Synopses & Reviews
This Thirty-First Edition of ANNUAL EDITIONS: ANTHROPOLOGY provides convenient, inexpensive access to current articles selected from the best of the public press. Organizational features include: an annotated listing of selected World Wide Web sites; an annotated table of contents; a topic guide; a general introduction; brief overviews for each section; a topical index; and an instructors resource guide with testing materials. USING ANNUAL EDITIONS IN THE CLASSROOM is offered as a practical guide for instructors. ANNUAL EDITIONS titles are supported by our student website, www.mhcls.com/online.
Table of Contents
UNIT 1 Anthropological Perspectives
1. 46582 Before: The Sixties, Conrad Phillip Kottak, Assault on Paradise, 2006
An anthropologists first fieldwork is especially challenging since it involves living in a strange environment with a people whose culture is stranger still. Yet, as Phillip Kottak describes such an experience in a small community in Brazil, the reward is a greater understanding of and appreciation for another culture.
2. 155 Eating Christmas in the Kalahari, Richard Borshay Lee, Natural History, December 1969
Anthropologist Richard Borshay Lee gives an account of the misunderstanding and confusion that often accompanies cross- cultural experience. In this case, he violated a basic principle of the !Kung Bushmen's social relationsfood sharing.
3. 40724 Tricking and Tripping, Claire E. Sterk, Tricking and Tripping: Prostitution in the Era of AIDS, Social Change Press, 2000
As unique as Claire Sterks report on prostitution may be, she discusses issues common to anthropologists wherever they fieldwork: How does one build trusting relationships with informants and what are an anthropologists ethical obligations toward them?
4. 43202 Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of Their Curious Relationship, Montgomery McFate, Military Review, March/April 2005
Countering the insurgency in Iraq requires cultural and social knowledge of the adversary. Yet, none of the elements of U.S. national powerdiplomatic, military, intelligence, or economicexplicitly take adversary culture into account in the formation or execution of policy. This cultural knowledge gap has a simple causethe almost total absence of anthropology within the national security establishment.
5. 42721 One Hundred Percent American, Ralph Linton, The Study of Man, Appleton–Century Company, 1936
For a complete understanding of American culture, we must acknowledge all of those contributions made by people from distant times and distant places. Given the current debates in Europe and the United States over immigration policy, this “dated,” but timely, piece by Ralph Linton reminds us of the importance of diffusion, or borrowing, from one culture to another.
UNIT 2 Culture and Communication
6. 42722 Whose Speech Is Better?, Donna Jo Napoli, Language Matters: A Guide to Everyday Questions About Language, Oxford University Press, 2003
Although we cannot explicitly state the rules of our language, we do choose to follow different rules in different contexts. Depending on the situation, we manipulate every aspect of language, from simple differences in pronunciation and vocabulary to the more complicated phrasing and sentence structure.
7. 46583 Do You Speak American?, Robert MacNeil, USA Today Magazine, January 2005
It is a common assumption that the mass media is making all Americans speak in a similar manner. Linguists point out, however, that while some national trends in language are apparent, regional speech differences are not only thriving, but in some places they are becoming even more distinctive.
8. 35827 Fighting for Our Lives, Deborah Tannen, The Argument Culture, Random House 1998
In America today, there seems to be a pervasive warlike tone to public dialogue. The prevailing belief is that there are only two sides to an issue and opposition leads to truth. Often, however, an issue is more like a crystal, with many sides, and the truth is in the complex middle, not in the oversimplified extremes.
9. 29629 ”I Cant Even Open My Mouth”, Deborah Tannen, I Only Say This Because I Love You, Random House, 2001
Since family members have a long, shared history, what they say in conversationthe messages echo with meanings from the pastthe metamessages. The metamessage may not be spoken, but its meaning may be gleaned from every aspect of context: the way something is said, who is saying it, or the very fact that it is said at all.
10. 165 Shakespeare in the Bush, Laura Bohannan, Natural History, August/September 1966
It is often claimed that great literature has cross-cultural significance. In this article, Laura Bohannan describes the difficulties she encountered and the lessons she learned as she attempted to relate the story of Hamlet to the Tiv of West Africa in their own language.
UNIT 3 The Organization of Society and Culture
11. 13088 Understanding Eskimo Science, Richard Nelson, Audubon, September/October 1993
The traditional hunters insights into the world of nature may be different, but it as extensive and profound as that of modern science.
