Pub: RADICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2 (2009).

Download the second issue here: http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/journal_02.pdf.

Ingold, Tim. "Anthropology is not Ethnography." PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY 154 (2008).

Abstract: Anthropology has been shrinking. Once an inclusive inquiry into the conditions of human life, it has increasingly turned inwards on itself. One reason for this shrinkage lies in the identification of anthropology with ethnography. Such identification leads us to think of observation as a means to the end of description. The lecturer will aim to show, to the contrary, how description not just literary but graphic and performative - can be re-embedded in observation. Overturning the relation between observation and description will enhance anthropology''s potential to engage with biology, psychology and archaeology on the great questions of the origins and destiny of humankind. Download the entire paper here: http://www.proc.britac.ac.uk/tfiles/825683A/154p069.pdf.

Cfp: "The Encultured Brain: Neuroanthropological Explorations," University of Notre Dame, South Bend, October 8, 2009.

The First Neuroanthropology Conference. One main part of the schedule will facilitate a kind of collective brain-storming, make connections (both mental and practical) meeting, rather than the standard anthropology panel set-up, where just a few people present 15 minute versions of their research. We will have two keynote presentations, as well as a lot of ’speed presentations’ in which participants will be able to briefly (about five minutes) talk to the whole assembled conference about what they are working on or would like to work on. We will have pre-printed message pads to allow the whole conference to share thoughts, as well as ample chances during breaks to grab the person you just heard share a great idea. There will also be an ongoing poster session for presenters so that we really get an opportunity to network in this emerging area of research. So much of what we hope to do is to create conversations over the fences that separate our respective disciplinary backyards, so we’re going to do our best to get people in touch. There will also be a roundtable on research methods for breaking new ground in neuroanthropology. In addition, we’ll have keynote lectures by Prof. Patricia Greenfield of UCLA and Prof. Harvey Whitehouse of Oxford University . Further information may be found here: http://neuroanthropology.net/2009/04/21/big-news-first-neuroanthropology-conference/.

Salmon, Gildas. "Levy-Bruhl and the Problem of Contradiction." LA VIE DES IDEES February 12, 2009.

As a thinker who has no heirs and belongs to no school, Lévy-Bruhl’s influence over the three main philosophical currents of the twentieth-century – analytical philosophy, phenomenology and structuralism – is gauged by the need each of them has felt to ward off the idea of a form of thought that excluded the principle of non-contradiction. The case that supplied the point of departure for Lévy-Bruhl’s thought was borrowed from anthropologist Karl Von den Steinen, who reported that the members of a Brazilian tribe, the Borono, claimed to be araras (a type of parrot). However, to be at once human and non-human violates the most fundamental principle of logic. It was in order to describe this phenomenon that Lévy-Bruhl called upon the law of participation, which he identified as the central principle of the primitive mentality. Starting with this example, Frédéric Keck shows that the problem raised by Lévy-Bruhl offers a panoramic view of contemporary thought. In analytic philosophy, Quine’s principle of charity could thus be understood as a means for reducing the contradictory utterances upon which Lévy-Bruhl built his case to mere errors of translation. If phenomenology proved more receptive to the concept of a pre-logical mind, it is because it saw it as an instrument for describing the “naïve” experience of the perceptible world independently of the intellectual frameworks that science imposes on our perception. But by subordinating this “practical logic” to a putatively superior theoretical logic, phenomenology lost sight of what made Lévy-Bruhl’s investigation radical. The great strength of structuralism, for its part, was to prove that these apparently contradictory utterances became intelligible in the light of the ethnographic context from which Lévy-Bruhl had isolated them: if the Bororo boasted of being araras, it is not because they were unaware of the contradiction but rather because they wished to distinguish themselves from their neighbors, the Trumai, who identified with aquatic animals. While recognizing the fruitfulness of this analysis, Keck emphasizes that structuralism’s focus on networks of semantic opposition prevented it from accounting for the syntax of the contradictory utterances that so fascinated Lévy-Bruhl. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.laviedesidees.fr/Levy-Bruhl-and-the-Problem-of.html.

