Aboriginal overkill overstated

In this article I critique Charles Kay’s aboriginal overkill hypothesis, which states that Native Americans numbered 100 million or more in precolumbian North America, extensively humanized the landscape, and suppressed wildlife numbers, thus allowing wildlife browse to proliferate. By examining Kay’s source use and pertinent information, I find that he makes four kinds of significant mistakes: exaggerations, failure to provide necessary data, errors of omission, and errors of logic. Through examples I illustrate that Kay’s errors compromise his hypothesis. Kay uses Yellowstone National Park as his primary example of such a humanized area; in contrast, I suggest it is a relatively pristine area.     

Ethnography,Advocacy and Feminism: A Volatile Mix. A View from a Reading of Diane Bell's Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin

Ethnography may lie at the heart of anthropological methodology but its claims are contested. Feminist anthropologists in particular have debated the challenges a critical academic discipline poses for a consciously politicised positioning of the ethnographer, examining the constraints this might impose on the ethnographic project. Such dilemmas are compounded in the context of advocacy work. This critique of a feminist ethnography (Diane Bell's Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin), which emerged from advocacy work in a litigious Australian context, suggests that the truth demands of advocacy work sit uneasily with both the partiality of critical ethnography and the politics of the feminist project.     

My Father’s Daughter: Becoming a ‘Real’ Anthropologist among the Ubang of Southeast Nigeria

This article explores some of the complexities of fieldwork for ethnographers conducting research in the ethnographic settings of significant ‘others’. The fieldwork in question took place in the rural, geographically isolated community of Ubang, in Obudu, Nigeria, where I was following in the footsteps of my anthropologist father. Drawing on personal experience, I attempt to candidly examine the challenges inevitably faced in this situation, including acceptance by the community as a bona fide researcher, pressure to fulfill the expectations of others familiar with my father’s work, and the struggle to carve out a professional identity distinct from my father’s. An earlier version of this paper, bearing the same title, first appeared in the Anthropology Matters Journal, 2007, vol 9(1). The paper is dedicated to the memory of my father, HRH Eze (Prof.) V.C. Uchendu, whose untimely death occurred after the final editing of the article, on December 7, 2006.     

Sacred Conceptions: Clinical Theodicies, Uncertain Science, And Technologies Of Procreation In India

This article argues that the rapid transfer of assisted conception technologies, such as in vitro fertilization, to India is not restricted merely to the modalities of offering potential biomedical resolution of infertility but includes, more crucially, how clinicians and infertile consumers assimilate the “Western technoscience” of conception. The article draws on a larger multisite ethnographic study of infertility and assisted conception in India’s five major cities and is principally based on narratives of clinicians and infertile couples and on clinic-based ethnographic observations. In this article I contend that the success or failure of assisted conception, when situated in the universe of Hindu faith, becomes a powerful critique of the “incompleteness” of the “Western” science of conception. Situating this contention in the broader context of a clinician’s faith, I assert that assisted conception—by conjoining seemingly disparate domains of the traditional and the modern, the sacred and the profane, the human and the superhuman, science and religion—produces clinical theodicies that help explain and contain the tentativeness permeating the conception technologies. The article concludes by arguing that this enchanted version of a thoroughly disenchanted worldview of biomedicine is part of a larger cultural process of indigenization of biomedicine in India.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Khyâl</Emphasis> Attacks: A Key Idiom of Distress Among Traumatized Cambodia Refugees

Traumatized Cambodian refugees with PTSD often complain of khyal attacks. The current study investigates khyal attacks from multiple perspectives and examines the validity of a model of how khyal attacks are generated. The study found that khyal attacks had commonly been experienced in the previous 4 weeks and that their severity was strongly correlated with the severity of PTSD (PTSD Checklist). It was found that khyal attacks were triggered by various processes—such as worry, trauma recall, standing up, going to a mall—and that khyal attacks almost always met panic attack criteria. It was also found that during a khyal attack there was great fear that death might occur from bodily dysfunction. It was likewise found that a complex nosology of khyal attacks exists that rates the attacks on a scale of severity, that the severity determines how the khyal attacks should be treated and that those treatments are often complex. As illustrated by the article, khyal attacks constitute a key aspect of trauma ontology in this group, a culturally specific experiencing of anxiety and trauma-related disorder. The article also contributes to the study of trauma somatics, that is, to the study of how trauma results in specific symptoms in a specific cultural context, showing that a key part of the trauma-somatic reticulum is often a cultural syndrome.     

The Substance View: A Critique (Part 2)

In my initial critique of the substance view, I raised reductio‐style objections to the substance view's conclusion that the standard human fetus has the same intrinsic value and moral standing as the standard adult human being, among others. In this follow‐up critique, I raise objections to some of the premises invoked in support of this conclusion. I begin by briefly presenting the substance view as well as its defense. (For a more thorough presentation, see the first part of my critique.) I then raise objections to three claims involved in the substance view's defense: the claim that the standard human fetus's intrinsic value and moral standing is a function of its potentiality; the claim that the standard human fetus's intrinsic value and moral standing is a function of its essential properties; and the claim that it is the possession of the basic potential for rational moral agency that best accounts for the wrongness of killing the standard human fetus, among others.     

