Cool and Crazy: Anthropological Film at the Point of Convergence between Humanities and Social Science

ABSTRACT

The use of film as a tool in anthropological fieldwork is a challenge to traditional ways of thinking about scientific research. Nevertheless, documentary filming of the informants in their own context has proved to be an interesting supplement in the exploration of what the anthropological research field actually covers. Furthermore, film work confronts the researchers with aesthetic aspects of mediation that have not been epistemically well attended to within social science. This article highlights pivotal problems in the professional no-man's-land where visual culture studies take place, as exemplified by the film Cool and Crazy.     

Psychospiritual ecoscience: The Ju/'hoansi and cultural tourism

The relation between knowledge and the visual, on the one hand, and knowledge about peoples on the other, is a prime concern in visual anthropology. The impact of the visual on the everyday life of the Ju/'hoansi is my concern here. This paper is offered in two parts: this article and the one which follows.

The results of a field‐trip in July 1996 to Otjozondjupa (previously known as Bush‐manland) in Namibia are discussed in terms of the question: How do subjects make sense of the anthropological?¹ Our “subject community” was the Ju/'hoansi of Nyae Nyae. The “texts” we interrogated through Ju/'hoansi popular memory were those made of them by the documentary filmmaker John Marshall, a South African feature‐film director, Jamie Uys, and one by the Discovery Channel.     

Bioprospecting the African Renaissance: The new value of <Emphasis Type="Italic">muthi</Emphasis> in South Africa

This article gives an overview of anthropological research on bioprospecting in general and of available literature related to bioprospecting particularly in South Africa. It points out how new insights on value regimes concerning plant-based medicines may be gained through further research and is meant to contribute to a critical discussion about the ethics of Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS). In South Africa, traditional healers, plant gatherers, petty traders, researchers and private investors are assembled around the issues of standardization and commercialization of knowledge about plants. This coincides with a nation-building project which promotes the revitalization of local knowledge within the so called African Renaissance. A social science analysis of the transformation of so called Traditional Medicine (TM) may shed light onto this renaissance by tracing social arenas in which different regimes of value are brought into conflict. When medicinal plants turn into assets in a national and global economy, they seem to be manipulated and transformed in relation to their capacity to promote health, their market value, and their potential to construct new ethics of development. In this context, the translation of socially and culturally situated local knowledge about muthi into global pharmaceuticals creates new forms of agency as well as new power differentials between the different actors involved.     

Fulani Knowledge of the Ecological Impacts of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Khaya senegalensis</Emphasis> (Meliaceae) Foliage Harvest in Benin and its Implications for Sustainable Harvest

Fulani Knowledge of the Ecological Impacts of Khaya senegalensis (Meliaceae) Foliage Harvest in Benin and Its Implications for Sustainable Harvest. An improved understanding of how local people view their impacts on the resources they exploit and how they perceive that their resources are affected by other factors can provide insight into reasons some resources are overexploited and into strategies to conserve them. In West Africa, various tree species are heavily harvested by indigenous herders for foliage to feed their cattle. The reported declines in populations of several of these species have both biological and cultural implications, as cattle are an integral part of indigenous cultures and livelihoods. In this study we investigated Fulani herders’ practices, knowledge, and perceptions of the ecological impacts of harvesting foliage of African mahogany, Khaya senegalensis, in Benin, and we tested some of the factors that may influence them. Fulani herders have detailed ecological knowledge of their impacts on the resources they depend on, and this is finely tuned to local ecological conditions. This knowledge is also widely spread across different sectors of Fulani communities and is highly congruent with scientific findings. However, due to the open-access context of K. senegalensis populations, detailed knowledge of sustainability does not translate into sustainable practices. Fulani perceptions of threats to populations differ significantly between ecological regions and provide key insights for locally relevant resource management plans. Traditional Fulani practices such as the sopoodu provide a basis for sustainable management of proposed Fulani-owned K. senegalensis plantations. This study illustrates how the assessment of local ecological knowledge, practices, and perceptions can play a key role in the design of culturally-appropriate conservation plans.     

