Placing Angola: Racialisation,Anthropocentrism, and Settler Colonialism at the Louisiana State Penitentiary's Angola Rodeo

The Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) is a site embedded with historical legacies of plantation slavery and settler colonialism; as the largest maximum security penitentiary in the United States, the prison also reflects the racial injustice of contemporary US mass incarceration. Situated on the site of an old plantation, the prison hosts the Angola Rodeo twice a year, an event that crystallises violent multispecies social relations in the merging of the US West and South as two distinct kinds of colonial projects. Whereas much scholarship and activism has worked against the wholesale dehumanisation inherent in chattel slavery, settler colonialism, and mass incarceration, this paper works to interrogate and disrupt the human–animal binary through which processes of dehumanisation are sustained. Drawing together postcolonial studies and animal studies, the paper centres empirical research on the Angola Rodeo to highlight how racialisation and anthropocentrism are intertwined logics of subordination and exclusion that carry forward into the present. Ultimately, the paper suggests the need for a mode of analysis and action that does not maintain the subordination of the animal, and instead, takes a de‐anthropocentric and decolonial approach to injustice.     

The uses of biology

Boyd, Robert, and Peter J. Richerson. Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. vii + 331 pp. including references and author and subject indices. $29.95 cloth.

Butterworth, George, Julie Rutkowska, and Michael Scaife, eds. Evolution and Developmental Psychology. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. xxiv + 205 pp. including chapter references and index. $27.50 cloth.     

Risk-senstive adaptive tactics: Models and evidence from subsistence studies in biology and anthropology

Risk-sensitive analysis of subsistence adaptations is warranted when (i) outcomes are to some degree unpredictable and (ii) they have nonlinear consequences for fitness and/or utility. Both conditions are likely to be common among peoples studied by ecologicll anthropologists and archaeologists. We develop a general conceptual model of risk. We then review and summarize the extensive empirical literatures from biology and anthropology for methodological insights and for their comparative potential. Risk-sensitive adaptive tactics are diverse and they are taxonomically widespread. However, the anthropological literature rarely makes use of formal models of risk-sensitive adaptation, while the biological literature lacks naturalistic observations of risk-sensitive behavior. Both anthropology and biology could benefit from greater interdisciplinary exchange.     

Human biology in the Classic Maya collapse: Evidence from paleopathology and paleodiet

We review evidence from human biology—paleopathological and isotopic paleodietary studies on ancient Maya skeletons—to assess the validity of ecological models of the Classic Maya collapse, in which elevated disease and deteriorating diet are commonly assumed. To be upheld, the health arguments of ecological models require that the Maya disease burden (1) was greater than that for many other societies and (2) increased over the span of occupation. The dietary argument requires (1) consistent change in diet from Preclassic and Early Classic Periods to the Terminal Classic and (2) increasing social divergence in diet. A correlation between diet and disease is necessary to link these arguments. Neither pathology nor isotopic data consistently support these criteria. Instead, it appears that local environmental and political factors created diversity in both disease burden and diet. In view of the human biological data, we are skeptical of ecological models as generalized explanations for the abandonment of Classic Maya sites in the southern lowlands.     

From born to made: technology, biology and space

This paper is concerned with forging new links between geography and biology and technology by delivering a set of shocks to the meaning of accepted categories like 'nature' and 'technology'. To achieve these dual aims, the paper will double click on the icon 'intelligence'. 'Intelligence' prioritizes the active shaping of environments . It thereby allows space for the spaces of the world to themselves become a part of intelligibility and intellect as elements of distributed cognition and , as will become clear, pre-cognition. The paper argues that such a conception of sentience can provide a series of new perspectives, as well as a pressing ethical challenge.     

Exaptation and synanthropic insects: A diachronic interplay between biology and culture

Abstract

Since 1982, Stephen J. Gould and Elisabeth Vrba's concept of exaptation has been adopted, to varying degrees, by a number of biological and social science disciplines. However, it remains a missing term in the study of archaeologically recovered insect remains and entomologically related artefacts. Exaptation refers to the process by which a characteristic acquires a function for which it was not originally adapted. The application of Gould and Vrba's concept to the field of archaeoentomology could enhance our perception of past social, environmental, and climatic conditions as well as interactions. Herein, biological and technological examples of the enduring relationship between synanthropic insects and humans are explored using the concept of exaptation.     

Folk biology: A frontier of cognitive anthropology

Brent Berlin, Dennis E. Breedlove, and Peter H. Raven. Principles of Tzeltal Plant Classification: An Introduction to the Botanical Ethnography of a Mayan‐Speaking People of Highland Chiapas. New York and London: Academic Press, 1974. xxii + 660 pp. Tables, figures, maps, illustrations, appendixes, references, and indexes. $39.50 (cloth).     

Skeletal biology in the twentieth century: From Piltdown to the present

Spencer, Frank. The Piltdown Papers 1908–1955. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. xii + 282 pp. including references and name and subject indices. $65.00 cloth

Spencer, Frank. Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. xxvi + 272 pp. including references and name and subject indices. $24.95 cloth

I?can, Mehmet ?a?ar, and Kenneth A.R. Kennedy, eds. Reconstruction of Life from the Skeleton. New York: Alan R. Liss, 1989. xv + 315 pp. including chapter references and index. $49.50 cloth.     

