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

We argue that to understand fishing in modern Iceland, it must be contexualized in terms of a system which includes three subsystems: (1) production–catching and processing, (2) distribution–selling processed fish internationally, (3) policy–establishing fishing areas, gear, periods, prices, quotas, and attempts to influence policy. We briefly outline the components of this system in contemporary Iceland. We conclude that if comparative studies of fishing are to be useful, they must go beyond comparisons of fishing boats to comparisons of fishing systems.

The potential for natural selection to occur within a population can be estimated through the use of Crow's Index of Total Selection. In the Greek immigrant population of Columbus, Ohio, this index has been low since the founding of the community in the 19h century, and has decreased in recent generations. This paper delineates specific cultural patterns which have contributed to the low fertility and prereproductive mortality rates in the Columbus Greek population.

Although the transition from midwife- to doctor-attended childbirth ended around 1920 in most parts of the United States, some groups, including ethnic minorities and rural dwellers, continued to rely on the midwife for delivery assistance well into the 1930s and 1940s. Interviews conducted with the members of one of these groups, the people of the southern Appalachian Mountains, yields information concerning the techniques and training of traditional Appalachian midwives, midwifery succession patterns, reasons for the lengthy persistence of this midwifery system, and, lastly, characteristics that may be compared and contrasted to the midwifery system used by rural southern blacks during the same time period (roughly 1920-1950).

The European response to new geographical and ethnographic information in Renaissance travel literature is explored. Using Shakespeare's The Tempest and Montaigne's essays, the paper also examines depictions of the savage as an individual and savagery as a social form in order to compare artistic to more avowedly empirical representations. The views of the dramatist and the essayist are related to the modern anthropological perspective

It has been suggested by Cohen [1978] that ethnicity is based on a “series of nesting dichotomizations” of shared diacritics wherein group membership occurs along a social scale of these markers by degree of inclusiveness and exclusiveness perceived of both subjectively and objectively by the group and by others. This paper is an attempt to explain the process of membership through the use of diacritic variables and the determination of sliding internal and external boundaries in the case of the Lubavitch, a contemporary chassidic group.

The special problems of this movement surround the need for selection of group-specific markers from multiple socio-cultural and historical Jewish categories which survive in the modern, urban context. Recruitment into the group involves a progressive acceptance of a series of clearly known “markers” that emerge as gradual membership commitments. These diacritics form, therefore, a taxonomy of involvement into a complex set of criteria separating the membership into a differentiating subculture.

Ethnohistory is not highly regarded within anthropology because of two factors. The first is that anthropologists do not value library research. The second, and more fundamental, factor is that ethnohistorians have largely failed to deal with problems of broad anthropological interest. Too often ethnohistorical studies deal not with culture but with chronology. The work of some ethnohistorians shows this need not to be the case. If more ethnohistorians were to pursue positivistic, scientific goals, they might achieve a higher standing within anthropology.

Neo-Marxists and other dependency theorists explain declining domestic food production in Sub-Saharan Africa as the result of increasing production of export crops. This paper examines the Mende agrarian household in Upper Bambara Chiefdom, Sierra Leone, at three points in time (circa 1900, 1945, and 1967) and argues for the reverse causality: the Mende have become commercial farmers of cocoa and coffee because they now lack sufficient labor for self-sufficiency in staple food production.

Predictable and reliable agricultural production, industrial output, and, in general, environments that promote human well-being depend on climatic stability. But the prehistoric and historic record indicate that climate change is a recurring feature of the environment. In this paper the climate history of the southwest coast of Ecuador is presented and discussed in relation to its influence on prehistoric and contemporary human populations living in this region. A recent case of climate change during the year 1971 is described. Patterns of land use and water management described for prehistoric peoples continue to be followed by the current population. Understanding the history of human responses to climate change may be necessary in order to make rational decisions about how to adapt our behavior to future climates.