Article

Bringing Culture into Human Biology and Biology Back into Anthropology

September 2013
American Anthropologist 115(3)

DOI:10.1111/aman.12022

Authors:

Hampshire College

In the recent past, human biology in anthropology was typically theorized as separate from—even in tension with—culture. In contrast, by further theorizing the social, political, and ecological processes through which what I call “cultural–biologicals” dialectically come into being, I foreground the restlessness and site specificity of human biology. In this article, I highlight research of three junior colleagues to propose two general processes connecting culture to biology: (1) through culturally specific readings of biological variables that, in turn, have biological consequences, and (2) through systems of global and local stratification that “get under the skin.” Anthropology is well positioned to follow the diverse pathways through which forms of stratification such as racism, sexism, and class inequalities seep into our biological beings, influencing states of nutrition, stress, and health, as well as ecology and culture. I show that biology does not stand still. By highlighting some of the restlessness of biological processes, I hope to move anthropology to reconsider a more complex, site-specific, and dialectical approach to human biology. Rethinking biology—especially human biology—in these ways may profoundly change how anthropologists, biologists, and citizens understand biology and thereby care for human bodies. En el pasado reciente, la biología humana en antropología fue típicamente teorizada como separada—aún en tensión—con la cultura. En contraste, propongo que antropólogos reincorporen una biología humana más específica en términos de lugar y dinámica dentro de la antropología y, además, teoricen los procesos sociales, políticos y ecológicos a través de los cuales surgió dialécticamente lo que yo llamo “cultural-biológico”. En este artículo destaco la investigación de tres colegas de menor antigüedad para proponer dos procesos generales conectando cultura a biología: (1) a través de lecturas culturalmente específicas de variables biológicas que, a la vez, tienen consecuencias biológicas, y (2) a través de sistemas de estratificación global y local que “producen exasperación”. La antropología esta bien posicionada para seguir los diversos caminos a través de los cuales formas de estratificación como racismo, sexismo y desigualdades de clase se filtran en nuestros seres biológicos, influenciando estados de nutrición, estrés y salud, así como ecología y cultura. Demuestro que la biología no se estanca. A través de enfatizar algunos de los siempre cambiantes procesos biológicos, espero mover la antropología a reconsiderar una aproximación más compleja, especifica del lugar, y dialéctica a la biología humana. Repensar la biología—específicamente la biología humana—en estas maneras puede profundamente cambiar cómo los antropólogos, los biólogos, y los ciudadanos entienden biología, y de este modo prestan atención a los cuerpos humanos.

Embedded Racism: Inequitable Niche Construction as a Neglected Evolutionary Process Affecting Health

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2023

Racial health disparities are a pervasive feature of modern experience and structural racism is increasingly recognized as a public health crisis. Yet evolutionary medicine has not adequately addressed the racialization of health and disease, particularly the systematic embedding of social biases in biological processes leading to disparate health outcomes delineated by socially-defined race. In contrast to the sheer dominance of medical publications which still assume genetic “race” and omit mention of its social construction, we present an alternative biological framework of racialized health. We explore the unifying evolutionary-ecological principle of niche construction as it offers critical insights on internal and external biological and behavioral feedback processes environments at every level of organization. We Integrate insights of niche construction theory in the context of human evolutionary and social history and phenotype-genotype modification, exposing the extent to which racism is an evolutionary mismatch underlying inequitable disparities in disease. We then apply ecological models of niche exclusion and exploitation to institutional and interpersonal racial constructions of population and individual health, and demonstrate how discriminatory processes of health and harm apply to evolutionarily relevant disease classes and life-history processes in which socially-defined race is poorly understood and evaluated. Ultimately, we call for evolutionary and biomedical scholars to recognize the salience of racism as a pathogenic process biasing health outcomes studied across disciplines and to redress the neglect of focus on research and application related to this crucial issue.

Navigating Identity: The Intersection of Social and Biological Identity from the World War II Battle of Tarawa

Article

Jan 2022
Hum Biol

Navigating Identity: The Intersection of Social and Biological Identity from the World War II Battle of Tarawa

