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Presents a look at some of the research being done on the origins of language. (BB)

Patterns among human hunter-gatherers and non-human social animals suggest patterns of early hominid social development. (BB)

An introduction to the field of paleoanthropology is presented. Contributions from a score of disciplines are replacing guesswork in the description of the environments that accompanied the stages of humankind. (BB)

The article offers an ethnographically embedded analysis of a UK‐based Jewish‐Muslim inter‐community network to contribute to anthropological research into the ethical efforts that groups seen as polarized invest in negotiating boundaries of difference. The article makes two sets of arguments. First, it suggests that sometimes such groups have to negotiate not one but several 'borders across difference' and follow diverse ethical routes to navigate them depending upon how they conceptualize these borders. Second, it shows that in negotiating different sets of boundaries, network members often use techniques that at first glance appear to be artificial or even superficial in that they build on formal rules and/or contain no promise of achieving a consensus on issues important for the participants. However, I argue that these seemingly superficial efforts could still be seen as ethical endeavours underpinned by a strong commitment to inter‐group solidarity and that they could be best understood as what Ruth Sheldon has described in her recent intervention in the ethics of Jewish ethnography as the movement between surface and depth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the styles of enquiry involved in Lowland South American Amerindian shamanic and narrative discourse genres. The article argues in favour of the existence of an Amazonian mode of thinking strictly related to formulaic composition, commonly found in different verbal poetic genres and its contemporary transformations into written texts published as books by Amerindian researchers and narrators. Taking into account philosophical and anthropological discussions about speculative thinking, this study aims to revise the role of narrative verbal genres in Amerindian ethnology and its ontological backgrounds, as well as offering an alternative perspective on the contrast between writing and oral traditions. The article is based on translations of songs and testimonies collected among the Marubo of Western Amazonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the constitutive role of blame in kinship as a practice in a low‐income neighbourhood in India's capital city, Delhi. Using ethnographic data, I show how women with serious or chronic illness express blame towards kin for their failures in critical moments: for not providing care during illness, not fulfilling kinship obligations, and even for causing or exacerbating illness. As relationships rupture to reveal the underlying precariousness of kinship, women use blaming statements, accusations, and critique to leverage toeholds of power and take matters into their hands against their families' wishes. Yet even as women forge a degree of agency through blaming practices, I show that these practices can lead, paradoxically, to the repair and reconstitution of kinship. This article builds upon existing scholarship that addresses both the failure of kinship as a system of mutual support and the work of kinship repair in similar marginal contexts in north India characterized by neglect, which render women vulnerable to negative effects. My focus on blaming acts offers a new angle on this intimate terrain, illustrating how women enact the social practice of blame to reshape the dynamics and terms of kinship relations, rather than reconciling themselves to kinship failings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reflection on making Indigenous films in a colonized world. The author draws on his experience as an Indigenous filmmaker to reflect on the settler's gaze and its implications for an Indigenous film practice. This is accomplished through telling stories and reflecting on films made over several decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different forms of care work are essential for the practice of anthropology in South Africa. In this biographical commentary, I describe how I enacted care work in my anthropological practice. I suggest that what is good about anthropology is its potential to be attentive to the multiple ways in which care work is enacted by us as anthropologists, as teachers of the discipline, as well as by our interlocutors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revealing complexity in the world—but also creating it—is at the heart of anthropology. It shapes our engagement with theory and ethics, writing and visual style, and choice of research subjects. But does it create blind spots? I respond to this question by discussing studies of violence, and my ethnographic material in progress on British ex‐soldiers. Owing to the ethical norm of suspending moral judgment of our research participants, we tend to avoid portraying their unlikable traits, internal contradictions, or troubling actions that do not advance our arguments. Ethnography often reveals florid complexity in structures or systems, but it creates simpler depictions of the people who inhabit these forms. Yet, since anthropology has long aimed to holistically capture the truth of social life, it should allow more space in ethnographic narrative for complicated protagonists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifty years ago, anthropologists, including applied researchers, were caught up in a dilemma of ethics and practice, in the face of criticisms of ethnographic embroilment in colonial, military, and neocolonial projects. But the epistemological crises that this provoked, together with anthropological engagement in political movements, sharpened our commitment to work with others to counter