys and Language. Joan Sivann. Language in Education Series. Oxford, England, and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1992. 261 pp.
Linguistic Diversity and National Unity: Language Ecology in Thailand
Authors: Hudak Thomas John
Published: November 2004

Linguistic Diversity and National Unity: Language Ecology in Thailand. William A. Smalley. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994. 436 pp.
Language and the Social Construction of Identity in Creole Situations
Authors: Minderhout David
Published: November 2004

Language and the Social Construction of Identity in Creole Situations. Marcyliena Morgan. ed. Center for Afro‐American Studies Special Publication Series, 10. Los Angeles: Center for Afro‐American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 1994. 158 pp.
The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue
Authors: Hagman Roy S.
Published: November 2004

The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue. Merritt Ruhlen New York: John Wiley and Sons,1994. 239 pp.
Signs in Society: Studies in Semiotic Anthropology
Authors: Hill Jonathan
Published: November 2004

Signs in Society: Studies in Semiotic Anthropology. Richard J. Parmentier. Advances in Semiotics. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994. 223 pp.
Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Register
Authors: Debernardi Jean
Published: November 2004

Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Register. Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan. eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. 385 pp.
Framing in Discourse
Authors: Johnstone Barbara
Published: November 2004

Framing in Discourse. Deborah Tannen ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. 263 pp.
Social and Temporal Dimensions in Icelandic Obituarial Discourse
Authors: Koester David
Published: November 2004

Icelandic obituarial discourse negotiates public and private domains and employs expressions of past, present, and future to create "remembrances" of particular individuals. Detailed analysis of the discourse context in which the obituaries are set and of the expressive mechanisms that characterize the obituarial writings in general gives a concise view of the social and temporal dimensions of this form of Icelandic historical expression.
Endangered Languages
Authors: Trechter Sara
Published: November 2004

Endangered Languages. Robert H. Robins and Eugenius M. Uhlenbeck. eds. Berg: Oxford, 1991. 273 pp.
A Zuni Artist Looks at Frank Hamilton Cushing
Authors: Darnell Regna
Published: November 2004

. Zuni Artist Looks at Frank Hamilton Cushing. Phil Hughte. Zuni, NM: Pueblo of Zuni Arts and Crafts, A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center, 1994. 125 pp.
Liquor and Medicine: A Mayan Case Study in Diachronic Semantics
Authors: Maffi Luisa
Published: November 2004

This article discusses processes of semantic change in the context of a Mayan case study. It presents a diachronic analysis of the meaning of the Tzeltal and Tzotzil Maya word pox—synchronically used to refer to sugarcane liquor (aguardiente) in various dialects of these two languages of southern Mexico—as well as of its relationship with the derived word poxil 'medicine'. The article argues for a dynamic of semantic change in which abstract meaning persists over time, through shifts in concrete referents due to sociocultural change. A specific semantic derivational process, involving extension from a prototype, is described in this connection. On these bases, the article also proposes a reinterpretation of the relationship between pox as 'sugarcane liquor' and poxil as 'medicine' (normally understood in terms of the synchronically observable major role of the alcoholic beverage in ritual and curing in the Mayan Highlands). Historical linguistic data, colonial sources, and historical and ethnohistorical elements are brought to bear on this claim, and the significance of this reinterpretation for Highland Mayan ethnography is suggested, as well as vis‐à‐vis diachronic versus synchronic explanation, issues of lexical acculturation, and the role of cognitive processes in affecting lexical change
Columbia Plateau Indian Place Names: What Can They Teach Us?
Authors: Hunn Eugene
Published: November 2004

