E. N. Anderson

• Professor Emeritus at University of California, Riverside

The causes, consequences, and timing of the rise of moralizing religions in world history have been the focus of intense debate. Progress has been limited by the availability of quantitative data to test competing theories, by divergent ideas regarding both predictor and outcomes variables, and by differences of opinion over methodology. To address...

The causes, consequences, and timing of the rise of moralizing religions in world history have been the focus of intense debate. Progress has been limited by the availability of quantitative data to test competing theories, by divergent ideas regarding both predictor and outcomes variables, and by differences of opinion over methodology. To address...

Review of The Great Fossil Enigma: The Search for the Conodont Animal. Simon J. Knell. 2012. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Pp. 440. $45.00 (cloth), 25 b & w illustrations. ISBN 9780253006042.

Review of The Banana Tree at the Gate: A History of Marginal Peoples and Global Markets in Borneo. Michael R. Dove. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. Xix, 332 pp. Illus. Bibliography, indexes. ISBN 978‐0‐300‐15321‐7 (hardcover). $55.00.

Maya agriculture is currently outperforming alternatives across the Yucatán Peninsula, while changing to incorporate new ideas that fit with its basic commitment to shifting agriculture based on maize as the staple and over 100 minor crops. Considerable research over the last 60 years has shown the reasons for agricultural resilience, which include...

Review of Feeding the People, Feeding the Spirit: Revitalizing Northwest Coastal Indian Food. Elise Krohn and Valerie Segrest. 2010. Northwest Indian College, Bellingham, WA. Pp. x + 158, copiously illustrated, tables, bibliography.

IntroductionEarly WorkEmotions as Cultural ConstructsEmotions as UniversalNew Work on Emotions in the BrainMotivationConclusion References

DefinitionsOriginsAgricultural SystemsAgriculture and RitualRehabilitating Swidden FarmingHomegardensModern Applications: BiodiversityMethods Conclusion References

Review of Indigenous Knowledge, Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology. Raymond Pierotti. 2011. Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group), New York. Pp. Xv + 264, Bibliography, index. ISBN13: 978-0-415-87924-8 (hbk), 978-0-203-84711-4 (ebk).

Review of Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science. Carol Kaesuk Yoon. 2009. W.W. Norton, New York. Pp. 344, index, bibliography, illustrations. $27.95 (cloth). ISBN 9780393‐061970.

Review of Spirits of the Air: Birds and American Indians in the South. Shepard Krech III. 2009. University of Georgia Press, Athens. Pp. 245, copiously illustrated. $44.95 (hardbound). ISBN-13 978-0-8203-2815-7.

Skeletal analysis shows that the ancient Maya typically obtained about 75% of their calories from maize (White 1999, passim). In some areas, they ate more seafood or root crops, and maize dropped to around 50% (Magennis 1999; Staller et al. 2006; White et al. 2006). Maize is a C4 plant; other common Maya foods are primarily C3 plants. This refers t...

Review of Material Choices: Refashioning Bast and Leaf Fibers in Asia and the Pacific. Roy W. Hamilton and B. Lynne Milgram, eds. 2008. Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles. Pp. 187, bibliography, index, copious color illustrations. $30.00 (paper). ISBN-13 9780974872988.

Review of Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case that Put the Whale and Challenged the Order of Nature. D. Graham Burnett. 2007. Princeton University Press. Pp. 304 color plates, halftones, bibliography, index. $29.95(cloth). ISBN 9780691129501.

Review of Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art. Dale Rosengarten, Theodore Rosengarten, and Enid Schildkrout, eds. 2008. Museum for African Art, New York. Distributed by University of Washington Press, Seattle. Pp. 269, copiously illustrated in black-and-white and color. ISBN (cloth) 978-0-945802-50-1, (paper) 978-0-945802-51-8.

Pasternak (1968) has reported a case of “lineage atrophy” on Taiwan. This fits a pattern discernible in several widely separated cases. It seems that the Chinese lineage, often considered a rock-stable base of Chinese society, is at the mercy of economic-ecological factors.

Review of Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case that Put the Whale and Challenged the Order of Nature . D. Graham Burnett. 2007. Princeton University Press. Pp. 304 color plates, halftones, bibliography, index. $29.95 (cloth). ISBN 9780691129501.

Plants for Food and Medicine: Proceedings of the Joint Conference of the Society for Economic Botany and the International Society for Ethnopharmacology. H. D. V. Prendergast. N. L. Etkin. D. R. Harris. and P. J. Houghton. eds. Kew, Richmond, UK: Scientific Publications Dept., Royal Botanic Gardens, 1998. 438 pp.

This paper discusses the concept of “hybridity” as applied to nonya cuisine, the long-established fusion cuisine between Fujian Chinese and Bumiputra (Malay) cuisines in Malaysia. “Hybridity” is shown to be an inappropriate concept, because nonya cooking is simply one aspect of the millennia-old interaction within East and Southeast Asia's single,...

In rural, developing world communities, women are often isolated from biomedical services. Frequently, traditional birth attendants (TBAs) are the only caregivers during childbirth, both normal and complicated. Women trust their TBAs to manage their births. Globally, government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have sought to upgrade TBAs'...