systemic, structural, and enacted violence. Today, continued inequality at local and global levels is deeply complicated by corporate globalization and climate change. Ethnographic research and anthropological engagement is urgent and critical, requiring our persistence to redress social wrongs through supportive, generous partnerships, as advocates and as outspoken witnesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an anthropologist, I have worked with people in both developing new technologies and managing existing ones. Based on this experience, I suggest that although anthropologically informed perspectives can contribute to technology development—from providing insights on particular cases to raising broader questions about a product's impact on society—the route to doing so is sometimes indirect. In this endeavor, anthropology matters by engaging not just the finished product, when critique is so easily possible, but the process of development, as the work is yet underway. Such engagement is enabled by how people leverage their commitments, stances, and manner of being there along the way and over time. To better enable the impact of anthropology in this work, anthropologists would be well served by engaging more with these kinds of applied questions as a part of their training and knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role do passion and poetry play in our research‐based quest to promote social justice? In this piece—a manifesto of sorts—I make a case for prioritizing both passion and poetry in our ethnographic writing. Such a commitment will allow our insights to be learned, our interlocutors' and our own voices to be heard, and our policy recommendations to be heeded. But writing poetically from a place of passion is just the first step. User‐friendly, public writing deserves a sociologically friendly platform. Hence, in the second part of this manifesto, I outline a series of steps that I recommend our discipline take in order to radically scale up our commitment to practice an engaged anthropology. Such tactics will allow us to more realistically promote our knowledge as we advocate for social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropological debates about development are often framed by a moral contrast between pure and instrumental knowledge. But the good of anthropology is situationally produced, as we can demonstrate by reflecting on the discipline's institutional conditions. Institutional contexts sustain our professional identities and research practices, including the claimed differences between them. These contexts are in turn produced by political economies of development expertise and academic knowledge production. Indeed, social anthropology's core research practices were shaped by its configuration within political economies of colonial governance, and they were perpetuated through the expansion of university systems. We should, then, stop sustaining the fictions that our work is situated outside political economies of interest or that we write purely in pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Rather, we need to be more transparent about the economies that determine the kinds of knowledge we produce and the political implications of what we authorize as knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"What good is anthropology?" Rather than accepting a predetermined notion of the good, I ask, What ancestral spirits animate anthropology as a vocation? In pursuing this question, I turn to the inaugural issue of American Ethnologist, which, I suggest, expresses an anthropological spirit readable via Lévi‐Strauss and Rousseau. I examine how this spirit was expressed in other parts of the world, such as the first generation of postcolonial anthropologists in India, as they confronted the question whether India may be seen as a settler colony. How was such a spirit born? As one possible beginning, I offer a creation myth for the birth of anthropological sensibility, located in a key moment of the Ramayana, when its tribal/lower‐caste poet‐author, Valmiki, begins to enunciate differently, after witnessing an act of human, settler violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As anthropology reaches maturity, its contributions are likely to grow. This is because the discipline's practitioners, in writing parochial ethnography, can link a respect for individual difference to our understanding of global humanity. Such a practice aligns with the growing political struggle to retain meaning in an expanding world. Moreover, anthropology's commitment to life as lived research, including private domains and engagement with digital worlds, will also become more significant, while anthropology's ethos of empathy will expand beyond the human. Reaching maturity will require a further repudiation of inequality and colonialism, developing a different relationship to theory, philosophy, and engaged anthropology, as well as fostering a much wider commitment to global education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An examination of American anthropology from 1974 to 2024 shows that the discipline faces novel challenges in today's "meta," or media ecosystem: two challenges facing theory and two facing ethnography. To remain successful, anthropology must meet these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning with a critical examination of the humanist assumptions of critical ethnography, this article interrogates and surfaces problems with the ontological and epistemological orientations of this research methodology. In drawing on exemplar empirical data from an arts‐based project, the article demonstrates the limitations in the humanist‐based qualitative research approach and advances a postdualist, postrepresentationalist direction for critical ethnography called entangled ethnography. Using data from a larger study that examined the perspectives of racialized mad artists, what is demonstrated in this inquiry is that the entanglement of