Hart, Keith. "Marxism and Economic Anthropology." THE MEMORY BANK BLOG January 9, 2009.

An ‘anthropology’ is any systematic study of humanity as a whole. The modern academic discipline has its origins in the democratic revolutions and rationalist philosophy of the eighteenth century. The question then was how the arbitrary inequality of the Old Regime might be replaced by an equal society founded on what all people have in common, their human nature. It was thus a revolutionary critique of the premise of inequality and a source of constructive proposals for a more equal future. Such a future was thought to be analogous to the kinship organization that preceded societies based on the state and class division and that could still be observed among contemporary savages. This framework for thinking about social development was retained and elaborated in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But it is no longer the leading anthropological paradigm, having been replaced by an ethnographic relativism that is more compatible with a world society fragmented into nation-states. Marx was a political economist, to be sure; but he also developed a coherent view of the place of capitalism in human history as a whole. For this reason, I consider Karl Marx to have been the greatest economic anthropologist of all time. Marxism was shaped by the tradition I call the ‘anthropology of unequal society’ and became its most sustained source of development. Rousseau’s example inspired Morgan and Engels a century later; while Wolf and Goody have brought the tradition up-to-date. The most influential marriage of Marxism and anthropology was the French school that flourished in the 1960s and 70s. So this essay will have three parts: the economic anthropology of Karl Marx; a sketch of the anthropology of unequal society; and French structuralist Marxism. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.thememorybank.co.uk/2009/01/08/marxism-and-economic-anthropology/.

Fearn, Hannah. "The Great Divide." TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION November 20, 2008.

The discipline of anthropology has split firmly into two factions - social anthropologists and evolutionary anthropologists. Renowned anthropologist Eric Wolf once described his discipline as "the most scientific of the humanities and the most humanistic of the sciences." Perhaps he was attempting to capture the uniqueness of a subject that can talk to both academic camps but, by the time he died in 1999, his words articulated the growing split within the discipline. Today, anthropology is at war with itself. The discipline has divided into two schools of thought - the social anthropologists and the evolutionary anthropologists. The schism between the two is simple but deeply ingrained. Academics in the subject clearly align themselves with one side or the other; once that choice is made it defines their career. The division lies in the question of whether or not anthropology is a science, and if it accepts that Darwinian evolutionary theory guides research into human behaviour and the development of societies. On one side are the evolutionary anthropologists. "(They believe) our behaviour is based on things that we did to find mates in our years of evolution," says Alex Bentley, a lecturer in anthropology at Durham University. "Then we have the social anthropologists. Some of them really strongly reject this kind of thinking. They consider it reductionist. They are focused on the specifics of culture." Put crudely, social anthropologists describe and compare the development of human cultures and societies, while evolutionary anthropologists seek to explain it by reference to our biological evolution. The two sides of the one discipline are struggling to unite. "They just do not see eye to eye. They don't see anything the same way," says Bentley. "It can be very difficult. In some departments they hardly speak. Professionally there is almost no overlap. One is more descriptive and the other is more analytical. It's a very clear dividing line in many departments. It often causes a lot of acrimony." Read the rest here: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=404341&c=1.

Erlanger, Steven. "100th Birthday Tributes Pour in for Levi-Strauss." NEW YORK TIMES November 28, 2008.

Claude Lévi-Strauss, who altered the way Westerners look at other civilizations, turned 100 on Friday, and France celebrated with films, lectures and free admission to the museum he inspired, the Musée du Quai Branly. Mr. Lévi-Strauss is cherished in France, and is an additional reminder of the nation’s cultural significance in the year when another Frenchman, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Mr. Lévi-Strauss shot to prominence early, but with his 1955 book, Tristes Tropiques, a sort of anthropological meditation based on his travels in Brazil and elsewhere in the 1930s, he became a national treasure of a specially French kind. The jury of the Prix Goncourt, France’s most famous literary award, said that it would have given the prize to Tristes Tropiques had it been fiction. Mr. Lévi-Strauss, a Brussels-born and Paris-bred Jew, fled France after its capitulation to the Nazis in 1940. He spent the next eight years based in the United States, where he taught at the New School for Social Research in New York and was influenced by noted anthropologists like Franz Boas, who taught at Columbia. On Friday, the culmination of several days of celebration, there were no false notes. At the Quai Branly, 100 scholars and writers read from or lectured on the work of Mr. Lévi-Strauss, while documentaries about him were screened, and guided visits were provided to the collections, which include some of his own favorite artifacts. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/books/29levi.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all. See also:

• Banks, Eric. "100 Candles for Claude Levi-Strauss." Chronicle of Higher Education Brainstorm Blog November 25, 2008;
• "Bon anniversaire, M. Lévi-Strauss!" Le Monde November 25, 2008;
• Lichfield, John. "Grand Chieftain of Anthropology Lives to See his Centenary." Independent November 29, 2008;
• Ivry, Benjamin. "Claude of the Jungle." Forward November 6, 2008;
• Sperber, Dan. "Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100: Echo of the Future." Open Democracy November 28, 2008;
• Wilcken, Patrick. "The Century of Claude Levi-Strauss." Times Literary Supplement October 29, 2008.

Pub: RADICAL ANTHROPOLOGY (2008).

Articles include:

• Jerome Lewis on abundance
• Interview with Noam Chomsky
• Lionel Sims decodes Stonehenge
• Keith Hart: a philosophy for life
• Marek Kohn: can we learn to trust?

Access the whole issue here: http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/journal_02.pdf.

Annual Meeting, American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, November 19-23, 2008.

The theme is "Inclusion, Collaboration and Engagement." Highlights include: “HIV/AIDS: Underscoring Needs for and Challenges to Collaboration” is jointly offered from the Association for Africanist Anthropology and the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA). Presenters will analyze why and how we must reconceptualize our theoretical understandings of culture and society, as well as our approaches to health, development, community capacity building and international collaboration to address the HIV/AIDS crisis. “Radical Archaeology as Critical Anthropology: Papers Honoring Thomas C Patterson” is sponsored by the Archeology Division. Papers will examine such issues as the influence of archaeology on anthropological theory and articulations between native communities and archaeologists. “The Legacy of Daphne Berdahl” will be presented by the Society for the Anthropology of Europe. Daphne Berdahl was one of anthropology’s leading scholars of Central and Eastern Europe. Papers will assess her contributions to such areas as the anthropology of borderlands, memory and consumption. One of the roundtables sponsored by the National Association of Student Anthropologists, “Graduate Student Collaborations and Engagements in Environmental Change Research,” will stress how graduate students can collaborate on integrative research programs focused on the human dimensions of environmental change. The Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness and the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology will cosponsor the invited session “Black Atlantic and Caribbean Religions: Transnational Flows and Local Histories.” This session will bring together researchers documenting the histories of specific religious communities throughout the region. The Society for East Asian Anthropology highlights its session “Reinventing the Chinese State.” This panel shows, through five finelyetched ethnographic portraits, that the Chinese state has reinvented itself as an omnipresent force. NAPA and the Anthropology and Environment Section have collaborated to produce “Researching a Moving Target: Anthropological Models and Methods in an Age of Unprecedented Climate Change.” Experienced researchers and practitioners will show how their work engages their research communities in collaboration, consultation and public debate about how to address global climate change locally. The Society for Visual Anthropology’s 2008 lineup includes a diverse and engaging range of papers, screenings and special events. Highlights include the Annual Film, Video and Interactive Media Festival, which received a record number of contributions and promises to be one of the best programs to date. The Society for the Anthropology of North America will present “New States of War and Policing,” which will focus on the relationship between war-making, states and policing, and probe their convergence in the current global war on terror. The Society for Urban, National, and Transnational/Global Anthropology and Society for the Anthropology of Work will co-sponsor “Locating Labor: Anthropologists Engage Service Worker Struggles.” David Bacon, labor photojournalist and author, will put the actions of the San Francisco hotel strike into the context of transnational labor politics and help us delineate an ethnology of labor struggles. The newly formed Society for Anthropological Sciences will sponsor its first AAA sessions, which will highlight various formal methods of collecting, analyzing and visualizing data from the field, in particular methods of cognitive anthropology and social network analysis. The Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists will co-sponsor, with the Executive Program Committee, a session titled “Anthropology and Transgender: Rethinking Inclusion, Collaboration and Engagement.” Trans and non-trans anthropologists, historians,lobbyists and community-based activists will constitute the exciting panel of speakers. “Rethinking Race, Biology and Genetics” is an Executive Program Committee session that promises to explore the difficult debate about the biology and social construction of race. Papers show a recognition that anthropology, despite its long engagement with the complex relationship of race, biology and genetics, has yet to formulate an effective and relevant response to the recent surge of public interest in, and misconceptions about, these concepts. “Multiple Indigenous Views of Anthropology’s Future: Envisioning a New Anthropology” is a Presidential Session that will focus on indigenous anthropologists, and their communities, who are engaging in a new, collaborative anthropology that is directed by, rather than directed at, their heritage. The complete programme may be found here: http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/upload/2008prelim_prog-TRUEFINAL.pdf. Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/.