I propose a program for cross‐cultural research seeking semantic universals in place–name systems. Over 1000 place‐names in the Sahaptin Indian language of northwestern North America are analyzed for syntactic, semantic, and distributional regularities. Comparisons are drawn with Dena'ina Athabaskan, Yurok, and local English place‐name systems. Binomial place‐names are rare in Sahaptin, though common in other languages. Sahaptin place‐names very frequently are descriptive of biological and topographic features of sites. Many Sahaptin place‐names describe features of land and water as if in motion. Place‐names are sacred in origin; thus no places are named for persons. Quantitative analysis of the spatial distribution of place‐names unexpectedly reveals a striking correlation between place‐name density and population density which holds for a sample of 14 languages. This appears due to a tendency for an individual's repertoire of place‐names to be limited to approximately 500.
Flutes of Fire: Essays on California Indian Languages.
Authors: Macaulay Monica
Published: November 2004

Flutes of Fire: Essays on California Indian Languages. Leanne Hinton Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 1994. 270 pp.
A Dialogue on Dialogue
Authors: Shore Bradd
Published: November 2004

The Dialogic Emergence of Culture. Dennis Tedlock and Bruce Mannheim. eds. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. 302 pp.
The Translator as Communicator.
Authors: Berk‐Seligson Susan
Published: November 2004

The Translator as Communicator. Basil Hatim and Ian Mason. New York: Routledge, 1997. 244 pp.
Québec's Aboriginal Languages.
Authors: Darnell Regna
Published: November 2004

Québec's Aboriginal Languages. Jacques Maurais. ed. Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 1996. 334 pp.
Color and Cognition in Mesoamerica: Constructing Categories as Vantages.
Authors: Casson Ronald W.
Published: November 2004

Color and Cognition in Mesoamerica: Constructing Categories as Vantages. Robert E. MacLaury. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997. 616 pp.
Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class.
Authors: Parmentier Richard J.
Published: November 2004

Exposing Prejudice: Puerto Rican Experiences of Language, Race, and Class.Bonnie Urduoli. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. xiv, 222 pp.
Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire.
Authors: Blommaert Jan
Published: November 2004

Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire. Johannes Fabian. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1996. 348 pp.
Language, Culture and Communication in Contemporary Europe.; Language and the State: Revitalization and Revival in Israel and E'ire.; Language Policy and Social Reproduction: Ireland 1893–1993.
Authors: Quinn Eileen Moore
Published: November 2004

Language, Culture and Communication in Contemporary Europe. Charlotte Hoffmann. ed. Bristol, PA: Multilingual Matters, Ltd., 1996. 165 pp.

Language and the State: Revitalization and Revival in Israel and E'ire. Sue Wright. ed. Bristol, PA: Multilingual Matters, Ltd., 1996. 75 pp.

Language Policy and Social Reproduction: Ireland 1893–1993. Pddráig O'Riagáin. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. 297 pp.
Growing Up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York
Authors: Riley Kathleen C.
Published: November 2004

Growing Up Bilingual: Puerto Rican Children in New York. Ana Celia Zentella. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997.323 pp.
Referring to Space: Studies in Austronesian and Papuan Languages
Authors: Hoëm Ingjerd
Published: November 2004

Referring to Space: Studies in Austronesian and Papuan Languages. Gunter Senft. ed. Oxford: Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics, Oxford University Press, 1997. 324 pp.
Pronouncing and Persevering: Gender and the Discourses of Disputing in an African Islamic Court
Authors: Hoffman Katherine E.
Published: November 2004

Pronouncing and Persevering: Gender and the Discourses of Disputing in an African Islamic Court. Susan F. Hirsch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. 360 pp.
Korle Meets the Sea
Authors: Obeng Samuel Gyasi
Published: November 2004

Korle Meets the Sea. Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. 216 pp.
White, Whole Wheat, Rye: Jews and Ethnic Categorization in Washington, D.C.
Authors: Modan Gabriella
Published: November 2004

White is used to signify, often implicitly, a number of qualitatively different phenomena, thereby masking both different and similar positionalities between and within ethnic groups. In Jewish Washingtonians' talk of Whiteness, the different weights which speakers assign to ethnic culture, marginality, and skin color lead to shifting and contradictory ascriptions of Jews to the category White. These ascriptions complicate the binary discourse of ethnicity found in much recent research and in public discourse in Washington, D.C.
The Melungeon Identity Movement and the Construction of Appalachian Whiteness
Authors: Puckett Anita
Published: November 2004

