Social Anthropology

Secondary burial cemeteries, visibility and land tenure: A view from the southern Levant Chalcolithic period

by Rona Winter

Co-authored with Tal Svoray and Isaac Gilead, 2012, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

Engineering love

by Brian Earp

Savulescu, J. and Sandberg, A. (2012). Love machine: Engineering lifelong romance. New Scientist, 2864, 28-29.

Essay partially adapted from Earp, B. D., Sandberg, A., and Savulescu, J. (2012). Natural selection, childrearing, and the ethics of marriage (and divorce): Building a case for the neuroenhancement of human relationships. Philosophy & Technology, forthcoming [see "profile" box in article].

Available at the New Scientist website: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428646.200-love-machine-engineering-lifelong-romance.html

New Scientist BIG IDEA section, May 2012.

With break-up and divorce a major part of modern life, it looks... more New Scientist BIG IDEA section, May 2012.

With break-up and divorce a major part of modern life, it looks like we may be outliving our inborn capacity to love. But there could be a way to outwit evolution and make love last.

Also available at New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428646.200-love-machine-engineering-lifelong-romance.html.

Tesis de licenciatura. MIGRACIÓN MÉXICO – ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTUDIO DE CASO EN CAMPANA, DURANGO: UNA REGIÓN DISCONTINUA TRASNACIONAL.

by Ana Laura Gonzalez Valdés

Premio Fray Bernardino de Sahagun a la mejor tesis de licenciatura en Antropología Social 2006, Mension Honorífica. Migración, Región, Historia Regional.

MIGRACIÓN MÉXICO – ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTUDIO DE CASO EN CAMPANA, DURANGO: UNA REGIÓN DISCONTINUA TRASNACIONAL.more MIGRACIÓN MÉXICO – ESTADOS UNIDOS, ESTUDIO DE CASO EN CAMPANA, DURANGO: UNA REGIÓN DISCONTINUA TRASNACIONAL.
Campana pertenece al municipio de Tlahualilo, ubicado al norte del estado de Durango, dentro de la Comarca Lagunera. En este ejido se producen algodón, melón y sandía para exportación. La crisis económica, las políticas de Estado, la falta de buenos compradores para el producto, la reducción del abasto de agua y los atractivos de la vida del otro lado de la frontera, han motivado un acelerado flujo migratorio hacia los Estados Unidos. En diez años ha emigrado más del 65% de la población.
Esta investigación se basa principalmente en los testimonios de personas originarias de La Campana que radican en Estados Unidos, durante su estancia en el ejido en el verano del 99,
invierno 99-00, verano 00, invierno 01 y verano 02; así como de los testimonios de los que se quedan allí en esos mismos periodos. A través de ella presentaré las imágenes tanto de los que se quedan como de los que se van, de la articulación entre su comunidad de origen y la de destino, como fundamento para la construcción de una región discontinua.
Reviso primeramente algunas teorías que conforman el sustento del planteamiento, posteriormente hago un recorrido por la conformación de la región, su historia y su situación actual, cotejando la información proporcionada por los sujetos con los datos existentes con relación a su conformación histórica y a la migración México-Estados Unidos, para finalmente presentar los estudios de caso y las conclusiones obtenidas en esta investigación.
La información aquí revisada solo cubre los años de 1998 a 2002 por lo que no se revisan las teorías que desde esta fecha se han desarrollado.

Pierre Bourdieu and the Distinctive Body

by Nadeem Fayaz

2009, « Habitus, Freedom and Reflexivity », in Theory and Psychology Volume 19, no. 6, pp. 728-755.

by Mathieu Hilgers

The question of freedom is recurrent in the theory of habitus. In this paper I propose that the notion of freedom is... more The question of freedom is recurrent in the theory of habitus. In this paper I propose that the notion of freedom is an essential and necessary component for the coherence of the analyses which mobilize habitus both in terms of their theoretical articulation and in terms of their grounding in empirical reality. This argument can seem surprising considering that the theory of habitus has often been accused of being deterministic. Yet I show that, from an epistemological point of view, habitus theory is not deterministic. Bourdieu’s treatment of this concept implies at least three principles that exclude determinism: (1) the production of an infinite number of behaviors from a limited number of principles, (2) permanent mutation, and (3) the intensive and extensive limits of sociological understanding. After identifying and describing these principles, I show the reason for their incompatibility with a deterministic perspective and consider their implications for the corresponding model of action. I illustrate this analysis by a discussion of Loïc Wacquant’s carnal sociology of the pugilistic universe which reveals why it is essential to understand and explain the relation between habitus and freedom.

2011 The three anthropological approaches to neoliberalism, in International Social Science Journal, Vol 61 (202) : 351–364.

by Mathieu Hilgers

International Social Science Journal, Volume 61, Issue 202, 2011: 351–364.

For around fifteen years now, anthropology has been engaged in the study of neoliberalism. What contribution does the... more For around fifteen years now, anthropology has been engaged in the study of neoliberalism. What contribution does the discipline have to make to a debate largely monopolized by economics and political science? To answer this question, the present article returns to the major texts and highlights the three perspectives from which anthropology has approached neoliberal expansion: culturalist, systemic and the approach based on governmentality. Each has its own epistemological presuppositions and a specific conception of anthropology, globalization and neoliberalism. The article highlights the relevance and limitations of these approaches.

