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

The relationship of individual style to formal and informal codes of action and value in the military are examined. Three examples taken from the author's experience in the Army Reserves illustrate the conditions in which individuals can manipulate the formal system to their own interests. Although the ability to negotiate meanings in the military is strongly linked to the individual's status within the organization, the full weight of that identity is largely a function of acumen and personal style; that is, the judicious management of both formal and informal military codes and practices.

Anthropological analysis of the contemporary U.S.A. should move beyond describing observed behavior to probing underlying cultural assumptions. But it is particularly difficult for anthropologists enculturated within the U.S. to confront their own cultural premises and blindspots. One useful strategy is to analyze American behavioral data in terms of models developed by anthropologists for describing other cultures. This article takes an irreverent look at academe, using George M. Foster's model of peasant society. Participant-observation on campuses shows that the Image of Limited Good, which Foster found in peasant communities, seems also to underlie and explain everyday behavior in the academic

The pattern of Hopewell site distribution throughout the midwest has given rise to several models of interaction during Middle Woodland times. Primary among these is the idea of the Hopewell Interaction Sphere (HIS), involving the movement of material items and ideological concepts but not groups of people. An analysis of biological distance between skeletal populations drawn from Ohio and Illinois Hopewell mortuary sites was done in order to test this interpretation. The pattern of biosocial interaction resulting from comparison of inherited osteological traits, both metric and non-metric, supports such a model. The degree of heterogeneity between the two areas of Hopewell expression suggests little exchange was occurring on a biological level. The HIS as an interregional trade network composed of locally adapted, indigenous cultural groups appears to have reality in both the biological and material aspects of its archeological remains.

Names and the messages that they communicate have been a subject of general and anthropological interest. Here data are presented from Anuta, a Polynesian island in the eastern Solomons, showing that one's sense of identification with one's name is as intimate as in the west, and that social bonds are frequently established through the naming process, but without the permanence and exclusivity that we associate with names. Suggestions are offered as to why names are such potent vehicles for shaping people's sense of who they are and where they fit into their universe.

This article challenges certain current formulations which allege that women are innately less inclined to seek sexual variety than men, and that women are innately “nurturant” and “emotional.” A comparison of women's sexual behavior in communal and class societies leads to the conclusion that these apparent differences between the sexes are culturally imposed, rather than biological in origin. A cultural interpretation is offered to explain the greater repression of female sexuality in class societies, emphasizing the use of sexual repression in the maintenance of social boundaries between classes and gender-castes. American capitalist society provides a clear illustration of such use–doctrines of “innate” female monogamy, nurturance, and emotionality tend to be most intensely promulgated when there is low demand for women in the wage labor force. By promoting the redomestication of female labor, such ideologies serve to perpetuate upper class and male privilege.

Modern cognitive anthropology has shifted its interests from analyzing groups of related lexemes to analyzing discourse with emphasis on the schemata that provide coherence to speech. Logical inference patterns such as syllogisms play an important role in these schemata and have received attention in the recent literature. The results of an investigation into the structural validity and folkloric use of Navajo syllogisms are reported in this article. The syllogism is found to be a valid reasoning pattern in Navajo and a key schematic feature of Navajo folk tales.

Currently flourishing comparative studies of and by women have raised challenging questions for anthropological research and theory building. Although male bias has been widely discussed, other sources of bias are also seen to be at work, and their effects, it is argued, are not limited to research concerning the position of women. Myth building, instead of the construction of scientific theories, may result. The theory of a universal male dominance is used to illustrate this point.