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- Volume 38, 2009
Annual Review of Anthropology - Volume 38, 2009
Volume 38, 2009
- Preface
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Archaeology and Anthropology: A Personal Overview of the Past Half-Century
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 1–15More LessHaving begun graduate work in anthropology and prehistoric archaeology at a time (early 1950s) and place (University of Chicago) where the two were closely linked, I subsequently participated in work devoted to early agricultural economies in Western Asia and Eastern North America; to the relations among archaeology, history, and science; and to the place of anthropological archaeology in the contemporary world. In this article I discuss my personal experiences within each of these areas of endeavor.
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New Paths in the Linguistic Anthropology of Oceania
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 17–31More LessThe linguistic anthropology of Oceania has seen vigorous and productive analysis of language ideologies, ritual performance, personhood, and agency. This article points to three related paths of inquiry that are especially promising. First, language ideologies are analyzed for the ways they shape expectations and interpretations of effective action and social identity. Second, processes of entextualization are examined with reference to Bible translation because Christianity is a dominant social force in contemporary Oceania. Third, prominent recent work on personhood and agency is reviewed, and scholars are urged to reconsider the classic Oceanic term mana in relation to changing understandings of power, including those wrought by religious transformations. These paths of inquiry are intertwined and cross-cutting and can lead to productive new understandings of ideologies and practices of stability and transformation.
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Social Reproduction in Classrooms and Schools
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 33–48More LessSocial reproduction theory argues that schools are not institutions of equal opportunity but mechanisms for perpetuating social inequalities. This review discusses the emergence and development of social reproduction analyses of education and examines three main perspectives on reproduction: economic, cultural, and linguistic. Reproduction analyses emerged in the 1960s and were largely abandoned by the 1990s; some of the conceptual and political reasons for this turning away are addressed. New approaches stress concepts such as agency, identity, person, and voice over the structural constraints of political economy or code, but results have been mixed. Despite theoretical and methodological advances—including new approaches to multilevel analysis and alertness to temporal processes—the difficult problem remains to understand how social inequality results from the interplay of classrooms, schools, and the wider society.
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The Commodification of Intimacy: Marriage, Sex, and Reproductive Labor
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 49–64More LessOver the past three decades, scholars have paid greater attention to the intensification and complex interconnectivity of local and global processes. Anthropological studies of cross-border marriages, migrant domestic workers, and sex workers have burgeoned, demonstrating growing scholarly interest in how social relations have become evermore geographically dispersed, impersonal, mediated by and implicated in broader political-economic or capitalist processes. At the same time, intimate and personal relations—especially those linked to households and domestic units, the primary units associated with reproductive labor—have become more explicitly commodified, linked to commodities and to commodified global processes (i.e., bought or sold; packaged and advertised; fetishized, commercialized, or objectified; consumed; assigned values and prices) and linked in many cases to transnational mobility and migration, presenting new ethnographic challenges and opportunities. This review highlights contemporary anthropological and ethnographic studies of the transnational commodification of intimacy and intimate relations, related debates, themes, and ethnographic challenges.
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Identity and Difference: Complicating Gender in Archaeology
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 65–81More LessFrom its inception, the archaeology of gender was entwined with feminism. Engagement has engendered reconstructions of complex, diverse peoples and practices that are more equitable, relevant, and sound. Yet, for many archaeologists, the connection with feminist perspectives has frayed in recent years. Their studies of gender articulate dated ideas about women and epistemological frames that highlight duality and universality. Examinations of labor divisions typify shortcomings. To advance gender's study and archaeology, practitioners need to consider several concerns about identity and difference emerging from third-wave feminism. Gender is envisioned as intersection. Bioarchaeology, especially, will benefit from feminist approaches that reflect critically and regard gender in nonnormative and multiscalar terms. To this end, resistance to feminism must fade. Opposition stems from its imagined relationship with postmodernism, but conflation misconstrues feminism's sociopolitical commitment to emancipatory change. For their part, archaeologists can utilize feminist perspectives to diversify the field, explore difference, and tackle archaeological issues with sociopolitical resonance.
