Ambiguating Agency: The Case of Malinowski's Ghost

Agency is useful to people not so much for controlling a site of authorship or authority as for ambiguating social relationships and authority. Both indigenous and anthropological practices of ambiguation are critical sites of discourse that allow the gaps and ruptures between epistemologies the possibility of positive value.     

Mauss,Interestedness, and Disinterestedness: Hawaiian and Maori Fisheries

This article uses Mauss's thesis on The Gift as a lens through which to critically compare Hawaiian and Māori fisheries. I focus, in particular, on the specific and paradoxical blending of interestedness and disinterestedness in the subsistence sector in Hawaii, and the historical separation of these phenomena in the context of fisheries management in New Zealand. As emergent financial commodities fish symbolises a new type of disjuncture between production and exchange, a disjuncture which is likely to be unsustainable in terms of either human or environmental costs.     

Anthropology, Kleinian Psychoanalysis, and the Subject in Culture

This essay uses the work of psychoanalyst Melanie Klein to reopen the dialogue between anthropology and psychoanalysis. It argues that Kleinian concepts enhance an anthropology that seeks out both intersubjective and intrasubjective difference and disjuncture, and it demonstrates the uses of major Kleinian concepts for addressing classic anthropological problems, including gender classification and the analysis of persecution in witchcraft and sorcery systems. Applying Kleinian concepts to the analysis of cultural-historical process, it shows how splitting and denial may be central to the reproduction and hegemony of dominant cultural systems through time and addresses the question of how to theorize the relationship among dominant cultural systems, social differentiation, and individual subjectivities.     

Cultural Evolution: A Review of Theory,Findings and Controversies

The last two decades have seen an explosion in research analysing cultural change as a Darwinian evolutionary process. Here I provide an overview of the theory of cultural evolution, including its intellectual history, major theoretical tenets and methods, key findings, and prominent criticisms and controversies. ‘Culture’ is defined as socially transmitted information. Cultural evolution is the theory that this socially transmitted information evolves in the manner laid out by Darwin in The Origin of Species, i.e. it comprises a system of variation, differential fitness and inheritance. Cultural evolution is not, however, neo-Darwinian, in that many of the details of genetic evolution may not apply, such as particulate inheritance and random mutation. Following a brief history of this idea, I review theoretical and empirical studies of cultural microevolution, which entails both selection-like processes wherein some cultural variants are more likely to be acquired and transmitted than others, plus transformative processes that alter cultural information during transmission. I also review how phylogenetic methods have been used to reconstruct cultural macroevolution, including the evolution of languages, technology and social organisation. Finally, I discuss recent controversies and debates, including the extent to which culture is proximate or ultimate, the relative role of selective and transformative processes in cultural evolution, the basis of cumulative cultural evolution, the evolution of large-scale human cooperation, and whether social learning is learned or innate. I conclude by highlighting the value of using evolutionary methods to study culture for both the social and biological sciences.     

God,Fatherland, Home: revealing the dark side of our anthropological virtue

The article uses ethnographic research on right-wing anti-government movements in Bolivia conducted at the height of social conflict and cultural violence in 2008 and 2009 to reflect more generally on the relationship between anthropological research, ethical commitment, and the politics of knowledge. The article first describes the relevant epistemological and political contexts in which engaged anthropology emerged as an important disciplinary current. It then goes on to consider how and why the author's research on right-wing political practice in Bolivia diverged from the disciplinary expectations of engaged anthropology. After reflecting on the implications of this shift, the article concludes by arguing for a methodological recalibration that allows anthropologists to take seriously the ideologies and cultural logics of contemporary right-wing mobilization, particularly social and political movements that are animated by what Edmund Burke described as ‘just prejudice’.     

The evolution of costly displays,cooperation and religion: credibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolution

This paper lays out an evolutionary theory for the cognitive foundations and cultural emergence of the extravagant displays (e.g., ritual mutilation, animal sacrifice and martyrdom) that have so tantalized social scientists, as well as more mundane actions that influence cultural learning and historical processes. In Part I, I use the logic of natural selection to build a theory for how and why seemingly costly displays influence the cognitive processes associated with cultural learning — why do “actions speak louder than words?” The core idea is that cultural learners can both avoid being manipulated by their models (those they are inclined to learn from) and more accurately assess their belief commitment by attending to displays or actions by the model that would seem costly to the model if he held beliefs different from those he expresses verbally. Part II examines the implications for cultural evolution of this learning bias in a simple evolutionary model. The model reveals the conditions under which this evolved bias can create stable sets of interlocking beliefs and practices, including quite costly practices. Part III explores how cultural evolution, driven by competition among groups or institutions stabilized at alternative sets of these interlocking belief-practice combinations, has led to the association of costly acts, often in the form of rituals, with deeper commitments to group beneficial ideologies, higher levels of cooperation within groups, and greater success in competition with other groups or institutions. I close by discussing the broader implications of these ideas for understanding various aspects of religious phenomena.     

