American Anthropology in the Middle Decades: A View from Hollywood

North American anthropology had an earlier interest in studies of the United States and in critical approaches than is often recognized. Such interests were pursued before World War II but were set aside during the war and in anthropology's postwar expansion. This perspective on anthropological history was inspired by the work of Hortense Powdermaker, specifically the disjunction between her 1930s research in segregated Mississippi and her pioneering study of Hollywood in the late 1940s. Reexamining that study highlights the theoretical framework that led to omissions in her account of Hollywood, while her explanation of movie content invites a more diachronic approach. Parallels between the history of the movies and that of cultural anthropology from the 1930s through the 1960s suggest how both were shaped by the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.     

Primate Behavioral Ecology: From Ethnography to Ethology and Back

Nonhuman primates occupy a special niche in anthropology because of the comparative insights into humans they provide. Initial anthropological interest in primates targeted the apes for their close phylogenetic relationships with humans, and the semiterrestrial Old World monkeys for their ecological similarities with hominids adapting to life on the ground. From the earliest anecdotal reports of tool use and hunting to more contemporary quantitative analyses of local "cultural" traditions, nonhuman primates have challenged deep-rooted concepts of human uniqueness and redefined the boundaries between us and other animals. Yet, despite the long-standing influence of primate studies in anthropology, approaches to studying primates began diverging from those of earlier ethnographers. Advances in primatology, particularly during the 1990s, have included a much deeper understanding of how ecology, phylogeny, and demography affect behavior. Insights into intraspecific, population-level variation represent an important area of convergence between primatology, other areas of anthropology, and conservation biology. [Keywords: primate behavioral ecology, anthropocentrism, evolutionary theory, systematic methods, biology]     

The American Anthropological Association and the Values of Science, 1935-70

American anthropologists have repeatedly addressed questions about the nature of anthropology as a science and the relationship of anthropology to society. Complex interactions between anthropology and political events in American life have challenged definitions of science, including anthropologists as citizens, scientists, and professionals and the roles they appropriately play. A series of exchanges and events between the 1930s and 1970 are examined in order to shed light on some of the recurrent dilemmas of definition and practice in anthropology as anthropologists have grappled with them in different times and in relation to different contexts. [Keywords: U.S. anthropology, U.S. history, science]     

First Recipients of Anthropological Doctorates in the United States, 1891-1930

This article seeks to show the origins of the professionalization of anthropology by examining early doctoral dissertations in this field and their authors. The bibliography consists of citations with biographical details of the authors, when known, of doctoral dissertations in anthropology from United States educational institutions up to 1930. One hundred twenty-four citations are given all, representing 18 institutions. Forty-one of the dissertations were not written for degrees in anthropology. Besides documenting existence of anthropological work outside recognized graduate programs of anthropology, the bibliography provides a demographic profile of anthropology and shows the distribution of subdiscipline concentrations and regional foci, as well as patterns in the professional domination of anthropology by graduates of various programs and in the publication of doctoral research. [Keywords: dissertations, anthropology—history, anthropology—bibliography, scholarly communication, graduate education]     

耳螺的研究现状与展望

耳螺(Ellobiid)是一类特殊的原始有肺类软体动物,大多嗜盐,主要分布于海陆过渡区的高潮带和潮上带.耳螺在软体动物进化史上具有特殊地位,并且因其对环境变迁和人为干扰十分敏感,可作为环境评估的重要指标种.过去2个多世纪,众多学者已经对耳螺的形态学、解剖学、分类学和生态学等开展了系统的研究.本文概述了耳螺研究的3个阶段...     

The rise of academic physical anthropology in the United States (1880–1980): A historical overview

This paper surveys the development of physical anthropology in the period from 1880 to 1980, beginning with the founding of the U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology and the advent of professionalism in anthropology. The growth of physical anthropology within academic anthropology and the effect of the bias toward ethnology and archaeology is considered. Three historical phases are suggested: pre-1900, the pre-academic period of physical anthropology; 1900–1930, the initial development of academic physical anthropology, which witnessed the founding of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology and the American Association of Physical Anthropologists by Hrdli?ka, and of Hooton's program at Harvard University; 1930-present, which has seen the full development of physical anthropology in an academic context.     

‘Being Honest to my Science’: Reo Fortune and J.H.P. Murray, 1927-301

Reo Fortune worked on Tewara Island in the D'Entrecasteaux group in the Australian Territory of Papua from November 1927 to May 1928. His relations with the Lieutenant-Governor J.H.P. Murray and the government anthropologist F.E. Williams were problematic. In this paper I argue that Fortune's actions, along with increasing tension between Murray and Radcliffe-Brown, were sufficient for a change in Murray's attitude towards continued independent anthropological research in Papua. After 1930, despite his early support for colonial officers receiving training in anthropology, Murray sent no cadets or officers for training in the university. With the exceptions of Geza Roheim and Paul Wirz, both in 1930, Williams conducted all anthropological research in Papua until the outbreak of the Pacific War in December 1941.     

