Keeping Biological Anthropology in Anthropology, and Anthropology in Biology

Considerable tension among the subfields has existed within the discipline of anthropology. As a result, some anthropology departments have splintered, and the hallmark "holistic approach" of anthropology has been considered more myth than reality. However, as promoted by the American Anthropological Association and the American Anthropologist for over one hundred years, enhancing the holistic nature of anthropology remains an important and necessary endeavor. This article provides an introduction to this special issue of the American Anthropologist , which focuses on the subfield of biological anthropology. Hopefully, as a result, increased connections among the subfields will be fostered, for the betterment of both biological anthropology and anthropology in general. The underlying theme of this article and the subtext for the entire special issue is clear: Biological anthropology needs anthropology, and anthropology needs biological anthropology. [Keywords: biological anthropology, subfields, four-field approach, holistic]     

Medical Anthropology as Cultural Anthropology

Book reviewed in this article:
Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective . Byron J. Good.
Knowledge, Power, and Practice: The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life . Shirley Lindenbaum and Margaret Lock, eds.     

Gender and Anthropology

Gender and Anthropology. Frances E. Mascia-Lees and Nancy Johnson Black. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2000. 128 pp.     

Anthropology and Globalization

Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Arjun Appadurai. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. 229 pp.
Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. Ulf Hannerz. New York: Routledge, 1996. 216 pp.
Thai Women in the Global Labor Force: Consuming Desires, Contested Selves. Mary Beth Mills. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999. 218 pp.     

Anthropology and psychiatry

In this paper anthropology and psychiatry are defined as well as their scientific area, their methods and research objectives; the high level of their mutual thematic and methodological complementarity has been emphasized. The sociocultural factors which are inherent in the area of cultural anthropology can affect mental health in a number of ways: by forming a certain personality type that is predisposed for a certain type of disorder, by an education model which increases the frequency of some disorders, by criticism and sanctions of a certain behaviour that is actually desirable from the point of view of mental health preservation, by supporting and rewarding a behaviour model that is harmful for mental health; by its complexity and, in some of the segments, by mutual contradictions they can cause mental disorders; by forming symptoms of mental disorders i.e. by a pathoplastic action through which they become an area of scientific interest of cultural psychiatry. Anthropology directs psychiatry towards creating preventive and therapeutic programs that accept the mutual influence and interconnectedness of socio-cultural conditions and the mental health status.     

Anthropology and emotion

The centrality of emotion in thought and action is increasingly recognized in the human sciences, though basic questions of definition and scope remain unresolved. Where do emotions begin and end? How should we identify and analyse them? How should we write about them? Ethnographic fieldwork, as pioneered by Malinowski, offers powerful insights into the place of emotion in social life; but emotions are peculiarly difficult to capture in the generalizing format of case study and ethnographic summary. In this article I argue that semantic, structural, and discourse‐based approaches tend to miss what is most important – what counts for the persons concerned and therefore what makes the emotion. I review the conceptual and methodological issues and conclude that only a narrative approach can capture both the particularity and the temporal dimension of emotion, restoring verisimilitude and fidelity to experience.     

Seeing Anthropology: Cultural Anthropology through Film

Seeing Anthropology: Cultural Anthropology through Film (book and video). Karl G. Heider. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997. 347 pp.; 190:58 running time, VHS, color.     

Seeing Anthropology: Cultural Anthropology through Film

Seeing Anthropology: Cultural Anthropology through Film. Karl G. Heider. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997. 347 pp.,. videotapes.