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J Scott Hill

ANTHROPOLOGIST BIOGRAPHIES -Ortner - 1 views

www.indiana.edu/...Ortner.htm

theory ortner keysymbols

shared by J Scott Hill on 30 Jan 13 - Cached
  • This article is the beginning of Ortner’s latest project: American ethnography and the examination of the relationship between class and capitalism in America. When she began her career anthropology, Ortner notes that research in America was unheard of. Since the advent of postmodernism, reflexivity and the exploration of experience that form an anthropologist's perspective have gained greater validity. Ortner’s current research is thus follows her high school classmates, whose culture helped form her perspective.
  • his was a previously inarticulated method of cultural analysis, but one nonetheless used frequently by anthropologists. Her purpose was to explicate this analysis before applying it to her monograph on the Sherpas on which she was simultaneously working.
  • There are two types of main symbols: summarizing and elaborating. Summarizing symbols, not surprisingly, combine several complete ideas into one symbol or sign that the participant perceives. This single symbol stands for all of these ideas simultaneously. This summarizing occurs often with sacred symbols such as the American flag. Summarizing symbols act as a catalyst in order to make an impact on the respondent.
markyearick

Perspectives on Tierney's Darkness in El Dorado - 0 views

www.jstor.org/...320007

perspectives darkness anthropology Yanomami

shared by markyearick on 06 Feb 13 - No Cached
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  • markyearick on 06 Feb 13
     
    "Even before its publication, Darkness in El Dorado became a Janusfaced text that in calling attention to methodological and ethical shortcomings of scientific research in the Amazon also brought attention to faults in its own production." "Tierneys harrowing account forces us to ask how personal and professional ethical questions are defined and connected. His merit is to have brought together a vast amount of information about Western anthropological and medical practices carried out among the Yanomami and to have situated these practices within the network of institutional connections that made them possible and the ideologies of science and history that have rendered them so popular." "While Tierneys focus is on individuals, his book locates them in two relevant contexts: the cold war and the Vietnam War, during which currents of evolutionary genetics, sociobiology, and cultural anthropology claiming that aggression plays a positive role in human evolution found broad support, and the Venezuelan petrostate culture of clientelism, which fostered a network of corrupt politicians and businessmen with interests in the Yanomami and their territory for reasons of profit and power."
Erin Brennan

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis - 1 views

www.aber.ac.uk/...whorf.html

Sapir-Whorf mould theories social language

shared by Erin Brennan on 20 Feb 13 - Cached
  • Within linguistic theory, two extreme positions concerning the relationship between language and thought are commonly referred to as 'mould theories’ and 'cloak theories'. Mould theories represent language as 'a mould in terms of which thought categories are cast' (Bruner et al. 1956, p. 11). Cloak theories represent the view that 'language is a cloak conforming to the customary categories of thought of its speakers' (ibid.). The doctrine that language is the 'dress of thought' was fundamental in Neo-Classical literary theory (Abrams 1953, p. 290), but was rejected by the Romantics (ibid.; Stone 1967, Ch. 5). There is also a related view (held by behaviourists, for instance) that language and thought are identical. According to this stance thinking is entirely linguistic: there is no 'non-verbal thought', no 'translation' at all from thought to language. In this sense, thought is seen as completely determined by language.
  • Sapir argued in a classic passage that: Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.
  • ir idea of what these were. I should note that Whorf distanced himself from the behaviourist stance that thinking is entirely linguistic (Whorf 1956, p. 66). In its most extreme version 'the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis' can be described as consisting of two associated principles. According to the first, linguistic determinism, our thinking is determined by language. According to the second, linguistic relativity, people who speak different languages perceive and think about the world quite differently.
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  • the Whorfian perspective is that translation between one language and another is at the very least, problematic, and sometimes impossible. Some commentators also apply this to the 'translation' of unverbalized thought into language. Others suggest that even within a single language any reformulation of words has implications for meaning, however subtle. George Steiner (1975) has argued that any act of human communication can be seen as involving a kind of translation, so the potential scope of Whorfianism is very broad indeed. Indeed, seeing reading as a kind of translation is a useful reminder of the reductionism of representing textual reformulation simply as a determinate 'change of meaning', since meaning does not reside in the text, but is generated by interpretation.
  • The Whorfian perspective is in strong contrast to the extreme universalism of those who adopt the cloak theory. The Neo-Classical idea of language as simply the dress of thought is based on the assumption that the same thought can be expressed in a variety of ways. Universalists argue that we can say whatever we want to say in any language, and that whatever we say in one language can always be translated into another. This is the basis for the most common refutation of Whorfianism. 'The fact is,' insists the philosopher Karl Popper, 'that even totally different languages are not untranslatable'
  • Whilst few linguists would accept the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in its 'strong', extreme or deterministic form, many now accept a 'weak', more moderate, or limited Whorfianism, namely that the ways in which we see the world may be influenced by the kind of language we use.
  • Moderate Whorfianism differs from extreme Whorfianism in these ways: the emphasis is on the potential for thinking to be 'influenced' rather than unavoidably 'determined' by language; it is a two-way process, so that 'the kind of language we use' is also influenced by 'the way we see the world'; any influence is ascribed not to 'Language' as such or to one language compared with another, but to the use within a language of one variety rather than another (typically a sociolect - the language used primarily by members of a particular social group); emphasis is given to the social context of language use rather than to purely linguistic considerations, such as the social pressure in particular contexts to use language in one way rather than another.
Brendan Raleigh

