On the Poetry of a Boasian Cultural Anthropologist: Ruth Benedict’s Palimpsestuous Writings

2021 ◽  
pp. 171-190
Author(s):  
A. Elisabeth Reichel
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Anthropologist

scholarly journals Gandhi’s Militant Nonviolence in the Light of Girard’s Mimetic Anthropology

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 988
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Palaver
Keyword(s):  
Fear Of Death ◽  
Mimetic Theory ◽  
Rene Girard ◽  
Cultural Anthropologist ◽  
René Girard ◽  
Contagious Nature ◽  
Nonviolent Action ◽  
God's Grace

Nuclear rivalry, as well as terrorism and the war against terror, exemplify the dangerous escalation of violence that is threatening our world. Gandhi’s militant nonviolence offers a possible alternative that avoids a complacent indifference toward injustice as well as the imitation of violence that leads to its escalation. The French-American cultural anthropologist René Girard discovered mimetic rivalries as one of the main roots of human conflicts, and also highlighted the contagious nature of violence. This article shows that Gandhi shares these basic insights of Girard’s anthropology, which increases the plausibility of his plea for nonviolence. Reading Gandhi with Girard also complements Girard’s mimetic theory by offering an active practice of nonviolence as a response to violent threats, and by broadening the scope of its religious outreach. Gandhi’s reading of the Sermon on Mount not only renounces violence and retaliation like Girard but also underlines the need to actively break with evil. Both Gandhi and Girard also address the religious preconditions of nonviolent action by underlining the need to prefer godly over worldly pursuits, and to overcome the fear of death by God’s grace. This congruence shows that Girard’s anthropology is valid beyond its usual affinity with Judaism and Christianity.

scholarly journals Communicology and Culturology: Semiotic Phenomenological Method in Applied Small Group Research

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Lanigan
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Group Formation ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Descriptive Phenomenology ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Cultural Anthropologist ◽  
Dyadic Group ◽  
Semiotic Phenomenology ◽  
The University

Communicology is the science of human communication where consciousness is constituted as a medium of communication at four interconnected levels of interaction experience: intrapersonal (embodied), interpersonal (dyadic), group (social), and inter-group (cultural). The focus of the paper is the group level of communication across generations, thus constituting inter-group communication that stabilizes norms (forms a culture). I propose to explicate the way in which the method of semiotic phenomenology informs the pioneering work at the University of Toronto by Tom McFeat, a Harvard trained cultural anthropologist, on small group cultures as an experimental research methodology. Rather than the cognitiveanalytic (Husserl‘s transcendental eidetic) techniques suggest by Don Ihde as a pseudo "experimental phenomenology", McFeat provides an applied method for the empirical experimental constitution of culture in conscious experience. Group cultures are constructed in the communicological practices of group formation and transformation by means of a selfgenerating group narrative (myth) design. McFeat‘s method consists of three steps of culture formation by communication that are: (1) Content-Ordering, (2) Task-Ordering, and (3) Group-Ordering, i.e., what Ernst Cassirer and Karl Jaspers call the logic of culture or Culturology. These steps are compared to the descriptive phenomenology research procedures suggested by Amedeo Giorgi following Husserl‘s approach: (1) Find a sense of the whole, (2) Determine meaning units, (3) Transform the natural attitude expressions into phenomenologically, psychologically sensitive expressions. A second correlation will be made to Richard Lanigan‘s semiotic phenomenology method following the work of Cassirer, Jaspers, and Merleau-Ponty: (1) Description of Signs, (2) Reduction of Signifiers, and (3) Interpretation of Signifieds.

Southeast Asian Society: Dual or Multiple

1964 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-427
Author(s):  
Benjamin Higgins
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Cultural Anthropologist ◽  
Asian Society ◽  
Traditional Sector ◽  
Capital Intensive

It is now ten years since I wrote my own initial critique of the theory of sociological dualism presented by J. H. Boeke. In the intervening decade, all of us who are concerned with the problem of economic development and cultural change have, I trust, learned more about the nature of the phenomenon and hence the reopening of discussion by Professor Manning Nash at this time is very welcome. I should like to deal first with his main theme, and then with a few details of his paper.Professor Nash shows the usual reluctance of the cultural anthropologist to generalize; he is unwilling to “deal with anything as complex, heterogeneous, and refractory as Southeast Asia as a whole.” The really interesting question, however, is surely how general tiie phenomena of dualistic society, multiple society, technological dualism, and underdevelopment are, and what the relationships are among them. Being less inhibited than Professor Nash, let me say at once that in my view technological dualism appears in all countries which can be regarded as underdeveloped. By this I mean that all such countries have two clearly distinguishable sectors, one with a capital-intensive and modern technology with high levels of man-year productivity, consisting of large scale manufacturing, plantation agriculture, mining, and the services associated with these; and die other, the “traditional” sector, consisting of peasant agriculture, small scale manufacturing and handicrafts, and the services connected with these.

scholarly journals A Science of Evil: An Exploration into Terror Management Theory, and a Psychoanalytic Theory of Extremism

