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Anthropological Perspective (anthropological + perspective)
Selected AbstractsNew Perspectives on Female CircumcisionANTHROPOLOGY & HUMANISM, Issue 2 2002Barry P. Michrina Ellen Gruenbaum. The Female Circumcision Controversy: An Anthropological Perspective. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. 242 pp. [source] Anthropological Perspectives on the Trafficking of Women for Sexual ExploitationINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 1 2004Lynellyn D. Long Contemporary trafficking operations transform traditional bride wealth and marriage exchanges (prestations) by treating women's sexuality and bodies as commodities to be bought and sold (and exchanged again) in various Western capitals and Internet spaces. Such operations are also global with respect to scale, range, speed, diversity, and flexibility. Propelling many trafficking exchanges are political economic processes, which increase the trafficking of women in times of stress, such as famine, unemployment, economic transition, and so forth. However, the disparity between the global market operations, which organize trafficking, and the late nineteenth century social/public welfare system of counter-trafficking suggests why the latter do not effectively address women's risks and may even expose them to increased levels of violence and stress. Drawing on historical accounts, anthropological theory, and ethnographic work in Viet Nam and Bosnia and Herzegovina, this essay examines how specific cultural practices embedded in family and kinship relations encourage and rationalize sexual trafficking of girls and young women in times of stress and dislocation. The essay also analyses how technologies of power inform both trafficking and counter-trafficking operations in terms of controlling women's bodies, sexuality, health, labour, and migration. By analysing sexual trafficking as a cultural phenomenon in its own right, such an analysis seeks to inform and address the specific situations of girls and young women, who suffer greatly from the current migration regimes. [source] Culture and Rights after Culture and RightsAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 1 2006JANE K. COWAN Building on a critical, theoretical approach outlined in Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives (Cowan et al. 2001a), I posit rights processes as complex and contradictory: Both enabling and constraining, they produce new subjectivities and social relations and entail unintended consequences. To encourage interdisciplinary engagement on these themes, I explore selected texts that consider the relationship between culture and rights, addressing two literatures: (1) debates on culture, rights, and recognition in the context of multiculturalism among political philosophers and (2) an emerging literature by anthropologists, feminists, critical legal scholars, and engaged practitioners analyzing empirical cases. Although political philosophers elucidate ethical implications and clarify political projects, an outmoded arsenal of theoretical concepts of "culture,""society," and "the individual" has hampered their debates. When accounts are both theoretically informed and empirically grounded, contradictions, ambiguities, and impasses of culture and rights are more fully explored and the liberal model of rights and multiculturalism is more open to interrogation. [source] Landscape, Memory and History: Anthropological PerspectivesAMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 1 2005NEIL L. NORMAN No abstract is available for this article. [source] Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture and HistoryAMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Issue 3 2001Keith S. Brown Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture and History. Joel M. Halpern and David A. Kideckel. eds. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. vii. 477 pp., illustrations, photographs, notes, references, index. [source] The anthropology of dementia: a narrative perspectiveINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GERIATRIC PSYCHIATRY, Issue 3 2009William L. Randall Abstract This article draws on recent thinking in the field of narrative gerontology to lend support to Mahnaz Hashmi's "anthropological perspective" on dementia. From a narrative perspective, the relational component of human life - and thus of dementia - is underscored. Moreover, when the narrative dimensions of memory are considered, the line between "normal" and "pathological" is revealed as finer than commonly assumed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Dementia: an anthropological perspectiveINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GERIATRIC PSYCHIATRY, Issue 2 2009Mahnaz Hashmi First page of article [source] The necropolis of Vallerano (Rome, 2nd,3rd century AD): an anthropological perspective on the ancient Romans in the SuburbiumINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF OSTEOARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 2 2006A. Cucina Abstract The present study investigates the skeletal remains of individuals who were part of a Roman suburban community, in order to assess lifestyle and living conditions in the town's outskirts during the Roman Imperial age. The existence of the community