Racial classification in the United States is ultimately binary, categorizing individuals as "white" or "nonwhite." How this binary system is discursively constituted depends upon the ways in which elements of a repertoire interconnect to distribute or consolidate power and privilege across discursive contexts. Circulation of the revitalized lexeme Melungeon as a valued "object" within Appalachian discourse reveals linguistic processes by which white racial privilege is constructed and expanded, mixed‐race classification excluded, and nonwhite disenfranchisement reproduced.
Himalayan Space: Cultural Horizons and Practices.
Authors: Michailovsky Boyd
Published: November 2004

Himalayan Space: Cultural Horizons and Practices. Balthasar Bickel and Martin Gaenszle. eds. Zürich: Völkerkundemuseum, 1999. 278 pp.
Evolution and the Human Mind: Modularity, Language and Meta‐Cognition
Authors: Kurzban Robert
Published: November 2004

Evolution and the Human Mind: Modularity, Language and Meta‐Cognition. Peter Carruthers and Andrew Chamberlain. eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 331 pp.
The Amazonian Languages
Authors: Gnerre Maurizio
Published: November 2004

The Amazonian Languages. R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 446 pp.
'You're So Fat!': Exploring Ojibwe Discourse
Authors: Garro Linda C.
Published: November 2004

'You're So Fat!': Exploring Ojibwe Discourse. Roger Spielmann. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1998. xi. 280 pp.
Intimate Hierarchies and Qur'anic Saliva (Tëfli): Textuality in a Senegalese Ethnomedical Encounter
Authors: Perrino Sabina M.
Published: November 2004

This article examines the multimodal textuality of a videotaped ethnomedical encounter between a Senegalese healer and his patient and considers these findings in light of metadiscourses on healing that were collected in interviews. The article demonstrates how a cultural figure of the healing process is precipitated out of patterns of co‐occurrence (or "textures") of linguistic, paralinguistic, and nonlinguistic semiotic devices and suggests that this approach is well equipped to illuminate ethnomedical practice in Senegal and elsewhere.
Desmond Morris's The Human Animal: A Personal View of the Human Species—The Language of the Body
Authors: Mehus Siri
Published: November 2004

Desmond Morris's The Human Animal:. Personal View of the Human Species—The Language of the Body. Clive Bromhall. dir. Princeton: Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 1999. 50 min.
Signs of Cherokee Culture: Sequoyah's Syllabary in Eastern Cherokee Life
Authors: Walker Willard
Published: November 2004

Signs of Cherokee Culture: Sequoyah's Syllabary in Eastern Cherokee Life. Margaret Bender. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002. xx. 187 pp.
Producing and Editing Diagrams Using Co‐Speech Gesture: Spatializing Nonspatial Relations in Explanations of Kinship in Laos
Authors: Enfield N.J.
Published: November 2004

This article presents a description of two sequences of talk by urban speakers of Lao (a southwestern Tai language spoken in Laos) in which co‐speech gesture plays a central role in explanations of kinship relations and terminology. The speakers spontaneously use hand gestures and gaze to spatially diagram relationships that have no inherent spatial structure. The descriptive sections of the article are prefaced by a discussion of the semiotic complexity of illustrative gestures and gesture diagrams. Gestured signals feature iconic, indexical, and symbolic components, usually in combination, as well as using motion and three‐dimensional space to convey meaning. Such diagrams show temporal persistence and structural integrity despite having been projected in midair by evanescent signals (i.e., handmovements anddirected gaze). Speakers sometimes need or want to revise these spatial representations without destroying their structural integrity. The need to "edit" gesture diagrams involves such techniques as hold‐and‐drag, hold‐and‐work‐with‐free‐hand, reassignment‐of‐old‐chunk‐tonew‐chunk, and move‐body‐into‐new‐space.
Abraham's Diary ‐ A European Ethnic Show from an Inuk Participant's Viewpoint
Authors: Thode‐Arora Hilke
Published: November 2004