Eureka ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-66
Author(s):  
Sayeed Devraj-Kizuk
Keyword(s):  
Terror Management Theory ◽  
Terror Management ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Management Theory ◽  
Cultural Anthropologist ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ernest Becker ◽  
Motivating Factor ◽  
General Explanation

Terror Management theory is a refinement on Psychoanalytic theory that places the knowledge and resulting fear of mortality as the primary motivating factor in human behaviour. Based largely on the work of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, the theory seeks to examine human nature from an existential standpoint, and use psychoanalytic observation to create a comprehensive theory of the subconcious factors that comprise human behaviour. This paper seeks to provide an introduction and general explanation of the essential premise of Terror Management Theory, and explain in detail one of the most integral aspects of the theory, the projection of death-anxiety from an individual onto a person, object, or abstraction, known in TMT as transference. The ideas developed in the first part of the paper are then used to develop an existentialist psychoanalytic rationale behind the extremist behaviour of the radical Islamic terrorist organisation Al Qa'ida. The paper concludes by conducting a brief review of the scientific research studies that have in the past few decades succeeded in providing solid experimental data that supports the predictions made by Terror Managment Theory.

PA Comments

1987 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-22
Author(s):  
James Lett
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Local State ◽  
Full Time ◽  
University Of Florida ◽  
Cultural Anthropologist ◽  
Day Of The Week ◽  
The University

Since the spring of 1983, when I completed my doctorate in Anthropology at the University of Florida, I have been working as a broadcast journalist, most recently at the CBS television affiliate in Ft. Pierce, Florida, where I currently anchor and produce 40 minutes of local, state, and national news every day of the week. To my knowledge, I am the only professionally trained cultural anthropologist in the country who's working full-time as a television journalist, and that's something, I realize, that puzzles both anthropologists and journalists. As far as I'm concerned, however, I'm doing what I was trained to do: observe, record, describe, and explain human behavior—I'm just doing it in what is, for anthropologists, a non-traditional medium.

A Cultural Anthropologist as Expert Witness: A Lesson in Asking and Answering the Right Questions

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 6-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila Rodriguez
Keyword(s):  
Expert Witness ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
Bed Sharing ◽  
Cultural Anthropologist ◽  
Abuse Case ◽  
Mexican Culture ◽  
Sexual Abuse Case ◽  
The Right ◽  
Sharing Behavior

A few years ago, a Mexican man in the United States allegedly abused his young stepdaughter by fondling her breasts. Last summer, his ex-wife formally accused him of this crime, and the public defender hired me to serve as an expert witness in the sexual abuse case. The defendant argued that he had not intentionally fondled the girl, and that when this occurred a younger boy—his biological son—was also present in the bed. His lawyer believed that some of his ideas and behaviors concerning bed-sharing behavior were cultural, and that is why she contacted me.1 My task was to establish whether, in fact, in "Mexican culture" such bed-sharing behavior is considered appropriate. As I prepared myself for this endeavor I found that there is a dearth of information about the practical, scholarly, and ethical dilemmas I encountered along the process of serving as an expert witness. The case never made it to trial, as the defendant was eventually offered a plea deal in large part because of my testimony. Nonetheless, I learned valuable lessons throughout the process that will undoubtedly be useful for any cultural anthropologist facing this role.

Conceptualizing Diaspora: Tales of Jewish Travelers in Search of the Lost Tribes

AJS Review ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alanna E. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Anthropologist ◽  
Dissertation Research

I met Simcha Jacobovici in 1998 while doing my dissertation research in Uzbekistan. Long-haired, fair-skinned, and dressed in American garb, he was clearly an outsider like myself, and we introduced ourselves. I told him I was a cultural anthropologist doing fieldwork among the Bukharan Jews. He told me that he was a filmmaker collecting footage for a documentary about the ten lost tribes. I had heard the theory that the Bukharan Jews were among the lost Israelite tribes, but I considered it far-fetched and had trouble taking Simcha's enthusiasm about the possibility seriously.

Carving Turf in the Practice of Public Ethnography

2004 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-17
Author(s):  
George Esber
Keyword(s):  
National Park ◽  
National Park Service ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Cultural Anthropologist ◽  
Administrative Position ◽  
Park Service ◽  
Open Position

The use of applied ethnography is relatively new among National Park Service (NPS) programs compared to other academic disciplines that were incorporated by the NPS much earlier as part of the effort to fulfill its mission. Although anthropology had been part of the NPS for decades, it was represented only by archaeology, along with associated museology and curatorial functions. However in 1981, Dr. Douglas Scoville, himself an archaeologist, decided that an open position in anthropology should be filled by an ethnographer to represent cultural anthropological interests in park operations. Dr. Muriel "Miki" Crespi was the first cultural anthropologist hired to fill the new administrative position in the Washington office. For the next decade, Miki worked hard to secure positions for applied ethnographers to serve in the regional offices where program goals of ethnographic expertise and service could be implemented for parks in which there are peoples with traditional cultural affiliations.

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