Maori hapuu and their History

Current research by historians and lawyers in Maori land and fisheries claims is broaching issues of Maori kinship calling for renewed social anthropological research. In this essay I review the history of social anthropological research in Maori kinship through 1975, a lapse in this research until the late 1980s, and a recent revival. A central problem of this research has been the conceptualisation of Maori hapuu (‘subtribes’) or cognatic descent groups. A critique of the recent analyses suggests that the early failure of social anthropologists to understand hapuu in historical context continues, although in different theoretical forms. The burgeoning research by historians and lawyers, while lacking fundamental anthropological insights, suggests that hapuu cannot be separated from their specific history.     

Some Ecological Concepts and Their Implications ror Settlement Archaeology

Abstract

In the field of archaeology there has been an increasing concern for the standardization of terminology, units of measurement, and theoretical concepts. At the same time there has been a tremendous influx of new ideas, challenges to established concepts and theories, and a rethinking of the place of archaeology in the social sciences. Much of this re-evaluation has come about as a result of new insights into the nature of human society and, perhaps more importantly, a general opening up of the field in the sense that ideas, theories, and techniques developed in the social, biological, physical, and mathematical sciences are being introduced and tested for their application in the solution of anthropological and archaeological questions. One area which has become increasingly important as a source of concepts and theory is the field of biological ecology. This discussion considers two of these ecological concepts (seasonality, econiche) and proposes a sequence of socio-ecological units (individual, group, population, society, eco-community, eco-system) which it is believed are useful in the study of prehistoric social and settlement systems.     

The Reprise of Malinowski

ABSTRACT

Ways of Baloma is a deliberate attempt to move Anthropology as a discipline by means of a new account of a classic locale for the practice. How does it manage this purpose? This essay evaluates Mosko’s attempt from the perspective of another ethnographer with long-term ethnographic research in the Kula Ring. Paradoxes abound in the book and are featured in this review. For while Malinowski’s theoretical pronouncements quickly lost their significance for most anthropologists, his Trobriand ethnography became a model in its own right. And it is this model Mosko attempts to hold up for review and revision based on his view of the contemporary theoretical state of the art. This review outlines some of the strategies and ideas, as well as the regional locale, Mosko deploys in an attempt to make a new Trobriand ethnography a model for anthropological analysis.     

Stygofauna Abundance and Distribution in the Fissures and Caves of the Nardò (Southern Italy) Fractured Aquifer Subject to Reclaimed Water Injections

The demographic growth in developing countries and the increasing pressure of anthropological activities in industrialized states around the world, are leading to a gradual contamination of the natural habitats of our planet. Although the extent of these effects is unclear, the results can already seen in the quality of natural resources, which are intensely stressed by climate changes (greenhouse effect, nutrients load, water consumption, etc.) and by direct contamination of toxic wastes. This could progressively destroy the variety of faunal species and, indeed, recent warming has caused changes in species distribution and abundance. This paper presents an investigation into the possible effects of climate change and anthropological pressures on the ground water fauna present at the Nardò site (Salento peninsula, Southern Italy). Three ecological categories were examined: stygoxenes, stygophiles and stygobionts. The latter are anophthalmic, without pigment, measure up to 10–12 mm, and live in water which moves throughout fissures and karstic caves of carbonate aquifers. These stygofauna are very sensitive to changes, due to environmental stresses, such as water temperature, dissolved oxygen, water salinity, pH and chemical constituents, in their hypogeous habitat. The stygofauna categories are active organisms which contribute to the biodegradation of organic compounds in wastewater artificially (or naturally) injected in the fractured subsoil. Weak information has been available until now about Salento stygofauna ability to resist water pollution caused by human activities. At the Nardò site 12000 m³/d of 2 ^y effluent from municipal treatment plants have been injected since 1991 in a natural sinkhole. Here, the abundance of the stygofauna, recovered in three wells (Colucci, Brusca and Spundurata cave) at progressive distances from sinkhole, and their distribution have been correlated with ground water constituents. Groundwater quality was monitored on each occasion that stygofauna were collected, during the spring-autumn seasons.     

National ceremonies: the pursuit of authenticity

Abstract

This article asks what, if any, impact national ceremonies have on the formation of national identities. Why are some ceremonies perceived as national and persistent through time, while others fail to achieve that status? It argues that national ceremonies can only be examined as specific types of situations – performances, rather than rituals – characterized by the relationship between performers and their audiences. Following Jeffery Alexander's cultural pragmatics theory, national ceremonies are seen as successful only when a performance is perceived as authentic. A ceremony's authenticity is, at best, a quality of experience among its audience. Only when the audience is transformed into willing participants through a performance's mise-en-scène can a national ceremony be seen as a ritual-like performance. The paper will conclude that the efficacy of these performances is temporary, and that even when a performance succeeds in creating a community of shared experience, that community dissolves with the end of the performance.     

