Anthropology Commons^™

The United Nations Declaration On The Rights Of Peasants And Other People Working In Rural Areas, Marc Edelman, Priscilla Claeys

Publications and Research

In December 2018, the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. UNDROP is the product of 17 years of struggle by La Via Campesina, other transnational agrarian movements and allies that included NGOs, states, UN mandate holders, and academics. It recognises the dignity of rural populations, their contributions to global food production, and their ‘special relationship’ to land, water and nature, as well as their vulnerabilities to eviction, hazardous working conditions and political repression. It reiterates rights protected in other instruments and sets new standards for individual and collective rights …

From The Human To The Planetary: Speculative Futures Of Care, Miriam Ticktin

Publications and Research

This is largely a theoretical, speculative essay that takes on the question of what ‘care’ looks like at a moment when climate change is increasingly taking center stage in public and political discussions. Starting with two new practices, namely, humanitarian care for nonhumans and One Health collaborations, I seek to determine what forms of political care can incorporate the well-being of future generations and future iterations of the earth. After an exploration of One Health as an approach to planetary care, I ask what its parts enable us to think, despite its limitations; I focus on the new human-nonhuman assemblages …

The Making And Silencing Of “Axé-Ocracy” In Brazil: Black Women Writers’ Spiritual, Political And Literary Movement In São Paulo, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

In this article, I will focus on two influential writers from the south of Brazil, Cristiane Sobral who currently lives in Brasília, from Rio de Janeiro, and Conceição Evaristo who currently lives in Rio de Janeiro state, from Minas Gerais. I got to know them in São Paulo in 2015 at a public event: the “Afroétnica Flink! Sampa Festival of Black Thought, Literature and Culture.” I will include references to some of their younger contemporaries such as Raquel Almeida, Jenyffer Nascimento, and Elizandra Souza, all of whom reside in São Paulo, in order to illustrate the Black Brazilian women writers’ …

Thinking Like An Ethnographer, Kristina Baines

Publications and Research

Learning to conduct ethnographic research means more than simply learning about the different ethnographic methods and putting them into action. To gather data ethnographically, we say we need to use ourselves--our bodies and our minds--as the tool of data collection. Ethnographers use their five senses to observe human behavior and write about what they observe, however, they need to develop those senses to help them collect accurate data. Part of this process is developing what is called the “ethnographic mindset.” This chapter outline ways in which ethnographic researchers can begin to develop this mindset.

An Early Modern Human Outside Africa, Eric Delson

Publications and Research

Analysis of two fossils from a Greek cave has shed light on early hominins in Eurasia. One fossil is the earliest known specimen of Homo sapiens found outside Africa; the other is a Neanderthal who lived 40,000 years later.

The Leaked Texts At The Heart Of Puerto Rico’S Massive Protests, Yarimar Bonilla

Publications and Research

With Governor Rosselló refusing to step down, Puerto Ricans are gathering today in what could be the island’s largest-ever protest.

Microdamage As A Bone Quality Component: Practical Guidelines For The Two‐Dimensional Analysis Of Linear Microcracks In Human Cortical Bone, Victoria M. Dominguez, Amanda M. Agnew

Publications and Research

Microdamage is a component of bone quality believed to play an integral role in bone health. However, comparability between existing studies is fraught with issues due to highly variable methods of sample preparation and poorly defined quantification criteria. To address these issues, this article has two aims. First, detailed methods for preparation and analysis of linear microcracks in human ribs, specifically addressing troubleshooting issues cited in previous studies, are laid out. Second, new, partially validated criteria are proposed in an effort to reduce subjective differences in microcrack counts and measures, ensuring more comparable results between studies. Revised definitions based on …

Historical Ecology And Longitudinal Research Strategies Around Lake Mývatn Iceland, Thomas Mcgovern, George Hambrecht, Megan Hicks

