The Orphanista Manifesto: Orphan Films and the Politics of Reproduction

In this essay, I review the works of filmmakers Bill Morrison and Gregorio Rocha and contextualize their work within a growing apocalyptic cultural movement of film preservationists who identify as "orphanistas." As orphanistas they struggle to reshape and reproduce cultural memory and heritage through reviving "orphans"—films abandoned by their makers. Moving images mimic cognitive memory, yet, depending on reproductive technologies, copies of moving images may organize mass publics and influence cultural imaginaries. Traditionally considered conservative, preservation in the midst of destruction is not only a creative but also an avant-garde act of breathing new life into storytelling and the reproduction of cultural memory. In this essay, I discuss how the surrealist works of Morrison and Rocha radically confront dominant cultural imaginings of race and nation, and I argue that film preservation has the potential of being socially transformative. An interview with Gregorio Rocha follows.     

Designing humans: A human rights approach

Advances in genomic technologies such as CRISPR‐Cas9, mitochondrial replacement techniques, and in vitro gametogenesis may soon give us more precise and efficient tools to have children with certain traits such as beauty, intelligence, and athleticism. In this paper, I propose a new approach to the ethics of reproductive genetic engineering, a human rights approach. This approach relies on two claims that have certain, independent plausibility: (a) human beings have equal moral status, and (b) human beings have human rights to the fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life. I first argue that the human rights approach gives us a lower bound of when reproductive genetic engineering would be permissible. I then compare this approach with other approaches such as the libertarian, perfectionist, and life worth living approaches. Against these approaches, I argue that the human rights approach offers a novel, and more plausible, way of assessing the ethics of reproductive genetic engineering.     

Amazonian historical ecologies

Historical ecology may be defined as the undertaking of a diachronic analysis of living ecological systems, with the view to accounting more fully for their structural and functional properties. Historical ecology, more an approach or a research strategy than a paradigm, addresses a central question: 'How does environmental change relate to the historical development of human societies?' An integral part of the new ecological anthropology, historical ecology seeks to dereify the concepts of nature and culture, and to rethink critically the complexity of the biological world, particularly the problematic distinction between the wild and the domesticated, which has hitherto inspired natural science research on the diversity of biological life. This paper examines the ways in which historical ecology has been used to research nomadic bands subsisting with few or no domesticates in lowland South America. I argue that current knowledge of the Amazon biome, which is far more sophisticated than it was in the late 1940s and the early 1950s, when Steward edited the Handbook of South American Indians , allows us to rethink human occupation of, and adaptation to, the Amazon; to redefine the forces that have shaped the material dimensions of social life, and to recognize that Amazonian hunter-gatherers have played an active part in the making of the natural environment that they have occupied for millennia. I also argue that 'trekking', far from representing a necessary intermediary stage in the regression from horticulture to foraging, constitutes, in some cases, a sui generis solution to deep contradictory forces of a political, religious, and social character. Such internal processes may have long predated the Conquest and the disruptions it caused. I conclude that reliance on resources created in the past may be a characteristic shared by various trekking and foraging groups of the Upper Amazon.     

Higher reproductive skew among birds than mammals in cooperatively breeding species

While competition for limited breeding positions is a common feature of group life, species vary widely in the extent to which reproduction is shared among females (‘reproductive skew’). In recent years, there has been considerable debate over the mechanisms that generate variation in reproductive skew, with most evidence suggesting that subordinates breed when dominants are unable to prevent them from doing so. Here, we suggest that viviparity reduces the ability of dominant females to control subordinate reproduction and that, as a result, dominant female birds are more able than their mammal counterparts to prevent subordinates from breeding. Empirical data support this assertion. This perspective may increase our understanding of how cooperative groups form and are stabilized in nature.     