12. 40725 The Inuit Paradox, Patricia Gadsby, Discover, October 2004
The traditional diet of the Far North, with its high-protein, high-fat content, shows that there are no essential foodsonly essential nutrients.
13. 46584 Meeting the Maasai: Messages for Management, Nigel Nicholson, Journal of Management Inquiry, September 2005
By comparing the social organization of the Maasai of East Africa to family-run businesses in the West, Nigel Nicholson is able to see the “best qualities of tribalism” in eachas well as the worst.
14. 13089 Too Many Bananas, Not Enough Pineapples, and No Watermelon at All, David Counts, from The Humbled Anthropologist: Tales From the Pacific, Wadsworth Publishing, 1990
Among the lessons to be learned regarding reciprocity is that one may not demand a gift or refuse it. Yet, even without a system of record-keeping or money being involved, there is a long-term balance of mutual benefit.
15. 40726 Ties That Bind, Peter M. Whiteley, Natural History, November 2004
The Hopi people offer gifts in a much broader range of circumstances than people in Western cultures do, tying individuals and groups to each other and to the realm of the spirits.
UNIT 4 Other Families, Other Ways
16. 38373 When Brothers Share a Wife, Melvyn Goldstein, Natural History, March 1987
While the custom of fraternal polyandry relegated many Tibetan women to spinsterhood, this unusual marriage form promoted personal security and economic well-being for its participants.
17. 11363 Death Without Weeping, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Natural History, October 1989
In the Shantytowns of Brazil, the seeming indifference of mothers who allow some of their children to die is a survival strategy geared to circumstances in which only some may live.
18. 46586 Whats Love Got to Do with It, Stephanie Coontz, Psychotherapy Networker, May/June 2005
For thousands of years of Western history, the idea that people should marry for love was a bizarre belief and a serious threat to the social order. In this article, Stephanie Coontz recounts the social and economic changes that helped to establish the love-based, male-breadwinner marriage as the dominant model in North America and Europe. It did not take long, however, for even this model to be challenged.
19. 38374 Arranging a Marriage in India, Serena Nanda, The Naked Anthropologists, Wadsworth, Inc., 1992
Arranging a marriage in India is far too serious a business for the young and inexperienced. Instead the parents make the decision on the basis of the families' social position, reputation and ability to get along.
20. 17612 Who Needs Love! In Japan, Many Couples Dont, Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, February 11, 1996
Paradoxically, Japanese families seem to survive not because husbands and wives love each other more than do American couples, but rather because they perhaps love each other less. And as love marriages increase, with the compatibility factor becoming more important in the decision to marry, the divorce rate is rising.
UNIT 5 Gender and Status
21. 32938 The Berdache Tradition, Walter L. Williams, The Meaning of Difference, Roseblum, Beacon Press, 2000
Not all societies agree with the Western cultural view that all humans are either women or men. In fact, many Native American cultures recognize an alternative role called the “berdache,” a morphological male who has a non-masculine character. This is just one way for a society to recognize and assimilate some atypical individuals without imposing a change on them or stigmatizing them as deviant.
22. 24586 A Womans Curse?, Meredith F. Small, The Sciences, January/February 1999
An anthropologist's study of the ritual of seclusion surrounding womens menstrual cycle has some rather profound implications regarding human evolution, certain cultural practices and womens health.
23. 26828 Where Fat Is a Mark of Beauty, Ann M. Simmons, Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1998
In a rite of passage, some Nigerian girls spend months gaining weight and learning customs in a “fattening room.” A womans rotundity is seen as a sign of good health, prosperity and feminine beauty.
UNIT 6 Religion, Belief, and Ritual
24. 37742 Eyes of the Ngangas: Ethnomedicine and Power in Central Africa, Arthur C. Lehmann and J. Meyers, Magic, Witchcraft and Religion, Mayfield Publishing, 2001
Because of cost, availability and cultural bias, many people rely on ethnomedical or traditional treatment of illness rather than biomedical or Western treatment. Actually, says Lehmann, both systems are effective in their own ways and should be integrated in developing primary health care in the Third World.
25. 42724 Ancient Teachings, Modern Lessons, David A. Taylor, Environmental Health Perspectives, vol. 109, no. 5, 2001
Although indigenous knowledge rarely comes in the form of scientific data and often involves complex narratives, health professionals of the twenty-first century may gain new tools by combining the best of science with the best of the old ways.
26. 37743 The Adaptive Value of Religious Ritual, Richard Sosis, American Scientist, March–April 2004
Rituals promote group cohesion by requiring members to engage in behavior that is too costly to fake. Groups that do so are more likely to attain their collective goals than are groups whose members are less committed.
27. 46587 Remapping the World of Autism, Roy Richard Grinker, AnthroNotes, Fall 2006
As anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker observes, the best way to learn about the rules of any society is to see them broken. It is for this reason that illness, when it prevents people from living up to the rules of social behavior, can teach us so much about culture.
28. 2564 The Secrets of Haitis Living Dead, Gino Del Guercio, Harvard Magazine, January/February 1986
In seeking scientific documentation of the existence of zombies, anthropologist Wade Davis found himself looking beyond the stereotypes and mysteries of voodoo‚ and directly into a cohesive system of social control in rural Haiti.
29. 186 Body Ritual Among the Nacirema, Horace Miner, American Anthropologist, June 1956
The ritual‚ beliefs and taboos‚ of the Nacirema provide us with a test case of the objectivity of ethnographic description and show us the extremes to which human behavior can go.
30. 27128 Baseball Magic, George Gmelch, Elysian Fields Quarterly, All Star Issue 1992
Professional baseball players, like Trobriand Islanders, often resort to magic‚ in situations of chance and uncertainty. As irrational as it may seem, magic creates confidence, competence and control in the practitioner.
UNIT 7 Sociocultural Change: The Impact of the West
31. 189 Why Cant People Feed Themselves?, Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins, Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity, Random House, 1977
When colonial governments force the conversion of subsistence farms to cash crop plantations, peasants are driven into marginal lands or into a large pool of cheap labor. In either case, the authors maintain, they are no longer able to feed themselves.
32. 12911 The Arrow of Disease, Jared Diamond, Discover, October 1992
The most deadly weapon colonial Europeans carried to other continents was their germs. The most intriguing question to answer here is why the flow of disease did not move in the opposite direction.
33. 42726 Burying the White Gods: New Perspectives on the Conquest of Mexico, Camilla Townsend, The American Historical Review, June 2003
Contrary to popular belief, there is little evidence that the Aztecs seriously believed that Hernando Cortés and his men were gods returning from the east. Instead, the author explains, the origin and durability of the myth provided an alternate explanation for what actually happened in the period of the Conquest. In addition, Camilla Townsend discusses what the indigenous people were actually thinking.
34. 32941 The Price of Progress, John Bodley, Victims of Progress, Mayfield Publishing, 1998
As traditional cultures are sacrificed to the process of modernization, tribal peoples not only lose the security, autonomy and quality of life they once had, but they also become powerless, second-class citizens who are discriminated against and exploited by the dominant society.
35. 46588 The Battle for Cattle, Lisa Matthews, Cultural Survival Quarterly, June 15, 2006
The Maasai of Kenya have lost much of their livestock to a crippling drought, but the real problem has been the dispossession of some of their best land beginning with the British colonists but continuing with their own sovereign government.
36. 46589 Rangers by Birth, Will Hurd, Cultural Survival Quarterly, June 15, 2006
The creation of a national park in Ethiopia in order to attract tourists is threatening the lives of people who have lived there for thousands of years. Ironically, the fact that Omo National Park can be mistaken for a wilderness by Westerners is a tribute to the benign environmental impact of the livelihood strategies of the indigenous people.
37. 46590 Digging Into the Roots of Research Ethics, Lila Guterman, The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 1, 2006
As an ethnobotanist sought to advance her research and professional standing, she found herself on the horns of an ethical dilemma: How to make more widely available the benefits of tribal medicines without violating the proprietary rights of the indigenous people who helped her.
38. 46591 Can Minority Languages Be Saved?, Eric Garland, The Futurist, July/August 2006
The conventional wisdom is that most of the worlds languages and cultures will simply cease to exist as a result of the globalization of commerce and the seductive power of world pop culture. Eric Garland claims, however, that this is not the only potential scenario, since new technologies are available to safeguard peoples languages and cultural identity while simultaneously allowing free exchanges of ideas and goods.
39. 42728 What Native Peoples Deserve, Roger Sandall, Commentary, May 2005
What should be done about endangered enclave societies in the midst of a modern nation such as Brazil? The main priority, says Roger Sandall, must be to ensure that no one should have to play the role of historical curiosity and that those who want to participate in the modern world should be able to do so, whether on the reservation or off of it.