Between 1874 and 1932, the Hamburg‐based German menagerie owner and founder of the still existing zoo, Carl Hagenbeck, organized ethnic shows – a common form of European and American show business of that time period. Troupes of people from locations considered to be ‘exotic' were recruited in order to perform in front of paying spectators what were considered to be “typical activities” of their homelands and cultures. The article describes the Hagenbeck Inuit show of 1880/81, which was comprised of Inuit who were recruited in Labrador, and focuses the diary written by Abraham who was one of the Inuk participants. Abraham's diary is compared with that written by Johan Adrian Jacobsen, who was the show impresario, as both cover the same events and stretch of time. Correspondence by Hagenbeck and other staff members involved in organizing the show and by the Moravian Brethren in Labrador, Germany and England as well as additional Moravian documents are used to contextualize further the material included in Abraham's diary. Thus, it is possible to some extent to reconstruct the events before, during, and after the show occurred. As well, the particular features of Abraham's diary are analyzed. As this diary seems to be the only source on a European‐organized ethnic show written by one of the non‐European participants, the diary is of special documentary value.
Blood and Nerves Revisited: Menopause and the Privatization of the Body in a Newfoundland Postindustrial Fishery
Authors: Davis Dona L.
Published: November 2004

Ethnographic data from a longitudinal, interpretive study of women's changing social and cultural constructions of menopause in a postindustrial, Newfoundland fishing village indicate that three major changes have taken place in the way women conceptualize female, reproductive life‐cycle events and processes. First, folk idioms of nerves and blood that once linked soma, psyche, place, and tradition are now trivialized and have been superseded by biomedical models of menopause. Second, physicians, television, magazines, and school teachers have replaced the community's middle‐aged women and the mutual communication of shared experience as major sources of information and advice on reproduction and aging. Third, women's bodies have become privatized, and bodily metaphors that once linked women in complex individual and collective assessments of shared, highly valued traditions and mutual judgment of moral character have lost their dominance in village life. [menopause, Newfoundland, body image, sociocultural change, fishing]
Privileged Knowledge and Mothers' “Perceptions”: The Case of Breast‐Feeding and Insufficient Milk in Bangladesh
Authors: Zeitlyn Sushila , Rowshan Rabeya
Published: November 2004

This article uses the example of breast‐feeding and insufficient‐milk syndrome in Bangladesh to illustrate the privileged status of professional discourse. While health professionals' discourse is given the status of scientific knowledge, the views and opinions expressed by breast–feeding women are referred to as “perceptions” and thus regarded as less objective. We use data gathered in two anthropological studies undertaken between 1987 and 1992 to examine some of the ambiguous qualities that breast‐feeding mothers, their relatives, and health practitioners attribute to breast milk in Bangladesh. We discuss how old beliefs are incorporated into new systems and how bottles, which are associated with allopathy and science, provide a way of circumventing anxieties about female physiology and breast milk. Medical, religious, and popular ideas on breast‐feeding and insufficient milk represent different intersecting discourses on the same theme—that female physiology and sexuality are problematic, [breast‐feeding, insufficient milk, ethnophysiology, Bangladesh, privileged discourse]
Verbal Intercourse and Sexual Communication: Impediments to STD Prevention
Authors: Pliskin Karen L.
Published: November 2004

This article explores the problems of risky sexual behavior by examining the ways people verbally negotiate sexual interaction regarding sexually transmitted diseases. Based on in‐depth interviews with 124 adults (ages 21–63) who are infected with genital herpes, the article shows that knowledge about sexually transmitted diseases is not necessarily related to the action needed for their prevention. People are more afraid of being rejected by a partner than they are of contracting an STD (except, of course, AIDS). By examining difficulties people have with sexual health discourse and showing how these difficulties are related to both the problem of communicating politeness and the problem of representing the self and the sexual other, this article demonstrates that STD prevention programs overlook a very important emotional and communicative issue: the lack of a culturally sanctioned language with which to discuss sexual health with partners, [genital herpes, STD prevention, STD communication, sexually transmitted diseases, STD risk]
Discourse, Power, and the Diagnosis of Weakness: Encountering Practitioners in Bangladesh
Authors: Wilce James M.
Published: November 2004