Moments of Hierarchy: Constructing Social Stratification by Means of Language, Food, Space, and the Body in Pohnpei, Micronesia

In this paper I examine relationships between multiple semiotic modes used to construct hierarchy, and I show the importance of going beyond our traditional notion of language to look at how social actors employ a range of semiotic resources in organizing and interpreting social relations. Using examples from Pohnpei, Micronesia, I show how notions of superior and inferior are compounded through several sign systems—spatial relations, food sharing, the body, and language. These systems act oppositionally as well as cooperatively to produce situated ideas of social inequality, ideas built out of disequilibrium of bodies in space, of referents in language, and distribution of resources, as well as contradictions in the interactions of these signs. The compounding of signs not only recruits multiple sensory modes and perspectives in the exposition of hierarchical relations, but entails a notion of the contradictory nature of status relations. Using examples from a Pohnpeian feast, I explore the creative interplay of sign systems in the construction of "moments" of hierarchy in a large, public setting and discuss how through the practice of title-giving, which virtually every adult member of the society participates in, a particular idea of social inequality, built out of multiple sign systems, is mapped onto each body, [language, interaction, politics, Oceania, social stratification, hierarchy]     

The taste of freedom: commensality,liminality, and return amongst Afghan transnational migrants in the UK and Pakistan

This study follows UK Afghan migrants on a return visit to Northwest Pakistan. Combining theorizations of mobility, liminality, and commensality, it takes the picnic trip (chakar) as a little‐explored cultural lens through which to analyse symbolic formations of freedom, the shaping of Pakhtun transnational labour, and social hierarchies constituted through migration and return. As potent imaginary sites of remembering and forgetting, chakar map destinations left and not‐yet arrived at, routes of flight and return, and the burden of multi‐levelled constellations of political and economic insecurity on refugees living between the UK and Pakistan. The article argues that chakar are at once therapeutic and reproductive of ways in which personal and systemic realities combine features of hierarchy, exploitation, and patriarchy. They sustain participants in a tension between desires to preserve the hierarchies they conceal, and desires for more freedom. These contradictory experiences are usefully analysed through the emblematic arc of the ‘round trip’.     

Culture and Disability Behavior

A substantial amount of literature suggests that illness behavior in the United States is a product of a patient''s core culture; equally credible findings do not support this contention. Most students and graduates in the health care professions believe that illness and disability behavior are affected by a patient''s culture, but they are hard put to find convincing examples of that relationship. In experience with medical students studying the social and cultural bases of illness behavior, with patients who are disabled and with persons who claim disability in the absence of physical disease or disabling psychopathology, I observed no deviant disability behavior that was typical for the members of any cultural group, and no behavior was displayed by the members of one cultural group that was not seen in members of other cultural groups. No cultural stereotypes were upheld. I did find evidence that disability behavior is influenced by personality factors, social situations and the gains derived from the disability status. Evolving concepts of “entitlement,” which are closely related to socioeconomic status, also have a significant influence. The impact of feedback from others in a person''s many social and medical subcultures is a more crucial determinant of illness and disability behavior, except in those for whom illness and disability behavior is determined by the limitations imposed by the disease or by a personality structure resistant to cultural expectations and social feedback.     

Signifying the Pandemics: Metaphors of AIDS, Cancer, and Heart Disease

This article offers a symbolic analysis of the cultural construction and signification of three of the major "pandemics" of the late 20th century: AIDS, cancer, and heart disease. It is based on unstructured interviews conducted in Israel between 1993–94 with 75 nurses and 40 physicians and between 1993–95 with 60 university students. Two key symbols, "pollution" and "transformation" are shown to constitute AIDS and cancer within a symbolic space that I suggest is "beyond culture" where body boundaries are dissolved and cultural categories are dismantled. Heart disease, in contrast, is metaphorized as a defect in the "body machinery." The article concludes by arguing that heart attack is depicted as the pathology of the Fordist, modernist body, while AIDS/cancer are pathologies of the postmodern body in late capitalism. [AIDS, cancer, heart disease, semiotics, metaphorization]     

INNOVATION AND ANCESTRAL REVELATION: THE CASE OF DREAMS

This article explores aspects of the relationship between tradition and innovation in an Australian Aboriginal society by looking at dreams as a 'traditional' facet of cultural change. In many Aboriginal societies spirits of the deceased, spirit beings, and ancestral figures are said to communicate with and 'reveal' certain things to the dreamer. Some things that are revealed, such as those pertaining to ritual and ceremonial life, are said to have existed 'from the beginning' and are not considered to be 'new'. Here I discuss a case of ancestral revelation relating to a commonplace sphere of Aboriginal life – the card game. Through this I explore something of the complexity of the ways in which 'traditional' beliefs and forms of innovation are dialectically interdependent with contemporary cultural experiences as well as with distinctive historical experiences which have preceded them.     