Article

Mar 2021
Hum Biol

The 1943 Battle of Tarawa resulted in the loss of approximately 1,000 US service members on or around Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll, Republic of Kiribati. Nearly half these casualties were accounted for after the battle. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) has worked to identify the remaining ∼510 unaccounted-for service members and has successfully identified ∼160 service members to date. Demographic data pulled from historical documentation of the US losses indicate a relatively homogeneous population (99% White, 81% 17-23 years of age, and only two individuals with a documented religious preference other than Protestant or Catholic). Using this demographic data as a framework, three case studies are presented to demonstrate how a holistic biosocial approach to building identity could facilitate forensic identifications. The temporal and sociocultural contextualization of analyses enables anthropologists to navigate inconsistencies between 21st-century and historical (1940s) social identity concepts to overcome challenges to identification. The case studies demonstrate how biological evidence, genetic evidence, and material evidence (material culture) differently contribute to the social identity of an individual and can impact identification efforts when analytical conclusions are incongruent with historical documentation. The first case of US Battle of Tarawa casualties examines how morphometric biological affinity assessments are biased by the fluidity of social identity concepts when complex morphological and metric indicators of biological affinity are not represented in historical race categories. The second case demonstrates how biogeographic genetic affinity predictions, through a discussion of the G2a4 haplogroup, need to be examined holistically in the context of other lines of evidence. The third case highlights how material evidence can further define social identity beyond physicality, genetic structure, and race. The challenges of interpreting identity from human remains, as highlighted through these examples, are commonly encountered by anthropologists working in disaster victim identification and other humanitarian contexts. Thus, it is imperative for anthropologists to be self-aware of implicit biases toward the current prevailing definitions of biological and social identity and to consider historical perceptions of identity when working in these contexts.

Crossing at y/our own peril: Biocultural boundary crossing in anthropology

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2022
AM ANTHROPOL

Biocultural approaches in anthropology originated from a desire to dissolve the nature/culture divide that is entrenched in the discipline. Whereas biocultural approaches were born under the umbrella of medical anthropology, by the late 1990s, biology‐centered approaches to bioculturalism had been mostly taken up by human biologists in biological anthropology. It was at this point that biology‐inclined approaches began to gel into an informal interdiscipline, biocultural anthropology. Much like any other discipline, biocultural anthropology developed research and professional norms with erected boundaries around acceptable work and workers. We draw from scholarly work in interdisciplinary studies to explore those norms and boundaries from the perspective of our collaborative, multimethod, and interdisciplinary project that combines “biology” and “culture” in unconventional ways. We provide examples of the obstacles, barriers, and risks we experienced and the costs exacted on the research project and the researchers due to the nature of our boundary crossings. By exploring biocultural anthropology from the edges of acceptability, we expose the unacknowledged boundary work in contemporary biocultural anthropology, and by extension, in its parent discipline, anthropology.

Noxious Smoke and Silent Killers: Identity, Inequality, Health, and Pollutant Exposure During England’s Industrial Revolution

Thesis

Full-text available

Jul 2020

Sara Anne McGuire

How do the environments and social structures that we create and modify to suit our needs affect the individuals that live and work within those environments? Bioarchaeology and political ecology provide novel means by which to understand how the environments we create, both social environments and our modifications of the natural environment, can affect the body and individuals’ health disproportionately. This dissertation uses osteological analyses, historic records, trace element analysis (arsenic, barium, and lead), and isotopic analyses (various lead isotopes as well as strontium 87/86) to evaluate how different types of anthropogenic environments can be retained within and have an effect upon the body. Key in this dissertation is how anthropogenic environments and industrial practices transformed environments during the Industrial Revolution in England, and how individuals’ interaction with their environments depended upon elements of their biosocial identity and the inequality present within society, both of which ultimately dictate what environments individuals can access. Accordingly, the anthropogenic processes that transformed environments in England and which were prevalent during the industrial period were a systemic threat that had far reaching consequences throughout the country, and possibly the world. This dissertation studies two archaeological collections of individuals from England during the Industrial Revolution. Neither collection is extreme in being either completely industrial and urban, or completely rural and agrarian. Instead, these collections fall within the mid-range of industrialization, though one is larger and more industrialized than the other. The more industrial population was buried at St. Hilda’s parish in South Shields, a large industrial town with a variety of industries that include nearby coal mines and the construction of ships and steam engines. The more agrarian population was buried at St. Peter’s church in Barton-upon-Humber, a small market town focused on agriculture. These collections were chosen, as was this time period, because they represent populations of individuals who lived during dramatic environmental change, but before environmental and occupational legislation was passed to prevent pollution and job-related hazards. Therefore, this dissertation focuses on the extent to which individuals were exposed to the pollutants present in their environments, and how this exposure occurred disproportionately based on aspects of their identity and the regions in which they lived. Prior to osteological and sample analyses, it was predicted that the population from St. Hilda’s would have experienced greater pollutant exposure and adverse health outcomes than the population from St. Peter’s, and that this could be seen in the concentration of key trace elements in their bones. It was also predicted that men from St. Hilda’s should have greater concentrations of trace elements in their bones compared to women due to the more hazardous nature of men’s work during this time period. Furthermore, it was predicted that as a consequence of the concentrations of trace element pollutants in individual’s bones, the population from St. Hilda’s would have experienced a greater variety of negative health outcomes associated with exposure. The findings of this dissertation do not support all of these predictions, however. There were no differences in stature between the two populations, indicating that either there was some buffer in South Shields that protected the individuals from St. Hilda’s from the causative factors of decreased stature, or that there were similar hazards in both South Shields and Barton-upon-Humber. There were also a significantly greater number of older women among the population from St. Hilda’s compared to St. Peter’s, further reinforcing this finding. In regard to the pollutants present in both environments, there were harmful concentrations of different trace element pollutants in the skeletal samples from both populations (lead among those from St. Peter’s, and barium and arsenic among those from St. Hilda’s), and women from St. Hilda’s show significantly higher levels of arsenic and barium in their bodies compared to men. Furthermore, the men from St. Peter’s had significantly greater skeletal concentrations of lead compared to the men from Sr. Hilda’s. The findings of this dissertation contradict the assumptions that the countryside and more rural environments provided safe and clean escapes from industrial cities and towns, and that women experienced fewer hazards in terms of pollutant exposure compared to men. Instead, there was continuity in environments throughout England during the Industrial Revolution such that the major changes and processes that occurred in industrial cities affected the entire country. A more agrarian town like Barton-upon-Humber was not immune to the pollutants and harmful effects of industry. However, living in a larger and more industrial town like South Shields was not entirely harmful to its population, either. Potential routes of exposure to pollutants and toxic compounds include not only occupational exposure, but also exposure as a result of burning coal in the home and workplace for heat, energy, and to cook food, as well as the use of goods made with toxic compounds – “silent killers” that could be found in homes throughout the country.