The author's experiences as a "patient" of nonbiomedical practitioners, and an examination of Bangladeshis' encounters with practitioners daktars [biomedical doctors], herbalists, exorcists, and diviners), reveal the interactive means by which the diagnosis of durbalata (weakness) is constructed. In the cases presented, facing power in the person of the practitioner means losing face. I argue that discursive phenomena above and below the lexical level are responsible. The phenomena described —(1) interruption or dismissal of the patient1 s words by practitioners and others present during the clinical encounter, (2) divinatory routines that assign the durbalata label to women, and (3) one patient's use of "creaky" voice quality in a strictly "popular sector" (domestic) encounter—are nonreferential but socially significant semiotic processes that operate, for the most part, beneath the level of discursive awareness. These encounters and their outcomes have more to do with social reproduction than with any unambiguously effective therapeutic outcome. [doctor‐patient discourse, social construction of illness, language and cognition, semiotics, Bangladesh]
Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction
Authors: Davis‐Floyd Robbie
Published: November 2004

Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction. Faye D. Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp. eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995 (cloth and paper), xii. 450 pages.
AIDS and Anthropologists: Ten Years Later
Authors: Farmer Paul
Published: November 2004

Global AIDS Policy. Douglas A. Feldman. ed. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1994 (cloth and paper),. + 250 pp.

AIDS and STDs in Africa: Bridging the Gap between Traditional Healing and Modern Medicine. Edward C. Green. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994. xii. 276 pp.

Hidden in the Blood:. Personal Investigation of AIDS in the Yucatan. Carter Wilson. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995 (cloth and paper), xx. 168 pp.

Plague Doctors: Responding to the AIDS Epidemic in France and America. Jamie L. Feldman. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1995 (cloth), xii. 273 pp.

Young People at Risk: Fighting AIDS in Northern Tanzania. Knut‐Inge Klepp. Paul M. Biswalo. and Aud Talle. eds.Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995 (cloth), xxviii. 243 pp.

AIDS is. Kind of Kahungo That Kills. Hanne Overgaard Mogensen. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995 (cloth and paper), ix. 135 pp.

Les Sciences Sociales Face au Sida: Cas Africains autour de l'Exemple Ivoirien. Jean‐Pierre Dozon and Laurent Vidal. eds. Paris: Orstom, 1995 (paper). 300 pp.

Sida et Anthropologie: Bilan et Perspectives. Jean Benoist and Alice Desclaux. eds. Paris: Karthala, 1995 (paper). 412 pp.
Embodiment of Terror: Gendered Violence in Peacetime and Wartime in Croatia and Bosnia‐Herzegovina
Authors: Olujic Maria B.
Published: November 2004

Gendered violence is not a special type of torture used only in war. Its roots are well established in peacetime. This article discusses parallels between the patterns of everyday domination and aggression during times of peace and war. Further, it discusses how metaphors and acts of rape in peacetime are transformed into symbols and acts of rape for wartime purposes. During peacetime the individual body, especially its essences —sexuality and reproduction—becomes the symbol of everyday domination and aggression. Wartime transforms individual bodies into social bodies as seen, for example, in genocidal rapes or ethnic cleansing, which are thought to purify the bloodlines. Then, institutions—that is, medical, religious, and government establishments—further reinforce the wartime process by manipulating the individual/social body into the body politic by controlling and defining "human life" and using political rapes to entice military action by the West. The final transformation (at the war's conclusion) is the reformation of the social body back into the individual body, making the individual body once again the focus of dominance and aggression as the acceptable social "order.” [war rapes, gender, body folklore, Croatia, Bosnia‐Herzegovina]
Suffering Child: An Embodiment of War and Its Aftermath in Post‐Sandinista Nicaragua
Authors: Quesada James
Published: November 2004

