The Politics of Ontology: Anthropological Positions — Cultural Anthropology At first blush, “ontology” and “politics” make strange bedfellows. Ontology evokes essence, while politics, as modern, democratic, multiculturalist citizens tend to understand it, is about debunking essences and affirming in their stead the world-making capacities of human collectives. Yet this notion of a social construction of reality itself instantiates a particular ontology, and a powerful one at that—and here we also mean politically powerful. Still, as anthropologists we are attuned to the “powers of the weak”—to the many complex connections, some of them crucially negative, between power differences (politics) and the powers of difference (ontology). How might “the otherwise” be rendered manifest ethnographically? Here, we need to remind ourselves that ethnographic descriptions, like all cultural translations, necessarily involve an element of transformation or even disfiguration.
Written in Bone - A Highly Unusual Case In 2002, archaeologists uncovered an isolated grave just outside the log wall of a fort built on an island in the James River almost four centuries earlier. Who was buried there? Male skeleton (burial partially re-created for an exhibition) 1607, James Fort site, Jamestown Virginia. Image courtesy of: APVA Preservation Virginia/Historic Jamestowne The discovery mystified investigators. Unlike nearly all the other early fort burials they had found, this one once held a coffin. World-systems theory A world map of countries by trading status, late 20th century, using the world system differentiation into core countries (blue), semi-periphery countries (purple) and periphery countries (red). Based on the list in Dunn, Kawana, Brewer (2000). World-systems theory (also known as world-systems analysis or the world-systems perspective),[1] a multidisciplinary, macro-scale approach to world history and social change, emphasizes the world-system (and not nation states) as the primary (but not exclusive) unit of social analysis.[1][2]
The Tarahumaras: An Endangered Species : Mexico Culture & Arts Shep Lenchek Never conquered by the Aztecs and despite being defeated by Mexican armies, the Tarahumaras still consider themselves an independant nation. So strong is this conviction that in the Fifties they more than once took complaints directly to the United Nations. Perhaps the purest and most unmixed of any Indian tribe in Mexico, so little is known about them that their true name "Raramuri" was corrupted to "Tarahumara" by white men and never corrected. Most of the world knows them only as long distance runners. Living in high altitudes, they have developed tremendous lung capacity and in more primitive times hunted deer and mountain goats, running them down on foot.
Ecological anthropology Some societies have proven to be sustainable for centuries or even millennia. Others have degraded their habitat and depleted the natural resources in it to the extent of undermining their economic and social viability thereby leading to sociocultural disintegration and even collapse. Examples of sustainable societies are the highlanders of New Guinea, Inca of the Andes, Menominee in Wisconsin, Norse of Iceland, Pueblo of the southwestern region of the United States, San of southern Africa, Tikopia in the South Pacific, Tokugawa era Japan, Tonga in the South Pacific, and Yanomami in the Amazon between Brazil and Venezuela.
The mystery of the labyrinth by Mirko Elviro This symbol represents a real mystery: in fact it appears in very different places and times. Its meaning is a mystery. Some researchers believe that it is a "ritual course", confining it to the religious-mystic field. Other say it may represent a human brain. But nobody of them is able to give an explanation about its so great diffusion in the world and in times so distant among them. Nature–culture divide The nature–culture divide, refers to a theoretical foundation of contemporary anthropology. Early anthropologists sought theoretical insight from the perceived tensions between culture, as a social entity, and nature, as a bio-physical entity. The argument became framed as to whether the two entities function separately from one another, or if they have a continuous biotic relationship with each other. Debate during the 1960s and '70s extended the debate to the role of women (as nature) and men (as culture). Western and indigenous concepts[edit]
Race I like race. I know it sounds odd, even politically incorrect. But I really enjoy the differences among people around the world. One aspect of this is all our different cultures. ecophenomenology A New Geometry of fear :: the road from Smithson to Nelson February 15, 2013 · by simeon kaminski · in Academic art, Conceptual art, Contemporary Art, Environment, Galleries, geography, human geography, infrastructure, Research art, roads, Uncategorized · I’ve mentioned Robert Smithson before in a previous post and still haven’t quite satisfied myself (and probably never will) that whatever I’ve read and written about his work Asphalt Rundown adequately describes the profound influence this work has had on a particular type of environmental art. Had Smithson survived into this decade, our account of […] Place, Anthropocentrism and Environment in the work of Smithson, Marshall, Sonfist, and Eliasson.
Virtual Anthropology Lab - The Mind Project When completing this lab, you become a field anthropologist conducting a study in cognitive linguistics focusing on color terms. Virtual books introduce the physiology of color perception, the physics of light, and current methods of data gathering using a Munsell Color Chart. You will start by being a subject in your own study.
The Ivory Tunnel: What is Ecological Phenomenology (Ecophenomenology)? If environmental philosophy is a young field, ecological phenomenology as such is even younger, dating back perhaps two decades to foundational works, most notably Erazim Kohak's The Embers and the Stars (University of Chicago Press, 1984) and Neil Evernden's The Natural Alien (University of Toronto Press, 1985). Both works offer remarkably similar invocations to an encounter of environmental thought with phenomenology. In a lyrical and deeply personal paean to the "moral sense of nature" (13), Kohak asserts that "[we] must approach nature anew, undertaking no less than a phenomenology of nature as the counterpart of our moral humanity" (22). Evernden directly addresses the vitiation (and the possibility of redemption) of the environmental movement, observing that "[i]f what we are is entailed in the story we create for ourselves, then only a new story will alter us and our actions. ... Ingrid Leman Stefanovic offers the following methodological account of phenomenological enquiry: