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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Book Review Of 'Evolutionary And Interpretive Archaeologies' Edited By Ethan E. Cochrane And Andrew Gardner, Liane Gabora, Carl P. Lipo
Book Review Of 'Evolutionary And Interpretive Archaeologies' Edited By Ethan E. Cochrane And Andrew Gardner, Liane Gabora, Carl P. Lipo
Anthropology Faculty Scholarship
Evolutionary and Interpretive Archaeologies, edited by Ethan E. Cochrane and
Andrew Gardner, grew out of a seminar at the Institute for Archaeology at
University College London in 2007. It consists of 15 chapters by archaeologists
who self-identify themselves as practitioners who emphasize the benefits of
evolutionary or interpretive approaches to the study of the archaeological
record. While the authors' theoretical views are dichotomous, the editors' aim
for the book as a whole is not to expound on the differences between these two
kinds of archaeology but to bring forward a richer understanding of the
discipline and to highlight areas of …
Continuity And The Open Whole: A Comparison Of Recent (Peircian) Ethnographies, Joshua Reno
Continuity And The Open Whole: A Comparison Of Recent (Peircian) Ethnographies, Joshua Reno
Anthropology Faculty Scholarship
A comparison of Eduardo Kohn's "How forests think: Toward an anthropology beyond the human" and David Pedersen's "American value: Migrants, money, and meaning in El Salvador and the United States" which explores their relationship to the continuist ontology of the philosopher Charles S. Peirce and its implications for contemporary anthropology.
Combinatorial Structure Of The Deterministic Seriation Method With Multiple Subset Solutions, Mark E. Madsen, Carl P. Lipo
Combinatorial Structure Of The Deterministic Seriation Method With Multiple Subset Solutions, Mark E. Madsen, Carl P. Lipo
Anthropology Faculty Scholarship
Seriation methods order a set of descriptions given some criterion (e.g., unimodality or minimum distance between similarity scores). Seriation is thus inherently a problem of finding the optimal solution among a set of permutations of objects. In this short technical note, we review the combinatorial structure of the classical seriation problem, which seeks a single solution out of a set of objects. We then extend those results to the iterative frequency seriation approach introduced by Lipo et al. (1997), which finds optimal subsets of objects which each satisfy the unimodality criterion within each subset. The number of possible solutions across …
Toward A New Theory Of Waste: From "Matter Out Of Place" To Signs Of Life , Joshua Reno
Toward A New Theory Of Waste: From "Matter Out Of Place" To Signs Of Life , Joshua Reno
Anthropology Faculty Scholarship
This paper offers a counterpoint to the prevailing account of waste in the human sciences. This account identifies waste, firstly, as the anomalous product of arbitrary social categorizations, or ‘matter out of place’, and, secondly, as a distinctly human way of leaving behind and interpreting traces, or a mirror of culture. Together, these positions reflect a more or less constructivist and anthropocentric approach. Most commonly, waste is placed within a framework that privileges considerations of meaning over materiality and the threat of death over the perpetuity of life processes. For an alternative I turn to bio-semiotics and cross-species scholarship around …
From Biopower To Energopolitics In England's Modern Waste Technology, Joshua Reno, Catherine Alexander
From Biopower To Energopolitics In England's Modern Waste Technology, Joshua Reno, Catherine Alexander
Anthropology Faculty Scholarship
Two energy-generating technologies in Britain which transform waste into a resource are compared. One is the (in)famous Combined Heat and Power incinerator in Sheffield, the other a forgotten biological digester in Devon utilizing anaerobic microbes. Both sites are early exemplars of experimental and biopolitical waste disposal technologies—incineration and anaerobic digestion—now regarded as leading alternatives for reducing the United Kingdom’s dependence on landfill and fossil fuel; both sites also inspired public resistance at critical moments in their development. The analysis here relates how activists and technicians struggle to demonstrate competing truths about alternative energy. Through comparison, it becomes clear that, beyond …