Human races and the problem of variability--a recommendation for the solution by Franz Weidenreich

In parts of anthropology race concepts were playing a central role for evolutionary reconstruction as a means for assessment and study of human variability. This method was criticised already quite early. In this paper the arguments of one of those early critics, Franz Weidenreich, are introduced and reconstructed on a methodological basis. While avoiding race concepts, Franz Weidenreich developed other methods for reconstructing lines of evolutionary development. He suggested to use an extended concept of physical constitution. This concept is also introduced and studied with reference to its methodological foundations.     

Olive Pink and the Encounter with the Academy

Olive Pink studied anthropology at the University of Sydney under Professor A.P. Elkin. Although she did fieldwork among the Northern Aranda and Wailbri of Central Australia, she became disenchanted with anthropology and lived a reclusive life in Alice Springs. In this paper I present a brief outline of her life, particularly during the 1930's I point to the problems she encountered and suggested that she needs to be relocated within her discipline.     

A Particular Synthesis: Aleksandr Promptov and Speciation in Birds

During the 1930s, Aleksandr Promptov—a student of the founder of Russian population genetics Sergei Chetverikov—developed an elaborate concept of speciation in birds. He conducted field investigations aimed at giving a naturalistic content to the theoretical formulations and laboratory models of evolutionary processes advanced within the framework of population genetics, placing particular emphasis on the evolutionary role of bird behavior. Yet, although highly synthetic in combining biogeographical, taxonomic, genetic, ecological, and behavioral studies, Promptov’s speciation concept was ignored by the architects of the 1930s and 1940s evolutionary synthesis, including Theodosius Dobzhnasky, Ernst Mayr, and Julian Huxley. In this article, I argue that the story of Promptov’s concept and its reception by other evolutionists challenges the traditional presentation of the synthesis as a singular, international process of the unification of biology, which led to the creation of a universal synthetic theory of evolution. It suggests that during the same time period, within largely the same theoretical framework, there were multiple, intrinsically local, attempts at creating synthetic evolutionary concepts. These concepts were often quite particular—in their taxonomic applicability, in their explanations of various evolutionary factors, and in the range of disciplines unified in the synthesis. Apparently, these concepts ran contrary to the universal aspirations of the synthesis architects, and as a result, they were disregarded, first by the architects and later by historians of the evolutionary synthesis.     

The Skeleton in the Physical Anthropology Closet1

Abstract

The “new” and “newer” concepts of physical anthropology are oriented to biochemical, genetic and evolutionary studies. While theseareneededand welcome concepts, they often slight the basic tools of anthropometry and typology. Also, the new and newer physical anthropology tends to separate biological factors from their cultural contexts. The writer discusses several questions posed by this shift in emphasis and suggests that the lack of a functional approach lessens the effectiveness of both biologically and culturally oriented investigators.     

Population Cycles,Disease, and Networks of Ecological Knowledge

Wildlife populations in the northern reaches of the globe have long been observed to fluctuate or cycle periodically, with dramatic increases followed by catastrophic crashes. Focusing on the early work of Charles S. Elton, this article analyzes how investigations into population cycles shaped the development of Anglo-American animal ecology during the 1920s–1930s. Population cycling revealed patterns that challenged ideas about the “balance” of nature; stimulated efforts to quantify population data; and brought animal ecology into conversation with intellectual debates about natural selection. Elton used the problem of understanding wildlife population cycles to explore a central tension in ecological thought: the relative influences of local conditions (food supply, predation) and universal forces (such as climate change and natural selection) in regulating wild animal populations. He also sought patronage and built research practices and the influential Bureau of Animal Population around questions of population regulation during the 1930s. Focusing on disease as a local population regulator that could interact with global climatic influences, Elton facilitated an interdisciplinary and population-based approach in early animal ecology. Elton created a network of epidemiologists, conservationists, pathologists and mathematicians, who contributed to population cycle research. I argue that, although these people often remained peripheral to ecology, their ideas shaped the young discipline. Particularly important were the concepts of abundance, density, and disease; and the interactions between these factors and natural selection. However, Elton’s reliance on density dependence unwittingly helped set up conditions conducive to the development of controversies in animal ecology in later years. While ecologists did not come to consensus on the ultimate causes of population cycles, this phenomenon was an important early catalyst for the development of theory and practice in animal ecology.     