Knowledge Discovery in Biology and Biotechnology Texts: A Review of Techniques,Evaluation Strategies,and Applications

Abstract

Arguably, the richest source of knowledge (as opposed to fact and data collections) about biology and biotechnology is captured in natural-language documents such as technical reports, conference proceedings and research articles. The automatic exploitation of this rich knowledge base for decision making, hypothesis management (generation and testing) and knowledge discovery constitutes a formidable challenge. Recently, a set of technologies collectively referred to as knowledge discovery in text (KDT) has been advocated as a promising approach to tackle this challenge. KDT comprises three main tasks: information retrieval, information extraction and text mining. These tasks are the focus of much recent scientific research and many algorithms have been developed and applied to documents and text in biology and biotechnology. This article introduces the basic concepts of KDT, provides an overview of some of these efforts in the field of bioscience and biotechnology, and presents a framework of commonly used techniques for evaluating KDT methods, tools and systems.     

‘Anthropological Investigation has Very Little Interest for Me’: Notes from Moravian Missionaries in Australia

ABSTRACT

As some of the first people to spend extended amounts of time with Indigenous peoples, missionaries were well placed to provide information to European and colonial audiences on non-European peoples. Moravian missionaries arrived in Australia in the mid-nineteenth century and over the next six decades worked amongst numerous Indigenous groups in the south-eastern part of Australia, in the interior, and in northern Queensland. This paper will trace the contributions made by German Moravian missionaries to anthropological and ethnographical knowledge both in the colonies as well as in Germany. It will particularly focus upon the connections forged in religious and scientific networks through anthropological work. The paper contends that a unified German identity was forged through scientific work that transcended denominational boundaries. Moreover, the ability to disseminate ethnographical knowledge within secular circles, both in the colonies and in Germany, provided legitimisation to missionary work and embedded missionaries within global knowledge networks. Through examining the work of one individual missionary, Friedrich Hagenauer, the fragility of these global knowledge networks is explored.     

Aspects of the semantics of emotions and feelings in Dalabon (South‐Western Arnhem Land,Australia)

This article describes two of the principal roots allowing the expression of emotions and feelings in Dalabon, an endangered language of South‐Western Arnhem Land. The first root, kangu, ‘belly’, is depicted linguistically as the location of emotions induced by interpersonal relationships. The belly is thus presented as the locus of good and bad moods generally and of conflict more specifically. Furthermore, the material properties of the belly—its fluidity in particular—impact on one’s temper and ability to deal with others in an ideologically prescribed manner. Speakers describe ritual manipulations undertaken on the belly of young infants in order to shape their temper. Kangu‐no may thus be described as a malleable interface between the person and the outside world, principally other people. The second root, yolh, may at first sight translate as ‘feelings’, either good or bad, but also means ‘appetite’, ‘drive’, ‘pep’. Yolh‐no is associated with the most intimate part of the person, one’s own aspirations that are independent of interactions with others. Although yolh‐no connotes the core self and kangu‐no, the belly, connotes relatedness to others, they are conceived as physiologically connected, so that material properties of the belly impact on the self. Thus, the semantic analysis of Dalabon, along with related anthropological observations, unveils an explicit conceptual and cultural attention to the distinction between emotions and feelings (as respectively defined in the article) and to the autonomy of the person within a constraining social framework. The article shows how this concern echoes and challenges both anthropological and philosophical considerations.     

Counting birds on farmland habitats in winter

Capsule Perimeter counts underestimate the number of birds using agricultural fields.

Aims To determine the degree to which farmland birds may be undercounted on field surveys and the factors influencing this.

Methods In a study of 96 fields, birds in the field were counted during a walk of the perimeter. Afterwards transects were walked across the field to determine the number of birds missed. Additionally in a national survey we looked at the birds seen in field transects expressed as a proportion of the total seen in the transect and on perimeter counts.

Results To obtain an accurate count of birds on a field requires the use of the whole-area search methodology especially for species such as Grey Partridge Perdix perdix, Snipe Gallinago gallinago, Skylark Alauda arvensis and Meadow Pipit Anthus pratensis. However, for a large number of species, including thrushes, flocking finches and buntings, over 90% of individuals can be recorded using the much less time-consuming perimeter count method.