Publications and Research

Historical Ecology has proven to be a very influential tool kit for thinking about complex human interactions with changing landscapes, climate, and other humans. It has also provided concrete and practical frameworks for carrying out sustained long- term place-based research projects that break through traditional periodization to look at the dialectical interaction of human economies and local and regional ecosystems through time. The “longitudinal perspective” pioneered by Carole Crumley’s work in Burgundy has proved to be a very effective tool for carrying out sustained multi-year, multi-investigator, and multi- generational investigations in landscapes around the globe. This paper presents an overview …

Collaborating On A Federal Level, Moving Beyond Mandated Consultation In Section 106, Kelly Britt

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Authenticating Loss And Contesting Recovery: Fema And The Politics Of Colonial Disaster Management, Sarah Molinari

Publications and Research

The chapter discusses how institutional regulators of disaster recovery "authenticate" loss and contribute to the process of disciplining disaster subjects. Drawing on ethnographic research after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, the chapter suggests that alternative grassroots approaches to disaster recovery point to a reimagining of "recovery" organized around a framework of support and affective relations.

"I Have A Scream" Enunciaciones Disidentes En Torno Al 15m En España, José Del Valle, Natalia Castro Picón

Publications and Research

En este artículo analizaremos el primer Grito Mudo, gesto colectivo de desobediencia realizado por el movimiento de los Indignados en la Puerta del Sol de Madrid en mayo de 2011, como escena glotopolítica. En esta acción, que consistió en que la multitud auto-convocada guardase un minuto de silencio justo antes de la medianoche, cuando entraba en vigor la sentencia que ilegalizaba la concentración, convergen diferentes formas discursivas (que incluyen el lenguaje, el silencio y los cuerpos) que ponen en conflicto los regímenes normativos que limitan el sentido de la participación política y los límites de la democracia. Este tipo de …

Large Pelvic Tubercle In Orangutans Relates To The Adductor Longus Muscle, Brian M. Shearer, Magdalena Muchlinski, Ashley S. Hammond

Publications and Research

Orangutan pelves commonly exhibit a large, projecting tubercle in the iliopubic region, historically assumed to homologous to the pubic tubercle in humans. However, it is not clear whether this tubercle is a unique feature of Pongo, or if it is anatomically homologous with the human pubic tubercle when considered as a soft tissue attachment point. To clarify this issue, we dissected orangutan and other ape cadaveric specimens to evaluate the pelvic brim soft tissues and how they may relate to the tubercle (when present). We additionally conducted a broad osteological survey of pelvic brim morphology across 28 primate genera …

But Are They Actually Healthier? Challenging The Health/Wellness Divide Through The Ethnography Of Embodied Ecological Heritage, Kristina Baines

Publications and Research

A holistic definition of ‘health’ remains difficult to operationalize, despite decades of attempts by medical anthropologists and the World Health Organization to do so. Anthropologists routinely reject dichotomous notions – belief vs. knowledge, wellness vs. health, mental vs. physical, environment vs. self – yet demands for physiological evidence of ‘health’ persist. In this article, I ask what evidence would sufficiently demonstrate health, and explore the possibility of measures that move beyond the physiological. Using ethnographic data collected in indigenous Maya communities in Belize and in immigrant communities in New York City, I argue that ecological heritage practices can provide a …

Burning Libraries: A Community Response, Thomas H. Mcgovern

Publications and Research

Archaeology is increasingly seen as a global change science as well as a provider of community heritage resources. Rapid climate change is destroying archaeological sites at an unprecedented rate, and community- based response is urgently needed.

‘Haciendas And Plantations’: History And Limitations Of A 60-Year-Old Taxonomy, Marc Edelman

Publications and Research

In 1957, Eric R Wolf and Sidney W Mintz published ‘Haciendas and Plantations in Middle America and the Antilles’ in the Jamaican journal Social and Economic Studies. This article discusses the production of the Wolf and Mintz article, its analytical framework and the theoretical tensions it contains, and its subsequent influence, mainly though not exclusively on anthropological and historical scholarship about large landed properties in Latin America and the Caribbean. ‘Haciendas and Plantations’ appeared at a time when anthropologists such as Elman Service, Charles Wagley, and Marvin Harris were trying to make sense of agrarian Latin America by developing typologies …

Bad Bunny, Good Scapegoat: How 'El Conejo Malo' Is Stirring A 'Moral Panic' In Post-Hurricane Puerto Rico, Yarimar Bonilla

Publications and Research

Article examines the Moral Panic around the music of trap artist Bad Bunny in Puerto Rico

The Intentional De-Cohesion In Deportability, Talha Issevenler

Publications and Research

A critical exploration of loss or decohesion of political agency in deportability.