2012, « The Historicity of the Neoliberal State », in Social Anthropology, volume 20, n° 1, pp. 80-94

by Mathieu Hilgers

Debate with Loic Wacquant “Three Steps to a Historical Anthropology of Actually Existing Neoliberalism." Social Anthropology, 20, 1, with responses in the next issue: Jamie Peck, Nick Theodore, and Neil Brenner, Stephen Collier, Daniel Goldstein, Johanna Bockman, Don Kalb...

Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. 2011. Violence sits in places? Cultural practice, neoliberal rationalism, and virulent imaginative geographies. Political Geography. 30 (2), 90-98.

Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that... more Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that violence is 'irrational' marks particular cultures as ‘other’. Neoliberalism exploits such imaginative geographies in constructing itself as the sole providence of nonviolence and the lone bearer of reason. Proceeding as a ‘civilizing’ project, neoliberalism positions the market as salvationary to putatively ‘irrational’ and ‘violent’ peoples. This theology of neoliberalism produces a discourse that binds violence in place. But while violence sits in places in terms of the way in which we perceive its manifestation as a localized and embodied experience, this very idea is challenged when place is reconsidered as a relational assemblage. What this re-theorization does is open up the supposed fixity, separation, and immutability of place to instead recognize it as always co-constituted by, mediated through, and integrated within the wider experiences of space. Such a radical rethinking of place fundamentally transforms the way we understand violence. No longer confined to its material expression as an isolated and localized event, violence can more appropriately be understood as an unfolding process, derived from the broader geographical phenomena and temporal patterns of the social world.

What symbols

by Dmitry Misyurov

This article contains 12 questions about the symbols. What are your thoughts in response? This article contains 12 questions about the symbols. What are your thoughts in response?

The Material-Cultural Turn: event and effect.

by Dan Hicks

Cite this paper as: Hicks, Dan 2010. The Material-Cultural Turn: Event and Effect. In Dan Hicks and Mary C. Beaudry (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies. Oxford: OUP, pp. 25- 98.

The full references are provided in the bibliography for the published volume.

Emasculation among the Hijras

by Oleg Nekrassovski

draft only

The Mysterious Arrow Poison of the Yanomamo

by Oleg Nekrassovski

draft only

Auto-ethnography of my food habits

by Oleg Nekrassovski

draft only

Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia. Journal of Agrarian Change.

The unfolding of a juridico-cadastral system in present-day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of... more The unfolding of a juridico-cadastral system in present-day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of landholding, which are entrenched in notions of community consensus and existing occupation. The discrepancy between such orally recognized antecedents and the written word of law have been at the heart of the recent wave of dispossessions that have swept across the country. Contra the standard critique that corruption has set the tone, this paper argues that evictions in Cambodia are often literally underwritten by the articles of law. Whereas ‘possession’ is a well-understood and accepted concept in Cambodia, a cultural basis rooted in what James C. Scott refers to as ‘orality’, coupled with a long history of subsistence agriculture, semi-nomadic lifestyles, barter economies, and–until recently–widespread land availability have all ensured that notions of ‘property’ are vague among the country’s majority rural poor. In drawing a firm distinction between possessions and property, where the former is premised upon actual use and the latter is embedded in exploitation, this article examines how proprietorship is inextricably bound to the violence of law.

'The Prehistoric Mind as a Historical Artefact’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 65 (2011), 1-8.

by Matthew Daniel Eddy

On 8 July 2010 the front page of The Guardian newspaper featured an attractive colour drawing by the artist John... more On 8 July 2010 the front page of The Guardian newspaper featured an attractive colour drawing by the artist John Sibbick. It was entitled ‘Meet the Norfolk relatives’ and it depicted a pastoral scene of farmers and hunters going about their daily routines. However, the image was not included to illustrate a gargantuan sum recently paid for an impressionist painting. Nor was it a taster for an article about a long-lost work of art. This drawing was slightly different from the kinds that one would normally see on the front of a leading British newspaper. Its subjects were naked. Their bodies were hairy. They were, in fact, an artist’s impression of the early humans who lived on the Norfolk coast a million years ago...

Call for Book Chapters- Fieldwork Experiences in Turkey

by Rabia Harmansah

Uma relação difícil: A trama da religião em tempos de política

by L. Nicolás Guigou

ANÁLISE DE DISCURSO E ANTROPOLOGIA

by L. Nicolás Guigou

A cronologia absoluta das ocupações funerárias da Gruta da Casa da Moura

by António Faustino Carvalho

Authentication: Hot and cool

by Scott Cohen

Cohen, E. and Cohen, S.A. (2012) Authentication: Hot and cool. Annals of Tourism Research, 39(3), 1295-1314. DOI: 10.1016/j.annals.2012.03.004

Seeking to shift the discussion of the concept of authenticity in tourism scholarship from the dominant concern with... more Seeking to shift the discussion of the concept of authenticity in tourism scholarship from the dominant concern with tourist experiences to the more sociological problem of the processes of authentication of tourist attractions, we conceptualize two analytically distinct, but practically often intersecting, modes of authentication of attractions, “cool” and “hot”. Through a range of examples, we demonstrate the implications of the two modes for the dynamics of the constitution of tourist attractions, examine their interaction, and illustrate how "cool" and "hot" authentication can be conducive to different types of personal experiences of authenticity. We furthermore explore the crucial question of who is authorized to authenticate tourist attractions, and thereby uncover issues of power and contestation in the politics of authentication.

Keywords: authentication; authenticity; performativity; power; tourist attractions