This article considers how the ripple effects of war and its aftermath are embodied and lived even after being mediated by time, space, and social status. Through a case study of a Nicaraguan boy and his natal family, I argue that the legacy of war, structural violence, and endemic poverty are chronic and lingering and emerge from internationally and locally produced traumatogenic social relations. I use a phenomenological approach to distress to minimize the clinical tendency to pathologize individual sufferers, and to illuminate the destructive capacities of politically and historically produced conditions of social "normal abnormality.” The continuum of lived experience of social suffering is poignantly articulated by a member of one of society's most vulnerable sectors, a ten‐year‐old child, [children, social suffering, war and structural violence, phenomenology of distress, Nicaragua]
Homeopathic Medicine in the City of Oaxaca, Mexico: Patients' Perspectives and Observations
Authors: Whiteford Michael B.
Published: November 2004

This article looks at the growth and use of homeopathic medicine in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico. Based on interviews with 174 male and female patients from half of the homeopathic clinics in the city, this research examined attitudes toward disease causation and how one stays healthy. Findings suggest that women are better at monitoring and trying to improve their health than are their male counterparts. Although homeopathy enjoys a strong and almost devoted following, women seem to be more convinced of the overall efficacy of homeopathic medicine than do men. [medical pluralism, homeopathy, complementary/alternative medicine, Mexico, gender differences]
Intensification and the Discourse of Decline: A Rhetoric of Medical Anthropology
Authors: Tomlinson Barbara
Published: November 2004

Our use of academic rhetorics does not just deliver old arguments more eloquently, but rather serves an epistemological purpose that enables us to ask new questions. The rhetorical strategy of intensification contests and dislodges unnoticed and untheorized presuppositions in academic arguments by redefining taken‐for‐granted uses of language, by reemphasizing the often overlooked social imbrication of metaphors presented as neutral scientific descriptions, and by reopening the textual and conceptual "black boxes" that allow authors to evade responsibility for their rhetorical choices. As deployed by Emily Martin (1987) in The Woman in the Body, intensification reveals how rhetorical gestures rooted in negative sociocultural attitudes toward women's bodies sometimes masquerade as "scientific" or "medical" knowledge. Martin reveals a pattern of medical metaphors that incorrectly associate menstruation and menopause with processes of decline and decay. Intensification enables Martin to contest the discourse of decline in accounts of menstruation by underscoring how it is shaped by cultural metaphors of production and information processing, by foregrounding its anachronistic voices and their outmoded language and attitudes about women's reproductive systems, by calling attention to the persistently negative terminology that permeates discussions of women's reproductive processes, by emphasizing the different languages used for women's reproductive physiology and for similar but ungendered physiological processes, and by accentuating the celebratory language used for men's reproductive physiology. Intensification serves to demonstrate that these metaphors misrepresent or suppress fundamental aspects of physiology, inappropriately impose gendered attitudes on processes more accurately represented by nongendered terms, and negatively influence representations of women, their physiological processes, and their medical needs, [rhetoric of inquiry, discourse analysis, intensification, reproductive physiology, menstruation and menopause, Emily Martin]
Sacrifice, Plants, and Western Pharmaceuticals: Money and Health Care in Northern Ghana
Authors: Bierlich Bernhard
Published: November 2004

In this article I discuss the role of money vis–à–vis health care among the Dagomba, an agrarian people living in northern Ghana, whose pluralistic medical culture involves the use of both plants and Western pharmaceuticals in the treatment of various symptoms. In Dagomba society monetary exchanges in the domain of healing cannot be equated with selfinterest, and nonmonetary exchanges cannot be compared with altruism in any straightforward fashion. Exchanges and their purposes are made meaningful by the contexts in which they occur. Exchanges may involve money and be commoditized. However, the very fact that such an exchange is made in a "benevolent and considerate manner" (which often means selling/buying on credit) transforms otherwise impersonal relationships between medicine sellers and their customers into displays of solidarity with the communal (collective) goals of Dagomba society. [chemists, drug peddlers, herbalists, money, public health]
Health Culture and the Clinical Encounter: Vietnamese Refugees' Responses to Preventive Drug Treatment of Inactive Tuberculosis
Authors: Ito Karen L.
Published: November 2004

