Among the Peoples of the Agreste of Pernambuco

Anthropology, despite its historic role in both creating and dismantling the American racial worldview, seems barely visible in contemporary scholarly and public discussions of "race." The authors argue that race should once again be central to anthropological inquiry, that cultural and physical anthropologists must jointly develop and publicly disseminate a unified, uniquely anthropological perspective. They suggest ways to proceed and identify internal barriers that must be overcome before the anthropological voice can be heard.     

Reestablishing "Race" in Anthropological Discourse

Anthropology, despite its historic role in both creating and dismantling the American racial worldview, seems barely visible in contemporary scholarly and public discussions of "race." The authors argue that race should once again be central to anthropological inquiry, that cultural and physical anthropologists must jointly develop and publicly disseminate a unified, uniquely anthropological perspective. They suggest ways to proceed and identify internal barriers that must be overcome before the anthropological voice can be heard.     

Race, Ethnicity, and Racism in Medical Anthropology, 1977–2002

Researchers across the health sciences are engaged in a vigorous debate over the role that the concepts of "race" and "ethnicity" play in health research and clinical practice. Here we contribute to that debate by examining how the concepts of race, ethnicity, and racism are used in medical–anthropological research. We present a content analysis of Medical Anthropology and Medical Anthropology Quarterly , based on a systematic random sample of empirical research articles ( n = 283) published in these journals from 1977 to 2002. We identify both differences and similarities in the use of race, ethnicity, and racism concepts in medical anthropology and neighboring disciplines, and we offer recommendations for ways that medical anthropologists can contribute to the broader debate over racial and ethnic inequalities in health.     

Introduction: Expanding the Discourse on "Race"

In response to Mukhopadhyay and Moses's call for biological and cultural anthropologists to reestablish a dialogue on race, anthropologists from the four major subfields join colleagues from two allied disciplines to address the possible ways in which the anthropological discourse on race can become more holistic and amenable to the urgent needs and interests of the public. This essay offers an overview of the current resurgence of race-focused scholarship in anthropology, as well as a framework for an intertextual reading of the articles featured in this theme forum. Anthropologists' current conversation on race and racism is built on a rich legacy, elements of which are still being uncovered in gender- and racecognizant explorations of the discipline's past Despite the considerable hiatus since the last major juncture of race-centered debate and research, that legacy has recently inspired a promising upsurge of critical analysis which, if mobilized effectively, may contribute to the subversion of the often subtle cultural and structural logics of contemporary racism, as well as clear the ground for a new culture for multiracial democracy. Toward this end, anthropologists and others interested in using anthropological tools must cultivate more richly nuanced analyses and intervention strategies informed by insights emerging from the cross-fertilization of ideas from the various subfields along with such fields as human genetics and ethnic studies. Anthropology's unique role in interrogating, theorizing, and potentially disrupting the dynamics of racism may be dependent on understanding the conceptual and methodological significance of strategic intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary interfaces.     

Changing language, remaining pygmy

In this article I am illustrating the linguistic diversity of African Pygmy populations in order to better address their anthropological diversity and history. I am also introducing a new method, based on the analysis of specialized vocabulary, to reconstruct the substratum of some languages they speak. I show that Pygmy identity is not based on their languages, which have often been borrowed from neighboring non-Pygmy farmer communities with whom each Pygmy group is linked. Understanding the nature of this partnership, quite variable in history, is essential to addressing Pygmy languages, identity, and history. Finally, I show that only a multidisciplinary approach is likely to push forward the understanding of African Pygmy societies as genetic, archeological, anthropological, and ethnological evidence suggest.     

Anthropology and television: Ethnographic‐ethnological topics on German television

The following paper gives an overview of the various programs with ethnographic‐ethnological content shown on Channels I and III of ARD, a public broadcasting company in Germany, from 1965 until 1989. Research focused on ethnographic‐ethnological content of documentary films in general and thus also included television programs whose theme as a whole differed from this topic. Based on a review of the data of a total of 280 programs, 4 categories of program are classified: 1. Eth nographic television programs; 2. Television programs with ethnographic elements; 3. Television programs with an ethnological topic; and 4. Border‐line cases, i.e. programs which are remarkable from an anthropological point of view but which cannot directly be classed with one of the categories above. Most of the programs with ethnographic‐ethnological content are broadcast on Channel III which addresses target groups with specific interests. This aim was more visible during the first years of the existence of Channel III at the end of the Sixties and during the Seventies than it is nowadays. The change is reflected in the quality of programs containing ethnographic‐ethnological topics over the years. In general a shift can be noted from programs with an outstanding visual quality (although they always have been rare) to programs which derive from the journalistic tradition of television and put a major stress on commentary. Through the years a change in the topics presented becomes apparent. The Seventies were the period when the majority of programs shown were on tribal societies. From the end of that decade until the mid‐Eighties there was an increase in the number of programs covering other non‐tribal ethnic groups. Moreover, topics such as ethnic minorities, even in Europe, urban groups or the various daily life‐styles of people within a whole state or country, emerged, and more emphasis was given to social and political aspects. The research reveals that television as a medium is open to different programs with ethnographic‐ethnological content. Apart from the quality of the programs offered, the abundance and variety of programs available reflects a wide interest in foreign nations and cultures. Anthropologists should acknowledge that fact in order to make ethnological knowledge available to a wider audience.     

