Eugenic sterilization: a preliminary comparison of the Scandinavian experience to that of Germany

The paper argues that historical analysis and explanation of eugenics in Germany can benefit much from systematic comparison to Scandinavia. Common cultural background and quite similar development up to 1933 provides a background for isolating salient causes in Nazi population policies. This comparison will also help a more precise understanding of the mutual dependence between science and politics in the case of eugenics. The author holds that many of the geneticists who participated in the eugenics debates of the 1930's and 1940's had a clearer grasp of the distinction between science and politics than most present day historiographers of eugenics.     

Conservative populist politics and the remaking of the “white working class” in the USA

For decades, scholars and journalists have intricately tied presidential elections to the idea of a struggling “white working class.” They explained the 2016 presidential election by investigating the politics of low- or middle-income white conservative voters. This article instead focuses on the way in which white low-wage and unemployed small town residents question, distrust, and embrace conservative populist politics. The paper first explores how conservative populism and the media response are remaking the white working class along cultural and racial lines. Drawing from research conducted in a predominantly white former manufacturing town in central Maine, I then document that some poor and low-wage white workers distrust conservative populist politicians and are angry about being pushed aside by business-first politics. While populist and neoliberal politics have contributed to a remaking of the white working class around a white worker ideal, the concomitant decline in the social safety net and good jobs has been generating a sense of betrayal among those who are struggling the most. The article thus offers an alternative to the white working class caricature and argues that a contradictory consciousness results from workers living within and reacting against economic precarity and conservative populism.     

The idea of health: history,medical pluralism,and the management of the body in Emilia-Romagna,Italy

Basic beliefs about health in north central Italy derive from an approach to the personal management of the body that is not just reactive but also proactive. This article examines a complex field of health factors in relation to historical processes and a system of medical pluralism. Rapid demographic and social changes over the past century have brought an accommodation of ancient medical beliefs to more recent germ-oriented principles. An enduring belief in the permeability of the body leads to an emphasis on moderation in personal conduct to prevent debilitation, whether by atmospheric insults, microbial infection, or modern-day miasmas such as pollution or additives in food. The idea of health itself is analyzed to show how biomedicine varies across societies and how historical processes have shaped contemporary cultural patterns and led to generational continuities and differences in beliefs and behaviors. This information may also improve interactions between patients and health care providers.     

Anthropomorphic effigy vessels from Chupicuaro,Mexico*

The subjectivity of the anthropologist is grounded in the historical and ideological worlds in which he is positioned. The author finds the basis of his comparison of Australian and Sinhalese Buddhist nationalisms in the Australian cultural context, which leads him to a particular construction of the Sinhalese “otherness”. The Australian egalitarian nationalism and the Sinhalese Buddhist hierarchical nationalism are traced as ideologies through a range of practises, showing differing relationships between nation and state. Both nationalisms, the author argues, are to be understood as equally “modern” .     

The tyranny of the binary: race,nation and the logic of failing liberalisms

This article explores the consequences of rapidly fissuring binary models of community and progress in a national and global context. It suggests that this is a dominant (black/white) paradigm used to map both mainstream and particularly liminal sites of cultural/political articulation. Furthermore, it argues that such models of imputed progress, reason and civility contain the narcissistic residue of an earlier liberal encounter: namely, the fetish quality attached to the black body as abject text and privileged humanist ontology by the twentieth-century European movement of liberal humanism. The article argues that recent attempts to rethink this position vis à vis the European Holocaust have actually rehearsed the logic, both of fetish and binarism. Moreover, that this stasis in liberal thinking on issues of race and violence has heightened the attraction of those political movements characterized by cultural absolutism. The essay suggests that acknowledgement of the 'public secret' which underwrites liberal narrative stasis is the first step towards a more appropriate cultural grammar.     

Dancing with a Difference: Reconfiguring the Poetic Politics of Aboriginal Ritual as National Spectacle1

This paper argues that indigenous dance is a poetic politics of cross‐cultural encounter that engages Aboriginal identities with those of the Australian nation. I question the nature of this encounter in terms of a performative dialogue that is both musically and kinesically presented by indigenous communities and ‘translated’ into political discourse by the government. The sentiments of ‘translation’ raise questions as to how local ritual expressions of Aboriginal dance can mediate dialogue when presented as national spectacle. What is being meditated? What is happening in the process of evocation? In this performative nexus, I focus specifically on the poetic politics of Yolngu ritual as spectacle; the nature of performative dialogue in terms of shared dance forms between indigenous communities; the problem of the authentication of dance identities; and how corporeal dispositions of indigenous dance genres influence national sentiment by their symbolic power. I pursue these issues through an analysis of how ancestral dances have been repositioned in national performance venues, such as concerts, cultural centres and ritual arenas, as a means of asserting performative statements about indigenous positioning within the nation‐state. The nature of this dialogue raises questions of authenticity and processes of authentication. It highlights indigenous concerns to control representations of indigeneity as national event, as well as a desire to convey something of the sentiment and sentience embodied in the poetics of their ancestral performances.     