was linked to the functioning of one of the many villas that surrounded the town of Rome at that time. In order to assess health, several indicators were explored, including mortality, oral pathologies and specific (cribra orbitalia) and aspecific (linear enamel hypoplasia) indicators of nutritional and physiological impairment. The sample, which probably represents the labour force of the villa, shows a high number of individuals dying in the early adult age and very few living beyond 50. Subadults were frequently affected by pathological conditions which may indicate anaemia and/or inflammations and infections, as witnessed by the frequency of cribra orbitalia. Growth was also impaired, as the individuals suffered from systemic disturbances during the early years of life that led to the formation of linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) in their teeth. Frequency of LEH is very high, as well as its multiple occurrence through time (2.44 defects per individual) and its onset occurs from the earliest age classes. Diet, on the other hand, does not seem to have been particularly carbohydrate based. Oral pathologies are very low, which is consistent with meat consumption complementing a diet rich in low-calorific products of agriculture and seemingly low in refined carbohydrates. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Bone loss and osteoporosis: An anthropological perspectiveAMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2005Dawnie Wolfe Steadman No abstract is available for this article. [source] Jewish mysticism and magic: an anthropological perspective , By Maureen BloomTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 4 2008Gideon Bohak [source] Humanitarian aid in post-Soviet countries: an anthropological perspective , By Laëtitia Atlani-DuaultTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 3 2008Jonathan Benthall [source] "Do You Have Anything to Add?"ANTHROPOLOGY & HUMANISM, Issue 1 2000Commentary on the Social Experience of Mental Illness, Narrative as Reflection This article argues that a phenomenological study of mental illness constructed from first-person subjective narratives can make a substantial contribution to our understanding of illness in terms of ordinary human experience. I suggest that the social experience of mental illness is primarily one of alienation and that this is both an internal and externally imposed experience. I conclude by proposing that the anthropological perspective,seeing the person within his or her wider cultural context, including both spatial and temporal dimensions,has the potential to generate new insights into how we might mitigate the alienating and depersonalizing effects of the mental illness experience. On another level, this article represents my attempt, as a mother, to come to terms with a mental health crisis within my own family. [source] Husserlian Meditations and Anthropological Reflections: Toward a Cultural Neurophenomenology of Experience and RealityANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS, Issue 2 2009CHARLES D. LAUGHLIN PH.D. ABSTRACT Most of us would agree that the world of our experience is different than the extramental reality of which we are a part. Indeed, the evidence pertaining to cultural cosmologies around the globe suggests that virtually all peoples recognize this distinction,hence the focus upon the "hidden" forces behind everyday events. That said, the struggle to comprehend the relationship between our consciousness and reality, even the reality of ourselves, has led to controversy and debate for centuries in Western philosophy. In this article, we address this problem from an anthropological perspective and argue that the generative route to a solution of the experience,reality "gap" is by way of an anthropologically informed cultural neurophenomenology. By this we mean a perspective and methodology that applies a phenomenology that controls for cultural variation in perception and interpretation, coupled with the latest information from the neurosciences about how the organ of experience,the brain,is structured. [source] Front and Back Covers, Volume 25, Number 1.ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 1 2009February 200 Front cover caption, volume 25 issue 1 A boy shows off on his horse at the annual festival of racing, games and music in Barsko'on, Kyrgyzstan in October 2007. The festival includes endurance races of up to 36 kilometres over steep, rocky mountain paths and streams, a far cry from the bowling-green surfaces of Churchill Downs and Newmarket. Abdildechan, an expert in horse games in Kyzyl Suu, explained that horse games and competitions such as these derive from the importance of horses to the nomadic and warrior traditions of the Kyrgyz people. Horses enable people to move away from danger, he explained, and are also essential for work and food. Cars are becoming increasingly common in Kyrgyzstan, but many people believe that they will never completely replace horses in this mountainous region. ,Young people may have cars', says shepherd Jakshylyck Orgochor, ,but where there is a Kyrgyz person there is always a horse: a horse is a man's wings'. In this issue, Rebecca Cassidy scrutinizes claims about the distinctiveness of the Kyrgyz horse and considers the political consequences of evaluating domesticated