Uncovering the biodiversity of genetic and reproductive systems: time for a more open approach. American Society of Naturalists E. O. Wilson Award winner address

Important scientific findings frequently arise from serendipitous findings. Unfortunately, many scientists are not prepared to take advantage of unexpected results and to question established paradigms, and this prevents them from capitalizing on their good fortune. In this essay, I first explain how pure serendipity led us to discover unusual modes of reproduction such as clonal reproduction by males and a green-beard gene. Next, I argue that the reproductive systems of ants and other organisms are probably much more diverse than is generally appreciated. This leads me to advocate for a new "molecular naturalist" approach to reproductive systems and a more "naturalistic" approach in population and evolutionary genetics. Finally, I make two further points. The first is that our current funding and education systems tend to hinder originality and curiosity. The other is that the field of ecology and evolution, and more generally all of science, would benefit from a shift in values from scientific productivity to scientific creativity. A few suggestions are made to this effect.     

Orphaned at conception: the uncanny offspring of embryos

A number of advances in assisted reproduction have been greeted by the accusation that they would produce children 'without parents'. In this paper I will argue that while to date these accusations have been false, there is a limited but important sense in which they would be true of children born of a reproductive technology that is now on the horizon. If our genetic parents are those individuals from whom we have inherited 50% of our genes, then, unlike in any other reproductive scenario, children who were conceived from gametes derived from stem cell lines derived from discarded IVF embryos would have no genetic parents! This paper defends this claim and investigates its ethical implications. I argue that there are reasons to think that the creation of such embryos might be morally superior to the existing alternatives in an important set of circumstances.     

Anthropomorphism,primatomorphism, mammalomorphism: understanding cross-species comparisons

The charge that anthropomorphizing nonhuman animals is a fallacy is itself largely misguided and mythic. Anthropomorphism in the study of animal behavior is placed in its original, theological context. Having set the historical stage, I then discuss its relationship to a number of other, related issues: the role of anecdotal evidence, the taxonomy of related anthropomorphic claims, its relationship to the attribution of psychological states in general, and the nature of the charge of anthropomorphism as a categorical claim. I then argue that the categorical reading of anthropomorphism cannot work and that it misrepresents what is being claimed when one claims that traits are shared between humans and nonhumans. We should think of such claims not as anthropomorphic per se– because that implies the trait is intrinsically human and only derivatively nonhuman. Instead, traits shared with mammals are mammalomorphic, for example, or primatomorphic when shared by primates.     

