Epidemics and anthropologists

This guest editorial reflects on the role of anthropology in the recent outbreaks of Ebola virus epidemics in West Africa and the opportunities and challenges in contributing to the management epidemics in general.     

Mountain anthropology and mountain anthropologists: The comparative study of populations at high elevations

Baker, Paul, and Corneille Jest, eds. L'Homme et Son Environnement à Haute Altitude: Environmental and Human Population Problems at High Altitude. Cahiers Népalais. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1981. 163 pp. including plates and bibliography. n.p.

Cook, David Noble. The People of the Colca Valley: A Population Study. Dellplain Latin American Studies No. 9. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1982. xx+101 pp. including bibliography and index. $15.50 cloth.

Poffenberger, Mark. Patterns of Change in the Nepal Himalaya. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1980. v+116 pp. including maps, bibliography, and index. $20.00 cloth.

Millones, Luis, and Hiroyasu Tomoeda, eds. El Hombre y Su Ambiente en los Andes Centrales. Senri Ethnological Studies No. 10. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 1982. v + 307pp. including plates, maps, and bibliography, n.p.

Lehmann, David, ed. Ecology and Exchange in the Andes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. v + 245 pp. including bibliography, glossary, and subject and author indices. $47.50 cloth.

Skar, Harold A. The Warm Valley People: Duality and Land Reform among the Quechua Indians of Highland Peru. Oslo Studies in Social Anthropology No. 2. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1982. v + 350 pp. including plates, appendices, bibliography, index, and glossary. n.p.     

Statistics for anthropologists

David Hurst Thomas. Figuring Anthropology: First Principles of Probability and Statistics. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976. xi + 532 pp. Tables, figures, appendix, exercises, references, and index. $13.50.     

Mexican anthropologists in Postrevolutionary Mexico

Cynthia Hewitt de Alcántara. Boundaries and Paradigms: The Anthropological Study of Rural Life in Postrevolutionary Mexico. Leiden Development Studies No. 4; 1982. 355 pp. (price not given) to be republished by Routledge and Kegan Paul).     

Women anthropologists look at women

Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, eds. Woman, Culture, and Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974. xi + 352 pp. Figures, tables, references, and index. $12.50 (cloth), $3.95 (paper).     

Many voices: Medical anthropologists explore the meaning of health,illness, and cure

Franz Boas organized and shaped American anthropology. No academic discipline of similar scope owed so much to just one person. Within three decades of coming to the United States from Germany he had trained the anthropologists who established its place within the universities and redirected its tone and ethos as well as its theories. The biographies under review help us understand the background, aims, and drive of the man. We shall consider, in particular, the impact he had on the political and ethical tone of the field, the prevalence of women in it, and the importance of his scientific background.     

British anthropologists and African railwaymen

R. D. Grillo. African Railwaymen: Solidarity and Opposition in an East African Labour Force. New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1974. xi + 215 pp. Figures, tables, appendixes, bibliography, and index. $15.00 (cloth).     

Oil age ethnographies: Alaskan anthropologists address the world

Fienup‐Riordan, Ann. Eskimo Essays: Yup'ik Lives and How We See Them. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1990. xxii + 269 pp. including notes, references, and index. $25.00 cloth, $11.95 paper.

Jorgensen, Joseph G. Oil Age Eskimos. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. xix + 401 pp. including appendices, bibliography, and index. $40.00 cloth.

Oswalt, Wendell H. Bashful No Longer: An Alaskan Eskimo Ethnohistory, 1778–1988. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990. xviii + 270 pp. including notes, references, and index. $21.95 cloth.     

Nutrition and food production: Not as anthropologists see them

Hamilton, Sahni, Barry Popkin, and Deborah Spicer. Women and Nutrition in Third World Countries. South Hadley, Massachusetts: Bergin and Garvey, 1984. x + 147 pp. including notes, appendices, and references. $24.95 cloth.

