Artifacts with Feelings/Feeling Artifacts: Toward a Notion of Tacit Modalities to Support and Propel Anthropological Research

Author(s):  
Jennifer Rowsell ◽  
Sandra Schamroth Abrams
Author(s):  
Ben Raffield

AbstractIn recent years, archaeological studies of long-term change and transformation in the human past have often been dominated by the discussion of dichotomous processes of ‘collapse’ and ‘resilience’. These discussions are frequently framed in relatively narrow terms dictated by specialist interests that place an emphasis on the role of single ‘trigger’ factors as motors for historic change. In order to address this issue, in this article I propose that the study of the ‘shatter zone’—a term with origins in physical geography and geopolitics that has been more recently harnessed in anthropological research—has the potential to facilitate multi-scalar, interdisciplinary analyses of the ways in which major historical changes unfold across both space and time, at local, regional, and inter-regional levels. This article unpacks the concept of the shatter zone and aligns this with existing archaeological frameworks for the study of long-term adaptive change. I then situate these arguments within the context of recent studies of colonial interaction and conflict in the Eastern Woodlands of North America during the sixteenth to eighteenth century. The study demonstrates how a more regulated approach to the shatter zone has the potential to yield new insights on the ways in which populations mitigate and react to instability and change while also facilitating comparative studies of these processes on a broader, global scale.


1986 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bhim S. Savara ◽  
John C. Steen ◽  
Michael W. Vannier

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Elżbieta M. Goździak

AbstractTwo years have passed since Jarosław Gowin, the Polish Minister of Science and Education, has signed a new law known as the Constitution for Science (Konstytucja dla nauki) or simply Law 2.0 (Ustawa 2.0). Law 2.0 declared that ethnology and anthropology are no longer independent fields of scientific inquiry, but are part of a new discipline: the study of culture and religion. In this essay, I analyze the effects of this law on ethnology and anthropology in Poland. I look at how the law affected anthropological research, especially its financing, and training, including enrollment of students. I place this discussion withing the broader context of reforms aimed at Polish higher education.


2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-532
Author(s):  
Susan A. Gelman

ABSTRACTThis article examines two interrelated issues: (i) how considering generics within their social contexts of use contributes to theories of generics, and (ii) how contemporary work on generics provides promising directions for the study of language as an aspect of social life. Examining the function of generics in meaningful interactions stands in contrast to standard treatments, which consider generics as isolated, context-free propositions. Additionally, recent psychological approaches suggest new questions that can enrich sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological research. These include, for example, when and why generics serve not just negative functions (such as stereotyping) but also positive functions (such as meaning-making), how generics gain their power from what is unstated as opposed to stated, and how generic language distorts academic writing. Ultimately, the study of language in society has the potential to enrich the study of generics beyond what has been learned from their study in linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. (Generics, concepts, categories, stereotyping, induction)*


As multisited research has become mainstream in anthropology, collaboration has gained new relevance and traction as a critical infrastructure of both fieldwork and theory, enabling more ambitious research designs, forms of communication, and analysis. This book is the outcome of a 2017 workshop held at the Center for Ethnography, University of California, Irvine. It is the latest in a trilogy. The authors assemble several notable ventures in collaborative anthropology and put them in dialogue with one another as a way of exploring the recent surge of interest in creating new kinds of ethnographic and theoretical partnerships, especially in the domains of art, media, and information. The chapters highlight projects in which collaboration has generated new possibilities of expression and conceptualizations of anthropological research, as well as prototypes that may be of use to others contemplating their own experimental collaborative ventures.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marin Pilloud ◽  
Cassie Skipper ◽  
SaMoura Horsley ◽  
Alba Craig ◽  
Krista Latham ◽  
...  

To understand the implications of the forensic anthropological practice of “ancestry” estimation, we explore terminology that has been employed in forensic anthropological research. The goal is to evaluate how such terms can often circulate within social contexts as a result, which may center forensic anthropologists as constituting “race” itself through analysis and categorization. This research evaluates terminology used in anthropological articles of the Journal of Forensic Sciences between 1972 and 2020 (n = 314). Terminology was placed into two categories: classifiers and descriptors. Classifiers were standardized into one of five options: “race,” “ancestry,” “population,” “ethnic,” or “other.” Descriptors included terms used to describe individuals within these classificatory systems. We also compared these terms to those in the NamUs database and the U.S. census. Our results found that the terms “ancestry” and “race” are often conflated and “ancestry” largely supplanted “race” in the 1990s without a similar change in research approach. The NamUs and census terminology are not the same as that used in forensic anthropological research; illustrating a disconnect in the terms used to identify the missing, unidentified, and in social contexts with those used in anthropological research. We provide histories of all of these terms and conclude with suggestions for how to use terminology in the future. It is important for forensic anthropologists to be cognizant of the terms they use in medicolegal contexts, publications, and in public and/or professional spaces. The continued use of misrepresentative and improper language further marginalizes groups and perpetuates oppression rooted in systemic racism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 81 (6) ◽  
pp. 406-413
Author(s):  
Norbert Ricken

Abstract As familiar and self-evident as what is meant by ›helping‹ may seem at first, it is difficult to define ›helping‹ in a precise conceptual way. Against this backdrop, the question of what ›helping‹ is will be taken up and dealt with from a theoretical point of view. The path taken to work out and systematically define the form of helping leads to the discussion of some of the (predetermined) breaking points built into it and to the conclusion that ›helping‹ must be categorically defined differently. Recent anthropological research also suggests this by referring to the social-theoretical embedding of individuals and leaving behind individual-theoretical understandings of isolated individuals who would then enter into a relationship with each other.


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