bodies, objects, and meaning‐making practices is central to working with the ontologically excluded, such as those who find themselves in various states of disembodiment and/or corporeal and psychic distribution. We propose the redevelopment of critical ethnography, extended by entanglement theory (a critical posthuman theory), and suggest that for it to be an inclusive methodology, critical ethnography must be conceptualized as in the process of becoming and always in regeneration, open to critique, extension, and redevelopment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Razón Crítica is the property of La Fundacion Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Razón Crítica is the property of La Fundacion Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The integration of social psychiatry and clinical anthropology has a rich history marked by shared interests in phenomenology and scientific epidemiology, shaping mental healthcare significantly. Social psychiatrists and clinical anthropologists strive for a holistic comprehension of mental illnesses through extensive research and deepening knowledge of their respective disciplines. The amalgamation of social psychiatry and anthropology helps elucidate the complex interplay between mental health and societal dynamics, fostering culturally sensitive care. Anthropology offers a comparative understanding of mental health care, highlighting the influence of culture on the experience of mental stress and care provision. It also addresses research gaps and promotes interdisciplinary collaboration. Transdisciplinary approaches bridge clinical practice and social context in public mental health, providing comprehensive insights into mental health issues, and paving the way for culturally informed interventions. Applied anthropology, particularly, plays a crucial role in evaluating community acceptance of health initiatives and developing effective interventions tailored to specific contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropology and its marquee method, ethnography, have recently been promoted as an analytical key for unlocking problems faced in other domains. This review addresses two books that argue for the value of this anthropological lens: Anthro‐Vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life, by Gillian Tett, and How to Think like an Anthropologist, by Matthew Engelke. The differences between these works highlight the risk of deploying anthropology as a means to other ends, without subjecting those ends to the same theorization and scrutiny as one's topic or methods. While these authors demonstrate that there is significant value that the anthropological toolkit can provide, both in life and in business, there remains a fine line to be drawn between the instrumentalization of the discipline and the broader pursuit for knowledge and meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article titled "LIVED FUTURES: ORIENTATIONS AND FUTURE PRACTICES IN UNCERTAIN TIMES" presents a dossier on the orientations and practices of the future in uncertain times. The editors of the dossier were surprised by the amount of articles received that addressed the theme of future time, as they considered that this topic did not have a significant presence in the Spanish-speaking academic debate. The article highlights the diversity of perspectives and approaches present in the dossier, as well as the importance of exploring the multiple futures that are constantly contested in society. It also mentions the temporal turn that the field of social sciences and humanities has experienced in recent decades, where greater attention has been paid to future time. [Extracted from the article]

The latest IPCC report estimates that approximately 1 billion people will be at risk from coastal hazards in the near term due to coastal population increase, sea-level rise and other coastal changes. This will occur in a world that is changing rapidly due to climate change, ecosystem decline, human development and the projected transformations of the economy to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement. In this context, social sciences provide a pivotal perspective to coastal adaptation, for example, while assessing barriers and opportunities across scales, from local to global. This scoping review explores how social sciences support coastal adaptation. We show that Political Sciences, Economics, Sociology and Geography are already supporting coastal adaptation. Yet, scientific fields such as legal sciences, psychology, history and archaeology as well as anthropology and ethnography are less developed in the context of coastal adaptation to sea-level rise. New research avenues could also integrate education, media and communication research and aim at truly interdisciplinary studies linking different branches of social sciences with coastal science and climate services. This effort could help moving from a coastal adaptation often focused on coastal engineering protection to a broader vision of coastal resilient development, also addressing the challenges of mitigation, sustainable development and coastal ecosystem decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Razón Crítica is the property of La Fundacion Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic has changed many persisting modalities of human life. It has made a huge impact on the lives and livelihoods of people living across the globe. Imposition of restrictions on the movement made life difficult for researchers of many fieldwork-based social science disciplines like anthropology, sociology and others. It is in this context, this article tries to explore the possibilities, advantages and disadvantages of some of the new and emerging approaches like virtual/digital ethnography. This article plunges deep into the methodological issues of doing ethnographic fieldwork to show that innovative research strategies have always been adopted on grounds of the sheer necessity of capturing