俫人ABO血型的调查与研究

本文报告用玻片快速检验法对分布于桂西滇黔桂接壤地区的待识别民族俫人ABO血型的调查结果。俫人ABO血型的基因频率是:p=0.1189,q=0.3201,r=0.5610。俫人的血型分布特点是B>O>A,在我国南方诸民族中,俫人与海南省黎族的ABO血型分布特点相同。与周围民族的聚类分析的结果表明俫人与黎族具有最近的遗传距离,因而在系统树中聚类为一组。俫人与黎族可能共同起源于古越族的支族俚人。     

Origin Myths in Bioethics: Constructing Sources,Motives and Reason in Bioethic(s)

Bioethics, the term now usually standing in for Biomedical Ethics, is a field of medical anthropological engagement. While many anthropologists and other social scientists work with bioethicists and physicians, this paper instead takes Bioethics as a topic of cultural research from the perspective of Cultural Bioethics and Interpretive Medical Anthropology. Application of useful findings of vintage anthropological research in cultural anthropology and the anthropology of religion and an interpretive lens reveal a field without a single origin or unified methodology. The paper suggests the appropriateness of a literal meaning of current conceptual commonality of the term Bioethics: that the term does in fact refer to a plurality of distinct enterprises with distinct origins and, hence, justifications.     

Female sexuality,social reproduction,and the politics of medical intervention in Niger: Kel Ewey Tuareg perspectives

This essay explores connections between political institutions, forms of power, and women's health care concerns from a cultural anthropological perspective. I focus on the roles of different medical establishments among the Kel Ewey Tuareg of Niger—Western-European sponsored, central state, traditional herbalism and Islamic scholarship—in creating, maintaining, and disputing these constructs, through the invention and elaboration of disease categories and through the selective application of medical and reproductive models and technology to women. I also explore women's attempts to manage these forces, as they draw upon a cultural inventory that is alternately supportive and in conflict with their interests.     

Reflections of a Nonpolitical Naturalist: Ernst Haeckel, Wilhelm Bleek, Friedrich Müller and the Meaning of Language

Ernst Haeckel was convinced that the origin of language was the keyto understand human evolution. The distinguished slavist AugustSchleicher was his original inspiration on that matter but hiscousin Wilhelm Bleek was the deciisive source for his views of human language. Bleek lived in Southern Africa, studied Xhosa andZulu, and had the rare opportunity to learn the bushman languagewhich, with its characteristic clicks, suggested the form of theoriginal human language in its evolution from ape-like sounds.Haeckel's view of anthropology based on cultural elements ratherthan physical characters alone was shared by other scholars includingthe Vienna-based Friedrich Mueller who applied Haeckel's approachin his studies during the voyage of the Habsburg ship ``Novara.' Haeckel's anthropological views were heavily entangled with contemporaryconceps of race so that he and Mueller related different languages todifferent human groups both from a cultural and racial angle. Suchracialist attitude presented obvious political implications which allauthors mentioned denied vehemently. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

"Race"—Still an Issue for Physical Anthropology? Results of Polish Studies Seen in the Light of the U.S. Findings

The racial paradigm, which became rooted in physical anthropology at its very beginning, was, for decades, treated as a concept needing no verification. It was only in the mid-20th century that the first attempts were made to question the usefulness of the race concept in describing our species variation. Since then, an ever growing number of anthropologists, particularly in the United States, have rejected the concept (nearly seventy percent in 1999). In Poland, the situation is different—in the 2001 study, the race concept was rejected by only 25 percent; the remaining respondents differing widely as to the accepted meaning of race. Unlike the U.S. anthropologists, Polish anthropologists tend to regard race as a term without taxonomic value, often as a substitute for population. The discrepancy may stem from differences in the traditions of anthropological schools, the differing sociopolitical histories, education, semantics, and possible attitudinal factors. [Keywords: race, human variation, subspecies, anthropological schools]     

Earliest Phases in the Evolution of Sickness and Healing

Sickness and healing constitute the root concepts that center medical anthropological inquiry and give the field its identity. Here, they are held to manifest a biological adaption designed by evolution that requires culture for its final realization. Sickness and healing thus provide anthropology with a bioculturalform that has changed in content and expression during cultural evolution. The early phases of this evolution, those bearing the most apparent influences of the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, are reviewed and analyzed in the article. Some of the implications of this for medical anthropology are discussed.     

