Central issues in anthropology : a journal of the Central States Anthropological Society最新文献

At a time when there is talk of a crisis in anthropology and if the lack of a dominant paradigm, self-reflecting anthropology represents a strong and polar contemporary trend. Applying the Lstorical and comparative perspectives of anthropology to contemporary anthroplogy, this paper argues that the roots of this trend are to be found in the works of Malinowski, Mead and Luckhohn. Continuities are observed and their implications are robed by asking: anthropology for what? and for whom?

Papua New Guinea (PNG)—together with other Pacific Island nations—has taken an active, leadership role in international arenas around the issue of a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific. Yet, the legacy of the anthropological research in that country has produced an ideological investment in projecting the people as “strange, quaint natives.” This exotification of Papua New Guineans contributes to a situation in which the geopolitical concerns of the modern nation-state of PNG are usually not analyzed within anthropology. This paper investigates the geopolitical interests and diplomatic initiatives of PNG at the United Nations (UN) during the reinscription of New Caledonia as a non-self-governing territory. It utilizes interviews with diplomats and other UN-affiliated persons regarding the problem, if any, that the heritage of anthropology poses for functioning in an international context. In addition, PNG and Pacific Island government representatives discuss the implications of this legacy for government policy. By framing the issues in this way, I argue for the necessity of reconstituting the expertise on Pacific cultures and societies to include Pacific people as experts.

This compelling analysis of the implications of the “Mead-Freeman” debate is the last work by Eleanor Leacock, who died in Samoa in 1987. According to Leacock, one of the principal effects of Freeman's attack on Mead's work was to focus attention upon his support for biological determinism. In addition, his findings about Samoa ignored the culture changes that had taken place in Samoa through time. Freeman can also be faulted for failing to note the contemporary problems of Samoa as a small, Third World island nation.

On the other hand, Leacock reflects on the possibility that even if Mead's research reinforced an infantile image of Samoans as “simple, happy natives,” Freeman's “balanced” emphasis on aggression and violence has potentially negative effects for Samoan communities throughout the world. Hence, both Mead and Freeman separated Samoan culture from Samoan history.

Leacock thus demonstrates vividly that the lack of a historically based, advocacy-oriented anthropology produces stereotyped images. This advocacy is the key to forging access to the “insider” perspective, for it assumes that it is undertaken in active collaboration with those whom the researcher is studying. Leacock's paper thus points the way to a more constructuve and collaborative ethnography.

This examination of Margaret Mead, by an anthropologist from Papua New Guinea, whose people have been the focus of Dr. Mead's research, provides a sorely needed indigenous viewpoint that will benefit western anthropologists.

Rising scholars in Papua New Buinea regard Margaret Mead's published studies, and those of most western anthropologists, as being more a reflection of western culture than of the people under study. The distortions created by anthropologists have stripped the indigenous people of their dignity and right to determine their own future.

Margaret Mead: From a Cultural/Historical Perspective presents a special opportunity for anthropologists to examine the ideologies within American culture that influenced Dr. Mead's perception of Third World people. Within this analystical study of Dr. Mead's work we find that the philosphy of humanism popularly associated with her may in fact have been less influential than her Freudian biological view of human behavior.

This ethnographic study of a corporate research department expands our understanding of the difficulties encountered by new employees in learning the cultural rules of the workplace. Particular attention is focused on the process by which newcomers become affiliated with their initial projects. The results suggest that newcomers tend to identify with other employees on the basis of job classification, gender, age, and tenure in the department. Such information is useful in sensitizing all individuals in a given organizational setting to the culturally relevant learning which newcomers must acquire and in providing criteria for the re-evaluation of existing newcomer orientation programs.