An unconventional route to becoming a cell biologist

I am honored to be the E. B. Wilson Award recipient for 2015. As we know, it was E. B. Wilson who popularized the concept of a “stem cell” in his book The Cell in Development and Inheritance (1896, London: Macmillan & Co.). Given that stem cell research is my field and that E. B. Wilson is so revered within the cell biology community, I am a bit humbled by how long it took me to truly grasp his vision and imaginative thinking. I appreciate it deeply now, and on this meaningful occasion, I will sketch my rather circuitous road to cell biology.I grew up in a suburb of Chicago. My father was a geochemist, and for everyone whose parents worked at Argonne National Laboratories, Downers Grove was the place to live. My father’s sister was a radiobiologist and my uncle was a nuclear chemist, both at Argonne; they lived in the house next door. Across the street from their house was the Schmidtke’s Popcorn Farm—a great door to knock on at Halloween. The cornfields were also super for playing hide-and-seek, particularly when you happened to be shorter than those Illinois cornstalks.Open in a separate windowElaine FuchsI remember when the first road in the area was paved. It made biking and roller-skating an absolute delight. Fields of butterflies were everywhere, and with development came swamps and ponds filled with pollywogs and local creeks with crayfish. It was natural to become a biologist. When coupled with a family of scientists and a mother active in the Girl Scouts, all the resources were there to make it a perfect path to becoming a scientist.I could hardly wait until I was in junior high school, when I could enter science fairs. You would think that my science-minded family might help me choose and develop a research project. True to their mentoring ethos, they left these decisions to me. My first project was on crayfish behavior. I recorded the response of the crayfish I had caught to “various external stimuli.” At the end of this assault, I dissected the crayfish and, using “comparative anatomy,” attempted to identify all the parts. The second project was no gentler. I focused on tadpole metamorphosis and the effects of thyroid hormone in accelerating development at low concentrations and death at elevated concentrations. Somehow, I ended up going all the way to the state fair, where it became clear that I had serious competition. That experience, however, whetted my appetite to gain more lab experience and to learn to read the literature more carefully.My experience with high school biology prompted me to gravitate toward chemistry, physics, and math. When it came to college, my father told me that if there was a $2000/year (translated in 2015 to be $30,000/year) reason why I should go anywhere besides the University of Chicago (where Argonne scientists received a 50% tuition cut for their children) or the University of Illinois (then $200/year tuition), we could “discuss” it further. Having a sister, father, aunt, and uncle who went to the University of Chicago, I chose the University of Illinois and saved my Dad a bundle of money. At Illinois, I thought I might revisit biology, but my choices for a major were “biology for teachers” or “honors biology.” The first did not interest me; the second seemed intimidating.I enrolled as a chemistry major. Four years went by, during which time I never took a biology class. I enjoyed quantum mechanics, physics, and differential equations, and problem solving became one of my strengths. In the midst of the Vietnam War era, however, Illinois was a hotbed of activity. I was inspired to apply to the Peace Corps, with a backup plan to pursue science that would be more biomedically relevant than quantum mechanics. I was accepted to go to Uganda with the Peace Corps, but with Idi Amin in office, my path to science was clear. Fortunately, the schools I applied to accepted me, even though, in lieu of GRE scores, I had submitted a three-page essay on why I did not think another exam was going to prove anything. I chose Princeton’s biochemistry program. This turned out to be a great, if naïve choice, as only after accepting their offer did I take a biochemistry class to find out what I was getting into. I chose to carry out my PhD with a terrific teacher of intermediary metabolism, Charles Gilvarg, who worked on bacterial cell walls. My thesis project was to tackle how spores break down one cell wall and build another as they transition from quiescence to vegetative growth.By my fourth year of graduate school, I was trained as a chemist and biochemist and was becoming increasingly hooked on biomedical science. I listened to a seminar given by Howard Green, who had developed a method to culture cells from healthy human skin under conditions in which they could be maintained and propagated for hundreds of generations without losing their ability to make tissue. At the time, Howard referred to them as epidermal keratinocytes, but in retrospect, these were the first stem cells ever to be successfully cultured. I was profoundly taken by the system, and Howard’s strength in cell biology inspired me. It was the perfect match for pursuing my postdoctoral research. The time happened to be at the cusp of DNA recombinant technology.At MIT, I learned how to culture these cells. I wanted to determine their program of gene expression and how this changed when epidermal progenitors embark on their terminal differentiation program. While the problem in essence was not so different from that of my graduate work at Princeton, I had miraculously managed to receive my PhD without ever having isolated protein, RNA, or DNA. Working in a quintessential cell biology lab and tackling a molecular biology question necessitated venturing outside the confines of the Green lab and beyond the boundaries of my expertise. Fortunately, this was easy at MIT. Richard Hynes, Bob Horvitz, Bob Weinberg, and Graham Walker were all assistant professors, and their labs were very helpful, as were those of David Baltimore and Phil Sharp, a mere walk across the street. On the floor of my building, Steve Farmer, Avri Ben Ze’ev, Gideon Dreyfuss, and Ihor Lemischka were in Sheldon Penman’s lab just down the hall, and they were equally interested in mRNA biology, providing daily fuel for discussions. Uttam Rhajbandary’s and Gobind Khorana’s labs were also on the same floor, making it easy to learn how to make oligo(dT)-Sepharose to purify my mRNAs. Vernon Ingram’s lab was also on the same floor, so learning to make rabbit reticulocyte lysates to translate my mRNAs was also possible. Howard bought a cryostat, so I could section human skin and separate the layers. And as he was already working with clinicians at Harvard to apply his ability to create sheets of epidermal cells for the treatment of burn patients, I had access to the leftover scraps of human tissue that were also being used in these operations.The three years of my postdoc were accompanied by three Fuchs and Green papers. The first showed that epidermal keratinocytes spend most of their time expressing a group of keratin proteins with distinct sequences. The second showed that these keratins were each encoded by distinct mRNAs. The third showed that, as epidermal keratinocytes commit to terminally differentiate, they switch off expression of basal keratins (K5 and K14) and switch on the expression of suprabasal keratins (K1 and K10). That paper also revealed that different stratified tissues express the same basal keratins but distinct sets of suprabasal keratins. I am still very proud of these accomplishments, and my MIT experience made me thirst to discover more about the epidermis and its stem cells.My first and only real job interview came during my second year of postdoc, at a time when I was not looking for a job. I viewed the opportunity, initiated by my graduate advisor, as a free trip home to visit my parents and my trial run to prepare me for future searching. I was thrilled when this interview materialized into an offer to join the faculty, for which the University of Chicago extended my start time to allow me to complete my three years with Howard.Times have clearly changed, and it is painful to see talented young scientists struggle so much more today. That said, I have never looked ahead very far, and having a lack of expectations or worry is likely to be as helpful today as it was then. I am sure it is easier said than