Conclusions Perimeter counts are likely to be reliable for most species but special efforts may be required for a few cryptic species.     

The good Arab: conditional inclusion and settler colonial citizenship among Palestinian citizens of Israel in Jewish Tel Aviv

Dominant majorities often use idealized categories to validate the ‘goodness’ and deservingness of minority citizens. For Palestinian citizens of Israel, this category is the ‘good Arab’. Since its origins in early Jewish settlement of Palestine, it has become a powerful and controversial metaphor in Israeli public discourse. As an experienced condition of limited inclusion, the ‘good Arab’ exemplifies the Palestinian dilemma of accessing socioeconomic opportunities in Jewish Israeli spaces that stigmatize and fend off their ethnonational identity. Combining a historical genealogy of the ‘good Arab’ with ethnographic research among Palestinians in Tel Aviv, this article shows how a historically evolved logic of settler colonial control and indigenous erasure continues to define liberal frameworks of conditional citizenship and inclusion. Theorized through the emerging concept of conditional inclusion, these insights open up new avenues for analysis and comparison in anthropological debates surrounding indigenous struggles, settler colonialism, urban inclusion, and citizenship.     

How Malinowski sailed the Midnight Sun: the academic conference as ethnographic performance

Anthropology's scope is broader than its public, often limited to other anthropologists, while those who share their knowledge in the field with the ethnographer are too often cut off from anthropological debates about that knowledge. The anthropology conference, seen as research practice, proves successful in readmitting ethnographic subjects into anthropological dialogues. A symposium held in 2015 in Alotau, Papua New Guinea, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Malinowski's arrival in the Massim region, demonstrates how Massim peoples transcend anthropologists’ discursive presentations by using images, objects, and performances, diluting, along the way, anthropology's hierarchical control.     

German Missionaries and Australian Anthropology

ABSTRACT

In their primary task of converting Indigenous Australians to Christianity, German missions active in various parts of Australia through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century recorded relatively few successes. On the other hand, their endeavours in observing and recording Aboriginal languages and cultures have left a rich – and yet frequently overlooked – anthropological legacy. A common element in that legacy is their work in the area of linguistics, which they understood to be a necessary foundation for their evangelical work. Nonetheless, caution must be exercised in evaluating the German missionary contribution to Australian anthropology according to either national or religious paradigms. German anthropology, as practised within the community of missionaries and outside, evinces a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. Moreover German anthropologists, including missionaries, were by the late nineteenth century connected into international knowledge networks.     

‘Don't be so serious’: ethical play,Islam, and the transcendent

Modes of play and playfulness are central to ethics, yet have not been as rigorously considered by anthropologists as have more earnest forms of ethical life. In this article, I argue that attention to play reframes recent anthropological debates about ethical transcendence and immanence. I do so through a consideration of the Islamic discourse of ‘calculation’ (ḥisāb), an idiom by which Muslims articulate their hoped-for state in the hereafter through the imagery of a divine accounting of good and bad deeds. Drawing on ethnography from the Indonesian province of Aceh, I show how ḥisāb cultivates forms of epistemological play through which Muslims explore the inscrutability of transcendence. Such play reveals the socially and theologically emergent qualities of transcendent truths and values, suggesting hidden affinities between transcendent stances and more immanent forms of ethical life.     

Performing the Nation: Unauthorized Mexican Migration and the Politics of Language Use and the Body along the US–Mexico Border

ABSTRACT

Given the harsh environment for Mexican migrants in the US state of Arizona, migrants must think carefully about instantiating their identities in White public space through clothing, bodily movements, and language. This article explores the ways some unauthorized Mexican migrants in Arizona perform belonging to the USA by performing Chicano. Performing Chicano means passing as a US citizen, and migrants’ well-being can depend upon the recognition of those performances. Other unauthorized migrants perform the Supermexicana, to pass as Mexicans who are shopping in the USA, and need to hide the fact that they clandestinely live there. This article examines how some migrants perform a commitment to the USA in public while privately disavowing it, and how others perform a commitment to Mexico that they simply cannot have. This analysis argues that the experiences of unauthorized migrants in the USA can be productively seen through the lens of national performativity.