Annual Editions: Anthropology 06/07

Inhaltsverzeichnis

UNIT 1. Anthropological Perspectives



1. Doing Fieldwork Among the Yanomam , Napoleon A. Chagnon, from Yanomam : The Fierce People, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1992



Although an anthropologist s first field experience may involve culture shock, Napoleon Chagnon reports that the long process of participant observation may transform personal hardship and frustration into confident understanding of exotic cultural patterns.



2. Lessons from the Field, George Gmelch, Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, Macalester, 2003



By introducing students to fieldwork, George Gmelch provides them with the best that anthropology has to offer an enriched understanding of other people and cultures along with a glimpse of oneself and what it means to be an American. Fieldwork is a matter of mutual acceptance and mutual economic benefit.



3. Eating Christmas in the Kalahari, Richard Borshay Lee, Natural History, December 1969



Anthropologist Richard Borshay Lee gives an account of the misunderstanding and confusion that often accompany the cross-cultural experience. In this case, he violated a basic principle of the !Kung Bushmen s social relations food sharing.



4. Tricking and Tripping: Fieldwork on Prostitution in the Era of AIDS, Claire E. Sterk, Tricking and Tripping: Prostitution in the Era of AIDS, Social Change Press, 2000



As unique as Claire Sterk s report on prostitution may be, she discusses issues common to anthropologists wherever they do fieldwork: how does one build trusting relationships with informants and what are an anthropologist s ethical obligations toward them?



UNIT 2. Culture and Communication



5. Fighting for Our Lives, Deborah Tannen, The Argument Culture, Random House, 1998



In America today, there seems to be a pervasive warlike tone to public dialogue. The prevailing belief is that there are only two sides to an issue and opposition leads to truth. Often, however, an issue is more like a crystal, with many sides, and the truth is in the complex middle, not in the oversimplified extremes.



6. I Can t Even Open My Mouth , Deborah Tannen, I Only Say This Because I Love You, Random House, 2001



Since family members have a long, shared history, what they say in conversation the messages echo with meanings from the past the metamessages. The metamessage may not be spoken, but its meaning may be gleaned from every aspect of context: the way something is said, who is saying it, or the very fact that it is said at all.



7. Shakespeare in the Bush, Laura Bohannan, Natural History, August/September 1966



It is often claimed that great literature has cross-cultural significance. In this article, Laura Bohannan describes the difficulities she encountered and the lessons she learned as she attempted to relate the story of Hamlet to the Tiv of West Africa in their own language.



8. Body Art As Visual Language, Enid Schildkrout, Museum of Natural History Publication for Educators, Winter 2001



As a visual language, body art involves shared symbols, myths and social values. Whether as an expression of individuality or group identity, it says something about who we are and what we want to become.



UNIT 3. The Organization of Society and Culture



9. Understanding Eskimo Science, Richard Nelson, Audubon, September/October 1993



The traditional hunters insights into the world of nature may be different, but they are as extensive and profound as those of modern science.



10. The Inuit Paradox, Patricia Gadsby, Discover, October 2004



The traditional diet of the Far North, with its high-protein, high-fat content, shows that there are no essential foods only essential nutrients.



11. Ties that Bind, Peter M. Whiteley, Natural History, November 2004



The Hopi people offer gifts in a much broader range of circumstances than people in Western cultures do, tying individuals and groups to each other and to the realm of the spirits.



12. Too Many Bananas, Not Enough Pineapples, and No Watermelon at All: Three Object Lessons in Living with Reciprocity, David Counts, The Humbled Anthropologist: Tales From the Pacific, Wadsworth Publishing, 1990



Among the lessons to be learned regarding reciprocity is that one may not demand a gift or refuse it. Yet, even without a system of record-keeping or money being involved, there is a long-term balance of mutual benefit.



13. Prehistory of Warfare, Steven A. LeBlanc, Archaeology, May/June 2003



Rather than deny the prevalence of warfare in our past, says the author, anthropology would be better served by asking why do people go to war? and why do they stop fighting?



UNIT 4. Other Families, Other Ways



14. How Many Fathers Are Best for a Child?, Meredith F. Small, Discover, April 2003



The ways in which people view biological paternity says a lot about the power relationships between men and women, the kinds of families they form, and how the human species evolved.



15. When Brothers Share a Wife, Melvyn C. Goldstein, Natural History, March, 1987



While the custom of fraternal polyandry relegated many Tibetan women to spinsterhood, this unusual marriage form promoted personal security and economic well-being for its participants.



16. Adding a Co-Wife, Leanna Wolfe, Loving More Magazine, Fall 1998



After seven years, the author s partner became involved with another woman. By taking her cues from polygynous households in East Africa, she learned how to deal with the disruption by adding a co-wife.



17. Death Without Weeping, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Natural History, October 1989



In the shantytowns of Brazil, the seeming indifference of mothers who allow some of their children to die is a survival strategy geared to circumstances in which only a few may live.



18. Our Babies, Ourselves, Meredith F. Small, Natural History, October 1997



Cross-cultural research in child development shows that parents readily accept their society s prevailing ideology on how babies should be treated, usually because it makes sense in their environmental or social circumstances.



19. Arranging a Marriage in India, Serena Nanda, Stumbling Toward Truth: Anthropologists at Work, Wareland Press, 2000



Arranging a marriage in India is far too serious a business for the young and inexperienced. Instead the parents make decisions on the basis of the families social position, reputation and ability to get along.



20. Who Needs Love! In Japan, Many Couples Don t, Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, February 11, 1996



Paradoxically, Japanese families seem to survive, not because husbands and wives love each other more than American couples do, but because they perhaps love each other less. As love marriages increase, with the compatibility factor becoming more important in the decision to marry, the divorce rate in Japan is rising.



