Toward a Marxian anthropology? Bare,abstract, mobile,global

Anthropology has conventionally taken as some of its most cherished foundational categories the precise opposites of the key concepts that animate this inquiry: rather than “bare life,” anthropology has tended always to emphasize the fullness and complexity of social and political life; instead of labor in the abstract, which we recognize in its commodified form as “labor-power,” anthropology has produced exquisite inventories of concrete laboring activities and the “cultural” content of productive work; against the impermanence and mutability of lives characterized by their mobility, the ethnographic enterprise has been deeply attached to the sedentarist presuppositions of lasting settlement, dwelling, and “community”; and contrary to the task of apprehending space on a global scale, ethnographic study has been overwhelmingly localized and place-bound. Rethinking these elementary premises of the ethnographic endeavor and situating these critical concepts at the center of our epistemological frameworks are crucial theoretical and practical tasks for any meaningful social inquiry today. In this regard, the Marxian theoretical arsenal is simply indispensable. But, in the derisive words of so many disciplinary forebears and overseers, is this properly “anthropological”? The prospective convergence of genuinely critical sociopolitical inquiry with the techniques and insights of anthropology must remain for us the locus of an urgent problem—an open question on an open horizon.     

The cultural construction of gendered bodies: Biology and metaphors of production and destruction*

One way of conceiving of the anthropological task is that of countering the degradations and “dehumanizations” of the “other” to which the species is prone by promoting “transcendent humanization.” However efficiently and professionally anthropologists gather their materials and form them into their ethnographic and ethnologic analyses, may not this “ethical impulse” be postulated as the “final cause” of our efforts? But what could such a sonorous phrase mean ? And what is its relationship to the systematic study of the “differences that make or do not make a difference” in culture to which anthropology has long been devoted? I will argue that it involves a dynamic of categories and that this dynamic is itself an object of systematic study. Recently, for example, some anthropologists have been writing “against culture,” seeing the culture concept and associated theory more as barriers than as benefits to pan‐human understanding. I will argue that this is an instance of “transcendent humanization.” One cannot but be sympathetic to the thrust and merits of this argument. But at the same time one wants to ask what implications it holds for the systematic study and understanding of the other. This article, then, examines some elementary vectors in the “dynamic of the categorical” involved in these and related recent debates which also may be seen in terms of transcendence and humanization: the debate over relativism and the recently emergent debate over “enlightenment mythmaking” in anthropology.     

The Ethnographer Who Never Was: Eulalia de Abaitua as a Lens on Fin-de-Siècle Basque Society

Nineteenth-century Basque culture became a kind of ethnographic museum for anthropology, yet the nativism of its discourse ignored the industrial dimension of Basque society. This duality was captured, however, by the amateur photographer Eulalia Abaitua. She has been ignored by the canon due to her “amateur” status, her gender, and perhaps even her own transnational identity. However, her work fits into a long photographic tradition of “vernacular” ethnographers and her contribution is to be found in her “performance” or production. She should, then, be reclaimed as a significant actor in the history of Basque ethnography.     

Ethnography as storytelling

In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers. But if today “having counsel” is beginning to have an old-fashioned ring, this is because the communicability of experience is decreasing. In consequence we have no counsel either for ourselves or for others. After all, counsel is less an answer to a question than a proposal concerning the continuation of a story which is just unfolding. To seek counsel one would first have to be able to tell the story. (Quite apart from the fact that a man is receptive to counsel only to the extent that he allows his situation to speak.) Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom. The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out. This, however, is a process that has been going on for a long time. And nothing would be more fatuous than to want to see in it merely a “symptom of decay,” let alone a “modern” symptom. It is, rather, only a concomitant symptom of the secular productive forces of history, a concomitant that has quite gradually removed narrative from the realm of living speech and at the same time is making it possible to see a new beauty in what is vanishing Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller; Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov,” (1936) in Illuminations (New York; Schocken 1969) p. 86; also see “Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian,” (1937) in One-Way Street (London: New Left Books), pp. 351–352. .     

Introduction: The Politics of Order in Contemporary Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT

This collection of articles seeks to demonstrate that the concept of order – the intensive and extensive coordination of human action across space and time – is useful for answering some of the most pressing theoretical and practical questions in contemporary Papua New Guinea (PNG) today. Building on existing work in this field [Benda-Beckmann, K., and F. Pirie. 2007. “Introduction.” In Order and Disorder: Anthropological Perspectives, 1–15. New York: Berghahn Books] in this special issue we ask: How do people create enduring, stable, and routinised life in contemporary Melanesia today? We position our work as the next step in a growing movement to study contemporary institutions in PNG as order-making projects, rather than attempting to divide them into legitimate projects like ‘government’ and false or ineffective ones like ‘cargo cults’.     