done, but this has also been the same for my science. I have always enjoyed the experiments and the joy of discovery. There was no means to an end other than to contemplate what the data meant in a broader scope.I arrived at the University of Chicago with a well-charted route. My aim was to make a cDNA library and clone and characterize the sequences and genes for the differentially expressed keratins I had identified when I was at MIT. It was three months into my being at Chicago when my chair lined up some interviews for me to hire a technician. I was so immersed in my science that I did not want to take time to hire anyone. I hired the first technician I interviewed. Fortunately, it worked out. However, I turned graduate students away the first year, preferring to carry out the experiments with my technician and get results. After publishing two more papers—one on the existence of two types of keratins that were differentially expressed as pairs and the other on signals that impacted the differential expression of these keratin pairs, I decided to accept a student, who analyzed the human keratin genes. My first postdoc was a fellow grad student with me at Princeton; she studied signaling and keratin gene expression. My second postdoc was initiated by my father, who chatted with him at the elevator when I was moving into my apartment. He set up DNA sequencing and secondary-structure prediction methods, and the lab stayed small, focused, and productive.I was fascinated by keratins, how they assembled into a network of intermediate filaments (Ifs). When thalassemias and sickle cell anemia turned out to be due to defects in globin genes, I began to wonder whether there might be human skin disorders with defective keratin genes. I had no formal training in genetics, and there were no hints of what diseases to focus on. Thus, rather than using positional cloning to identify a gene mutation associated with a particular disease, we took a reverse approach: we first identified the key residues for keratin filament assembly. After discovering that mutations at these sites acted dominant negatively, we engineered transgenic mice harboring our mutant keratin genes and then diagnosed the mouse pathology. Our diagnoses, first for our K14 mutations and then for our K10 mutations, turned out to be correct: on sequencing the keratins from humans with epidermolysis bullosa simplex (EBS), we found K14 or K5 mutations; similarly, we found K1 or K10 mutations in affected, but not in unaffected, members of families with epidermolytic hyperkeratosis (EH). Both are autosomal-dominant disorders in which patients have skin blistering or degeneration upon mechanical stress. Without a proper keratin network, the basal (EBS) or suprabasal (EH) cells could not withstand pressure. Ironically, family sizes of all but the mildest forms of these disorders were small, meaning that the disorders were not amenable to positional cloning. But the beauty of this approach is that once we had made the connection to the diseases, we understood their underlying biology. In addition, the IF genes are a superfamily of more than 100 genes differentially expressed in nearly all tissues of the body. Once we had established EBS as the first IF gene disorder, the pathology and biology set a paradigm for a number of diseases of other tissues that turned out to be due to defects in other IF genes.Fortunately, I had students, Bob Vassar (professor, Northwestern University) and Tony Letai (associate professor, Harvard Medical School), and a postdoc, Pierre Coulombe (chair, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Johns Hopkins University), who jumped into this fearless venture with me. We had to go off campus to learn transgenic technology. I had never worked with mice before. When Bob returned to campus with transgenic expertise, we hired and trained Linda Degenstein, whose love for animal science was unparalleled. Pierre’s prior training in electron microscopy was instrumental in multiple ways. Additionally, I was not a dermatologist and had no access to human patients. Fortunately Amy Paller, MD, at Northwestern volunteered to work with us.The success of this project attests to an important recipe: 1) Pursue a question you are passionate about. 2) In carrying out rigorous, well-controlled experiments, each new finding should build upon the previous ones. 3) If you have learned to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, then you will not be afraid to chart new territory when the questions you are excited to answer take an unanticipated turn. 4) Science does not operate in a vacuum. Interact well with your lab mates and take an interest in their science as well as your own. And wherever you embark upon a pathway in which the lab’s expertise is limited, do not hesitate to reach out broadly to other labs and universities.I have followed this recipe now for more than three decades, and it seems to work pretty well. A lab works only when its students and postdocs are interactive, naturally inquisitive, and freely share their ideas and findings. I have been blessed to have a number of such individuals in my lab over the years. When push comes to shove, I am always inclined first to shave from the “brilliant” category and settle for smart, nice people who are passionate and interactive about science and original and unconventional in their thinking.So what questions have I been most passionate about? I have always been fascinated with how tissues form during development, how they are maintained in the adult, and how tissue biology goes awry in human disorders, particularly cancers. I first began to think about this problem during my days at Princeton. I also developed a dogma back then that I still hold: to understand malignancies, one must understand what is normal before one can appreciate what is abnormal. I think this is why I have spent so much of my life focusing on normal tissue morphogenesis, despite my passion for being at the interface with medicine. And because skin has so many amazingly interesting complexities, and because it is a great system to transition seamlessly between a culture dish and an animal, I have never found a reason to choose any other tissue over the one I chose many years back.I will not dwell on the various facets of skin biology we have tackled over the years. Our initial work on keratins was to obtain markers for progenitors and their differentiating lineages. This interest broadened to understanding how proliferative progenitors form cytoskeletal networks and how the cytoskeleton makes dynamic rearrangements during tissue morphogenesis.From the beginning, the lab has also been fascinated by how tissue remodeling occurs in response to environmental signals. Indeed, signals from the microenvironment trigger changes in chromatin dynamics and gene expression within tissue stem cells. Ultimately, this leads to changes in proteins and factors that impact on cell polarity, spindle orientation, asymmetric versus symmetric fate specifications, and ultimately, the balance between proliferation and differentiation.The overarching theme of my lab over these decades is clear, namely, to understand the signals that unspecified progenitors receive that instruct them to generate a stratified epidermis, make hair follicles, or make sweat and sebaceous glands. And if we can understand how this happens, then how are stem cells born, and how do they replace dying cells or regenerate tissue after injury? And, finally, how does this process change during malignant progression or in other aberrant skin conditions?In tackling tissue morphogenesis, I have had to forgo knowing the details of each tree and instead focus on the forest. There are many times when I stand back and can only admire those who are able to dissect beautiful cellular mechanisms with remarkable precision. But I crossed that bridge some years ago in tackling a problem that mandates an appreciation of nearly all the topics covered in Bruce Alberts’ textbook Molecular Biology of the Cell. I am now settled comfortably with the uncomfortable, and the problem of tissue morphogenesis in normal biology and disease continues to keep me more excited about each year’s research than I was the previous year. Perhaps the difference between my days as a student, postdoc, and assistant professor and now is that my joy and excitement is as strong for those I mentor and have mentored as it is for myself.     