animals on the basis of contested categories including ,breed' and ,type'. Back Cover: HUMAN-ANIMAL RELATIONS Ros Coard, lecturer in archaeology and specialist in archaeozoology and forensic taphonomy in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Wales Lampeter, examines forensic evidence taken from the scene of a suspected big cat kill in West Wales, UK. The skulls in the foreground belong to an array of known big cat species, and Coard compared tooth pit data from these skulls with those found in sheep and horses killed in unusual circumstances. These data have been used to provide evidence for the existence of at least one large predatory felid in West Wales. However, even without this scientific corroboration, many people around the UK report sightings of non-endemic ,alien' big cats (ABCs) on a regular basis, attributing to them an almost mythical status, and this makes them an interesting phenomenon to be considered from an anthropological perspective. Coard has been working collaboratively with Samantha Hurn, an anthropologist who has been documenting narratives relating to big cat sightings in West Wales. In this issue of ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Hurn outlines the data collected so far. She argues that ABCs do, indeed, exist in West Wales, and discusses how and why her informants from the local Welsh farming community regard these predators in positive terms. Many see ABCs as both important keystone species performing the valuable function of keeping other problematic predators (notably foxes) in check, and highly politicized animals who symbolize their own marginalized position within contemporary UK society. As Lévi-Strauss put it long ago, animal-human relations are, indeed, good to think with. [source] Ethnobiology of the Nilgiri Hills, IndiaPHYTOTHERAPY RESEARCH, Issue 2 2002S. Rajan Abstract The Nilgiri is a popular massif towering high in the Western Ghats in South India with an altitude of 2623,m. Nature has been magnanimous in bestowing Nilgiri district with rich evergreen temperate to tropical forests. A high degree of biodiversity, marked by varied flora and fauna of good therapeutic potential as well as the varied number of indigenous groups of people in this area, makes it very popular among herbalists. The district has six anthropologically well defined ethnic groups namely Todas, Kotas, Kurumbas, Irulas, Paniyas and Kattunayakas living here possibly since 1200 B.C. The present review highlights the ethnobiological profile of six indigenous populations and their dependence on ambient flora and fauna for traditional health care needs. It has been observed that about 2700 therapeutically potent plant species are available in this hill station of which almost all have come from local medicine. Some have been explored scientifically. However, about 150 plant species are still to be explored for their therapeutic potential. The ethnography, phytochemical and therapeutic uses as well as the anthropological perspectives of the local medicines have been discussed in this review. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Materialising Oceania: New ethnographies of things in Melanesia and PolynesiaTHE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2009Joshua A. Bell Oceania occupies an intriguing place within anthropology's genealogy. In the introduction to this collection of essays, we examine the role of the ethnography of Oceania in the development of our anthropological perspectives on materialisation, the dynamic process by which persons and things are inter-related. Building upon the recent resurgence of theoretical interests in things we use the term materialisation (rather than material culture or materiality) to capture the vitality of the lived processes by which ideas of objectivity and subjectivity, persons and things, minds and bodies are entangled. Taking a processual view, we advocate for an Oceanic anthropology that continues to engage with things on the ground; that asks what strategies communities use to materialise their social relations, desires and values; and that recognises how these processes remain important tools for understanding historical and contemporary Oceanic societies. Examining these locally articulated processes and forms contributes to a material (re)turn for anthropology that clarifies how we, as scholars, think about things more widely. [source] Social memory and history: anthropological perspectives , Edited by Jacob J. Climo & Maria G. CattellTHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 4 2006Nayanika Mookherjee [source] Living Wage Considerations in the Right-to-Work State of South CarolinaANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW, Issue 1 2010Ann Kingsolver Abstract In a time of economic crisis, when unemployment and food insecurity have increased dramatically in South Carolina, is a living wage movement more or less likely? This article does not investigate this question ethnographically, but discusses the conditions for a living wage movement in this southern U.S. state, including the right-to-work legislation and logics that frame understandings and policies regarding employment and economic well-being in the state. Interpretive and political economic anthropological perspectives are employed in this analysis. [source] | |||||||||||||