Lessons from EEO: Toward a Universal Evolutionary Curriculum

We propose a human-centered evolutionary curriculum based around the three questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? How do I fit in? We base our curriculum on our experiences as an evolutionary biologist/paleontologist (NE) and as a secondary level special education science teacher (GE)—and not least from our joint experience as co-editors-in-chief of this journal. Our proposed curriculum starts and ends with human biology and evolution, linking these themes with topics as diverse as the “tree of life” (systematics), anthropology, Charles Darwin, cultural evolution, ecology, developmental biology, molecular evolution/genetics, paleontology, and plate tectonics. The curriculum is “universal” as it is designed to be taught at all levels, K–16. The curriculum is flexible: “modules” may be expanded and contracted, reordered, or modified to fit specific grade level needs—and the requirements and interests of local curricula and teachers. We further propose that students utilize workbooks from online or printed sources to investigate the local answers to the general questions (e.g., “Who am I?”), while classroom instruction is focused on the larger scale issues outlined in the modules of our curriculum.     

History,politics, space,labor: on unevenness as an anthropological concept

This article makes the case for considering “unevenness” as a central theoretical concept for anthropology. By closely examining three case studies, from Latin American and the US, we develop a fourfold approach to the study of unevenness: the histories of particular connections and disconnections; spatial/scalar differentiation; state formation; and the development of labor. This approach is located at the intersection of history, geography, and anthropology and, we contend, is particularly useful for exploring the political struggles that lie at the heart of capitalist development and that unfold over time and across space in divergent, irregular ways.     

Rethinking genes

The gene is the central construct of twentieth-century biology and evolution. It is a construct because, like “culture” in anthropology, “gene” is widely used and is central to the discipline's discourse, but eludes rigorous definition. Although the gene is acknowledged as a material entity, its membership criteria are unclear and its boundaries are fuzzy—indeed, more than one can occupy the same space at the same time. The purpose of this essay is to bring to light recent refinements in our conception of the gene and their implications for its use in biological anthropology.     

The transnational assemblage of Indian rape culture

We analyse the affective-cultural assemblage of “Indian rape culture” across historical time and social space. We examine news coverage of a highly visible 2012 rape in Delhi in two newspapers, New York Times and Times of India, and the longevity of these articulations through an analysis of online discourses three years later. We further trace colonial-era materializations of Indian rape culture which emerged in the context of the “Indian Mutiny” in contrast to local perspectives, and which were rearticulated by development and human rights organizations. We show that at each moment, Global north voices and institutions dominate. The processes of articulation emanating from Global north institutions serve to realize a racialized transnational assemblage of Indian rape culture. Our framework points to the “soft” power and fluidity of racializing processes, the heterogeneity, and the multiple logics that appear disconnected, but which nonetheless flow and come together to sustain racialized power structures.     

Erratum to Wang X,et al. Cell Cycle Volume 5, Issue 6; pp. 635-640

In the paper “Differential Subcellular Localizations of Two Human Sgo1 Isoforms” by Xiaoxing Wang, Yali Yang and Wei Dai (Cell Cycle, 5:6, 635-640, March 2006), following changes should be made:

In page 638, the sentence “this notion is supported by the observation that kinetochore recruitments of CENP-E and CENP-F are compromised after Sgo1 deletion (Marko Kallio, unpublished data)” should be revised as “this notion is supported by the observation that kinetochore recruitments of CENP-E 11 and CENP-F (J. Pouwels, A. Kukkonen, M. Kallio, L76, Late Abstracts-The American Society for Cell Biology 45th Annual Meeting, 2005) are compromised after Sgo1 depletion”.

Xiaoxing Wang, Yali Yang, Wei Dai

New York Medical College     

Health-Based Criteria for Sediment Disposal Options: A Case Study of the Port of New York/New Jersey

Approximately 4 million cubic yards of sediment are dredged annually from the Port of New York and New Jersey in order to maintain navigable channels. In many cases, the sediments contain elevated levels of numerous contaminants. The New York District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region II employ a framework of sediment quality evaluation to determine whether contaminated sediments are suitable for open ocean disposal (i.e., do not pose a health risk from bioaccumulation in human food chain) or whether more extensive and costly disposal methods are required. The degree to which chemicals can bioaccumulate from sediments into benthic invertebrates is a key determinant in the permitting decision. The maximally “acceptable” levels of bioaccumulation (bioaccumulation criteria) have been developed over a period of several years, using a variety of different methods. We reviewed the technical bases of these criteria and found that, while some values can be considered “risk-based,” others are based on historical background concentrations, Food and Drug Administration Action Levels, limits of detection, and other non-“risk-based” methodologies. Hence, the degree of uncertainty and health protection (or lack thereof) in the criteria varies considerably among the chemicals. We also reviewed the outcomes of several permit applications and found that the bioaccumulation criteria were not applied consistently. We propose the following refinements to the decision-making process: (1) bioaccumulation screening values based only upon risk-based criteria, using a single method that is applied for all chemicals; (2) increased consistency in decision-making and considerations of site-specific information where appropriate; and (3) assured availability of testing results for review and analysis by interested parties.     