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The Early Development of Gender Differences
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 83–97More LessThis article reviews findings from anthropology, psychology, and other disciplines about the role of biological factors in the development of sex differences in human behavior, including biological theories, the developmental course of sex differences, and the interaction of biological and cultural gendering processes at different ages. Current evidence suggests that major biological influences on individual differences in human gender, to the extent that they exist, operate primarily in early development, during and especially prior to puberty. Biological effects are likely to be mediated by relatively simple processes, like temperament, which are then elaborated through social interactions (as with mother and peers) into more complex gendered features of adult personality. Biological anthropologists and psychologists interested in gender should direct more attention to understanding how social processes influence the development and function of the reproductive endocrine system.
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The Ethnography of South Asian Foragers
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 99–114More LessForty contemporary South Asian societies continue to carry out hunting and gathering as their primary subsistence strategy, but who are these societies? In which ways are they similar or dissimilar? Are they like contemporary foragers in other world areas? This article reviews ethnographic research concerning contemporary South Asian foragers with a focus on subsistence, cosmologies, and social organization. Major conclusions are that evolutionary/devolutionary theories about foragers during the documented ethnographic period lack reliable data and that theories of trade between farmers and foragers ignore the paramount importance of subsistence foraging practices. Currently, theories based on interpretations of foragers' own cultural categories and standpoints constitute the most reliable ethnographic studies, and notable contributions are highlighted. Contemporary foragers themselves advocate that their best chances for cultural survival depend on state governments that maintain environmentally diverse, healthy forests, provide contemporary foraging communities access to their traditional natural resources, and implement projects that foster cultural survival rather than assimilation.
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The Biology of Paternal Care in Human and Nonhuman Primates
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 115–130More LessAmong primates, intense paternal care is manifested in only a few distantly related species, including humans. Thus, neither purely phylogenetic nor socioecological hypotheses can explain its presence or the variability in the expression of paternal behaviors. Traditional theoretical models for the evolution of paternal care can now be reexamined, focusing on male-female interactions as a possible key to understanding parental strategies. At a proximate level, the existing evidence implies a common physiological substrate for both paternal behavior and pair-bonds. Vasopressin, and perhaps prolactin and testosterone, apparently underlies the endocrinological bases of paternal care, and neuroanatomical reward pathways may be involved in the formation of attachment bonds. Understanding of the genetic structure of primate populations and the neurogenetics of social behavior is also emerging. A multidisciplinary approach that also considers epigenetic and transgenerational effects promises to open new avenues to explain the flexible nature of paternal care in primates.
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Developmental Origins of Adult Function and Health: Evolutionary Hypotheses
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 131–147More LessMany biological systems have critical periods that overlap with the age of maternal provisioning via placenta or lactation. As such, they serve as conduits for phenotypic information transfer between generations and link maternal experience with offspring biology and disease outcomes. This review critically evaluates proposals for an adaptive function of these responses in humans. Although most models assume an adult function for the metabolic responses to nutritional stress, these specific traits have more likely been tailored for effects during fetal life and infancy. Other biological functions are under stronger evolutionary selection later in life and thus are better candidates for predictive plasticity. Given the long human life cycle and environmental changes that are unpredictable on decadal timescales, plastic responses that evolved to confer benefits in adolescence or adulthood likely rely on cues that integrate matrilineal experiences prior to gestation. We conclude with strategies for testing the timescale and adaptive significance of developmental responses to early environments.
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Adoption of the Unrelated Child: Some Challenges to the Anthropological Study of Kinship
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 149–166More LessAdoption of children born by others is practiced in some form or another in all known societies. Although ethnographic monographs from all over the world have made numerous brief references to local adoption and/or fostering practices, very little sustained interpretative interest has, until recently, been directed at this social phenomenon. With the sudden and rapid increase in transnational adoption—people in Western Europe and North America adopt children from countries in the south and the former Soviet empire—a new-found anthropological interest in adoption has been observed. This review places adoption firmly within the tradition of theoretical kinship and explores the values attached to a perceived relationship between biological and social relatedness in a number of different social settings in which adoption is being practiced.