Navigating Identity: The Intersection of Social and Biological Identity from the World War II Battle of Tarawa

Article

Jan 2021
Hum Biol

The 1943 Battle of Tarawa resulted in the loss of approximately 1,000 US service members on or around Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll, Republic of Kiribati. Nearly half these casualties were accounted for after the battle. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) has worked to identify the remaining ~510 unaccounted-for service members and has successfully identified ~160 service members to date. Demographic data pulled from historical documentation of the US losses indicate a relatively homogeneous population (99% White, 81% 17–23 years of age, and only two individuals with a documented religious preference other than Protestant or Catholic). Using this demographic data as a framework, three case studies are presented to demonstrate how a holistic biosocial approach to building identity could facilitate forensic identifications. The temporal and sociocultural contextualization of analyses enables anthropologists to navigate inconsistencies between 21st-century and historical (1940s) social identity concepts to overcome challenges to identification. The case studies demonstrate how biological evidence, genetic evidence, and material evidence (material culture) differently contribute to the social identity of an individual and can impact identification efforts when analytical conclusions are incongruent with historical documentation. The first case of US Battle of Tarawa casualties examines how morphometric biological affinity assessments are biased by the fluidity of social identity concepts when complex morphological and metric indicators of biological affinity are not represented in historical race categories. The second case demonstrates how biogeographic genetic affinity predictions, through a discussion of the G2a4 haplogroup, need to be examined holistically in the context of other lines of evidence. The third case highlights how material evidence can further define social identity beyond physicality, genetic structure, and race. The challenges of interpreting identity from human remains, as highlighted through these examples, are commonly encountered by anthropologists working in disaster victim identification and other humanitarian contexts. Thus, it is imperative for anthropologists to be self-aware of implicit biases toward the current prevailing definitions of biological and social identity and to consider historical perceptions of identity when working in these contexts.

To Keep this Disease from Killing You: Cultural Competence, Consonance, and Health among HIV-positive Women in Kenya

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2017

Toni Copeland

The HIV/AIDS crisis continues in sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly 70% of infections are found. Despite recent efforts to supply antiretroviral therapy to those infected, most are not receiving medication and are forced to rely on self-management to remain healthy. In Kenya, many of those infected are women living in extreme poverty. This article presents the findings of research among poor women in Nairobi that examined the relationship between knowledge of a cultural model of self-managing HIV/AIDS, cultural consonance, and health. This biocultural study expands on earlier findings showing that knowledge of the model (competence) is a significant predictor of health by examining here how behavior consistent with that knowledge (consonance) affects health outcomes, as measured by CD4 counts, perceived stress, depressive symptoms, and recent illnesses. It concludes that knowledge of the model is a significant predictor of health, even after controlling for demographic data and behaviors. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Musahars’ perspective on nature, culture and cosmology

Article

Nov 2024

Madhu Giri

This paper tries to explore Musahars’ understanding and their behaviors about private property/possession, nature, and cosmology at large. Policymakers and change makers blamed that Musahars did not save private property, food, and money for their future. The establishment narrative in Madhes is, ‘Musahars are the destroyer of private property’. The community was essentialized as a metaphor for Banmanchhe (forest-human), an example of marginalization, and a sample of the illiterate community in Nepal. The main knowledge gap is, what is their understanding of private property, natural resources, and cosmology? How do they interpret themselves, other people, and nature? How do they interpret life, property, happiness, and death? To address such a series of questions, the researcher employed ethnographic observation, and key informant interviews during a fieldwork at Golbazar (Siraha, Nepal), in 2013-2017. Musahars have different understandings of life, private property, and cosmology. They believed that all natural resources were collective property including non-human by nature but powerful people exploited them by making rules of private property relations. Musahars’ cosmological and natural understanding is that they could communicate and understand natural entities (wild animals, soil, trees, water, and air) and cosmological phenomena (spirits, gods, souls) and vice-versa.