An Ethnographic Filmflam: Giving Gifts, Doing Research, and Videotaping the Native Subject/Object

Using the discussion of self-reflexivity as an organizing principle, this article examines how mobilizing digital video technology during fieldwork opens up empirical and theoretical space for reconceptualizing the relationship between anthropologists and informants. Placing the field of visual anthropology into critical conversation with long-standing theoretical arguments about the objectivist limitations of native anthropologists, I argue that the slipperiness of nativity as an anthropological designation helps to provide analytical tools for examining filmmaking as a kind of gift-giving process between native ethnographic filmmakers and the subjects of their films. This article highlights some of the ways in which my own filmic and videographic exploits in Harlem, New York, mark integral connections between seeing and being the proverbial other, probing social exchanges predicated on the usefulness of low-budget digital technology as a means of fostering politically and epistemologically valuable ethnographic collaborations.     

Reconciling “stress” and “health” in physical anthropology: What can bioarchaeologists learn from the other subdisciplines?

The concepts of “stress” and “health” are foundational in physical anthropology as guidelines for interpreting human behavior and biocultural adaptation in the past and present. Though related, stress and health are not coterminous, and while the term “health” encompasses some aspects of “stress,” health refers to a more holistic condition beyond just physiological disruption, and is of considerable significance in contributing to anthropologists' understanding of humanity's lived experiences. Bioarchaeological interpretations of human health generally are made from datasets consisting of skeletal markers of stress, markers that result from (chronic) physiological disruption (e.g., porotic hyperostosis; linear enamel hypoplasia). Non-specific indicators of stress may measure episodes of stress and indicate that infection, disease, or nutritional deficiencies were present in a population, but in assessing these markers, bioarchaeologists are not measuring “health” in the same way as are human biologists, medical anthropologists, or primatologists. Rather than continue to diverge on separate (albeit parallel) trajectories, bioarchaeologists are advised to pursue interlinkages with other subfields within physical anthropology toward bridging “stress” and “health.” The papers in this special symposium set include bioarchaeologists, human biologists, molecular anthropologists, and primatologists whose research develops this link between the concepts of “stress” and “health,” encouraging new avenues for bioarchaeologists to consider and reconsider health in past human populations. Am J Phys Anthropol 155:181–185, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A Comprehensive Energy and Economic Assessment of Biofuels: When “Green” Is Not Enough

Referee: Dr. Charles A. S. Hall, Department of Environmental Studies, State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, 1 Forestry Drive, Syracuse, NY 13210 Biofuel production systems are sometimes claimed to be able to fill in for future fossil fuel shortages as well as to decrease carbon dioxide emissions and global warming. As such, they are often promoted as a “green” alternative to fossil fuels. I present a comprehensive, system-based case study of biofuel production from maize or corn (Zea mays L.) and evaluate it critically in this review. The case study is taken as an example of the comprehensive approach that I suggest for any energy crop. I conclude that the biofuel option on a large scale is not a viable alternative based on economic, energy and eMergy (amount of available energy [exergy] of one form [usually solar] that is directly or indirectly required to provide a given flow or storage of exergy or matter) analyses of the case study data and estimated possible improvement of yield and efficiency. This is true for developed countries due to their huge energy demand compared with what biofuel options are able to supply as well as for developing countries due to the low yield of their agriculture and competition for land and water for food production. However, biofuels may contribute to optimizing the energy and resource balance of agricultural, livestock, or industrial production systems at an appropriate scale. I present a proposal to integrate ethanol production with industrial activities within a “zero emission framework” as a suggestion for optimization strategies capable of making the biofuel option more sustainable and profitable in those cases where it is appropriate.     

How is it between us? Relational ethics and transcendence

In this article, I engage the recent debate on transcendence/the transcendental within the anthropology of ethics with the claim that ‘How is it between us?’ is the most fundamental of all ethical questions. In doing so, I contrast relational ethics with ordinary ethics to show that ethics begins with a demand that emerges from a situation within which one finds oneself with others; a demand that pulls one out of oneself to respond in a modality of concern and care for the between where we dwell together. This attuned response is both an ethical and a political one; a response that opens possibilities for being-together-otherwise. Such possibilities, I argue throughout, can only begin with a relational ethics. I illustrate this with an ethnographic example from harm reduction practice and anti-drug war political activity in both New York City and Vancouver, Canada.     