Something Old, Something New: Historicizing Same-Sex Marriage Within Ongoing Struggles Over African Marriage In South Africa, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

This article examines contemporary struggles over same-sex marriage in the daily lives of black lesbian- and gay-identified South Africans. Based primarily on 21 in-depth interviews with such South Africans drawn from a larger project on post-apartheid South African marriage, the author argues that their current struggles for relationship recognition share much in common with contemporaneous struggles of their heterosexual counterparts, and that these commonalities reflect ongoing tensions between more extended-family and more dyadic understandings of African marriage. The increasing influence of dyadic understandings of marriage, and of associated ideals of romantic love, has helped inspire same-sex marriage claims and, in …

Graphic Representations Of Grammatical Gender In Spanish Language Anarchist Publications, Mariel Mercedes Acosta Matos

Publications and Research

This paper offers a descriptive analysis of the suffixes -@, -x, -e and other orthographic innovations as transgressions to the genderedness of Spanish language. First I discuss the grammatical rules of expressing gender in Spanish and a summary of the ongoing debates concerning linguistic sexism and androcentrism in Spanish language. Then I present some examples of the gender neutral suffixes drawn from articles found in 3 “Do It Yourself” journals published online by three anarchist collectives in Latin America.

Jewish Germany: An Enduring Presence From The Fourth To The Twenty-First Century, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Jewish Germany: An enduring presence from the fourth to the twenty-first century.

Book Review-The Battle For Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes On The Disaster Capitalists, Sarah Molinari

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Among The Palms1, Lee Haring

Publications and Research

Born out of the convergence of intellectual traditions and owning a borrowing capacity analogous to the one that engenders creole languages, the study of folklore, or folkloristics, claims the right to adapt and remodel political, psychological, and anthropological insights, not only for itself but for the humanities disciplines of philosophy, art, literature, and music (the “PALM” disciplines). Performance-based folkloristics looks like a new blend, or network, of elements from several of those. What looks like poaching, which is a common practice for folksong and folk narrative, can be examined in the PALM disciplines under names like intertextuality and plagiarism. Nation-oriented …

Building Brand Kurdistan: Helly Luv, The Gender Of Nationhood, And The War On Terror, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

In the early 2000s, the Kurdistan Regional Government hired a US-based firm to begin a public relations campaign called “The Other Iraq.” Since that time, it has worked with a number of PR and lobbying firms to build a cultural, political, and financial apparatus that I refer to as Brand Kurdistan. This apparatus aims to prove to Western audiencesthat the Kurds are a liberal exception in an illiberal Middle East, and to build prospects of KRG’s eventual national independence. This article explores the connections between Brand Kurdistan and the gendering of Kurdish nationalism, focusing particularly on Kurdish pop diva Helly …

Freshwater Reservoir Offsets And Food Crusts: Isotope, Ams, And Lipid Analyses Of Experimental Cooking Residues, John P. Hart, Karine Taché, William A. Lovis

Publications and Research

Freshwater reservoir offsets (FROs) occur when AMS dates on charred, encrusted food residues on pottery predate a pot’s chronological context because of the presence of ancient carbon from aquatic resources such as fish. Research over the past two decades has demonstrated that FROs vary widely within and between water bodies and between fish in those water bodies. Lipid analyses have identified aquatic biomarkers that can be extracted from cooking residues as potential evidence for FROs. However, lacking has been efforts to determine empirically how much fish with FROs needs to be cooked in a pot with other resources to result …

L’Agitation Du Quotidien: Une Conversation Sur La Réflexion Ⓐnarchiste Face Au Sexisme Dans La Langue, Mariel Mercedes Acosta Matos, Ernesto Cuba

Publications and Research

Ernesto Cuba interviewe Mariel Acosta au sujet des résultats de son mémoire de master, qui traite des propositions de morphèmes de genre inclusif dans des publications anarchistes de langue espagnole, parmi lesquelles le @, le x et d’autres innovations orthographiques cherchant à contrecarrer le biais androcentré de la langue.