A majority of Vietnamese refugees entering the United States test positive for inactive tuberculosis (TB). In asymptomatic conditions like inactive TB, it is often difficult to obtain compliance with medical treatment. The clinical encounter has been analyzed as a form of symbolic action between doctor and patient critical to patient trust and compliance. However, it is equally, if not more, important to understand the health culture of patients, that is, the broader sociocultural context of the patient within which his or her illness is interpreted and understood. In this article I look at health culture elements that influence compliance and noncompliance by Vietnamese American clients with courses of preventive drug therapy for inactive TB. Key factors in compliance are: (I) cultural interpretations of the therapy's side effects as "hot"; (2) the role of family members and peers; and (3) community perceptions of the drug treatment. Culturally incongruent elements of the clinical encounter and the funding of community‐based organizations for health education also are examined. [Vietnamese refugees, tuberculosis, compliance issues, health culture, clinical encounter]
In the Shadow of Illness: Parents and Siblings of the Chronically III Child
Authors: Green Linda
Published: November 2004

Social Suffering. Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das. and Margaret Lock. eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. xx vii. 404 pp.
Can There Be a "Cultural Epidemiology"?
Authors: DiGiacomo Susan M.
Published: November 2004

A brief excursion through the history of social medicine suggests that, at least in principle, epidemiology and anthropology are natural allies in the study of disease in human populations. In practice, however, this alliance has been limited and remains problematic. This article examines the possibilities for interdisciplinary research, taking cancer epidemiology as a case in point. I argue, on the basis of participant‐observation over a period of nearly two years in the epidemiology department of a medical research institute in Catalonia (Spain), that bioscientific uses of the concept of culture have led, disappointingly, to its reification as "beliefs" and its incorporation into the naturalist epistemology of Western institutional medicine. The unfortunate consequence is the medicalization of culture understood as "difference," which often stands in for social class. [cancer, culture, epidemiology, epistemology, research methods]
Cross‐Cultural Healing in East African Ethnography
Authors: Rekdal Ole Bjørn
Published: November 2004

Examples of cross‐cultural therapeutic relations have been mentioned frequently in ethnographic accounts from East Africa but have rarely been the object of in‐depth description and analysis. Colonialist ideology, structural‐functionalist anthropology, and a number of more recent medical anthropological contributions have been biased in ways that have drawn attention away from what is a prominent feature of African traditional medicine: the search for healing in the culturally distant. A focus on the dynamics and ideology of cross‐cultural healing may be crucial for an understanding of processes generated by the encounter between biomedicine and African traditional medical systems. As is exemplified by the Iraqw of Tanzania, widespread acceptance and extensive use of biomedical health services may not necessarily mean that people abandon traditional beliefs and practices. Quite the contrary, the attribution power to the culturally distant implies an openness to the unfamiliar, the alien, and the unknown, which may have facilitated the introduction and acceptance of biomedical health services, [medical anthropology, traditional medicine, cross‐cultural healing, Iraqw, Tanzania]
Cyborg Babies: From Techno‐Sex to Techno‐Tots
Authors: Taylor Janelle S.
Published: November 2004

Cyborg Babies: From Techno‐Sex to Techno‐Tots. Robbie Davis‐Floyd and Joseph Dumit. eds. New York and London: Routledge, 1998. x+358 pp.
The Anthropology of Infectious Disease: International Health Perspectives and The Kiss of Death: Chagas' Disease in the Americas
Authors: Manderson Lenore
Published: November 2004

The Anthropology of Infectious Disease: International Health Perspectives. Marcia C. Inhorn and Peter J. Brown. eds. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, Publishers, 1997. xv+ 495 pp.

The Kiss of Death: Chagas' Disease in the Americas. Joseph William Bastien. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1998. xxiv +301 pp.