Search

This article tracks the relatively unexamined ways in which ethnographic, travel and medical knowledge interrelated in the construction of fat stereotypes in the nineteenth century, often plotted along a temporal curve from ‘primitive’ corpulence to ‘civilized’ moderation. By showing how the complementary insights of medicine and ethnography circulated in beauty manuals, weight-loss guides and popular ethnographic books – all of which were aimed at middle-class readers and thus crystallize certain bourgeois attitudes of the time – it argues that the pronounced denigration of fat that emerged in Britain and France by the early twentieth century acquired some of its edge through this ongoing tendency to depict desire for and acceptance of fat as fundamentally ‘savage’ or ‘uncivilized’ traits. This tension between fat and ‘civilization’ was by no means univocal or stable. Rather, this analysis shows, a complex and wide-ranging series of similarities and differences, identifications and refusals can be traced between British and French perceptions of their own bodies and desires and the shortcomings they saw in foreign cultures. It sheds light as well on those aspects of their own societies that seemed ‘primitive’ in ways that bore an uncomfortable similarity to the colonial peoples they governed, demonstrating how a gendered, yet ultimately unstable, double standard was sustained for much of the nineteenth century. Finally it reveals a subtle and persistent racial subtext to the anti-fat discourses that would become more aggressive in the twentieth century and which are ubiquitous today.

Anthropologists have traditionally separated the history of their discipline into two main diverging methodological paradigms: nineteenth-century armchair theorizing, and twentieth-century field-based research. But this tradition obscures both the complexity of the observational practices of early nineteenth-century researchers and the high degree of continuity between these practices and the techniques that came later. While historians have long since abandoned the notion that nineteenth-century ethnologists and anthropologists were merely 'armchair' theorists, this paper shows that there is still much to learn once one asks more insistently what the observational practices of early researchers were actually like. By way of bringing out this complexity and continuity, this essay re-examines the work of two well-known British ethnologists, Robert Knox, and Robert Gordon Latham; looking in particular at their methods of observing, analysing and representing different racial groups. In the work of each figure, early training in natural history, anatomy and physiology can be seen to have influenced their observational practices when it came to identifying and classifying human varieties. Moreover, in both cases, Knox and Latham developed locally-based observational training sites., (Crown Copyright © 2011. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This essay uses Walter Pater's "Marius the Epicurean" (1885) to explore why certain Victorian liberals preferred to see religion as a matter of collective inheritance rather than personal belief. Recent commentators have portrayed the Protestant emphasis on individual conversion as one of the foundations of liberal individualism. Pater's liberalism, however, sees radical breakage with the past as a threat to the humanist ideal of many-sidedness and instead imagines the path of a rich individuality as running precisely through a surrender to the inscriptions of cultural heritage. Indeed, Pater virtually transforms the idea of self-culture into that of ethnographic culture, with the detached aesthete becoming a participant-observer who can both submit to the determinations of history and reflect on them through an anthropological lens.

Ethnicity belongs to the most important types of differentiation in Laos. Among the means to establish such differences is the ascription of bodies of knowledge to various ethnicities. Ritual healing knowledge is often associated with the foreign and the culturally different. The attribution of differentiated categories of foreignness thus supports the emergence and reproduction of ethnic differentiation and interethnic communication in this region. This article compares ritual healing among Rmeet in Laos, Karen in Thailand, and Iu Mien in both countries in respect to the ethnotopography of its origins.

Christoph Meiners (1747-1810) was one of 18th-century Europe's most important readers of global travel literature, and he has been credited as a founder of the disciplines of ethnology and anthropology. This article examines a part of his final work, "Untersuchungen über die Verschiedenheiten der Menschennaturen" [Inquiries on the differences of human natures], published posthumously in the 1810s. Here Meiners developed an elaborate argument, based on empirical evidence, that the different races of men emerged indigenously at different times and in different places in natural history. Specifically this article shows how a sedentary scholar who never left Europe constructed a narrative of human origins and migrations on the basis of (1) French theory from the 1750s (Charles de Brosses and Simon Pelloutier) and (2) data gathered by explorers as reported in travel literature (J.R. Forster, Pérouse, Cook, Marsden).

A collaborative study of the Smithsonian Institution's ethnology collections has inspired the narration of Alaska Native oral traditions, including Yupik Elder Estelle Oozevaseuk's re-telling (in 2001) of the story of Kukulek village and the St. Lawrence Island famine and epidemic of 1878–80. The loss of at least 1,000 lives and all but two of the island's villages was a devastating event that is well documented in historical sources and archaeology, as well as multiple Yupik accounts. Yupiget have transmitted memories of extreme weather, bad hunting conditions, and a wave of fatal contagion that swept the island. The Kukulek narrative, with origins traceable to the late nineteenth century, provides a spiritual perspective on the disaster's underlying cause, found in the Kukulek people's disrespect toward the animal beings that sustained them. This paper explores the cultural and historical contexts of this narrative, and contrasts it with Western perspectives.

This study combines ethnological, historical, and dendroecological data from areas north of the Arctic Circle to analyze cultural aspects of Sami use of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) inner bark as regular food. Bark was peeled in June when trees were at the peak of sapping, leaving a strip of undamaged cambium so the tree survived. As a result, it is possible to date bark-peeling episodes using dendrochronology. The paper argues that the use of Scots pine inner bark reflects Sami religious beliefs, ethical concerns, and concepts of time, all expressed in the process of peeling the bark. A well-developed terminology and a set of specially designed tools reveal the technology involved in bark peeling. Consistent patterns with respect to the direction and size of peeling scars found across the region demonstrate common values and standards. Peeling direction patterns and ceremonial meals relating to bark probably reflect ritual practices connected to the sun deity, Biejvve.

The paper describes the development and testing of a Web-based educational resource for usability and acceptability by health care providers who care for ethnic older adults. The work was undertaken as a dissertation project. The purpose of the Website is to provide on-demand ethnogeriatric information to enhance provider-patient interaction. Focus groups of clinicians and ethnic older adults were used in order to identify content relevant to the care of frail ethnic older adults. Collaboration with the Stanford Geriatric Education Center, On Lok SeniorHealth Services, Inc., Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education, and a network of virtual consultants provided support to the project. The site contains information on 15 cultures, 12 religions, and 6 ethnic minority cohort groups. Testing by snowball sampling generated survey data from 96 respondents, consisting of general practitioners (24%), pediatric specialists (20%), and geriatric specialists (18%). The Website was considered useful for provider-patient communication (77%) and would be recommended to others (99%). The Web-based information resource, called "Diversity, Healing, and Healthcare," currently exists as a resource rather than as a defined learning module and can be accessed at http://www.gasi. org/diversity.htm.