Unsettling Power: Domestic Violence,Gender Politics,and Struggles over Sovereignty in Ghana

This article provides a new lens for analyzing power formations in human rights practices by examining Ghanaian struggles over a Domestic Violence Bill. While the hegemonic character of human rights advocacy is well-established, we know less about exercises of power in discourses and practices that oppose rights. I analyze how the Ghanaian government constructed the discourse of cultural sovereignty and deployed it against women's rights. The government legitimated this discourse by appropriating the voice of ‘the people’ and superimposing notions of ‘foreignness’ onto both the Bill and Ghanaian women's rights activists. Drawing on the historiography of colonialism and ethnography of political performance, I argue that this case illustrates how the discourse of cultural sovereignty is mobilized in a struggle over shifting configurations of gender, political activism, and state sovereignty.     

Adolescent development and external influences

There are two different approaches to the definition of "normal" in adolescence: psychoanalytic interpretation and empirical research. They are not necessarily at odds but can complement each other if normalcy is viewed as a dependent variable. Its definition depends also on cultural rules, social values and expectancies, professional orientations, personality traits and political climate, which all determine the tolerance level for aberrance. The adolescent development including biological, cognitive and psychosocial changes is related to the existing social formations and processes. It is affected by family, peer groups, neighborhood, work and wider community. The paper describes the adolescent development in particular social contexts.     

Pterosaur and dinosaur remains from the Middle Jurassic Balabansai Svita in the northern Fergana Depression, Kyrgyzstan (Central Asia)

Abstract: Isolated pterosaur and dinosaur teeth and a sauropod metatarsal I and manual phalanx V-1 from the Middle Jurassic (Callovian) Balabansai Svita in the northern Fergana Valley, Kyrgyzstan, are described and attributed to the pterosaur taxon Rhamphorhynchinae indet., a theropod Tetanurae indet., a sauropod Neosauropoda indet., and a new pachycephalosaurid Ferganocephale adenticulatum gen. et sp. nov. The Balabansai theropod is possibly a stem-lineage representative of Dromaeosauridae. The new pachycephalosaurid is the oldest representative of the group and extends its known history by 10–20 myr. The Balabansai vertebrate assemblage is most similar to the Callovian assemblages from the Qigu and Upper Shaximiao formations in China, and intermediate in the evolutionary level of the taxa present between the Bathonian assemblages from Wucaiwan and the Lower Shaximiao formations (China) and the Late Jurassic Shar Teg fauna from Mongolia.     

Foraging mode of the chameleon,Bradypodion pumilum: a challenge to the sit‐and‐wait versus active forager paradigm?

Foraging mode is an important aspect of life history, often associated with traits such as locomotor mode, energy budget, risk of predation and reproductive effort. Because of these life-history associations, classification of foraging mode can be conceptually useful. Lizards figured prominently in the historical development of foraging mode concepts, yet our current understanding is dominated by only two lizard families which are good examples of the two extreme modes, sit-and-wait vs. active foraging. A great deal of lizard phylogenetic diversity remains unrepresented. Chameleons are a highly derived lizard taxon for which we have very little behavioural or ecological data, and no foraging mode data. Because chameleons are so unusual, it is not possible to predict where they will fit within the bimodal paradigm. I studied time budget and foraging mode in the Cape dwarf chameleon, Bradypodion pumilum , in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Several approaches were taken to assess foraging behaviour. First, lag-sequential analysis was applied to compare rates behaviours associated with observed eating events, which did not support a sit-and-wait foraging mode. Second, the number of moves per minute (MPM) and per cent time moving (%TM) were compared with those of other lizard taxa from the literature. Foraging in B. pumilum was found to be most consistent with an active foraging mode, although the MPM is unusually low. Thus I propose classification of B. pumilum as a cruise forager. Sufficient data are available to define a discriminant function for active vs. sit-and-wait modes among lizard speries, which classifys B. pumilum as active and additionally lends statistical support for good separation between foraging modes. These findings are discussed in relation to the evolution of foraging modes in chameleons and other lizard families.  © 2005 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society , 2005, 84 , 797–808.     