The Privatisation of Home and Hope: Return, Reforms and the Foreign Intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Contextualising the foreign-imposed return policies in early post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina, this article argues that the return of the displaced – however important it was to many Bosnians – ultimately functioned as the self-perpetuating lynchpin of an externally generated framework for post-war reconstruction, often out of tune with the hopes of its intended beneficiaries. Rather than following conventional anthropological cultural relativist arguments, I propose a critique of the foreign intervention that places it in its social, political and economic context, drawing attention to patterns of longing and belonging in Bosnia-Herzegovina. I contrast the groundings and implications of intervention policies with the experiences and yearnings of displaced Bosnians and show that, while it was legitimised as the implementation of an ostensibly ideologically neutral human rights discourse, the foreign emphasis on property and safety rights over other concerns channelled the reconstruction of Bosnia-Herzegovina into a peculiar, normative trajectory of postsocialist neoliberalisation.     

Reflections on Grant Evans’ The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos since 1975

In this article I reflect on Grant Evans’ landmark and influential The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance: Laos since 1975, the way in which this book relates to the transformation from socialism to post‐socialism in the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR), to the crisis of legitimacy of the communist regime, and to issues of social memory, Buddhism, nationalism, iconography, and ethnic minorities. I also consider how other scholars have engaged with The Politics of Ritual and Remembrance both critically and supportively since the publication of the monograph in 1998 . I include in my analysis some observations on Evans’ quite radical change in political views over his career as a student, journalist and academic, culminating in his critique of socialism in general and the LPDR in particular and his controversial sympathy for the Lao monarchy.     

Globalisation and bridewealth rhetoric

This article offers a close analysis of a ‘classic’ body of ethnographic material on the rhetoric and ritual accompanying bridewealth exchange and argues both for the perspective it provides on the dynamics of cultural continuity, and for the contemporary significance of such continuity for theorising the politics of globalisation. Munn’s study on ‘spacetime’ provides a perspective on bridewealth, both as praxis of continuity and of articulation with global processes. I conclude this article by posing the question of whether subjects such as the Maring of Papua New Guinea can be said to have agency at the global level. I argue that the condition of such agency is the alienation of that agency from their specificity as subjects.     

Some history of heredity-vs-environment, genetic inferiority at Harvard(?), and The (incredible) Bell Curve

This article discusses some historical and intellectual roots of American behaviorism in psychology and its anti-heredity, environmentalist bias, as well as the early ‘justification’ for pure line theory in genetics and some interrelations between the two fields. Next, I discuss the heritability concept, its promotion, its critique and the importance of distinguishing it from, rather than confusing or conflating it with, the heredity concept. Then, briefly I consider some of the history and problems associated with the intelligence concept, as well as the capital importance of biological controls in studies of human heredity. And finally, I document the incredibility of The Bell Curve and the appalling inadequacy of its reception. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Comparative Epistemology: Contours of a Research Program

This article addresses the question whether and how literary documents can be used to further our understanding of a number of key issues on the agenda of the philosophy of biology such as “complexity” and “reductionism”. Kant already granted a certain respectability to aesthetical experiences of nature in his third Critique. Subsequently, the philosophical movement known as phenomenology often used literary sources and literary techniques to criticize and question mainstream laboratory science. The article discusses a number of literary documents, from Moby-Dick to Jurassic Park, that explicitly stage a confrontation between scientific and non-scientific ways of experiencing and understanding the natural world. Special attention is given to the work of Michael Crichton. Its relevance for the philosophy of biology is pointed out.     

What Capabilities for the Animal?

In this essay, I defend a bi-constructivist approach to ethology—a constructivist ethology assuming that each animal adopts constructivist strategies. I put it in opposition to what I call a realist-Cartesian approach, which is currently the dominant approach to ethology and comparative psychology. The starting point of the bi-constructivist approach can be formulated as a shift from the classical Aristotelian question “What is an animal?” to the Spinozean question, which is much less classical but which seems to me to be much stronger: “What are the capacities of the animal?”. Is it possible to conceptualize an ethology which insists on interpretation and therefore on invention, innovation and creativity, rather than on causality, the monotony of behavioural routines, and/or genetic or environmental determination? Such an ethology would be based not on the fiction of an absent observer but on fully recognizing the necessity of an observer, who is effectively present in order to get an observation. A pluralistic ethology does not dissociate itself from the marginal epistemologies of practitioners like animal trainers, hunters, stockbreeders etc., or, moreover, non-western experts. An ethology of this kind is not clamped within the boundaries of purely academic epistemology, obsessed by demarcation lines between the human and the animal. My work on the bi-constructivist approach represents a contribution towards the elaboration of an authentically biosemiotic ethology, one which is significantly different from the mechanical ethology of today.     

