人类学的技艺

今天我们看到的社会科学乃是舶来品,是从西方知识体系中生长出来的。直到启蒙哲学时期,社会科学并没有剥离出来,我们能见到的还只是一些虽然睿智但却是大而化之的论述。“到19世纪初,科学终于     

Anthropology as jester

Disciplines from sociology to economics have claimed to be the queen of the social sciences. Lévi‐Strauss asserted the same for anthropology. Instead of competing for a royal position, we might better describe ourselves as the court jester who mocks and mimics accepted behaviour.     

Anthropology of French Canada

Gerald L. Gold and Marc‐Adelard Tremblay, eds. Communities and Culture in French Canada. Toronto: Holt, Rhinehart and Winston of Canada, 1973. xvi + 364 pp. Maps, tables, appendixes, bibliographies, indexes, and notes. $6.50 (paper).     

Anthropology through literature

James P. Spradley and George E. McDonough, eds. Anthropology Through Literature. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1973. xviii + 412 pp. $5.95 (paper).     

Anthropology in the Anthropocene

In the Anthropocene – an age troubled by global processes of material degradation – anthropology is constrained by its emphasis on local experience. Rather than confine itself, like mainstream economics, to the study of signs and subjectivities, it needs to develop its capacity to deal with the interaction of the symbolic and the material. This should include unravelling how economic ideas and the semiotics of consumption are entwined with the materiality of the biosphere and the physical metabolism of world society.     

Archaeology as Anthropology Revisited

Anthropology was established in the USA during the middle of the nineteenth century. From the beginning, archaeology was considered a part of the discipline, a notion that continues to this day. However, over the course of the past 160 years, periodically, the place of archaeology within anthropology is questioned. Often, this has a reflection in the growth or shrinking in membership of the Archaeology Division of the American Anthropological Association. I explore these trends and try to explain them in terms of the history of anthropology.     

Arrival: Anthropology in Hollywood

The recent Hollywood science fiction film Arrival features as its main character a linguist who explicitly references the Sapir‐Whorf hypothesis and linguistic relativism. Unusually for a mainstream film, Arrival presents the insights of linguistic anthropology as a key to the human‐alien encounter and combines these concerns with other key anthropological insights, particularly in relation to notions of time and the embodied nature of writing/drawing. In this article, the author argues that the film can be useful in thinking about anthropological debates on ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ versions of Sapir‐Whorf and suggests that a careful parsing of the anthropological concepts drawn on in the film provides food for thought about the possible usefulness of popular fictional concoctions for thinking through contemporary issues in anthropology and conveying them to a wider audience.     

Anthropology and working class life

W. H. Form. Blue Collar Stratification: Auto Workers in Four Countries. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. i‐xx + 335 pp. Figures, tables, bibliography, and index. $17.00.

J. D. Edelstein and M. Warner. Comparative Union Democracy: Organization and Opposition in British and American Labor Unions. London: George Allen, Unwin, Ltd. 1976. i‐ix + 378 pp. Tables, bibliography, and index. $19.95.

L. B. Rubin. Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working Class Family. New York: Basic Books, 1976. i‐xiii +268 pp. Bibliography, and index. $11.95.     

Anthropology in the financial crisis

This editorial considers the opportunities opened up for anthropologists by the financial crisis of 2008. The chief of these is the exposure of cracks in the intellectual hegemony of free-market economics which contributed to an unnecessarily defensive posture on the part of most anthropologists during the period of neoliberal globalization. The authors claim that anthropology can bridge the gap between everyday life and the world at large by combining the study of ideas and social actions. We draw on Ortiz's research among financial professionals to show how working practices informed by economic liberalism can have extremely unequal consequences for the global distribution of resources. The perspectives of Mauss and Polanyi on political economy can help us to make sense of the current situation and to recommend a path forward beyond market fundamentalism. Their general ideas lend power to the concrete findings of field research. The mask of neoliberal ideology has been ripped from the politics of world economy. Anthropology's highest mission is to start from where people are and go with them wherever they take you. What better time to follow this imperative than when the model the world has been compelled to live by for three decades is in such disarray?     

Anthropology,genuine and spurious

Sapir, Edward, Selected Writings in Language, Culture, and Personality, ed. by David G. Mandelbaum. With a New Epilogue by Dell H. Hymes. Paperback Edition. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985. iii + 617 pp. including bibliography. $14.95 paper.

Reiss, Nira. Speech Act Taxonomy. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1985. vi + 153 pp. including references and appendices. $36.00 paper.     

Anthropology in the middle east

Canfield, Robert L., ed. Turko‐Persia in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xiv + 256 pp. including references and index. $54.50 cloth.

Caton, Steven C. "Peaks of Yemen I Summon”: Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemen Tribe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. xv + 351 pp. including notes, appendices, bibliography, and index. $34.95.

Khoury, Philip S. and Joseph Kostiner, eds. Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990 xv + 351 pp. including collected references and index. $45.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.     

Anthropology at the bottom of the pyramid

This article explores what anthropology has to say about contemporary business strategies for market expansion among poor consumers in Africa and Asia. Focusing on the activities of global consumer goods company Unilever in India, we show how anthropology can provide valuable insights into the hidden work and power relations involved in transforming an everyday commodity like soap into a composite object, what we call a 'social good', that is capable of simultaneously combating disease, tackling poverty and realizing value for shareholders.     

Anthropology of Eurasia,Postsocialism and Beyond

David M. Engel. Code and Custom in a Thai Provincial Court: the Interaction of Formal and Informal Systems of Justice. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, The Association for Asian Studies, 1978. 230 pp.     

Anthropology,sinophilia and modes of production

Thurston, Anne F., and Burton Pasternak, eds. The Social Sciences and Fieldwork in China: Views from the Field. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1983. xv + 161 pp. including reference notes. $22.50 cloth.

Watson, Rubie S. Inequality Among Brothers: Class and Kinship in South China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. xiii + 193 pp. including maps, references, glossary, and index. $37.50 cloth.