Gene mobility and the concept of relatedness

Cooperation is rife in the microbial world, yet our best current theories of the evolution of cooperation were developed with multicellular animals in mind. Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness is an important case in point: applying the theory in a microbial setting is far from straightforward, as social evolution in microbes has a number of distinctive features that the theory was never intended to capture. In this article, I focus on the conceptual challenges posed by the project of extending Hamilton’s theory to accommodate the effects of gene mobility. I begin by outlining the basics of the theory of inclusive fitness, emphasizing the role that the concept of relatedness is intended to play. I then provide a brief history of this concept, showing how, over the past fifty years, it has departed from the intuitive notion of genealogical kinship to encompass a range of generalized measures of genetic similarity. I proceed to argue that gene mobility forces a further revision of the concept. The reason in short is that, when the genes implicated in producing social behaviour are mobile, we cannot talk of an organism’s genotype simpliciter; we can talk only of an organism’s genotype at a particular stage in its life cycle. We must therefore ask: with respect to which stage(s) in the life cycle should relatedness be evaluated? For instance: is it genetic similarity at the time of social interaction that matters to the evolution of social behaviour, or is it genetic similarity at the time of reproduction? I argue that, strictly speaking, it is neither of these: what really matters to the evolution of social behaviour is diachronic genetic similarity between the producers of fitness benefits at the time they produce them and the recipients of those benefits at the end of their life-cycle. I close by discussing the implications of this result. The main payoff is that it makes room for a possible new mechanism for the evolution of altruism in microbes that does not require correlated interaction among bearers of the genes for altruism. The importance of this mechanism in nature remains an open empirical question.     

