On stony ground: Lithic technology,human evolution,and the emergence of culture

Culture is the central concept of anthropology. Its centrality comes from the fact that all branches of the discipline use it, that it is in a way a shorthand for what makes humans unique, and therefore defines anthropology as a separate discipline. In recent years the major contributions to an evolutionary approach to culture have come either from primatologists mapping the range of behaviors, among chimpanzees in particular, that can be referred to as cultural or “proto‐cultural” ¹, ² or from evolutionary theorists who have developed models to account for the pattern and process of human cultural diversification and its impact on human adaptation. ^3–5.     

Social Theory,Ecology and Epistemology: Theoretical Issues in Australian Prehistory

Analysis of certain discussions in Tasmanian prehistory reveals a tacit but strong environmental determinism. This approach, which centres on the notion of cultural adaptation, dominates current research in Australian prehistory. Recent theoretical discussions have, however, shown that the ecological approach is untenable; it is suggested that neo-marxist economic anthropology, emphasizing social rather than ecological relations, provides an alternative. The interpretation of archaeological data in social terms is a problem, but it should be dealt with rather than ignored. A further difficulty arises from the epistemological framework within which most archaeological work has operated: this is simplistic and empiricist. Greater consideration needs to be given to the role of theory in, and the social context of knowledge.     

The emotion–valuation constellation: Multiple emotions are governed by a common grammar of social valuation

Social emotions are hypothesized to be adaptations designed by selection to solve adaptive problems pertaining to social valuation—the disposition to attend to, associate with, and aid a target individual based on her probable contributions to the fitness of the valuer. To steer between effectiveness and economy, social emotions need to activate in precise proportion to the local evaluations of the various acts and characteristics that dictate the social value of self and others. Supporting this hypothesis, experiments conducted in the United States and India indicate that five different social emotions all track a common set of valuations. The extent to which people value each of 25 positive characteristics in others predicts the intensities of: pride (if you had those characteristics), anger (if someone failed to acknowledge that you have those characteristics), gratitude (if someone convinced others that you have those characteristics), guilt (if you harmed someone who has those characteristics), and sadness (if someone died who had those characteristics). The five emotions track local valuations (mean r = +.72) and even foreign valuations (mean r = +.70). In addition, cultural differences in emotion are patterned: They follow cultural differences in valuation. These findings suggest that multiple social emotions are governed (in part) by a common architecture of social valuation, that the valuation architecture operates with a substantial degree of universality in its content, and that a unified theoretical framework may explain cross-cultural invariances and cultural differences in emotion.     

Family,Networks and Academics

The history of anthropology is a growing field of study within the discipline itself. Our series ‘Key Informants on the History of Anthropology’ is offered as a contribution to the discussion of how anthropology, as it is understood and practised today, evolved and took shape. In this invited article, Larissa Adler Lomnitz reflects on how a cosmopolitan background aroused an interest in her in questions of social identity. Her studies of social networks in urban situations in Latin America are renowned in anthropology. Here she relates how they unfolded—and how they have been intimately connected to her family life.     

From forest fires to fisheries management: Anthropology,conservation biology,and historical ecology

Human‐environmental relationships have long been of interest to a variety of scientists, including ecologists, biologists, anthropologists, and many others. 1 , 2 In anthropology, this interest was especially prevalent among cultural ecologists of the 1970s and earlier, who tended to explain culture as the result of techno‐environmental constraints. 3 More recently researchers have used historical ecology, an approach that focuses on the long‐term dialectical relationship between humans and their environments, as well as long‐term prehuman ecological datasets. 4 - 7 An important contribution of anthropology to historical ecology is that anthropological datasets dealing with ethnohistory, traditional ecological knowledge, and human skeletal analysis, as well as archeological datasets on faunal and floral remains, artifacts, geochemistry, and stratigraphic analysis, provide a deep time perspective (across decades, centuries, and millennia) on the evolution of ecosystems and the place of people in those larger systems. Historical ecological data also have an applied component that can provide important information on the relative abundances of flora and fauna, changes in biogeography, alternations in food webs, landscape evolution, and much more.     