Arnold van Gennep: The Hermit of Bourg-la-Reine

Arnold van Gennep was a leader in the field of French folklore and ethnology. His life was one of prolific publication, constant intellectual growth, and incisive criticism of the French social sciences. Yet he remained an outcast from the French academic life. From a survey of his writings and those of members of L'Année Sociologique, the lines of tension which resulted in van Gennep's exclusion from academe are traced . [Arnold van Gennep, Emile Durkheim, history of anthropology and folklore, French folklore, French sociology]     

Magic,myth and medicine

Carrots, celery, caraway and cumin and their relatives in the Apiaceae (Umbelliferae) have a long history of human use dating from our earliest written records. A large body of folklore has accumulated on their magical and mythical curative properties. Many of the early uses have persisted as part of 20th century folklore, sometimes supplementary to modern medicine. Studies largely during the last half of this century have provided the chemical bases for some of the ancient cures.     

Camelot at Yale: The Construction and Dismantling of the Sapirian Synthesis, 1931-39

For a brief shining moment in the 1930s, Edward Sapir stood at the forefront of a new synthesis of Boasian ethnology and linguistics. But his call to Yale in 1931 was a mandate taken up against formidable odds, and the grand synthesis soon began to unravel. George Peter Murdock, who became chairman in 1939, moved the department toward science and "verified theory." In the period immediately following World War II, Sapir's program was not revived, but its legacies have come to us by way of the Yale ethnoscience and linguistic anthropology of the 1960s, and his synthesis remains a viable option for Americanist anthropology at the millennium.     

Eugenic and sexual folklores and the castration of sex offenders in the Netherlands (1938-1968)

This contribution questions the positive/negative eugenics dichotomy that typifies the historiography on the eugenic movement in the Netherlands and the claim that this movement was mostly marginal because only positive eugenics was pursued. From 1938 to 1968 in the Netherlands, after a decade of debates, 400 sex offenders who had been committed to asylums for the criminally insane were 'voluntarily' and 'therapeutically' castrated. For political reasons debates on castration, meant to create consensus, eliminated any reference to or connotation with eugenics, yet these policies were unthinkable without them. This article shows that thinking about social and sexual problems and their solutions in the 1930s were permeated by eugenic folklore which in turn was informed by sexual folklore. Both eugenic and sexual lore, as common sense, or as ways of knowing, were about individual and collective loss of self control which was referred to with a catch-all phrase: 'hypersexuality'. Although sexual classifications used in diagnosing sex offenders suggested the existence of discrete sexual categories, homosexuality for instance was not seen as a sexual alternative or as an identity but as the extent to which an offender suffered from a form of hypersexuality that threatened the fabric of society.     

The fitness of human sociobiology: the future utility of four concepts in four subdisciplines.

Reported here are the results of a survey inquiring into the rate of acceptance of four sociobiological concepts in regard to their usefulness for future research. Included in the survey were members of four subdisciplines: animal behavior (biology), biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, and developmental psychology. Three types of institutions were included: universities, four- and five-year colleges, and community colleges. A total of 1,631 responses are reported with the degree of acceptance varying from highest to lowest as follows: biology, biological anthropology, developmental psychology, and cultural anthropology. These variations are related to the central concepts of each subdiscipline.     

N.W. Thomas and colonial anthropology in British West Africa: reappraising a cautionary tale

As the first government anthropologist to be appointed by the British Colonial Office, Northcote Whitridge Thomas (1868‐1936) has earned a place in the footnotes of anthropological history. Historians of the discipline have discussed his career in West Africa in their wider explorations of the relationship between anthropology and colonial administration in the early twentieth century. Through this work, an orthodox account of Thomas has emerged as an eccentric dilettante who damaged the reputation of the discipline, setting back its adoption as a practical science of value to colonial governance by a generation or more. Adopting a micro‐historical approach, closer scrutiny of the archival evidence challenges this orthodoxy, and places Thomas more centrally within the professional networks and practices of British anthropology in the period 1900 to 1915. As well as correcting the record concerning Thomas's professional reputation, a more complex picture emerges regarding the colonial authorities’ attitudes towards anthropology and the reason why this early experiment in colonial anthropology failed.     

The Human–Macaque Interface: Conservation Implications of Current and Future Overlap and Conflict in Lore Lindu National Park, Sulawesi, Indonesia

Here, I examine overlapping resource use of forest and cultivated resources by villagers and tonkean macaques (Macaca tonkeana) in Lore Lindu National Park, Sulawesi, Indonesia. An integrative research design was employed, using methods from primatology and cultural anthropology, in conjunction with quantitative measurements of cacao crop loss. The results indicate that the current patterns of overlapping resource use may not be severely affecting the tonkean macaques or villagers in Lindu. The research does, however, point to possible future difficulty if cacao crop raiding by macaques increases, and as changing socioeconomic trends and loss of traditional folklore result in further modification of macaque habitat. Successful strategies to ameliorate human–macaque conflict may require efforts aimed at the adoption of alternative buffer zone crops that use shade-management systems, the deliberate protection of important macaque food species, and increasing local tolerance to crop raiding by exploring the role of macaques in forest regeneration.