International Rice Research Institute. Report of an Exploratory Workshop on the Role of Anthropologists and Other Social Scientists in Interdisciplinary Teams Developing Improved Food Production Technology. Los Banos, Philippines: IRRI, 1982. 102 pp. including references, workshop summaries and recommendations, and list of participants, (n.p.) paper.     

Modelling the effect of Mesolithic populations on the slowdown of the Neolithic transition

The expansion of the Neolithic transition in Europe took place gradually from the Near East across the whole continent. At Northern Europe, observations show a slowdown in the speed of the Neolithic front in comparison to other regions of the continent. It has been suggested that the presence of high population densities of hunter-gatherers at the North could have been the main cause for this slowdown. This proposal has recently been described by a mathematical model that takes into account: (i) the resistance opposed by the Mesolithic populations to the advance of Neolithic populations in their territory, and (ii) a limitation on the population growth dynamics due to the competition for space and resources. But these two effects are not equally responsible for the slowdown of the spread. Indeed, here we show that the limitation on the population growth dynamics seems to have been the main cause of the delay of the expansion of farming in Northern Europe.     

Language and politics: Investigations of language and speech by social and cultural anthropologists

Anderson, Benedict R. O'G. Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. vii + 305 pp. including index. $44.95 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Merlan, Francesca and Alan Rumsey. Ku Waru: Language and Segmentary Politics in the Western Nebilyer Valley, Papua New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991; xvii + 387 pp. including appendices, notes, references, and index. $59.50 cloth.     

试论清代科举考试在贵州的变通与变革

清代科举考试,在贵州推行中出现了一些与民族地区发展实际相适应之变通与变革。从变通方面来看,这是务实官员努力之结果。它不仅使贵州士人有更多的机会和条件参与全国性的考试竞争,而且促进了贵州人才流动,扩大了这种制度文化在贵州的影响力。在内忧外患的情况下,有识之士在贵州走上了变革科举考试的道路,使贵州考试步入了近代化的轨迹。     

International development in transition

International development is in a period of transition. While the outcome of this is still unclear, this article argues that there are at least four areas in which the project of international development is changing. First, there is a debate, especially within the World Bank, about development strategy and how we think about development, particularly in terms of the balance between states and markets. This is evident in the debate over state failure and the new structural economics. Second, there is increasing evidence of a shift in lending, away from projects of ‘small’ human development, perhaps best encapsulated by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, towards more transformative ‘big’ development projects such as infrastructure. Third, ‘non‐traditional’ aid donors and new forms of private philanthropy are playing a more significant role in development financing and this, in turn, offers developing countries a new range of choices about what kinds of development assistance they receive. Fourth, aid relations are changing as a result of the renewed agency of developing states, particularly in sub‐Saharan Africa, and shifts towards increased South–South cooperation are growing as evidenced by increased funding from regional development banks and increased trade flows. The article reviews these changes and suggests a series of questions and challenges that arise from them for analysts of international development, developing countries and traditional aid donors.     

Other ways to examine the finances behind the birth of Classical Greece

Although the birth of Classical Greece is often attributed to the constitutional reforms of Cleisthenes (508/507 BCE), the achievement of an economically minded government under the Peisistratid tyrant Hippias (527–510 BCE) potentially paved the way by advancing Athenian silver for exportation in international trade. It is proposed here that new silver technology, which initiated the transition from acquiring silver from ‘dry’ silver ores to silver-bearing lead ores, was introduced to Greece during the time of the Peisistratids (561–510 BCE). Massive exploitation of silver-bearing lead ores at Laurion in Attica, which later financed the construction of a war navy, appears evident in the lead pollution records of Greenland ice, lead isotopic analyses of sixth-century BCE Attic silver coins and late Iron Age Levantine hacksilver, and is reflected in the numbers of lead votive figurines at sanctuaries in Sparta. Against the backdrop of the threat of war with Persia and an imminent Spartan invasion which resulted in the overthrow of Hippias (510 BCE), it is considered that a political transition occurred because Greece was both geologically and politically disposed to adopt this labour-intensive silver technology which helped to initiate, fund and protect the radical social experiment that became known as Classical Greece.