Anthropoaesthetics as an aspect of anthropoecology

The source of activity of every individual or group is to a great extent determined by the necessity of interaction with other individuals or groups (Afanasiev, 1990), i.e. with the diversity of anthropological surroundings. This manifests itself in the participation of individuals in the organization of their ecosystems, including the ethnocultural and physical conditions of life (Sukharev, 1998). Therefore it is possible to single out certain ecological aspects of perception of anthropological specificity of the surrounding population by an individual (group), leaning upon the definition of anthropoecology as a discipline, studying the laws of interaction between human communities and the system of natural, social and other factors, (Anthropological dictionary, 2004) as well as the coevolution of humans with their environment, in the process of adaptation (Lisseyev, 2001). At the same time it is usually emphasized that the ecological approach is best of all realized on the base of the principle of reciprocity of development of an individual and the surrounding reality, on the perception of the objects of this reality (including other people) with due regard to the reasons for the preference and corresponding values orientation. This represents the subject of ecological psychology (Sergeyenko, 2002; Pavlenko, 2002). In this context the relations between the individual and the environment (autoecology) as well as between the individual and a group (sinecology) are considered (Lisseyev, 2001).The study of the aesthetic perception of anthropological types by individuals belonging to different ethnoterritorial and age groups is the subject matter of a special branch of physical anthropology-anthropoaesthetics, which studies the peculiarities of the aesthetic preference of human facial features in modern populations, analyzing the dependence of human perception on the anthropological environment (Haldeyeva, 2004).     

Whatever happened to economic anthropology?1

In the 1970s, economic anthropology, along with kinship and ecological anthropology, was regarded as a core discipline in the teaching of anthropology. The centrality of all these subjects was reflected in the debates of the time. For economic anthropology, understanding the articulation of modes of production was the problem; the holy trinity—tribe, peasant, capitalist—provided the key terms of the debate. These terms, and this problem, are history. The discipline of anthropology has been de‐cored over the past 30 years: economic anthropology, kinship and ecological anthropology are not even on the agenda in many universities today (ANU included). This presents us with a paradox because these academic trends are in inverse proportion to the importance of contemporary developments in the economy, the family and ecology as global problems facing humanity. This paradox must be addressed not by arguing for a rehabilitation of the core subjects of the 1970s—those days are long gone—but by taking a critical look at the implicit theories of value that inform anthropological thinking about the economy, the family and ecology today. I shall argue that, along with neoliberalism, ‘agency’ has been the key term of the new paradigm that emerged in the 1970s, that this paradigm is about to become history and that new ways of thinking about the economy will have to emerge as we all become victims of the ‘financialisation’ of Europe, the industrialisation of Asia and the desiccation of Australia.     

Exploring Entrainment Patterns of Human Emotion in Social Media

Emotion entrainment, which is generally defined as the synchronous convergence of human emotions, performs many important social functions. However, what the specific mechanisms of emotion entrainment are beyond in-person interactions, and how human emotions evolve under different entrainment patterns in large-scale social communities, are still unknown. In this paper, we aim to examine the massive emotion entrainment patterns and understand the underlying mechanisms in the context of social media. As modeling emotion dynamics on a large scale is often challenging, we elaborate a pragmatic framework to characterize and quantify the entrainment phenomenon. By applying this framework on the datasets from two large-scale social media platforms, we find that the emotions of online users entrain through social networks. We further uncover that online users often form their relations via dual entrainment, while maintain it through single entrainment. Remarkably, the emotions of online users are more convergent in nonreciprocal entrainment. Building on these findings, we develop an entrainment augmented model for emotion prediction. Experimental results suggest that entrainment patterns inform emotion proximity in dyads, and encoding their associations promotes emotion prediction. This work can further help us to understand the underlying dynamic process of large-scale online interactions and make more reasonable decisions regarding emergency situations, epidemic diseases, and political campaigns in cyberspace.     

Archaeology, anthropology and subsistence

Wherever and whenever one may wish to place the roots of the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology, the subsistence-based categories of savage hunters and civilized farmers still lie at the heart of the division of much contemporary intellectual labour. The sources of these categories can be traced back into the seventeenth century, although they were first systematically related to (pre)history and cultural difference in the mid-eighteenth century. The subsequent relations between these categories and the changing disciplines of ethnology, ethnography, and archaeology have not remained constant over time or space. However, the underlying assumption that subsistence practices are meaningful and useful societal categories has persisted for the past 250 years. The relationship between such concepts, the closely associated idea of social evolution, and anthropology and archaeology, in particular from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, is examined. It is suggested that finding ways of writing across such categories is a necessary step for the future of both disciplines.     