Forensic uncertainty,fragile remains,and DNA as a panacea: an ethnographic observation of the challenges in twenty-first-century Disaster Victim Identification

This is an account of ethnographic research examining the specialist scientific processes known as ‘Disaster Victim Identification’ (DVI) in three settings: Québec, the United States, and the United Kingdom. In cases of multiple deaths, a series of actions accompanied by a plethora of tools are often invoked, housed at a disaster scene, forensic laboratories, a family assistance centre, and a mortuary. In this article, I examine a process dedicated to connecting the biological remains of the deceased with a confirmed validation of personhood. I describe a situation where responders/scientists will attempt multiple testing and re-testing of human remains, often pushing boundaries of available science. I argue that the search for certainty in identification lies at the heart of the activation of DVI processes, particularly when it is connected to DNA testing. Observing intimate forensic settings and the bricolage of the forensic anthropologist's labour has allowed me to track the production of the science of identity. I then reflect on the wider implications of these observations for affected communities and the responding scientists. Finally, I argue that there is complexity and ambivalence surrounding the increased use of technologies when applied to identification of victims.     

Technologies of immortality: the brain on ice

One of the first envatted brains, the most cyborgian element of J. D. Bernal’s 1929 futuristic manifesto, The world, the flesh and the the devil, proposed a technological solution to the dreary certainty of mortality. In Bernal’s scenario the brain is maintained in an ‘out of body’ but ‘like-body’ environment—in a bath of cerebral–spinal fluid held at constant body temperature. In reality, acquiring prospective immortality requires access to very different technologies—those that allow human organs and tissues to be preserved in a quite ‘inhuman’ life-world—the cryogenic storage chamber. Like Bernal, today’s cryonicists consider that immortality can be secured through preservation of the brain alone. In this article I trace attempts to preserve or suspend life, and especially brain function, through the application of new ‘technologies of immortality’. Drawing together historical information on the development of refrigeration, cryopreservation, transplantation, and nanotechnologies, I explore the uneasy relationship between cryonics and the technology on which it depends for its success—cryogenics. In so doing, I argue that the ability to successfully realize the science fiction fantasy of human immortality will rest on a moral and scientific parasitism: the capacity to use the biotechnological artifacts or proxies—cryogenically preserved brains, archived brains, tissues, and immortalized cell lines—derived from the dead, in order to prolong life.     

Looking back, looking beyond: revisiting the ethics of genome generation

This paper will explore some of the ethical imperatives that have shaped strategic and policy frameworks for the use of new genetic technologies and how these play a role in shaping the nature of research and changing attitudes; with an attempt to conceptualize some theories of genetic determinism. I analyse why there is a need to put bioethical principles within a theoretical framework in the context of new technologies, and how, by doing so, their practical applications for agriculture, environment medicine and health care can be legitimized. There are several theories in favour of and against the use of genetic technologies that focus on genes and their role in our existence. In particular the theory of geneticisation is commonly debated. It highlights the conflicting interests of science, society and industry in harnessing genetic knowledge when the use of such knowledge could challenge ethical principles. Critics call it a ‘reductionist’ approach, based on arguments that are narrowed down to genes, often ignoring other factors including biological, social and moral ones. A parallel theory is that there is something special about genes, and it is this “genetic exceptionalism” that creates hopes and myths. Either way, the challenging task is to develop a common ground for understanding the importance of ethical sensitivities. As research agendas become more complex, ethical paradigms will need to be more influential. New principles are needed to answer the complexities of ethical issues as complex technologies develop. This paper reflects on global ethical principles and the tensions between ethical principles in legitimizing genetic technologies at the social and governance level.     