The visual system as a constraint on the survival and success of specific artworks

Why should vision science turn its gaze towards artworks? One possibility is that understanding visual processing might yield some fundamental insight into the nature of art. However, there are many examples of phenomena that can be seen - such as automobiles, clouds or leaves - but which are not explained in any deep sense by the properties of human visual perception. We examine one art historical question that might benefit from knowledge about the visual system: why do some artworks 'survive' historically while others fade into the dustbin of time? One possible reason, suggested by studies of rapid visual categorization, is that some objects are recognized more quickly and easily than others and thus are less culturally specific in terms of pictorial representation. A second, related, explanation is that many artistic techniques use the eyes as a channel to evoke other senses, cognition, emotions and the motor system. 'Art' is a social and historical construct - after all, the concept of 'fine art' was invented in the 18th century - and thus many aspects of artistic appreciation are specific to particular cultural and historical contexts. Some great works, however, may be adopted by successive generations because of an ability to appeal to a shared perceptual system.     

From Moral Protest to Religious Politics: Ethical Demands and Beur Political Action in France

This paper traces the responses of Muslim youths ('Beurs') to their marginalisation in France. The Beur movement acquired national significance via the politicisation of moral protest in the early 1980s. In spite of early successes, the movement stumbled when the 'politics of austerity' adopted by the French state amplified a social crisis for which migrants became the scapegoats. The Beur movement, like other youth movements of the period, expressed a search for solidarity and a stress on ethical demands. Beurs' disenchantment when their civic elan ran out in the face of everyday difficulties led some to transfer their search for solidarity to the terrain of Islam. Islam, the paper argues, often appears to provide answers to the particular complex of politico-ethical demands for social justice and dignity that the Beur movement expressed. However, the Islamist re-conversion of some Beur militants is to be read as the result of a particular conjunction of multiple power relations which would integrate economic, social, cultural and gender dimensions. It is not necessarily indicative of a failure of the politics of moral protest to promote progressive transformational politics.     

The politics of genealogical incorporation: ethnic difference,genetic relatedness and national belonging*

This paper explores the relationship between genomic accounts of ethnic origins and distinctiveness and genealogical models of ethnic and national similarity and difference. It does so by focusing on genetic investigations of Irish Traveller origins in the context of ongoing campaigns for state recognition of Irish Travellers as an ethnic group, and in relation to the politics of national belonging. The ostensibly ethical practice of liberal genomics is entangled with the fraught politics of the Irish state’s commitments to addressing ethnic minority rights, insistence on differentiating between Travellers and other ethnic groups on the basis of genealogical difference, and the genealogical incorporation of Travellers within the national community of shared descent. Though ideas of ancestral relatedness across social or cultural boundaries are often figured as politically progressive, locating groups within a national family tree on the basis of genealogical relatedness can simultaneously deny ethnic difference and naturalize exclusive models of nationhood.     

The politics of the social economy: a case study of the Argentinean empresas recuperadas

This paper offers an ethnographically grounded analysis of the transformative possibilities of the Argentinean empresas recuperadas (ERs), which speaks to current debates on the ‘social economy’. The ERs emerged in a context shaped by the crisis of neoliberalism and of the Argentinean political system and a huge upsurge in popular self-organisation. In response to widespread factory closures, thousands of workers occupied abandoned companies, forming cooperatives and often introducing assembly-based decision-making. By 2002, they established a national organisation, which connected workers’ struggles to a wider movement for institutional change. However, by 2006, the organisation had fragmented and many ERs had reinstalled traditional control methods. Much of the literature divides between idealistic and deterministic interpretations, which conceive as a technical material process. The paper proposes an alternative, a concept of labour as a process of creating value—subjective needs and values, and surplus value—which links organisations to society. Conceiving the ‘politics of value creation’ highlights continuities within the financial management and institutional relations of many ERs, but most importantly, it also recognises the different ways in which emerging social identities articulated a new need for control. Through two case studies, the paper explores the social processes through which these actors shaped their cooperatives in very different ways—highlighting innovations in accounting techniques and state-society relations. This reveals why a focus on accounting can enable anthropologists to recognise the general limitations of cooperatives and also their specific cultural diversity. In conclusion, the paper reconciles current discussions on the concept of the social economy by theorising it as the internal socialisation of capitalism and as an institutional expression of new cultural needs.     