Macro-evolutionary studies of cultural diversity: a review of empirical studies of cultural transmission and cultural adaptation

A growing body of theoretical and empirical research has examined cultural transmission and adaptive cultural behaviour at the individual, within-group level. However, relatively few studies have tried to examine proximate transmission or test ultimate adaptive hypotheses about behavioural or cultural diversity at a between-societies macro-level. In both the history of anthropology and in present-day work, a common approach to examining adaptive behaviour at the macro-level has been through correlating various cultural traits with features of ecology. We discuss some difficulties with simple ecological associations, and then review cultural phylogenetic studies that have attempted to go beyond correlations to understand the underlying cultural evolutionary processes. We conclude with an example of a phylogenetically controlled approach to understanding proximate transmission pathways in Austronesian cultural diversity.     

Beyond Anthropology,Towards Actuality1

Anthropology in Australia is at a critical juncture. This paper discusses the way in which the discipline has been challenged at the institutional level, in part due to pressures arising from economic rationalisation within universities. Anthropology, however, must take some responsibility for its condition. Psychology has established itself as the primary ‘human’ discipline to provide qualifications appropriate for professional employment. At a more scholarly level, anthropology's traditional zones of concern have been taken over by others, including history and cultural studies. Can we, and should we, demystify anthropology and its practices? Can we reposition anthropology with a broader vision of the human experience, and what will happen if we cannot?     

Forensic social anthropology: an Australian perspective

If forensic physical anthropology is the science of biological processes and related medico-legal investigations, then forensic social anthropology is the science of cultural processes and related socio-legal investigations. This article lays out the terms, definitions, and application of forensic specialization in social anthropology as it is practised in Australia. The objective of this exercise is to equip both physical and social anthropologists with a consilient model for the joint engagement of their parent discipline in legal proceedings where cultural processes are deemed relevant by a court or other legally empowered body. As demonstrated in Australia, the potential applications of forensic social anthropology range across a variety of matters involving both civil and criminal investigation. Such matters include systematic land expropriation, child removal, forced population movement, modern-day slavery, unlawful detention, and other important social phenomena. The questionable legality of these kinds of phenomena is not isolated to Australia but is, rather, of international significance.     

History and future of visual anthropology

Visual recording of communication processes between communities or individuals by means of filming of photographing is of significant importance in anthropology, as it documents on site the specific features of various social communities in their encounter with the researcher. In terms of film industry, it is a sort of ethno-documentary pursuing originality and objectivity in recording the given subject, thus fulfilling the research mission. However, the potential of visual anthropology significantly exceeds the mere audiovisual recording of ethnologic realities. Modern methods of analysing and evaluating the role of visual anthropology suggest that it is a technical research service aimed at documenting the status quo. If the direction of proactive approach were taken, then the term ,visual anthropology' could be changed to ,anthropology of the visual,. This apparently cosmetic change of name is actually significantly more accurate, suggesting the denoted proactive swift in perceiving visual anthropology, where visual methods are employed to ,provoke< the reaction of an individual or of the community. In this way the "anthropology of the visual, is promoted to a new scientific sub-anthropological discipline.     

Human neuropsychology and the concept of culture

American anthropology is distinguished by a four-fields approach in which biological, cultural, archaeological, and linguistic dimensions of behavior are examined in evolutionary and cross-cultural perspective. Nevertheless, assumptions of mind-body dualism pervade scholarly thinking in anthropology and have prevented the development of a truly integrated science of human experience. This dualism is most exemplified by the lack of consideration of the role of the brain in both “physical” and “mental” processes, including phenomena labeled as cultural. In this paper, I review neural mechanisms of learning, communication, and emotion, and discuss the implications of these findings for culture theory. Lee Xenakis Blonder is an assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Science and the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, University of Kentucky Medical School, Lexington. She is currently examining the effects of stroke in different regions of the brain on language, nonverbal communication, and emotional processing in an attempt to better understand human brain and behavior relations. Recent publications include “Neuropsychological Functioning in Hemiparkinsonism” (with R. E. Gur, R. C. Gur, A. J. Saykin, and H. I. Hurtig),Brain and Cognition 9:244–257 (1989).     

