Suchergebnisse

What I have been hoping to do in this talk is to provide the scientific basis for the biological kinship of humans with other animals in particular and the whole of nature in general, and to show that the ethical perspective to which such a demonstration leads is inherent in the very nature of nature, that cooperation, love, not conflict and aggression, as we have long been led to believe, is the dominant principle by which living creatures are designed to live with each other. It was not Darwin, but the muscular Darwinists, like Herbert Spencer, who wasn't a biologist at all, but a desk philosopher, who coined the term, "the survival of the fittest," a misnomer which Darwin unfortunately adopted, but later regretted. The term, as we have better come to understand the facts, was a blunder, for it is the "fit" who are most likely to survive, not the "fittest," for the fittest are likely to be overspecialized, where flexibility, adaptability, is required.

ABSTRACT  In this article, I consider a selection of the 129 articles of new research published in five of the leading Anglo‐American peer‐reviewed outlets for sociocultural anthropology in 2008, discerning two general, but related, trends. The first suggests an ongoing interest among sociocultural anthropologists in new forms and contexts of market capitalism and a deepening concern for the multiple, complex, and even contradictory orientations to those forms by social actors caught up in them. The second reveals a concern with the imbrications of political and scientific epistemologies, particularly as they emerge in state policies and actions around issues of public health, the environment, and agriculture. Where they come together is in the number of studies whose objects of inquiry reside at the nexus where science, politics, and markets meet in what they see as the creeping expansion of neoliberal logics and their implications for the state as a political formation. [Keywords: sociocultural anthropology, neoliberalism, science studies, public health, capitalism]

Cross culturally and historically people who are attracted to members of their own sex ("homosexuals") have been viewed and treated in radically different ways. Some societies have exhibited tolerance or indifference, whereas others have vilified and persecuted homosexuals. Using primary sources, this project reviews the major sociological and medical theories of "homosexuality" between 1864 and 1946, evaluates their bias and political implications, and closes with a brief overview of contemporary research. In chapter two the themes of the texts presented are: causality, diagnosis, and treatment. The primary theory between 1864 and 1908 argues the congenital nature of "homosexuality. The themes in chapter three are: perspectives on "homosexuality," developmental processes, and the nature of patients' relationships to themselves, their families, and others. Arrested development and the importance of childhood relationships become popular theories between 1908 and 1946. These two chapters represent critical shifts in the medicalization of the "homosexual" body from scientific and medical perspectives to psycho-analytic perspectives. Many of the authors provide progressive ideas on "homosexuality" in their quest for scientific answers to a polarized subject matter. Although these early studies attempt to maintain scientific objectivity, they often conceal moral attitudes and prejudice. The theories and approaches analyzed in both chapters tend to pathologize "homosexuality," marginalize individuals and groups, differentiate "homosexuals" from "normal" people while ignoring diversity, and stereotype on the basis of gender. Problems of prejudice and persecution persist today, as described in chapter four. This project guides the reader through the 19th, and early 20th centuries' literature on homosexuality and analyzes its value judgments and political implications for gay and lesbian groups. Finally, a brief overview of contemporary research reviews the possible biological influence on "homosexuality" and homophobia in clinical settings. It is hoped that this journey will be enlightening and enable professionals as well as laity to make informed and fair decisions in the future.

Most depictions of "peripheral," nation-states' anthropologies assume that the anthropology's Other is a given, pre-defined subordinated group. Using the beginnings of Israeli anthropology (1960s–1970s) as our case study, we explore instead how while appropriating academic dominant paradigms of the time and aspiring to national unity, Israeli anthropologists were articulating through their choices of research subjects and research topics, and through their interpretations of the field an ethnic difference between themselves, European Jews and their "brothers," Oriental Jews. We follow the ambivalent discursive strategies through which this research project was created, and explore its implications for understanding other nation-building anthropologies.