What's in a perspective? The history of mexicanist anthropology

Hewitt de Alcántara, Cynthia. Anthropological Perspectives on Rural Mexico. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984. xiv + 224 pp. including footnotes and index. $32.95 cloth.     

Whither medical anthropology?

Alan Harwood. Rx: Spiritist as Needed. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977. xi + 251 pp. $22.50.     

The chronology of Rebetiko – a reconsideration of the evidence

Abstract

In this note I would like to discuss the problems presented to researchers by the almost complete lack of reliable information concerning the dates of pre-war rebetika recordings. It is unfortunately no exaggeration to say that with very few exceptions the published dates of older rebetika recordings are not to be trusted, and they have not been based on factual evidence. We are all of us familiar with the well-known reissues of older discs which as a rule never contain the slightest information about the original 78 recordings. A crass example is the series <inline-graphic href="splitsection11_in1.tif"/>whose six volumes do not furnish anything in the way of chronological or label information about the reissued records. There are, moreover, other reissues with more serious pretensions, but no less disappointing. For example the various reissues of the ‘Center for the Study of Rebetika’ where we are given extensive notes and illuminating discussions of musicological problems (at least on some of the early reissues) but not a word about the date, label, catalogue and master numbers of the original recordings. Even in the case of the best reissue so far of pre-war rebetika, Martin Schwartz's ‘Greek-Oriental’ (Folklyric 9033) the information provided in the extensive sleeve notes is not wholly satisfactory. The editor has given us the information found nowhere else on similar reissues, namely the original catalogue and masternumbers from which it should be possible to date the recordings. For instance, Schwartz notes that Charal. Panagis' recording <inline-graphic href="splitsection11_in2.tif"/>appeared originally on Greek Parlophone with the catalogue B 21751 and the masternumber 101476. He does not say, however, when he thinks the record was made, although he has all the information needed. From what we know of Parlophone catalogue numbers it seems certain that the record was issued in early 1934. On the same LP we also have Roza Eskenazi's <inline-graphic href="splitsection11_in3.tif"/>(Greek HMV AO 2147); nor in this case does Schwartz attempt to give a date, although it is plain that the record was issued in 1934.     

Am I going mad?: Adverse meditation events and the anthropology of ethics

There has been growing interest in meditation adversities amongst mindfulness communities in recent years. This article documents US meditator distress upon experiencing incoherence in the eclectic resources supporting their practice. How might the anthropology of ethics consider self-cultivation practices when the traditions supporting them fail due to incoherence? We need further research on moral bricolage to answer that question.     

The social origins of cognition: A basis for reintegrating anthropology and psychology?

Wertsch, James V., ed. Culture, Communication and Cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. x + 379 pp. including notes, bibliography, and indices. $42.50 cloth, $14.00 paper.

Rogoff, Barbara, and Jean Lave, eds. Everyday Cognition: Its Development in Social Context. Cambridge: Harvard Unversity Press, 1984. vi + 352 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $27.50 cloth.     

The rhetoric of science and the critique of imperialism in British social anthropology,c. 1870–1940

In this article I discuss issues of memory and historicity in a contemporary African prophetic movement, the Tokoist church. I do so by focusing on the multiple processes of “biographization” of the prophet’s (Simão Toko) life from the different allegiances within the movement. I suggest that, despite recent critiques on the biographical method, the ethnography of those (unstable and heterogeneous) processes can be very helpful to understand the place of memory and historical consciousness in contemporary Christianity.     

Ethnomedicine: The “new” medical anthropology?

Horacio Fabrega, Jr., and Daniel B. Silver. Illness and Shamanistic Curing in Zinacantan: An Ethnomedical Analysis. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973. xii + 285 pp. Tables, figures, appendixes, bibliography, and index. $10.95.     

Mary douglas and the “new anthropology”

Mary Douglas. Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975. xxi + 325 pp. Figures and index. $23.50.     

Split phalanges from archaeological sites: evidence of nutritional stress?

Broken animal phalanges from archaeological sites have been widely used as an indicator of nutritional stress of the prehistoric people due to the low caloric return rate (caloric yield/processing time) of the phalanges. Although it sounds logical, this widely popular argument is based on Binford’s (1978) interview with the Nunamiut and lacks empirical support. In this study, we present the results of experimental studies conducted on 142 modern cow (Bos taurus) and deer (Odocoileus virginianus) first phalanges to document the processing of phalanges, such as the required force and processing time to break them open, possible methods of breaking phalanges, and the resultant breakage and surface modification patterns. This comparative dataset and ethnographic data from contemporary hunter-gatherer groups indicate that broken phalanges in and of themselves cannot be taken as evidence of resource stress. The phalanges do not require substantial amount of processing time and marrow from the phalanges could have been preferred for its taste and soft texture during the period when resources were not scarce. This may explain the bone breakage pattern from an 8800 year old archaeological assemblage from Tangzigou in southwest China, where phalanges were intensively broken without any other evidence of resource stress.     

Belief and ritual: Has anthropology lost its magic?

Brown, Michael F. Tsewa's Gift: Magic and Meaning in an Amazonian Society. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985. No front matter, 220 pp. including appendices, chapter notes, bibliography, and index. $19.95 cloth.

Elworthy, Frederick Thomas. The Evil Eye: An Account of This Ancient and Widespread Superstition. New York: The Julian Press, 1986. xi + 471 pp. including illustrations and index. $7.95 paper.

Hurley, J. Finley. Sorcery. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985. vi + 232 pp. including key to principle sources, principle sources, and index. $25.00 cloth.