The Misrepresentation of Anthropology and Its Consequences

Critiques of anthropology from within the discipline and from without have been a major feature of our intellectual life since the late 1960s. The theoretical and empirical bases of cultural and social anthropology have been under attack since the Marxist and New Left critiques of the 1960s to those coming more recently from poststructuralism, postmodernist and literary theory, and postcolonial and cultural studies. As a result, several academic generations have been educated by reading the attacks on the field but rarely dealing with the actual theoretical works and ethnographies of earlier anthropologists. This article deals with several of the most common charges leveled at anthropology, notably that it has regularly and necessarily exoticized "Others," has been ahistorical, and has treated each culture as if it were an isolate, unconnected to any other. It demonstrates how inaccurate and easily falsifiable such claims are and recommends a critical reevaluation of these unexamined and destructive cliches,     

Reclaiming Applied Anthropology: Its Past, Present, and Future

Growing concerns about anthropology's impact in both academia and the broader social arena have led to calls for more "public" and more relevant anthropology. In this article, we expand on these exhortations, by calling for systematic joining of critical social theory with application and pragmatic engagement with contemporary problems. We argue for the repositioning of applied anthropology as a vital component of the broader discipline and suggest that it should serve as a framework for constructing a more engaged anthropology. In revisiting disciplinary history and critiques of applied anthropology, we demonstrate the central role that application has played throughout anthropology's evolution, address common misconceptions that serve as barriers to disciplinary integration, examine the role of advocacy in relation to greater engagement as well as the relationship of theory to practice, and conclude with an assessment of the diverse work that is subsumed under the inclusive rubric of "anthropology in use."     

Introduction to “Moral (and Other) Laboratories”

“Moral (and other) laboratories” is a special issue that draws on Cheryl Mattingly’s notion of the “moral laboratory” to explore the uncanny interface between laboratory ethnography and moral anthropology, and to examine the relationship between experience and experiment. We ask whether laboratory work may provoke new insights about experimental practices in other social spaces such as homes, clinics, and neighborhoods, and conversely, whether the study of morality may provoke new insights about laboratory practices as they unfold in the day-to-day interactions between test tubes, animals, apparatuses, scientists, and technicians. The papers in this collection examine issues unique to authors’ individual projects, but as a whole, they share a common theme: moral experimentation—the work of finding different ways of relating—occurs in relation to the suffering of something or someone, or in response to some kind of moral predicament that tests cultural and historically shaped “human values.” The collection as a whole intends to push for the theoretical status of not merely experience itself, but also of possibility, in exploring uncertain border zones of various kinds—between the human and the animal, between codified ethical rules and ordinary ethics, and between “real” and metaphorical laboratories.     

Surrender to the Market: Thoughts on Anthropology,The Body Shop,and Intellectuals1

The direction of anthropology over the last century is tied to the shifts from colonialism to postcolonialism and from modernism to postmodernism. These shifts have seen the thoroughgoing incorporation of the world population into the economic, political and juridical domain established through the last throes of colonialism and the transmutations of capitalism and the State. Anthropology, a discipline whose history shows close and regular links with colonial government, also transforms in association with the world it describes and partly creates. Two dominant trends in contemporary anthropology—applied consultancy and historicist self‐reflexivity—are compared for the ways they represent the transmutation, which is characterised, following Fredric Jameson as ‘the surrender to the market’. In this way it is asserted that just as the discipline had hitherto revealed its links to colonialism, it now reveals its links to globalisation through a form of commodified self‐obsession. To illustrate this quality the paper considers the global chain of cosmetics stores, The Body Shop, as an example of ‘late capitalism’ and the moral juridical framework of globalisation. Finally, it treats these developments in anthropology as more generally affecting intellectuals and knowledge production through the promotion of intellectual ‘silence’.     

Anthropology as a nation-building rhetoric: the shaping of Turkish anthropology (from 1850s to 1940s)

Although the presence of anthropology is strongly felt during the first decades of the Turkish republican history, namely the period between 1923 and 1940, it is striking to see that the discipline was conceived more as a nation-building device than a scientific endeavour. This article traces the formation of Turkish anthropology from the late Ottoman period to the consolidation of the Republican regime, emphasizing the interesting oscillations between physical and social/cultural anthropologies, which are alternately brought to fore according to the requirements the political agenda.