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Anthropology and Global Health
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 167–183More LessThis article addresses anthropology's engagement with the emerging discipline of global health. We develop a definition for global health and then present four principal contributions of anthropology to global health: (a) ethnographic studies of health inequities in political and economic contexts; (b) analysis of the impact on local worlds of the assemblages of science and technology that circulate globally; (c) interrogation, analysis, and critique of international health programs and policies; and (d) analysis of the health consequences of the reconfiguration of the social relations of international health development.
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Transitions: Pastoralists Living with Change
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 185–198More LessThis review covers two major causes of change in pastoral systems. First is fragmentation, the dissection of a natural system into spatially isolated parts, which is caused by a number of socioeconomic factors such as changes in land tenure, agriculture, sedentarization, and institutions. Second is climate change and climate variability, which are expected to alter dry and semiarid grasslands now and into the future. Details of these changes are described using examples from Africa and Mongolia. An adaptation framework is used to place global change in context. Although pastoral systems are clearly under numerous constraints and risks have intensified, pastoralists are adapting and trying to remain flexible. It is too early to ask if the responses are enough, given the magnitude and number of changes faced by pastoralists today.
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Medical Discourse
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 199–215More LessDiscourse plays an important role in medicine, and medical discourse in the broadest sense (discourse in and about healing, curing, or therapy; expressions of suffering; and relevant language ideologies) has profound anthropological significance. As modes of social action, writing and speaking help constitute medical institutions, curative practices, and relations of authority in and beyond particular healing encounters. This review describes cultural variation in medical discourse and variation across genres and registers. It then surveys two approaches to analyzing medical discourse: conversation analysis (CA) and discourse studies echoing Foucault's work, attempting to spur dialogue between them. Such dialogue could be fruitful because, despite hesitancy to invoke macrosocial variables, conversation analysts as well as Foucaultian discourse analysts have reflected on medical authority. Finally, the article reviews recent attempts to contextualize closely analyzed interactions—written exchanges as well as face-to-face clinical encounters—vis-à-vis the global circulation of linguistic forms and ideologies.
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State Emergence in Early China
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 217–232More LessQuestions relating to state emergence in China are often intertwined with the origins of early dynasties. This subject involves many disciplines, including archaeology, history, and anthropology, and scholars from these fields often employ different definitions for states/civilization, use various approaches, and address diverse issues. This article intends to provide an overview of major archaeological findings, approaches, interpretations, and debates on certain issues. Controversial questions include whether some of late Neolithic polities can be considered early states, and whether ancient textual accounts can be used to guide archaeological interpretations. It may not be possible in the near future to alter the historiographically determined approach, which pervades Chinese archaeology, but social-archaeology methods for investigating the political-economic system on regional and interregional scales have proven productive.
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Interdisciplinary Translational Research in Anthropology, Nutrition, and Public Health
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 233–249More LessThis review focuses on several human population health research topics that exemplify interdisciplinary concepts and approaches from anthropology, nutrition, and public health with an emphasis on applied or translational global health implications. First, a recent study on neonatal survival in a resource-poor region emphasizes how health can be markedly improved with detailed translation and implementation of evidence from all three disciplines. Second, schistosomiasis, a parasitic worm infection, is reviewed with an emphasis on developing a consensus of its nutritional health burdens and the next translational research steps needed to improve control of both infection transmission and disease. Last, the author's long-term Samoan nutrition and health studies are described with a focus on new translational research to improve diabetes. This selective review attempts to provide a rationale for the intersections of anthropology, nutrition, and public health to proceed with fundamental biological, cultural, and behavioral research to reduce health inequalities globally and domestically.
