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The Cultural Evolutionary Perspective: Toward a Multidisciplinary Method to Ethnic Identity Research
No full textEthnic Ambiguity and the African Past makes a disciplinary rupture from the precedent thinkers about the study of identity oriented on ethnicity, reviewing the role of ethnicity in social identification among peoples in the present and the past. Claiming all the potential development for the research on peoples’ ethnicity and identity that the collective highlights within the book, it underpins though the complexity for archaeologists to understand this kind of extrasomatic phenomenon solely on the basis of material culture. The case studies assembled together provide a synthesis and demonstrate mastery from the contributors of the early works relating to ethnicity in archaeology, anthropology and history
Becoming elite in a contested terrain: The post-colonial experiences of the Franco-Mauritian population in Mauritius
Get PDFReading postcolonial Sub-Saharan African political history books usually evokes a sense that African indigenous people, mostly phenotypically black Sub-Saharan people, were subject to a heroic European colonial conquest and suffered the effects of political domination at every level of society thereafter. Such books portray militant control, identity reclamation, and spatial ownership tied to pre-conquest origins. In this sense, indigenous Africans are perceived as the rightful claimants of geographic ownership and identity. However, according to author Tijo Slaverda, the case of Mauritius is unique, in that there were no original inhabitants in the country by the time the first Europeans arrived. The author argues that “This absence of natives facilitated white settlers to establish an elite position without much competition or resistance” (p. 2). According to the author, the island was empty at the beginning of the colonial period, and Europeans of French origin were the first to inhabit and populate the island. Other immigrants from Africa and other parts the world arrived later and became subservient to Europeans. Later, immigrants were brought to Mauritius mainly as indentured workers and slaves to boost and further European economic and political dominanc
Charting out a Complex World: Ancient Zapotec Religion in Context
No full textAncient Zapotec Religion is the first comprehensive study of Zapotec religion as it existed in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca on the eve of the Spanish Conquest. Author Michael Lind brings a new perspective, focusing not on underlying theological principles but on the material and spatial expressions of religious practice.Using sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish colonial documents and archaeological findings related to the time period leading up to the Spanish Conquest, he presents new information on deities, ancestor worship and sacred bundles, the Zapotec cosmos, the priesthood, religious ceremonies and rituals, the nature of temples, the distinctive features of the sacred and solar calendars, and the religious significance of the murals of Mitla—the most sacred and holy center. He also shows how Zapotec religion served to integrate Zapotec city-state structure throughout the valley of Oaxaca, neighboring mountain regions, and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.Ancient Zapotec Religion is the first in-depth and interdisciplinary book on the Zapotecs and their religious practices and will be of great interest to archaeologists, epigraphers, historians, and specialists in Native American, Latin American, and religious studies.
Liminal Spaces within the Caribbean Plantation Landscape
Get PDFArchaeologies of Slavery and Freedom in the Caribbean: Exploring the Spaces in Between, co-edited by Lynsey A. Bates, John M. Chenoweth, and James A. Delle exemplifies the benefits of applying a postcolonial epistemology in archaeological research. Bates et al. (2016) set out to examine the implications of liminal spaces across the landscape. The editors echo Escobar’s (2001) argument that cultural realities and an individual sense of identity are embedded in place. Archaeologies of Slavery and Freedom in the Caribbean examined the construction and renegotiation of identity through the active construction of liminal spaces across the plantation landscape. The landscape was the stage through which to understand “…interstitial places [as] contestation for identity” (Meniketti 2016, 189). Bates et al. (2016) seeks to capture the lived experiences of enslaved Africans utilizing liminal spaces to exercise a degree of control over one’s life, separate from the potentialities of surveillance within the plantation core
Pharmaceutical markets in India: Questioning "monopoly"
Get PDFIn Pharmacracy, Thomas Szasz (2001) writes against the appropriation of medicine as a tool of politics. Critical awareness should be fostered against all forms of medicalization and against state control of health. In Pharmocracy, William Faloon (2011) argues that the US healthcare market suffers from inflated prices because the FDA approval system is inefficient and needlessly restrictive. A radically free-market approach to pharmaceutical regulation and pricing would, he contends, lead to better health outcomes overall. In turn, Kaushik Sunder Rajan's Pharmocracy (2017) "coins" the same term to argue that multinational pharmaceutical companies should be prevented from establishing "hegemony": "Pharmocracy is a term I coin to refer to the global regime of hegemony of the multinational pharmaceutical industry" (p. 6). The "appropriation by health by capital" (p. 7) should be stopped. The state should not retreat, instead he wants "democratic politics to seize the state" (p. 242; which "state" is not quite clear).
Pol Pot's Willing Executioner? Criminal Accountability at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal
Get PDFDuring the Khmer Rouge's brutal reign in Cambodia during the mid-to-late 1970s, a former math teacher named Duch served as the commandant of the S-21 security center, where as many as 20,000 victims were interrogated, tortured, and executed. In 2009 Duch stood trial for these crimes against humanity. While the prosecution painted Duch as evil, his defense lawyers claimed he simply followed orders. In Man or Monster? Alexander Hinton uses creative ethnographic writing, extensive fieldwork, hundreds of interviews, and his experience attending Duch's trial to create a nuanced analysis of Duch, the tribunal, the Khmer Rouge, and the after-effects of Cambodia's genocide. Interested in how a person becomes a torturer and executioner as well as the law's ability to grapple with crimes against humanity, Hinton adapts Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil" to consider how the potential for violence is embedded in the everyday ways people articulate meaning and comprehend the world. Man or Monster? provides novel ways to consider justice, terror, genocide, memory, truth, and humanity
Fulfilling Sex Lives: Understanding People with Disabilities and Sexual Desire in Denmark and Sweden
Get PDFThis review discusses the merits of the book Loneliness and Its Opposite: Sex, Disability, and the Ethics of Engagement by Don Kulick and Jens Rydstrom
Resurgent life: How to flourish with what's left
Get PDFIn this essay I review Anna Tsing's recent work The Mushroom at the End of the World (2015). This creatively written ethnography explores how the matustake mushroom is differently conceived and experienced in Oregon, Japan, Yunnan, and Finland. The mushroom emerges as a symbol of the renewal of life after destruction, as they are primarily found in forests that have been subjected to industrial logging. Tsing makes important theoretical advances in the anthropology of value and the anthropology of exchange. She also connects her cultural critique of capitalism to a critique of science
Analyzing Ancient Mayan Elites through their Strategies for Urban Planning
No full textThis book attempts to fill several gaps: a general summary of Belizean sites for tourists and students; offering information on these sites to a scholarly audience unfamiliar with the Belizean context; and providing an application of Michael Smith’s theory of interpreting meaning through ordinal scales of analysis of site planning. Well-written and researched, the book’s only major flaw is its attempt to do too much at the same time.