UNIT 5. Gender and Status



21. A World Full of Women, Martha C. Ward, from A World Full of Women, Third Edition, 2002



Even though some jobs may be women s work and others are defined as men s work, such tasks are not the same in every group. Moreover, the relative power of men versus women has to do with who has the ability to distribute, exchange, and control valuable goods and services to people outside the domestic unit.



22. The Berdache Tradition, Walter L. Williams, Spirit and the Flesh, Beacon Press, 1986



Not all societies agree with the Western cultural view that all humans are either women or men. In fact, many Native American cultures recognize an alternative role called the berdache, a morphological male who has a nonmasculine character. This is just one way for a society to recognize and assimilate some atypical individuals without imposing a change on them or stigmatizing them as deviant.



23. A Woman s Curse?, Meredith F. Small, The Sciences, January/February 1999



An anthropologist s study of the ritual of seclusion surrounding women s menstrual cycle has some rather profound implications regarding human evolution, certain cultural practices, and women s health.



24. Where Fat Is a Mark of Beauty, Ann M. Simmons, Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1998



In a rite of passage, some Nigerian girls spend months gaining weight and learning domestic customs in a fattening room. A woman s rotundity is seen as a sign of good health, prosperity, and feminine beauty.



25. FGM: Maasai Women Speakout, Ledama Olekina, Cultural Survival Quarterly, December 15, 2004



According to Ledama Olekina, international efforts to stop female circumcision are sometimes putting women at even greater risk. In advocating open dialogue between community members and discussing possible alternatives, she offers an example in which Maasai women themselves become an effective force for social change.



UNIT 6. Religion, Belief, and Ritual



26. Eyes of the Ngangas: Ethnomedicine and Power in Central African Republic, Arthur C. Lehmann, from Magic, Witchcraft and Religion, Mayfield Publishing Co., 2001



Because of cost, availability and cultural bias, many people rely on ethnomedical or traditional treatment of illness rather than biomedical or Western treatment. Actually, says Lehmann, both systems are effective in their own ways and should be integrated in developing primary health care in the Third World.



27. The Adaptive Value of Religious Ritual, Richard Sosis, American Scientist, March April 2004



Rituals promote group cohesion by requiring members to engage in behavior that is too costly to fake. Groups that do so are more likely to attain their collective goals than are groups whose members are less committed.



28. Shamans, Mark J. Plotkin, Medicine Quest, Penguin Books, 2000



The Western tendency to disregard shamanic healing practices is supremely ironic when one considers the extraordinary therapeutic gifts they have already provided us and the invaluable potential that is still out there if we can get to it before it disappears
.



29. The Secrets of Haiti s Living Dead, Gino Del Guercio, Harvard Magazine, January/February 1986



In seeking scientific documentation of the existence of zombies, anthropologist Wade Davis found himself looking beyond the stereotypes and mysteries of voodoo and directly into a cohesive system of social control in rural Haiti.



30. Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, Horace Miner, American Anthropologist, June 1956



The ritual beliefs and taboos of the Nacirema provide us with a test case of the objectivity of ethnographic description and show us the extremes to which human behavior can go.



31. Baseball Magic, George Gmelch, Elysian Fields Quarterly, All Star Issue, 1992



Professional baseball players, as do Trobriand Islanders, often resort to magic in situations of chance and uncertainty. As irrational as it may seem, magic creates confidence, competence, and control in the practitioner.



UNIT 7. Sociocultural Change: The Impact of the West



32. Why Can t People Feed Themselves?, Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins, Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity, Random House, 1977



When colonial governments force the conversion of subsistence farms to cash crop plantations, peasants are driven onto marginal lands or into a large pool of cheap labor. In either case, the authors maintain, they are no longer able to feed themselves.



33. No Place to Call Home, Takeyuki Tsuda, Natural History, April 2004



When Japanese Brazilians return to the country of their ancestors, they discover that they are isolated as foreigners. Instead of striving to blend in as native Japanese, many of them respond by acting in overtly Brazilian ways.



34. The Arrow of Disease, Jared Diamond, Discover, October 1992



The most deadly weapon that colonial Europeans carried to other continents was their germs. The most intriguing question to answer here is why the flow of disease did not move in the opposite direction.



35. The Price of Progress, John Bodley, Victims of Progress, Mayfield Publishing, 1998



As traditional cultures are sacrificed to the process of modernization, tribal peoples not only lose the security, autonomy, and quality of life they once had, but they also become powerless, second-class citizens who are discriminated against and exploited by the dominant society.



36. Malthus in Africa: Rwandäs Genocide, Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Suceed, Viking Adult, 2004



What seemed on the surface to be a simple case of ethnic hatred turned out, on closer inspection, to involve excessive population growth, environmental degradation, a breakdown of traditional social cohesion, and political expediency.



37. A Pacific Haze: Alcohol and Drugs in Oceania, Mac Marshall, Contemporary Pacific Societies: Studies in Development and Change, Prentice Hall, 1993



The relatively benign use of psychoactive drugs, such as betel and kava in the Pacific Islands, is deeply rooted in cultural traditions and patterns of social interaction. Today, as a result of new drugs and disruptive social and economic changes introduced from the outside, a haze hangs over Oceania.



38. Pushing Beyond the Earth s Limits, Lester R. Brown, The Futurist, May/June 2005



The future will see not just more mouths to feed, but a growing demand for higher-quality, more resource-intensive food. The world s farmers may not be up to the many challenges of meeting these demands.



39. The Last Americans, Jared Diamond, Harper s Magazine, June 2003



The world today is suffering from the same problems as the ancient Maya, although on a much larger scale: increased pollution, environmental degradation and potential economic collapse. The difference so far, says Jared Diamond, is that we know their fate, and they did not. Perhaps we can learn.