The Law of the Lifegivers: The Domestication of Desire

The Law of the Lifegivers: The Domestication of Desire. René Devisch and Claude Brodeur. Langhorne, PA: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999. 268 pp.     

The Horror: The Subject of Desire in Postcoioniai Studies

Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. Anne McClintock. New York: Routledge, 1995. 449 pp.
Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things. Ann Laura Stoler. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995. 238 pp.
Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race. Robert J. C. Young. London: Routledge, 1995.236 pp.     

Material Poetics of a Malay House

Material objects call to us and structure our being. They are not passive, while we are active—rather, they embroil us in their lives as much as we engage them. Hence, sociality is not solely a human function but necessarily involves environments and artefacts. The notion of material poetics is, in this sense, a mutually shaping matrix that affects social life and thought. This philosophy is explored through an encounter with a Malay house. The house is in many ways liminal—a place in which thought and image dwells. It is traditional, yet unique; it holds and expresses history, yet that history is elsewhere and legendary; is Malay but with Chinese decorations, which articulate hybridity; is specifically local, yet involved in national and international flows. It embraces both oscillation and direction. The house is made of wood. This paper takes up this element, showing how the wood not only shelters, but also leads us to venture out to a garden of trees and a dream of jungles where encounters with things, stories and myths subvert our normal categories and expectations. The house leads us places and clears things for us, leading us into a new social field.     

Toward Computational Cumulative Biology by Combining Models of Biological Datasets

A main challenge of data-driven sciences is how to make maximal use of the progressively expanding databases of experimental datasets in order to keep research cumulative. We introduce the idea of a modeling-based dataset retrieval engine designed for relating a researcher''s experimental dataset to earlier work in the field. The search is (i) data-driven to enable new findings, going beyond the state of the art of keyword searches in annotations, (ii) modeling-driven, to include both biological knowledge and insights learned from data, and (iii) scalable, as it is accomplished without building one unified grand model of all data. Assuming each dataset has been modeled beforehand, by the researchers or automatically by database managers, we apply a rapidly computable and optimizable combination model to decompose a new dataset into contributions from earlier relevant models. By using the data-driven decomposition, we identify a network of interrelated datasets from a large annotated human gene expression atlas. While tissue type and disease were major driving forces for determining relevant datasets, the found relationships were richer, and the model-based search was more accurate than the keyword search; moreover, it recovered biologically meaningful relationships that are not straightforwardly visible from annotations—for instance, between cells in different developmental stages such as thymocytes and T-cells. Data-driven links and citations matched to a large extent; the data-driven links even uncovered corrections to the publication data, as two of the most linked datasets were not highly cited and turned out to have wrong publication entries in the database.     

The Kinesin-1 Chemomechanical Cycle: Stepping Toward a Consensus

Kinesin-1 serves as a model for understanding fundamentals of motor protein mechanochemistry and for interpreting functional diversity across the kinesin superfamily. Despite sustained work over the last three decades, disagreements remain regarding the events that trigger the two key transitions in the stepping cycle: detachment of the trailing head from the microtubule and binding of the tethered head to the next tubulin binding site. This review describes the conflicting views of these events and highlights recent work that sheds light on these long-standing controversies. It concludes by presenting a consensus kinesin-1 chemomechanical that incorporates recent work, resolves discrepancies, and highlights key questions for future experimental work. It is hoped that this model provides a framework for understanding how diverse kinesins are tuned for their specific cellular roles.     

The Politics of Tradition: Toward a Generic Culture in Vanuatu

The paper examines the role of the elite in generating constructions of tradition in present-day Vanuatu. While stopping short of postulating a ‘conspiracy theory’ interpretation, the paper does argue that the proto-bureaucratic 'class' is attempting to gain control over a symbolic code derived from traditional practices (kastom) so as to promote social cohesion and establish a civil polity. The negative case of kava, a symbol of traditional culture which was significantly not included in this corpus is discussed at length.     

Beyond Anthropology: Toward a Man-Science

Culture and Biological Man: Explorations in Behavioral Anthropology. ELIOT D. CHAPPLE.
Ethology: The Biology of Behavior. IREN-ÄUS EIBL-EIBESFELDT. Erich Kling-hammer, trans.
Studies in Animal and Human Behaviour. Volume I. Volume II. KONRAD LORENZ. Robert Martin, trans.     

Scenting a Subject: Odour Poetics and the Politics of Space

Olfactory studies are truly multidisciplinary, from anthropology to zoology. What literary criticism can offer is analysis of the language of smell and the discourses of olfactory practice which give smell meanings. In this paper I explore the poetics of odour in selected contexts in the developed West of the twenty-first century. I argue that the language of smell is elusive, contradictory, disguised: nonetheless, it deploys metaphor, story, personal meaning and social meaning, all frames that ‘nest’ together. I demonstrate contradictions of olfactory practice with reference to urban space and technologies of scent, acting on bodies and places. I argue that a relationship between scent, identity and space can be understood in terms of an olfactory sublime, to which there is also resistance, sanctioned by new laws. In public space, the complexity of deodorisation appears in the conflict between fragrance-free and compulsory olfaction, as I argue with reference to Halifax, Nova Scotia and to the London Underground.     

From Duty to Desire: Remaking Families in a Spanish Village

From Duty to Desire: Remaking Families in. Spanish Village. Jane Fishburne Collier. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.264 pp.     

The Precultural Basis of the Incest Taboo: Toward a Biosocial Theory

The literature on the origins of the incest taboo is characterized by controversy over the nature/nurture issue, and fears of reductionism. In recent years work emanating from such diverse disciplines as cultuml and physical anthropology, ethology, and neuropsychology warmnts a new look at this intriguing issue. It is probable that incest avoidance is widespread among the vertebrata and is built into the wiring. As learned behavior becomes more important phylogenetically, curiosity and exploration plays a larger role in adaptation and has manifest survival admntages. Incest awidance functions as a mechanism to propel the individual into new relationships and social territory. For humans, incest avoidance and its later elaboration into a cultuml taboo serve to motivate exploration of and attachment to a wider social nexus than the family. It also prevents fixation at a relatively undifferentiated psychological stage of development     

The BLyS Family: Toward a Molecular Understanding of B Cell Homeostasis

The B Lymphocyte Stimulator (BLyS) family of ligands and receptors regulates humoral immunity by controlling B lymphocyte survival and differentiation. Herein, we review the ligands and receptors of this family, their biological functions, and the biochemical processes through which they operate. Pre-immune B lymphocytes rely on BLyS signaling for their survival, whereas antigen experienced B lymphocytes generally interact more avidly with a homologous cytokine, A Proliferation Inducing Ligand (APRIL). The molecular basis for signaling via the three BLyS family receptors reveals complex interplay with other B lymphocyte signaling systems, affording the integration of selective and homeostatic processes. As our understanding of this system advances, molecular targets for manipulating humoral immunity in both health and disease should be revealed.     

Eldoret: An African Poetics of Technology

Eldoret: An African Poetics of Technology. Richard M. Swiderski. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995. 228 pp.     

Anthropological Demography: Toward a New Synthesis

Anthropological Demography: Toward. New Synthesis. David I. Kertzer and Tom Fricke. eds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. 294 pp.