The commercialization of molecular biology: Walter Gilbert and the Biogen startup

Abstract

Recombinant DNA technology was invented in 1973. Within a few years, molecular biologists began developing practical applications and establishing private companies to exploit them commercially. In 1978, Harvard biologist Walter Gilbert, one of the leading figures in the field, joined the founding scientific advisory board of a Swiss biotech startup called Biogen. He later became the company’s CEO. His participation helped Biogen recruit top scientific talent in the United States and Europe and encouraged many of his professional colleagues to follow his example and go into business. In this way, Gilbert became a linchpin in the formation of the contemporary biotechnology industry. Because his adventures in business were shaped by circumstances unique to the late twentieth century, Gilbert’s case adds a distinctive point of reference to studies of academic entrepreneurship. It also points to internal contradictions and conceptual ambiguities in neo-institutional accounts of research privatization.     

Ancient Indian concepts about phenomenology,biology, and therapeutics of epilepsy

This article discusses etiology, pathogenesis, symptoms, and treatment of epilepsy, as described in Charaka Samhitā (translation: Charaka’s Compendium) and Sushruta Samhitā, the two core texts of Ayurveda, an ancient system of medicine. Ayurveda emphasized amnesia and loss of consciousness as core features of epileptic seizures (Sanskrit: apasmar; translation: apa negation, smaran memory) and recognized that seizures occur due to a disturbance in brain function or flow of “humors” to the brain. Semiology of various seizure types was well described. Epilepsy was attributed to both internal and multiple exogenous factors. Treatment of epilepsy with formulations of naturally occurring substances, their compounding and use, is described in remarkable detail. Lifestyle modifications to protect people with epilepsy are also documented. Cognitive comorbidities of epilepsy were recognized. Although none of the Ayurveda formulations have any empirical evidence supporting their safety or efficacy in the treatment of epilepsy, studies are needed to generate relevant evidence, to recognize their hazards, and to integrate traditional and complementary systems of medicine with modern health care in an informed and safe manner.     

Relevance of soil biology and fertility research to archaeological preservation by reburial

Abstract

This paper discusses how soil biological information can help to improve understanding of, and possibly inform decisions about, preservation of organic archaeological remains by reburial. A brief summary of the properties of the soil biological community is followed by an outline of results from recent biological investigations following the recovery of archaeologically relevant materials that had been buried for thirty-three years in one of the experimental earthworks in England UK. Examples from the soil biology and fertility literature are discussed to illustrate the effects of fluctuations in soil wetness and aeration, and of nitrogen availability on decomposition. Finally, the impact of soil handling and physical disruption on biological processes in soil are discussed, as they influence whether soil functions can be restored at a reburial site once the archaeological resources have been ‘protected’ beneath.     

Causal pathways and causal processes: Studying the evolutionary prehistory of human diversity in language,customs, and biology

An issue of continuing interest to Pacific archaeologists—the “question of Polynesian origins”—is examined (1) to illustrate a set of basic concepts (pattern, pathway, and process) helpful when talking about the origins, maintenance, and stability of similarities and differences among human populations, and (2) to document, by case example, how one particular temporal pathway of development leading to one historically specific pattern of human variability may tell us something in general, as well as something in particular, about the evolutionary processes leading to human diversity in language, customs, and biology. Contrary to the conventional assumption that the first Polynesians migrated from a homeland located somewhere in Southeast Asia, a simple biological model based on perhaps no more than three types or kinds of event sequences—i.e., causal processes—suggests how modern Polynesian speakers may be derived from an ancestral population(s) once resident in the region of the Pacific we now speak of as Melanesia.     

Mapping the potential impact of synthetic biology on Australian foreign policy

Synthetic biology is an emerging technology that will impact on the future security and prosperity of Australia. As a discrete policy area synthetic biology has not been explored in relation to Australian foreign policy. To begin this process an understanding of Australia’s genetic endowment, Australia’s agricultural endowment and those security concerns novel to synthetic biology need to be developed. The convergence of the biological sciences and the information sciences is creating novel security concerns that impact on Australian sovereignty, both mainland and the Antarctic Territories, plant and animal health, and defence medical infrastructure. These concerns cross many traditional disciplinary and policy boundaries, an awareness of this is required and a nascent national practitioner community can develop this further. Drawing from work conducted by the US and UK synthetic biology practitioner communities, this article lays out the unique touch points synthetic biology has on Australian foreign policy.     

Beware of false prophets: biology, human nature and the future of International Relations theory

The disciplinary history of International Relations (IR) has been marked by confrontation between those who believe that the study of politics can and should be modelled on the natural sciences, a position defended most forcibly in the United States, and those who have dissented, viewing this ambition as methodologically unjustified and ethically undesirable. But the scientific template against which to judge such claims is constantly shifting. In this article it is suggested that mainstream IR theorists are likely to turn increasingly to the biological sciences for inspiration and intellectual legitimacy. Some of the possibilities and problems involved in this move are explored, focusing in particular on the prominent role played by evolutionary psychology in the social sciences. A variety of reasons are offered, political and theoretical, as to why IR scholars should be extremely wary of looking to the biological sciences to provide universalistic accounts of human behavioural patterns.     

Similarity of the flora of the Erie Islands: implications for conservation biology

Using a compiled list of the vascular flora for 21 islands in the western basin of Lake Erie, Preston's resemblance measure and Connor and Simberlof's Null Hypothesis I were applied to native and alien species subsets in order to examine how these findings fit within the equilibrium theory. Based on Preston's measure, it was found that the similarity of species between island pairs was more likely to fit with MacArthur and Wilson's equilibrium theory when native species were considered than when alien species were considered. Native species have restricted distributions - especially those found on the smaller islands - and appear to be less randomly distributed about the islands. This study also found that a large component of the alien flora is widespread in its distribution, and appears to be randomly distributed among most of the islands.