Ethnobiology is the scientific study of dynamic relationships among peoples, biota, and environments. Ethnobiology is multidisciplinary; the Ethnobiology Working Group (see insert) includes representatives from systematics, population biology, ecology, mathematical biology, cultural anthropology, ethnography, archaeology, geography, pharmacology, n...

Dans un article precedent (Current Anthropology 43:451-77), R. Nigh abordait certaines questions a propos de l'anthropologie et du Maya International Cooperative Biodiversity Group (ICBG), une proposition d'anthropologues americains et mexicains pour travailler avec une petite compagnie pharmaceutique britannique afin de trouver des substances medi...

This book examines Chinese food and the culture of food consumption in East and Southeast Asia. Through the lens of food, the authors address recent theories in social science concerning cultural identity, ethnicity, boundary formation, consumerism and globalization, and the invention of local cuisine in the context of rapid culture change. Written...

As an anthropologist who has been working with resource management issues for more than 40 years, E. N. Anderson was pleased to see the excellent series of articles on environmental sustainability in the May 2000 issue of the American Psychologist. Stuart Oskamp deserves praise for organizing this series. The article by Paul Stern (see record 2000-...

Marguerite Schenkhuizen. Memoirs of an lndo Woman: Twentieth-Century Life in the East Indies and Abroad. Monographs in International Studies, Southeast Series, 92. Lizelot Stout van Balgooy, ed. and trans. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1993. xviii. 286 pp.

Bennett, John W. Human Ecology as Human Behavior. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1993. x + 357 pp. including index. $39.95 cloth.Merchant, Carolyn. Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World. New York: Routledge, 1991. xvii + 276 pp. including notes and index. $49.95 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Cox, Paul Alan and Sandra Anne Banack, eds. Islands, Plants, and Polynesians: An Introduction to Polynesian Ethnobotany. Portland, Oregon: Dioscorides Press, 1991. 228 pp. including chapter references and indices. $34.95 cloth. Kuhnlein, Harriet V and Nancy J. Turner. Traditional Plant Foods of Canadian Indigenous Peoples: Nutrition, Botany and Use...

C. Napier Bell. Tangweera: Life and Adventures among Gentle Savages. Introduction by Philip A. Dennis. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989. 318 pp. Illustrations, appendices, index. (Original, without introduction, 1899.) $25.00 (cloth).

C. Napier Bell. Tangweera: Life and Adventures among Gentle Savages. Introduction by Philip A. Dennis. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989. 318 pp. Illustrations, appendices, index. (Original, without introduction, 1899.) $25.00 (cloth).

Mourning Dove. A Salishan Autobiography. Jay Miller. ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991. Notes, glossary, bibliography, xxxix. 265 pp. $30.00 (cloth)

Reviews the literature on Chinese families to alert persons interested in the family and in family therapy to a problem with the stereotype of the "Chinese family" that is widely found in the literature on psychology and family dynamics. Descriptions of Chinese families frequently focus on "Confucian" family values, which are characterized by extre...

Reports ethnographic research on Kakawis, a treatment center for Native Americans troubled by substance abuse, including participant observation during the course of 1 treatment session and continued follow-up. Kakawis has a relatively high success rate in producing sobriety. Its treatment is based on a fusion of psychological techniques with Nativ...

The hot/cold system is perhaps the most widely known medical belief system in the world. I propose that the wide acceptance of hot/cold ideas is due to the fact that they provide a particularly simple, economic coding for common human experience, such as hypothermia, heatstroke, and fevers. Coding of foods as heating or cooling can be understood in...

Jack Goody. Cooking, Cuisine and Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, ix. 253 pp. $9.95, (paper).

Twenty-four Chinese NPC patients under 25 years of age at the time of diagnosis were interviewed. The interviews were carried out in the presence of their families in 22 cases and concentrated on the environmental background of the subject's infancy and early childhood. An analysis of the results eliminated household inhalants, aerial contaminants,...

The people of the State of California (USA) have voted to put coastline development under strict State control; control had previously been vested in local communities, in so far as it had existed at all. The newly-established policy represents a major break with tradition, as government authority over zoning and other development control has previ...

One of the stimuli for the growth of interest in ecology and the environment over the last few years was the growth of a radical stance in ecological politics. This movement has been focused in the United States and England. The basic tenet of the movement is that environmental ills are caused by socioeconomic ills, and that a basic restructuring o...

Knowledge is socially constructed, yet humans succeed in knowing a great deal about their environments. Recent debates over the nature of "science" involve extreme positions, from claims that allscience is arbitrary to claims that science is somehow a privileged body of truth. Something may be learned by considering the biological know ledge of a v...

"Common themes emerge from the stories told by the other papers in this panel. First, local people, whether indigenous or fairly recent arrivals, know their terrain and its ecology exceedingly well, and their knowledge is not only useful but almost certainly necessary in any management scheme. Second, they are under great economic pressure to produ...

"Chunhuhub, a Maya ejido in the forests of Quintana Roo, Mexico, is one of several ejidos in the area that are attempting to manage their forest cover according to ejido rules, that is, collectively. The Mexican government currently views the ejido system as less than ideal. it is considering the abolition of the ejido system and privatization of t...

"This excellent and important article adds another case to the many now on record that indicate that tropical shifting cultivation can be sustainable, intensive, and highly productive."