Living in a Clinic: The Power of Public Health Promotions

Drawing on an anthropological study of the Cessnock area of New South Wales, this paper considers the politics of recent health promotion campaigns in Australia, placing the new ‘healthist’ discourse in its historical context. Whereas Cessnock people were once said to be bestial, or childish, or sick, they are now said to be fat. Whereas Methodism was once prescribed as the solution, doctors now order a rational and maximising attitude to life. It is argued that the undoubted seriousness of Cessnock's health ‘problem’ and the undoubted good will of the health promoters do not remove the danger of cultural imperialism.     

The evolution of male dominance

Conclusions We have proposed that an alternative explanation of sex-role evolution is available which is, unlike the prevailing conservative explanation, based on empirically supported observations. The model proposed here focuses upon the differential access of men and women to scarce resources and goods. Generally, but not always, this involves control of communications systems, intergroup relations, surplus products, and special ritual and recreative ends. We have argued that men have had greater access to these sources of power than have women because of demographic factors, and because of the power reproducing character of social evolution.Our model explicitly rejects explanations based on conservative premises. We have rejected the conservative assumptions that systems are based on survival needs, that male and female role division accords with inherent male and female capacity to meet survival demands, that status and power are a consequence of an individual's contribution to the subsistence system or to defense systems, that females are incapable of coping with the rigors of traditional male roles such as hunting, that males need to protect females, that males carry out most subsistence activity, and that the activities males engage in are those which are most necessary to system survival. In its place we have formulated a constraint model which focuses on the demographic limitations placed on females and the greater access these limitations give males to social resources through their greater ability to occupy cultural interfaces.We have also shown that the introduction of conservative premises into work aimed at providing an alternative model of sex-role evolution has prevented the formulation of research based on an alternative model. From Marx and Engels through the cultural evolutionists and up to Sanday's work, the introduction of conservative premises dealing with system needs of subsistence or of defense have prevented social scientists from dealing with the main problem: that of the strategic basis, and potential, of power wielded by men merely because they are new.T.A. Caine teaches in the Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.C.A.H. Caine teaches in the Department of Anthropology, Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota.     

Cloth, Gender, Continuity, and Change: Fabricating Unity in Anthropology

In this article, I compare backstrap-loom weaving in three cultural contexts: the ancient Maya, the ancient Aztecs, and 20th-century Mesoamerica. Although continuities are present, important differences exist in the ways that weaving was situated historically. Among the Classic Maya, weaving defined class; in Aztec Mexico, weaving defined gender; and in 20th-century Mesoamerica, weaving defined ethnicity. A comparison of these cases suggests that historical study is a useful tool for both archaeologists and ethnographers. It promotes recognition of the diversity of practice and belief in ancient societies. It helps to define the scope of contemporary ethnographic study. It combats cultural essentialism and injects agency into our accounts. It enables us to acknowledge both the rich heritage of indigenous peoples and the fact of culture change. Comparative historical study provides a strong rationale for the continued association of archaeology and cultural anthropology as parts of a wider anthropological whole.     

On medicine and politics.

This paper explores the relationship between medicine and politics, between medical management of the human body and governmental management of the body politic. It argues that the increasing complexity both of society and of governmental administration of society in the modern age has made it impossible completely to separate medicine from politics. It demonstrates that, along with great potential for social benefit, "medico-politics" brought with it great danger; much harm has been done purportedly to heal the body politic. The paper concludes by suggesting a way for physicians to minimize this danger.     

The ethics of marriage in American evangelicalism

The idea that marriage should be treated as a site of pious ethical work is widespread in conservative Christian discourse. This article considers how and why conservative American evangelicals have come to regard the everyday routines of heterosexual marriage as potential forms of religious labour that can cultivate robust Christian subjectivities along with successful conjugal relationships. It argues that the notion of pious marital work was strongly shaped by the secular culture of therapeutic counselling and self-help that developed during the twentieth century. While pious ethics and secular, everyday ethics are often seen as distinct, this historical perspective illuminates the modern coevolution of secular and conservative religious conceptions of marriage, revealing how each has linked marital work to personal as well as societal redemption.     