Architecture as animate landscape: circular shrines in the ancient Maya lowlands

In this study, I develop a theory of landscape archaeology that incorporates the concept of “animism” as a cognitive approach. Current trends in anthropology are placing greater emphasis on indigenous perspectives, and in recent decades animism has seen a resurgence in anthropological theory. As a means of relating in (not to) one's world, animism is a mode of thought that has direct bearing on landscape archaeology. Yet, Americanist archaeologists have been slow to incorporate this concept as a component of landscape theory. I consider animism and Nurit Bird-David's (1999) theory of “relatedness” and how such perspectives might be expressed archaeologically in Mesoamerica. I examine the distribution of marine shells and cave formations that appear incorporated as architectural elements on ancient Maya circular shrine architecture. More than just “symbols” of sacred geography, I suggest these materials represent living entities that animate shrines through their ongoing relationships with human and other-than-human agents in the world.     

Framing the Loss of Solace: Issues and Challenges in Researching Indigenous Compensation Claims

The 2016 judgment in the ‘Timber Creek’ compensation case (Griffiths v Northern Territory of Australia (no. 3) (2016) FCA 900) signals an end to an era of extinguishment-related injustice and inequality, representing, as it does, the first litigated Federal Court award of compensation for the loss or impairment of rights and interests, under the 1993 Native Title Act. In this paper, I explore some of the methodological challenges and conceptual issues confronting anthropologists involved in researching compensation claims. In drawing upon my experience in researching two such claims, I discuss how the issues of gender, resource development, environmental transformation, the Stolen Generation, and the history of Indigenous-European relations in remote and rural Australia impact upon investigations into the loss or diminution of traditional attachments to land. In conceptualising this loss of connection, I discuss material relating to the ‘anthropology of emotions’, and I point to some of the obstacles encountered when talking about emotions cross-culturally. In conclusion, I explore research undertaken into the social and psychological impacts of ecosystem distress, loss of place, and environmental change, and I posit the value of Glenn Albrecht’s concept of ‘solastalgia’ (2005. “Solastalgia, a New Concept in Human Health and Identity.” Philosophy Activism Nature 3: 41–44) in framing research into the loss of solace, and in expanding upon the legal notion of this loss as ‘inconvenience’ and ‘injured feelings’.     

Anti-politics movement

Does fair trade operate as economic development for farmers and artisans of the Global South, or is it a social movement that speaks to neo-liberal political subjectivities of the Global North? Fisher’s (Cult Agric 29(2):78–88, 2007) framework of “articulating modes of social transformation” allows both interpretations to be relevant. I use interviews, participant observation at a Chicago fair trade organization, and discourse analysis of fair trade materials to “study up” (Nader in Reinventing anthropology, Vintage Books, London, 284–311, 1969) the side of fair trade partnerships that exercise more economic power. I argue that participation in fair trade offers Northerners a way to reconcile their recognition of possessing disproportionate wealth in the global economic system with their uncertainty of how to create structural change in that system. Because fair trade calls on Northern consumers to make change at the individual level, the identities of Southern producers at the “underdeveloped” end of trade relationships are constructed in depoliticized, acontextual ways, thus limiting the possibilities for conceptualizing more radical transformation of poverty in the Global South.     

Male–male relationships in chimpanzees and the evolution of human pair bonds

The evolution of monogamy has been a central question in biological anthropology. An important avenue of research has been comparisons across “socially monogamous” mammals, but such comparisons are inappropriate for understanding human behavior because humans are not “pair living” and are only sometimes “monogamous.” It is the “pair bond” between reproductive partners that is characteristic of humans and has been considered unique to our lineage. I argue that pair bonds have been overlooked in one of our closest living relatives, chimpanzees. These pair bonds are not between mates but between male “friends” who exhibit enduring and emotional social bonds. The presence of such bonds in male–male chimpanzees raises the possibility that pair bonds emerged earlier in our evolutionary history. I suggest pair bonds first arose as “friendships” and only later, in the human lineage, were present between mates. The mechanisms for these bonds were co-opted for male-female bonds in humans.     

The Weight of the Hyphen: Freedom,Fusion and Responsibility Embodied by Young Muslim-American Women During a Time of Surveillance

This article reports on a qualitative investigation of 15 young Muslim-American women living in New York City, after 9/11 and in the midst of the Patriot Act. Participants completed surveys about identity, discrimination, and coping; drew “identity maps” to represent their multiple identities and alliances; and participated in focus groups on several college campuses in the New York metropolitan area. Focus groups were conducted to investigate collectively their sense of hyphenated identities, their experiences of surveillance and their responses to scrutiny in families, communities, on the streets and in the political public sphere. Implications for the theoretical and empirical study of immigrant youth “under siege” are developed, with a particular focus on the burdens and responsibilities embodied by daughters of the second generation of Muslim-Americans.