Towards “A Natural History of Data”: Evolving Practices and Epistemologies of Data in Paleontology, 1800–2000

The fossil record is paleontology’s great resource, telling us virtually everything we know about the past history of life. This record, which has been accumulating since the beginning of paleontology as a professional discipline in the early nineteenth century, is a collection of objects. The fossil record exists literally, in the specimen drawers where fossils are kept, and figuratively, in the illustrations and records of fossils compiled in paleontological atlases and compendia. However, as has become increasingly clear since the later twentieth century, the fossil record is also a record of data. Paleontologists now routinely abstract information from the physical fossil record to construct databases that serve as the basis for quantitative analysis of patterns in the history of life. What is the significance of this distinction? While it is often assumed that the orientation towards treating the fossil record as a record of data is an innovation of the computer age, it turns out that nineteenth century paleontology was substantially “data driven.” This paper traces the evolution of data practices and analyses in paleontology, primarily through examination of the compendia in which the fossil record has been recorded over the past 200 years. I argue that the transition towards conceptualizing the fossil record as a record of data began long before the emergence of the technologies associated with modern databases (such as digital computers and modern statistical methods). I will also argue that this history reveals how new forms of visual representation were associated with the transition from seeing the fossil record as a record of objects to one of data or information, which allowed paleontologists to make new visual arguments about their data. While these practices and techniques have become increasingly sophisticated in recent decades, I will show that their basic methodology was in place over a century ago, and that, in a sense, paleontology has always been a “data driven” science.     

The Importance of Population Growth and Regulation in Human Life History Evolution

Explaining the evolution of human life history traits remains an important challenge for evolutionary anthropologists. Progress is hindered by a poor appreciation of how demographic factors affect the action of natural selection. I review life history theory showing that the quantity maximized by selection depends on whether and how population growth is regulated. I show that the common use of R, a strategy’s expected lifetime number of offspring, as a fitness maximand is only appropriate under a strict set of conditions, which are apparently unappreciated by anthropologists. To concretely show how demography-free life history theory can lead to errors, I reanalyze an influential model of human life history evolution, which investigated the coevolution of a long lifespan and late age of maturity. I show that the model’s conclusions do not hold under simple changes to the implicitly assumed mechanism of density dependence, even when stated assumptions remain unchanged. This analysis suggests that progress in human life history theory requires better understanding of the demography of our ancestors.     

Work life balance?

There is no perfect recipe to balance work and life in academic research. Everyone has to find their own optimal balance to derive fulfilment from life and work. Subject Categories: S&S: Careers & Training