Jackson, John L. "Anthropology: the Softest Social Science." CHRONICLE BRAINSTORM July 29, 2008.

Why are people sometimes so dismissive of anthropology? In the era of Franz Boas and Margaret Mead, anthropologists were public intellectuals of the highest order. They wrote for popular magazines and challenged Americans’ too-quick assumptions about the hard-wired ‘nature’ of social life. But that was then. Now, anthropologists seem mostly relegated to the very back of the line when it comes to assessments about the value of social-scientific attempts to make sense of contemporary issues. . . . Anthropology often gets characterized as a 'postmodern' cesspool, a discipline that wallows in pseudo-theoretical (even literary) waters, embraces the most solipsistic form of navel-gawking introspection, and has recanted most of its earlier commitments to ‘objective’ outsiderism. At the same time, economists are thought to occupy a firmer space much closer to the normative benchmark that is the natural sciences, crunching numbers in ways that purport to eschew the ideologically-driven meanderings of those softer social sciences. There is a general pecking order in the social sciences. We all know that. It moves from economics down through the likes of political science and psychology, finally landing in the realm of sociology and anthropology. The closer one gets to serious mathematics as constituitive of the center of the discipline’s exploits, the higher one’s salary, the less diverse one’s colleagues (in terms of categories such as race or gender), and the more powerful one’s academic department. There are exceptions to this formulation, but it holds true quite a bit of the time, no? . . . Read the rest here: http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/jackson/anthropology-the-softest-social-science.

Malik, Kenan. "Identity is That Which is Given."

Malik, Kenan. Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate. Oxford: Oneworld, 2008. Excerpt: We’re All Multiculturalists Now observed the American academic, and former critic of pluralism, Nathan Glazer in the title of a book. And indeed we are. The celebration of difference, respect for pluralism, avowal of identity politics - these have come to be regarded as the hallmarks of a progressive, antiracist outlook and as the foundation of modern liberal democracies. Ironically, culture has captured the popular imagination just as anthropologists themselves have started worrying about the very concept. After all, what exactly is a culture? What marks its boundaries? In what way is a 16-year old British born boy of Pakistani origin living in Bradford of the same culture as a 50-year old man living in Lahore? Does a 16-year white boy from Bradford have more in common culturally with his 50-year-old father than with that 16-year old ‘Asian’? Such questions have led most anthropologists today to reject the idea of cultures as fixed, bounded entities. Some reject the very idea of culture as meaningless. ‘Religious beliefs, rituals, knowledge, moral values, the arts, rhetorical genres, and so on’, the British anthropologist Adam Kuper suggests, ‘should be separated out from each other rather than bound together into a single bundle labelled culture’. ‘To understand culture’, he concludes, ‘we must first deconstruct it. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=338. Other long excerpts may be found here: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5425/ and http://newhumanist.org.uk/1809. A review may be found here (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/strange-fruit-by-kenan-malik-859393.html).