Coronil et al., Perspectives on Darkness in El Dorado - 1 views

anthroniche.com/...0457.htm

darkness el dorado tierney neel chagnon measles Yanomami

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  • The first strand of the book, which occupies less than one-tenth of Tierney's text but has received the most public attention, argues that Neel and Chagnon collected blood samples for the Atomic Energy Commission to compare mutation rates in populations contaminated by radiation with those in one uncontaminated by it and at the same time carried out an experiment on immunity formation among an isolated population involving a measles vaccination program. According to Tierney, although a safer and cheaper vaccine was already available, Neel chose the Edmonston B vaccine because it produced antibodies that would allow for comparison of European and Yanomami immune systems and prove the latter's ability to generate levels of antibiodies similar to those of populations previously exposed to the disease. Tierney's most controversial and damaging charge is that these activities may have led to a deadly outbreak of measles. While medical experts agree that no vaccine could have caused an epidemic, it is still not clear why this outdated vaccine was chosen or what measures were taken to care for those affected by its known reaction.
  • For Tierney, however, seemingly any biomedical research is unethical; all studies for Tierney are "experiments" (however observational their methods), and all "experiments" that do not directly benefit the community involved in the study are "criminal" (p. 43). Thus James Neel, a recently deceased distinguished human geneticist as well as physician, who carried out an extensive series of biomedical studies of the Yanomami, is criminalized.
  • ere is where Neel parted company with classical eugenics. He never advocated selective breeding practices. He merely pointed out the selective consequences of Yanomami polygyny (Neel 1980 ) and noted with irony the extreme unlikelihood that populations in the industrialized world would adopt Yanomami marriage practices. His prescriptions for the gene pool (Neel 1994 ) all involved manipulating the environment rather than genetics. These included efforts to control population growth, "euphenics" or the reshaping of environments to "ameliorate the expression of our varied genotypes" (Neel 1994 :353), keeping mutation rates as low as possible through control of exposure to environmental mutagens, and providing counseling to prospective parents to decrease the transmission of genetic diseases. None of these ideas bear any resemblance to classic eugenic schemes.
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  • Elsewhere Tierney's misrepresentations cannot be dismissed as this kind of error. For instance, he associates unethical experiments in the University of Rochester Medical School with Neel, who was "company commander" and "ran much of the hospital" (p. 301). But rather than running the hospital, the page cited by Tierney from Neel's autobiography ( 1994 :22) says that he drilled the students in military exercises required by their army service. This is a particularly useful example of Tierney's misuse of citations, since it is so easily checked.
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