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Amazonian Archaeology
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 251–266More LessAmazonian archaeology has made major advances in recent decades, particularly in understanding coupled human environmental systems. Like other tropical forest regions, prehistoric social formations were long portrayed as small-scale, dispersed communities that differed little in organization from recent indigenous societies and had negligible impacts on the essentially pristine forest. Archaeology documents substantial variation that, while showing similarities to other world regions, presents novel pathways of early foraging and domestication, semi-intensive resource management, and domesticated landscapes associated with diverse small- and medium-sized complex societies. Late prehistoric regional polities were articulated in broad regional political economies, which collapsed in the aftermath of European contact. Field methods have also changed dramatically through in-depth local and regional studies, interdisciplinary approaches, and multicultural collaborations, notably with indigenous peoples. Contemporary research highlights questions of scale, perspective, and agency, including concerns for representation, public archaeology, indigenous cultural heritage, and conservation of the region's remarkable cultural and ecological resources.
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Symptom: Subjectivities, Social Ills, Technologies
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 267–288More LessIn the domain of health, not only are the raw effects of economic, social, and medical inequalities continually devastating, but novel processes of reconfiguring illness experience, subjectivity, and control are also underway. Human relationships to medical technology are increasingly constituted outside the clinical encounter. In this article we explore how the domestic encroachment of medical commodities affects social bonds in both affluent and resource-poor contexts, as well as how these commodities become interwoven in the very fabric of symptoms and identities. Symptoms are more than contingent matters; they are, at times, a necessary condition for the afflicted to articulate a new relationship to the world and to others. In exploring how people conceptualize technological self-care, we are specifically concerned with disciplinary modes of evidence-making and ask the following: what are the possibilities and limitations of theoretical frameworks (such as structural violence, biopower, social suffering, and psychoanalysis) through which these conceptions are being analyzed in contemporary anthropological scholarship? What can the unique capacities of ethnography add to the task of capturing the active embroilment of reason, life, and ethics as human conditions are shaped and lost? The intellectual survival of anthropological theory, we argue, might well be connected to people's own resilience and bodily struggles for realities to come.
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The Oldowan: The Tool Making of Early Hominins and Chimpanzees Compared
Vol. 38 (2009), pp. 289–305More LessThe Oldowan was the term first coined by Louis Leakey to describe the world's earliest stone industries, named after the famous site of Olduvai (formerly Oldoway) Gorge in Tanzania. The Oldowan Industrial Complex documents the first definitive evidence of early hominin culture as well as the earliest known archaeological record. This review examines our state of knowledge about the Oldowan and the hominin tool makers who produced this archaeological record and compares and contrasts these patterns with the technological and cultural patterns of modern apes, especially chimpanzees and bonobos. Of special interest are methodological approaches that can attempt to make direct comparisons between the early archaeological record and modern ape material culture, including a long-term collaborative experimental program in teaching modern apes to make and use stone tools.
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Previous Volumes
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Volume 52 (2023)
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Volume 51 (2022)
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Volume 50 (2021)
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Volume 49 (2020)
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Volume 48 (2019)
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Volume 47 (2018)
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Volume 46 (2018)
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Volume 45 (2016)
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Volume 44 (2015)
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Volume 43 (2014)
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Volume 42 (2013)
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Volume 41 (2012)
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Volume 40 (2011)
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Volume 39 (2010)
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Volume 38 (2009)
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Volume 37 (2008)
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Volume 36 (2007)
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Volume 35 (2006)
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Volume 34 (2005)
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Volume 33 (2004)
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Volume 32 (2003)
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Volume 31 (2002)
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Volume 30 (2001)
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Volume 29 (2000)
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Volume 28 (1999)
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Volume 27 (1998)
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Volume 26 (1997)
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Volume 25 (1996)
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Volume 24 (1995)
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Volume 23 (1994)
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Volume 22 (1993)
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Volume 21 (1992)
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Volume 20 (1991)
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Volume 19 (1990)
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Volume 18 (1989)
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Volume 17 (1988)
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Volume 16 (1987)
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Volume 15 (1986)
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Volume 14 (1985)
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Volume 13 (1984)
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Volume 12 (1983)
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Volume 11 (1982)
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Volume 10 (1981)
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Volume 9 (1980)
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Volume 8 (1979)
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Volume 7 (1978)
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Volume 6 (1977)
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Volume 5 (1976)
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Volume 4 (1975)
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Volume 3 (1974)
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Volume 2 (1973)
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Volume 1 (1972)
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Volume 0 (1932)