La Fontaine, J. S., Initiation: Ritual Drama and Secret Knowledge Across the World. New York: Penguin, 1986. No front matter, 208 pp. including notes to chapters and index. $5.95 paper.     

First‐world clinical anthropology and third‐world health issues

Golde, Peggy & Demitri B. Shimkin, eds. Clinical Anthropology: A New Approach to American Health Problems. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983. xxi + 456 pp. $17.75 (paper).

Morgan, John H., ed. Third World Medicine and Social Change: A Reader in Social Science and Medicine. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983. ix + 317 pp. $26.25 (cloth), $14.00 (paper).     

Seamus Heaney and the “place of writing”: technique as evidence of redress as a construct

This article re-examines the significance of redress for Seamus Heaney’s poetry and prose by illustrating that redress is a deeply considered intellectual construct which incites, facilitates and renews creativity throughout Heaney’s career. Redress neither constitutes a project of self-fashioning nor indicates uncertainty in terms of equivocation. Rather, it suggests Heaney’s characteristic uncertainty of how to create a space for himself from and within which to write. In his early work in particular, his contemplation of redress is indicated by his ritual recourse to spatial metaphor. Having arrived at the “place of writing”, the process of unwriting is immediately initiated and the space deconstructed. It is this deconstruction of the created place and the unwriting of what has been written which, in Heaney’s words, “makes the renewal of artistic effort contemplatable”. And it is that contemplation which functions as an impetus for poetry. This article therefore explores Heaney’s diction, rhetorical strategies and ritual performance of redress.     

The unexpected rise of cohabitation in the Philippines: evidence of socioeconomic disadvantage or a second demographic transition?

Cohabitation has increased rapidly in the Philippines, quadrupling in prevalence from 6 per cent in 1993 to 24 per cent in 2013 among young adult women. This increase is dramatic and exceptional given the slow change in other family behaviours, such as low divorce rates and continued high fertility, and the persistent influence of the Catholic Church. While cohabitation is often framed as evidence of ideational change and liberalisation, its continued uptake over time may be associated with socio-economic conditions. Using the 2013 national demographic and health surveys, we apply a discrete-time competing risks model to examine the relationship between socio-economic status and cohabitation, using education as proxy for resources and opportunities available to women. Our findings demonstrate that lower levels of education are significantly associated with a higher risk of cohabitation, which suggests rising cohabitation in the Philippines is more linked to socio-economic disadvantage than the devaluing of marriage among educated elites.     

Proximity and modes of innovation – evidence from two agricultural engineering industries in north-west Germany

Recently, policymakers realized the important role of traditional industries for regional development. However, traditional policies of the last decades mainly focussed on science-intensive high-tech industries. Therefore, it is important to understand, how traditional industries innovate and renew themselves. One of the most notable recent strands of literature distinguishing between the characteristics of high- and low-tech industries is the one on modes of innovation. However, another very important approach related to innovation and regional development, the proximity literature, has only partly discussed in relation to innovation modes. This paper seeks to contribute to this issue by focussing on two traditional agricultural engineering industries from north-western Germany that experienced processes of renewal in the first years of the twenty-first century. It is shown that these industries followed very different developments and utilized different forms of proximities in this process in very specific ways.     

Does the sex of firstborn children influence subsequent fertility behavior? evidence from family reconstitution

According to recent studies in evolutionary anthropology, firstborn daughters influence both parity progression and sibling survival by acting as so-called helpers at the nest. Based on 534 sets of household data from family reconstitution, the current analysis fails to show that offspring sex had any direct impact on maternal fertility, sibling survivorship, birth spacing, or reproductive span. Instead, the results indicate that fertility decisions were heavily affected by proximate factors such as child mortality and gender preferences. Families who had experienced child death were swift to substitute the loss with another pregnancy--a phenomenon known as replacement strategy. Similarly, a surplus of daughters acted as a strong impulse for parity progression, not because of potential helping effects but in an attempt to conceive additional sons. This is particularly apparent when the odds of grandmultiparity are considered.     

Assessment of innovation centres—methodological aspects and empirical evidence from Western and Eastern Germany

This study essentially pursues two goals. The first consists in investigating to what extent current methods of assessing the success of technology policies are applicable to the specific instrument of the innovation centre (IC). The deliberations made in this context are of an exploratory nature, since instruments specifically for the purpose of conducting regional economic analyses of the effectiveness of ICs have not yet been fully developed. Secondly, the methodological approach to a comprehensive empirical impact analysis of German ICs is discussed. A survey conducted to this effect by the Department of Economic Geography at the University of Hannover was recently concluded with an encouraging feedback. First results in the form of a comparison of East and West Germany are presented here.     

The oldest evidence of painted furniture from Sweden – The 12th century chair from Suntak

The 12th century Suntak chair is one of the earliest pieces of furniture known from Sweden. A close examination revealed minute remnants of possible colour pigments on several parts of the chair. Chemical analyses of the pigments revealed the presence of several colours such as black, white and red. This paper attempts to shed light upon the identification and origin of the pigments as well as the time of painting. The original use and the setting of the chair will also be discussed.     

Did Ancient Egyptian Ships have Keels? The evidence of Thonis‐Heracleion Ship 17

This paper presents the debate over the presence or absence of keels in the construction of Egyptian ships of the dynastic period. It contains an analysis of ship representations and models dating to the 18th–20th dynasties of the New Kingdom (c.1539–1077 BC) that provide evidence for the introduction of keels in Egyptian shipbuilding, and new archaeological material from excavations at Thonis‐Heracleion that sheds more light on the question.