Our Lady of Ipswich: devotion,dissonance, and the agitation of memory at a forgotten pilgrimage site

This article traces the social life of Our Lady of Ipswich, a statue taken to be destroyed during the English Reformation, and the possibility of pilgrimage in the context of dramatic urban change and loss of place memory. Arguing that iconoclasm is not an end‐point, we see that the life of the image is not extinguished on the pyre, but is set into motion by conflict surrounding its significance, efficacy, and survival. Indeed, it is not simply the act of iconoclasm that animates the statue; rather, such agonistic animation is an ongoing process which involves both those who reject and those who are devoted to the image. My argument is that the potency of contemporary images of Our Lady of Ipswich relies on an active cultivation of dissonance: the consciousness of religious schism; the disjuncture between Ipswich's historical importance and the perceived failures of twentieth‐century development; and the juxtaposition between devotional pilgrimage destination and disenchanted shopping space.     

Politics And Gastropolitics: Gender And The Power Of Food In Two African Pastoralist Societies

Male-centred aspects of political behaviour have generally remained the explanatory and interpretive focuses in analyses of the social organization of African pastoralists. While recent work on African pastoralists has shed increasing light on the lives of women, I argue that key assumptions underlying anthropological models of male dominance in these societies have been insufficiently challenged. Drawing on recent approaches in gender and social organization that highlight the mutual constitution of domestic and political domains, I examine comparative material from two well-known pastoralist societies: the Samburu of northern Kenya and the Nuer of southern Sudan. In doing so, I suggest strong linkages between male-dominated 'political spheres' and areas of domestic life in which the role of women is more significant – particularly processes of domestic food distribution. In re-examining central facets of Samburu politics – which are best known through Paul Spencer's seminal analysis of the gerontocratic aspects of Samburu political life – I suggest that the status and identities of Samburu men are in fundamental ways defined through their relationship to women as providers of food within Samburu households. Comparative material from the Nuer suggests, additionally, the strategic use of food by women in influencing male 'political spheres'. In comparing these cases, I suggest a more general model through which domestic processes of food allocation as realms of female-centred social action may be seen to play a central role in the forms and processes of pastoral 'political' life.     

Reasons to be fussy about cultural evolution

This discussion paper responds to two recent articles in Biology and Philosophy that raise similar objections to cultural attraction theory, a research trend in cultural evolution putting special emphasis on the fact that human minds create and transform their culture. Both papers are sympathetic to this idea, yet both also regret a lack of consilience with Boyd, Richerson and Henrich’s models of cultural evolution. I explain why cultural attraction theorists propose a different view on three points of concern for our critics. I start by detailing the claim that cultural transmission relies not chiefly on imitation or teaching, but on cognitive mechanisms like argumentation, ostensive communication, or selective trust, whose evolved or habitual function may not be the faithful reproduction of ideas or behaviours. Second, I explain why the distinction between context biases and content biases might not always be the best way to capture the interactions between culture and cognition. Lastly, I show that cultural attraction models cannot be reduced to a model of guided variation, which posits a clear separation between individual and social learning processes. With cultural attraction, the same cognitive mechanisms underlie both innovation and the preservation of traditions.     

Failed promises: economic integration, bureaucratic encounters, and the EU-Turkey Customs Union

European integration is based upon the promise to bring prosperity by creating economic and social equilibrium among member states and its regions via integrationist policies jointly managed by states and the institutions of the EU. As one common market initiative for greater economic integration in the wider region, goods circulate without tariff and customs duty barriers in the EU’s common customs area. Turkey, not an EU member, has been in this common market since 1996. The EU-Turkey Customs Union, which promised to bring deeper economic and political integration through eventual Turkish membership, represents Turkey’s aspirations to move from the periphery of Europe into its core. As an anthropological contribution to investigations of advanced European capitalism, this paper examines fundamental conflicts of interest between the EU and Turkey and locates them in their unequal power relations and in the disjuncture of each side’s overall objectives from economic integration. Most importantly, it shows that these interest conflicts have ramifications at the individual bureaucratic level and in daily bureaucratic practice. Dramatic expressions of Turkish state power, which are initially geared toward balancing out power inequities, exacerbate Turkish and EU officials’ failures to maintain at least a facade of mutually sustainable interests. Interpreted by EU officials as Turkish bureaucratic inertia, such disintegration of interests has implications for ongoing economic integration and membership negotiations between the two parties, with Turkish officials experiencing loss of control. The paper calls for a critical political economy that pays due attention to the cultural settings in which the former is embedded.