human life within complex and ever-transforming social situations. Thus, growing instances of innovative research strategies that researchers are adopting now might be seen as the need of the situation; whether good or bad, proper or improper, only the future will tell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building theory with ethnography and filmic research increasingly requires focussing on key practices or settings, instead of painting a broad panorama of a culture. But few authors discuss why and how to focus. This article provides a systematic discussion of the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of focusing ethnographic research by comparing different schools of thought and suggesting a practice theory-based approach. It argues that many research projects are focused but do not reflect on the process of focusing, describes how to identify focal settings or practices, and introduces sequential analysis as a tool for studying them. Analysing videos, documents and language are discussed in turn, and methods for ensuring quality in focused ethnography are suggested. Finally, the article provides recommendations for publishing focused ethnography as text or film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the work of Ivan Illich, our special issue reanimates iatrogenesis as a vital concept for the social sciences of medicine. It calls for medicine to expand its engagement of the injustices that unfold from clinical processes, practices, and protocols into patient lifeworlds and subjectivities beyond the clinic. The capacious view of iatrogenesis revealed by this special issue collection affords fuller and more heterogeneous insights on iatrogenesis that does not limit it to medical explanations alone, nor locate harm in singular points in time. These papers attend to iatrogenesis' immediate and lingering presences in socialities and structures within and beyond medicine, and the ways it reflects or reproduces the racism, sexism, and ableism built into medical logics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working with Veena Das's Textures of the Ordinary: Anthropology after Wittgenstein By Lotte Buch Segal Repairing the World: Ordinary Ethics and the Shadows of Moralism By Emilija Zabiliūtė The Text's Texture By Marco Motta The Residues of Kinship By Resto Cruz Uncertain Relations with People, Practice, and Ethnographic Knowledge By Andrew M. Jefferson The Moon Shadows: When Arguments Rest By Veena Das [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robert Harry Lowie, Franz Boas (1858-1942) ekolünden bir antropolog ve etnologtur. Lowie’nin yaşadığı dönemde ve öncesinde etnolojik veriler, kâşifler, seyyahlar, misyonerler ve zayıf eğitimli kimseler tarafından yazılmış tâli kaynaklardan elde ediliyordu. Lowie, hocası Boas gibi bu verileri ilk elden saha çalışmasıyla temin etmeleri gerekliliğine inanıyordu. Şehir alışkanlıklarına sahip biri olarak, Lowie’nin bu gayeyle uzak ve fevkalade zorlu bölgelerde alan çalışması yapması dikkat çekicidir. Başka hiçbir Amerikalı antropolog, saha çalışması metot ve esaslarını onun kadar geliştiremedi. Antropoloji, Etnoloji ve Külterel Antropoloji’ye dair görüşlerini Culture and Ethnology (Kültür ve Teknoloji), Primitive Society (İlkel Toplum), Primitive Religion (İlkel Din), An Introduction to Culture Anthropology (Kültür Antropolojisine Bir Giriş) ve The History of Ethnological Theory (Etnolojik Teori Tarihi) adlı kitaplarında açıkladı. Almanya ve Alman toplumuyla ilgisini The German People: A Social Portrait to 1914 (Alman Toplumu: 1914’e Sosyal Bir Betimleme) adlı kitabıyla sürdürdü. Lowie, siyaset felsefesiyle de ilgiliydi. Bu konuya dair görüşlerini The Origin of the State (Devletin Kökeni) adlı kitabında ele aldı.

Calls to "decolonize" the social sciences have reverberated in academia since at least the 1950s. Anthropology, in particular, has been marked as the "child of colonialism" and "handmaiden of imperialism" (Gough 1968). Over the course of eight decades now, critics have highlighted the unequal power structures which have framed ethnographic practices and anthropological knowledge production. Yet, anthropology's "savage slot" (and its manifestation in newer iterations) along with its epistemological and political logic have yet to be dislodged, persisting in contemporary disciplinary practices. This short essay argues for the need to address this crucial gap between anthropological theory and disciplinary practices, to act urgently to acknowledge and then resoundingly reject the haunting legacy of anthropology's "savage/primitive/native slot." Given that decolonization is ultimately about dismantling global hierarchies, I suggest that this can only be achieved through materializing progressive and deeply reflexive practices in the work of doing, writing, and teaching ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complexity is everywhere. From biology to genomics, from anthropology to public policy, experts are marveling at the complexity of the phenomena they study. Yet in recent years, scholars have warned against taking all of this complexity at face value. In this spirit, this article frames "complexity" as an epistemic artifact traceable through particular histories and traditions of knowledge‐making. Attributions of relative complexity to different societies have a long history in anthropology. Archaeologists, in particular, have defined and redefined, debated and deconstructed complexity, leaving behind a lively textual trail. Examining this trail as a case study, the article investigates some of the different and sometimes conflicting logics behind what gets to count as complex, when, and why, as well as behind the more general expansion of complexity's reach in recent decades. By doing so, it exemplifies a way of approaching complexity as an anthropological problem and as a dominant problematic of our times. [knowledge, complexity, epistemology, archaeology] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]