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This review surveys anthropological and other social research on bureaucratic documents. The fundamental insight of this literature is that documents are not simply instruments of bureaucratic organizations, but rather are constitutive of bureaucratic rules, ideologies, knowledge, practices, subjectivities, objects, outcomes, even the organizations themselves. It explores the reasons why documents have been late to come under ethnographic scrutiny and the implications for our theoretical understandings of organizations and methods for studying them. The review argues for the great value of the study of paper-mediated documentation to the study of electronic forms, but it also highlights the risk of an exclusive focus on paper, making anthropology marginal to the study of core bureaucratic practices in the manner of earlier anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on developments in biological anthropology. It highlights the career of seasoned anthropologist Earnest Albert Hooton. The concept of physical anthropology was defined and illustrations of its application were offered. The article also discussed in length the history of the American Association of Physical Anthropology, which was organized in 1929, by the anthropologist, Ales Hrdlicka to provide a venue for practitioners to exchange views, develop new techniques and improve the profession.