Ernesto Cuba interviews Mariel Acosta about the findings in her master’s thesis, which investigates inclusive gender morphemes in Spanish-language anarchist publications, among which is the use of @, x and other orthographic innovations that seek to challenge the androcentric bias of language.

Expressive Enlightenment: Subjectivity And Solidarity In Daniel Garrison Brinton, Franz Boas, And Carlos Montezuma, R. Arvo Carr

Publications and Research

This chapter explores the expressivism of Franz Boas’s anthropological and linguistic thought, and situates Boas in a late-nineteenth- century cultural and intellectual milieu in which the theory and practice of self-expression took on unprecedented significance. Boas’s expressivism had deep roots in German intellectual culture, but was also influenced in surprising ways by his experiences in the Americas, in particular by the “philosophy of expression” espoused by Daniel Garrison Brinton, to whom Boas paid tribute in a 1899 obituary. Yet the history of Boas’s expressivism goes beyond intellectual history and the transmission of scholarly theories among European and Euro-American academics; for …

Evolution Of The Modern Baboon (Papio Hamadryas): A Reassessment Of The African Plio-Pleistocene Record, Christopher C. Gilbert, Stephen R. Frost, Kelsey D. Pugh, Monya Anderson, Eric Delson

Publications and Research

Baboons ( Papio hamadryas) are among the most successful extant primates, with a minimum of six distinctive forms throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. However, their presence in the fossil record is unclear. Three early fossil taxa are generally recognized, all from South Africa: Papio izodi , Papio robinsoni and Papio angusticeps. Because of their derived appearance, P. angusticeps and P. robinsoni have sometimes been considered subspecies of P. hamadryas and have been used as biochronological markers for the Plio- Pleistocene hominin sites where they are found.

We reexamined fossil Papio forms from across Africa with an emphasis on their distinguishing features and …

Jenyffer Nascimento’S Epic Poetry Of Black Female Empowerment Jenyffer Nascimento: A Poesia Épica De Empoderamento Da Mulher Negra, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

This article presents results of auto-ethnography, literary analysis, and fieldwork research to answer an underlying, perhaps unresolved, concern, relevant to this dossier: how can we produce an ethical dialogue as transnational Black Feminists, among Black Brazilian women, and North American Black women, in an ethical manner, while realizing that one may (not ever) be a part of the “carnival without you in it.” Fertile Earth/ Terra Fertil tells a long overdue epic story to an audience within the poetry: Black women, family members, other times a Black man, Brazil, white women, or “you,” undefined. Joy to pain to chaos, sensuality, …

Symptomatic Leadership In Business Instruction: How To Finally Teach Diversity And Inclusion For Lasting Change, Linda L. Ridley

Publications and Research

Are business faculty complicit in mythologizing business concepts by ignoring historical precedence?

The refusal to examine in totality the history of discrimination and racism allows us to perpetuate a mythology of white supremacy that is enhanced through impotent diversity programs repeated throughout corporate America. This paper examines the importance of demythologizing the business curriculum through symptomatic thinking, which allows faculty and students to untangle the quagmire of diversity and inclusion in corporate America. Students are thereby equipped with tools for behavior transformation in the workplace that uses a symptomatic, rather than symbolic approach, to decision making and problem solving.

Phylogenetic Relationships Of Living And Fossil African Papionins: Combined Evidence From Morphology And Molecules, Kelsey D. Pugh, Christopher C. Gilbert

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.