Cyber anthropology or anthropology in cyberspace

As a variety of anthropology, cyber anthropology is considered to be the fastest growing sub branch in the science. It is based on synergic effects of multimedia systems and hypermedia, using their comparative advantages. One of the least researched fields of cyber anthropology is the relationship of individuals and social groups with a multimedia document in terms of their perception of such subject. This is because the foundation of social-informatics perception in the society is created based on the evidence of a real life, whereas here the perception is established at the level of virtual, i.e. online life. The rhetorical question here is whether an identical content causes the same or different user reactions, depending on whether it was perceived offline or online, i.e. to what extend does the medium (and not the information content) dictate the user perception. In this respect the research titled "Perception of online museum content creators and actual habits of Croatian online museum visitors" can be a "case study" for the impact of "cyber potential" on the classic anthropological paradigm.     

Family therapy and anthropology

There has been among family therapists a widespread belief that anthropology is at least useful if not kindred to their field. The belief springs from the assumption that families in different cultural milieus have different ways of expressing their experience of intimacy in everyday life. If this is true, family organization transcends culture, and the latter is a mere language or mode of expression of the more basic pillar of family organization. However, the assumption is also strong that different cultural contexts produce different types of families, and the natural consequence of this hypothesis is that family therapy as developed in the United States would be restricted to dealing with American families, while the problems of family life elsewhere should be meted by the local cultural ways. These two hypotheses, namely that of family universality and that of cultural relativism, are far ends of a continuum. The more interesting and real cases lie somewhere in the middle.In the following argument I will discuss this subject by presenting a brief overview of family therapy's theories and practices for those readers who know nothing about it, by reviewing a recent book that makes the claim that family therapists will benefit from some kind of anthropological knowledge, and finally by turning the question on its head and addressing the interest family therapy may have for anthropologists.     

History of anthropology

The author describes the history of biological anthropology with special reference to the period from 17th to 19th century. The most important anthropological theories and methodological developments of that time as well as their representatives are discussed in detail.     

Perspectives on the anthropology of birth

Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry -     

Toward conservational anthropology: addressing anthropocentric bias in anthropology

Anthropological literature addressing conservation and development often blames ‘conservationists’ as being neo-imperialist in their attempts to institute limits to commercial activities by imposing their post-materialist eco-ideology. The author argues that this view of conservationists is ironic in light of the fact that the very notion of ‘development’ is arguably an imposition of the (Western) elites. The anthropocentric bias in anthropology also permeates constructivist ethnographies of human–animal ‘interactions,’ which tend to emphasize the socio-cultural complexity and interconnectivity rather than the unequal and often extractive nature of this ‘interaction.’ Anthropocentrism is argued to be counteractive to reconciling conservationists’ efforts at environmental protection with the traditional ontologies of the interdependency of human-nature relationship.     

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.     

The Islam of anthropology

Research on ‘Muslim societies’ is a controversial topic in the present, particularly given the US army’s current employment of anthropological experts in war zones under military occupation. In 2006 the UK Foreign Office, too, sought to include anthropologists in its worldwide research project entitled ‘Combating Terrorism by Countering Radicalization’, with grants given outside the normal process of research funding and differently assessed. In this article, I immodestly argue for how the discipline of anthropology should apprehend and analyse Islam in the present political context. The paper claims that anthropological research provides an antidote to the Islamophobia of much talk about Islam in the Australian public sphere, an Islamophobia originating not only from the right but from some leftists and feminists as well.