The marketization of multiculturalism: neoliberal restructuring and cultural difference in Australia

This article assesses the relationship between multiculturalism and neoliberalism, focusing on the Australian context. It analyses recent reforms concerning immigrant integration and cultural diversity, and argues that since the mid-1990s Australian multiculturalism has embodied three central components of state restructuring: heightened demands for sociocultural discipline and conformity; fiscal conservatism and the retrenchment of safety nets; and the promotion of economic competitiveness, flexibility and efficiency in global markets. In retracing the trajectory of Australian policy this analysis contributes to emerging literatures on multiculturalism, and the shifting nature of citizenship and government rationalities in the present neoliberal context. In addition to illuminating recent changes in Australia, its findings display significant import for countries facing similar dynamics.     

The Zone of Social Abandonment in Cultural Geography: On the Street in the United States, Inside the Family in India

This essay examines the spaces across societies in which persons with severe mental illness lose meaningful social roles and are reduced to "bare life." Comparing ethnographic and interview data from the United States and India, we suggest that these processes of exclusion take place differently: on the street in the United States, and in the family household in India. We argue that cultural, historical, and economic factors determine which spaces become zones of social abandonment across societies. We compare strategies for managing and treating persons with psychosis across the United States and India, and demonstrate that the relative efficiency of state surveillance of populations and availability of public social and psychiatric services, the relative importance of family honor, the extent to which a culture of psychopharmaceutical use has penetrated social life, and other historical features, contribute to circumstances in which disordered Indian persons are more likely to be forcefully "hidden" in domestic space, whereas mentally ill persons in the United States are more likely to be expelled to the street. However, in all locations, social marginalization takes place by stripping away the subject's efficacy in social communication. That is, the socially "dead" lose communicative efficacy, a predicament, following Agamben, we describe as "bare voice."     

Aboriginal youth,hip hop and the politics of identification

This paper explores the identity work taking place around contemporary subcultural hip hop amongst Australian indigenous youth in two disadvantaged urban locations. Previous work on Aboriginal hip hop has been attentive to the interface between tradition and modernity. However, existing scholarship has lacked a deeper ethnographic understanding of the dynamics between youth and parent cultures, and the tensions between the two generations. This article is based on research with young hip hop enthusiasts, community activists and educators. It deals with the cultural politics of identification and sees hip hop practice as associated with a process in which Aboriginality is crystallized as a principal affiliation and as offering an account for experiences of social marginalization. Far from being an outlet for expressing a prior or essential Aboriginality, hip hop as cultural practice is associated with the production of particular identifications.     

Urban Kampongs in Ambon: Whose Domain? Whose Desa?

A devastating fire in a poor quarter of the city of Ambon, Eastern Indonesia, provided the context in which a number of the social, cultural and historical factors shaping the lives of the city's residents came to the fore. The paper argues that to comprehend the experiences of people whose lives were touched by the fire, and to appreciate its significance, the meanings ascribed to the event, it is necessary to comprehend those multiple factors in all their complexity and interpenetration. The paper argues that the symbolic construction of urban space and its constitution as ‘place’ are continuously emergent out of processes which appear in transformational moments, such as this fire. Physical changes to the quarter through time are examined to demonstrate their relevance to understanding the contemporary social processes and their local interpretations. The migratory origins of the people; continuing divisions between Christian and Muslim populations; the ongoing relevance of ancestral spirits and magic; the role of colonial and postcolonial states, and Ambon's strategic position, are all argued to be important to understanding the meaning of the place and the use of space in the city. The implications of the intersection of at least four clusters of ideas about space and place are considered critical to any adequate account of the contemporary lives of Ambonese and to explaining how it comes to be that some residents can become permanently displaced. The argument emphasises the processual nature of the understandings of space in the urban context.     

Senegalese immigrant families’ ‘regroupement’ in France and the im/possibility of reconstituting family across multiple temporalities and spatialities

This paper interrogates the structural conditions, macropolitics and governmentality of family ‘regroupement’ in France in an era of shifting immigration policies in Europe and the imaginative possibilities that Senegalese immigrants exercise to maintain family and kinship ties with those left behind. It argues that while the need to maintain ties from diasporic locations is mediated by policies, material and emotive transnational practices, the materiality of displacement as well as the state's politics of immigration render more elusive possibilities of maintaining family in situ. What tensions and creative strategies emerge? How is ‘home’, the primordial site of family structure, reimagined and reconstituted? Taking into account state's politics and immigrants’ entrapment within multiple spheres of power and their active agency as determinants, this paper uncovers how displacement gives rise to multiple ruptures while simultaneously motivating a search for active agency to reconstruct and reimagine kinship, family and conjugality across multiple temporalities and spatialities.