A few years ago, a colleague came into my office, looking a little irate, and said, “I just interviewed a prospective student, and the first question was, ‘how is work‐life balance here?’”. Said colleague then explained how this question was one of his triggers. Actually, this sentiment isn''t unusual among many PIs. And, yet, asking about one''s expected workload is a fair question. While some applicants are actually coached to ask it at interviews, I think that many younger scientists have genuine concerns about whether or not they will have enough time away from the bench in order to have a life outside of work.In a nutshell, I believe there is no one‐size‐fits‐all definition of work–life balance (WLB). I also think WLB takes different forms depending on one''s career stage. As a new graduate student, I didn''t exactly burn the midnight oil; it took me a couple of years to get my bench groove on, but once I did, I worked a lot and hard. I also worked on weekends and holidays, because I wanted answers to the questions I had, whether it was the outcome of a bacterial transformation or the result from a big animal experiment. As a post‐doc, I worked similarly hard although I may have actually spent fewer hours at the bench because I just got more efficient and because I read a lot at home and on the six train. But I also knew that I had to do as much as I could to get a job in NYC where my husband was already a faculty member. The pressure was high, and the stress was intense. If you ask people who knew me at the time, they can confirm I was also about 30 pounds lighter than I am now (for what it''s worth, I was far from emaciated!).As an assistant professor, I still worked a lot at the bench in addition to training students and writing grant applications (it took me three‐plus years and many tears to get my first grant). As science started to progress, work got even busier, but in a good way. By no means did I necessarily work harder than those around me—in fact, I know I could have worked even more. And I’m not going to lie, there can be a lot of guilt associated with not working as much as your neighbor.My example is only one of millions, and there is no general manual on how to handle WLB. Everyone has their own optimal balance they have to figure out. People with children or other dependents are particularly challenged; as someone without kids, I cannot even fathom how tough it must be. Even with some institutions providing child care or for those lucky enough to have family take care of children, juggling home life with “lab life” can create exceptional levels of stress. What I have observed over the years is that trainees and colleagues with children become ridiculously efficient; they are truly remarkable. One of my most accomplished trainees had two children, while she was a post‐doc and she is a force to be reckoned with—although no longer in my laboratory, she still is a tour de force at work, no less with child number three just delivered! I think recruiters should view candidates with families as well—if not better—equipped to multi‐task and get the job done.There are so many paths one can take in life, and there is no single, “correct” choice. If I had to define WLB, I would say it is whatever one needs to do in order to get the work done to one''s satisfaction. For some people, putting in long days and nights might be what is needed. Does someone who puts in more hours necessarily do better than one who doesn''t, or does a childless scientist produce more results than one with kids? Absolutely not. People also have different goals in life: Some are literally “wedded” to their work, while others put much more emphasis on spending time with their families and see their children grow up. Importantly, these goals are not set in stone and can fluctuate throughout one''s life. Someone recently said to me that there can be periods of intense vertical growth where “balance” is not called for, and other times in life where it is important and needed. I believe this sentiment eloquently sums up most of our lives.Now that I''m a graying, privileged professor, I have started to prioritize other areas of life, in particular, my health. I go running regularly (well, maybe jog very slowly), which takes a lot of time but it is important for me to stay healthy. Pre‐pandemic, I made plans to visit more people in person as life is too short not to see family and friends. In many ways, having acquired the skills to work more efficiently after many years in the laboratory and office, along with giving myself more time for my health, has freed up my mind to think of science differently, perhaps more creatively. It seems no matter how much I think I’m tipping the balance toward life, work still creeps in, and that’s perfectly OK. At the end of the day, my work is my life, gladly, so I no longer worry about how much I work, nor do I worry about how much time I spend away from it. If you, too, accomplish your goals and derive fulfillment from your work and your life, neither should you.     

The Importance of Being Serious: Subjectivity and Adulthood in Kenya

While anthropological scholarship on the life course transitions of young people has aimed to contribute to theories of structure and agency, social reproduction and change, it has done so relatively independently from the anthropological literature on subject formation. This paper explores how subjectivity – how people feel, think, and experience – is implicated in grappling with life course transitions. It addresses how ‘being serious’ is considered a critical adult competency and its achievement delineates a key life transition that young women in western Kenya variously resent and value, resist and seek. The analysis illuminates ways in which people grapple with their own subjectivity as a problem as well as a project, and how such problems and projects of subjectivity are problems and projects of social reproduction. I argue that taking account of such subjective transformations can augment political economy analysis of meanings and modes of life.     

Ethnography, art, and death

A problem facing anthropologists, given the centrality of memory and imagination to all social life, is how to access memory and the imaginary when there is no independent access to consciousness. Moreover, the discipline has 'largely failed to distinguish itself' in response to understanding HIV/AIDS ( Annual Review of Anthropology 30 , 2001: 163). In response to these observations I would argue that orthodox approaches are limited and we need to create new forms of collaborative research and representation with regard to understanding experiences of illness. Accordingly this article attempts to bring to life the interior dialogue of persons living with HIV/AIDS through performance by 'mapping' the city of Kampala through its emotions and memories rather than buildings and streets.     

Are second-generation Filipinos ‘becoming’ Asian American or Latino? Historical colonialism,culture and panethnicity

Abstract

This article examines how second-generation Filipinos understand their panethnic identity, given their historical connection with both Asians and Latinos, two of the largest panethnic groups in the USA. While previous studies show panethnicity to be a function of shared political interests or class status, I argue that the cultural residuals of historical colonialism in the Philippines, by both Spain and the USA, shape how Filipinos negotiate panethnic boundaries with Asians and Latinos, albeit in different ways. Filipinos cite the cultural remnants of US colonialism as a reason to racially demarcate themselves from Asians, and they allude to the legacies of Spanish colonialism to blur boundaries with Latinos. While the colonial history of Filipinos is unique, these findings have implications for better understanding racialization in an increasingly multiethnic society – namely, how historical legacies in sending societies interact with new racial contexts to influence panethnic identity development.