Turkish nationalism and the Kurdish question

This article addresses the ways in which Turkish nationalism has perceived the Kurdish question. It is shown that both Turkish nationalism and the Kurdish question have passed through some paradigmatic moments in the twentieth century. This, I argue, has shaped the way that the Kurdish question has been perceived by Turkish nationalism. While the Kurdish question had been seen by Turkish nationalism mostly in terms of a fatal rivalry between the backward, pre-modern and tribal past and the prosperous present in the first half of the century, it was perceived in terms of a tension between the peripheral economy and national market in the fifties and sixties. In the 1970s, the Kurdish unrest was believed to be a product of communist incitement. Despite this impurity in perception, one thing has remained nearly unchanged for Turkish nationalism: Kurds could become Turkish. In other words, Turkish nationalism of the republican era has principally perceived Kurds as future-Turks. However, the signs in circulation at present indicate that the confidence of Turkish nationalism as to Kurds’ potential of becoming Turkish is not as firm as it used to be. At present, Turkish nationalism seems to be getting prepared to abandon its contention that Kurds are future-Turks.     

From Posttrauma Intervention to Immunization of the Social Body: Pragmatics and Politics of a Resilience Program in Israel’s Periphery

This article traces a critical change in the professional therapy of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD): from treatment of a disorder borne by individuals to treatment of an anticipated disorder to be prevented by fortifying the entire population. A community resilience program in the city of Sderot in southern Israel, which has been subjected to Qassam rockets by its Palestinian neighbors across the border, serves as our case study. Drawing on an ethnographic study of this new therapeutic program, we analyze how the social body that the professionals attempt to immunize against trauma was treated. In particular, we follow the various practices used to expand the clinical. We found that the population was split into several groups on a continuum between the clinical and the preclinical, each receiving different treatment. Moreover, the social body managed according to this new form of PTSD was articulated through ethnic and geopolitical power relations between professionals from the country’s center and professionals from its periphery, and between the professionals and the city’s residents. Finally, we discuss how this Israeli case compares with other national sites of the growing globalization of PTSD, like Bali, Haiti and Ethiopia, which anthropologists have been exploring in recent years.     

New Directions in the Study of Dream Content Using the Hall and Van de Castle Coding System

Both methodological and statistical innovations add to the usefulness of the Hall and Van de Castle system for the content analysis of dream reports. In addition, there are weaknesses in most rating scales for the study of dream content, and numerous methodological and statistical problems call into question many past studies of dream content. In an introduction to this special issue, these possibilities and problems are discussed and then demonstrated through a critique of the literature on gender and dream content.     

Storks, Cabbage Patches, and the Right to Procreate

In this paper I examine the prevailing assumption that there is a right to procreate and question whether there exists a coherent notion of such a right. I argue that we should question any and all procreative activities, not just alternative procreative means and contexts. I suggest that clinging to the assumption of a right to procreate prevents serious scrutiny of reproductive behavior and that, instead of continuing to embrace this assumption, attempts should be made to provide a proper foundation for it. I argue that the focus of procreative activities and discourse on reproductive ethics should be on obligations instead of rights, as rights talk tends to obfuscate recognition of obligations toward others, particularly those who bear the most significant burdens of the procreative process. I examine some possible foundations of a right to procreate as well as John Robertson’s thoughtful account of “procreative liberty” but conclude that at the present time there exists no compelling account of a right to procreate. Finally, I conclude that in the absence of a satisfactory account of a right to procreate, we should refrain from grounding practices or polices on the assumption that there is such a right.

The basic reproductive number of tick–borne encephalitis virus

Tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) is reciprocally transmitted between Ixodes ricinus ticks and small mammals. Recently, transmission between co-feeding ticks has been postulated as an epidemiological by important mechanism of perpetuating the agent. To empirically examine the question whether the “traditional” mode of transmission is sufficient to maintain enzootic TBEV transmission, the basic reproductive number R₀ of TBEV could be estimated under this model for sites in which TBEV is enzootic. I propose an empirical estimator of R₀ for TBEV which is based on longitudinal stage–specific local tick infestation densities assessed by live trapping of small mammals. A Gibbs sampler–based 95%–credibility interval is presented. When applied to published field data from TBEV enzootic sites sub–critical R₀ estimates are obtained for both sites. I discuss potential shortcomings of this method and possible implications of these findings on the discussion of supplemental mechanisms of transmission. I thank Marc Lipsitch (Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA) who helped with an early version of this paper. I also thank Dr. Andrea Pugliese and two anonymous referees for their insightful comments and helpful suggestions.     

God is in the Data: Epistemologies of Knowledge at the Creation Museum

In contemporary American public culture, interest groups increasingly mobilise social constructionist arguments in order to discredit strains of scientific knowledge. According to Latour [2004. Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. Critical Inquiry, 30:225–48], the field of science studies has contributed to this trend by exposing the ways that scientific facts are socially mediated. In this article, I examine how a narrative of social construction is articulated in the Creation Museum, a young earth creationist museum in Northern Kentucky, USA. I compare the epistemology of science in the Creation Museum with that of conspiracy theory and of social constructionist science studies. I examine how, in the Creation Museum, social constructionist critique is combined with a framing of the Bible as a source of factual data. It is argued that science studies, conspiracy theory and creationism overlap in their critiques of the transparency and objectivity of science. However, they diverge in terms of the degree of recursivity they allow.