Introduction à l’anthropologie clinique

This paper discusses the concept of clinical anthropology. It recounts how an anthropological school of thought emerged in psychiatry and clinical psychology. Nowadays, that school spans the fields of philosophical anthropology, medical anthropology, cultural psychiatry, anthropological psychology, and clinical anthropology. After providing a conceptual and historical definition, we briefly introduce the ideas of the psychiatrist and philosopher, Ludwig Binswanger. In 1930, he became the first to introduce anthropological research into psychiatry, emphasising the a priori difference between homo natura and existence. Finally, we outline the development of phenomenological anthropology in Europe, with reference to the major philosophers and psychiatrists of the second half of the twentieth century.     

An Application of Dimensional Analysis in Cultural Anthropology

Lawlike generalizations can be developed only for variables exhibiting strict constancy in concept formulation. By considering anthropology a space and its basic concepts as dimensions and borrowing from ecology, cultural materialism, and social, political, and cultural anthropology, we develop a 14-dimensional space defined by 42 scaled variables. Dimensional analysis performed yields 14 equations and 28 dimensionless expressions that satisfy them. Additionally, we derive a set of 28 ethnological expressions. Entering scaled data from five societies, we solve for each. Twenty-one expressions yield significant order-ings. Examination of their performance confirms that they function holistically.     

Conjuring Medical Science: The 1986 Referendum on AIDS/HIV Policy in California

Medical science occupies a peculiar status in American life. On the one hand, people often view medical science as a privileged and authoritative body of knowledge that transcends other kinds of knowledge. On the other handy medical–scientific authority can be easily conjured from the popular symbols of science, e.g., credentials, technical terms, and white lab coats. This problem can be converted into an anthropological question of meanings and symbols, based on Geertz's interpretive anthropology and Baudrillard' s sociology of hyperreality. This article uses these frameworks to explore the cultural construction of medical-scientific authority in the case of a 1986 referendum on AIDS/HIV policy in California. The interpretation of that construction raises some difficult problems concerning anthropology's treatment of medical science. [AIDS, HIV, cultural construction of science, anthropology of science, hermeneutics of science]     

Corsets,Culture and Contingency: Reflections on Joan Lindsay's Picnic at Hanging Rock1

This article turns an anthropological sensitivity onto a literary text from its own society. It takes Joan Lindsay's novel ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ and ‘reads’ it in the light of ideas prominent in recent anthropological writings (the ideas of Lévi-Strauss are particularly used): it also articulates an interpretation by using notions current in modern literary and cultural analysis. The article points out that Lindsay's text has most commonly been interpreted as being about mysterious natural forces injurious to man. Whilst the text explores the disjunction between nature and culture, the article interprets the text as exploring the nature of cultural institutions and cultural processes.     

De la « théorie sexuelle » à l’anthropopsychiatrie

The creation of scientific psychiatry, which was modelled after the medical classification of diseases, was brought into question by the tenets of Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. We draw on Leopold Szondi’s method of developing an analytically inspired psychiatry in our effort to interpret Freud’s work from an anthropological perspective, removing psychiatry from the naturalistic medical model and giving it a genuinely human bearing. Szondi’s drive system ranges from the analysis of constitution (as in the animal biomedical model) to the analysis of destiny (as in Schicksalsanalyse). Within this system, the human is considered a driven being, existing in a psychological dimension from the outset, outside animal, sexual instincts. This distinction between mankind and animals accounts for the specificities of mental disorders and illnesses and paves the way to a purely anthropological psychiatry we can call cultural psychiatry. In this kind of psychiatry, any pathology is considered inherent in the destiny of a human being, a part of a person’s development. Its analysis, called pathoanalysis, deals with the human suffering at the heart of mankind’s place in the world.     

Racial classification in the evolutionary sciences: a comparative analysis

Human racial classification has long been a problem for the discipline of anthropology, but much of the criticism of the race concept has focused on its social and political connotations. The central argument of this paper is that race is not a specifically human problem, but one that exists in evolutionary thought in general. This paper looks at various disciplinary approaches to racial or subspecies classification, extending its focus beyond the anthropological race concept by providing a comparative analysis of the use of racial classification in evolutionary biology, genetics, and anthropology.     

A Sensory Ecology of Medicinal Plant Therapy in Two Amazonian Societies

Sensory anthropology has explored sensation as a fruitful but poorly examined domain of cross-cultural research. Curiously, sensory anthropologists have mostly ignored scientific research into sensation, even that which addresses cross-cultural variation. A comparative study in two Amazonian societies (Matsigenka, Yora [Nahua]) documented the role of the senses in medicinal plant therapy and benefited greatly from theoretical insights gleaned from sensory science. The study reveals a complex interweaving of cultural and ecological factors in medicinal plant selection, with sensation standing at the culture--nature nexus linking medical ideas with medical materials. By synthesizing (rather than antagonizing) scientific and anthropological insights, sensation can be understood as a biocultural phenomenon rooted in human physiology yet constructed through individual experience and culture. Overcoming the limitations of a narrowly defined sensory anthropology, sensory ecology is here proposed as a new theoretical perspective for addressing human--environment interactions mediated by the senses.