Biyokültürel bakış açısıyla popüler müzikte üretilen ve seçilen benzer örüntülerin temel dayanakları

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2024

Bu makale, popüler müziğin biyokültürel analizine odaklanarak, müzik biliminin disiplinlerarası bir yaklaşımını sunar. Müziğin biyoloji, psikoloji, sinirbilim ve karmaşıklık bilimi gibi alanlarla bütünleşmesini sağlayarak, müzikal tercihlerin ardındaki sosyal ve biyolojik süreçleri inceler. Makale, müziği yalnızca bir kültürel fenomen olmaktan öte, biyolojik boyutlarıyla ele alır ve biyokültürel yaklaşımı kullanarak, biyolojik ve kültürel etmenlerin karşılıklı etkileşiminin altını çizer. Bu çerçevede, popüler müzikteki benzerliklerin ve tekrar eden motiflerin üretim ve seçim süreçlerindeki etkileri, bireylerin müzikteki tanıdık unsurlara olan yatkınlıkları ile ilişkilendirilir ve bu bağlamda önemli hipotezler geliştirilir. Araştırmanın metodolojisi, nitel ve nicel veri analizlerinin birleşimini içerir, bilişsel ve biyolojik süreçlerin müzik tercihleriyle olan etkileşimini derinlemesine inceler. Ayrıca, benzerliklerin müzik endüstrisindeki stratejik kullanımını ve ekonomik verileri, endüstrinin dinamiklerini anlamak amacıyla değerlendirir. Bulgular, popüler müzik eserleri arasındaki benzerliklerin ve tekrar eden motiflerin, eserlerin yapısını ve dinleyiciler üzerindeki etkisini belirleyen kritik unsurlar olduğunu ortaya koyar. Bu bulgular, biyokültürel hipotezler ile desteklenir ve bilimsel araştırmalara dayanarak, zaman içinde ve farklı müzik türleri arasında bu benzerliklerin nasıl etkileşime girdiği analiz edilir. Çalışma, müzikal eserlerin tasarımı ve pazarlamasında dinleyici kitlesinin bilgi ve beklentilerinin önemini vurgular ve bu bilgilerin stratejik kullanımının müzik endüstrisinin başarısında kritik bir rol oynadığını gösterir. Sonuç olarak, makale, müzikolojinin geleneksel yaklaşımlarının ötesine geçerek, müziğin biyolojik, ekolojik ve sosyal yönlerinin entegrasyonunun önemini vurgular. Araştırma, besteleme, düzenleme, yayımlama, tüketme ve popüler müzik eserlerini pazarlama süreçlerine yenilikçi bir bakış açısı getirmeyi hedefler. Bu karmaşık sistem temelinde yükselen bilimler arası kapsamlı bakış açısı, gelecekteki müzikoloji çalışmalarında ve müzik endüstrisinin çeşitli alanlarında uygulanabilecek stratejilerin geliştirilmesine katkıda bulunacak, müzikal eserlerin daha geniş bir kitleye ulaşmasını sağlayacak yenilikçi yaklaşımlar sunar.

Beyond ‘heightism’ and ‘height premium’: An anthropology and sociology of human stature

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2023

Gideon Lasco

This review article examines the meanings and materialities of human stature, from serving as a marker of human difference to shaping the socio‐spatial experiences of individuals. I introduce existing perspectives on height from various disciplines, including biomedical discourses on the factors (e.g. nutrition, genetics) that determine height, economic discourses on how the average heights of populations have changed over time, sociobiological and psychological discourses that assume a pre‐cultural, evolutionary “height premium”, and popular discourses on heightism and height discrimination. Drawing from a diverse range of scholarship since Saul Feldman called for a “sociology of stature” in the 1970s, I then present ways in which height and height differences have figured in various domains of human experience, from employment and education to sports and social relationships. Finally, I survey people's attempts to become taller or shorter, and the implicit values that inform such height‐making practices. What these figurations and practices show, I argue, is that height intersects with notions of race, class, gender, and beauty – but is irreducible to any of them, and is thus best viewed as a distinct, embodied form of distinction, difference, and inequality. I conclude by proposing a research agenda for future work.

Coping mechanisms during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown in metropolitan Johannesburg, South Africa: A qualitative study

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2023
AM J HUM BIOL

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused prolonged stress on numerous fronts. While the acute health impacts of psychosocial stress due to the pandemic are well-documented, less is known about the resources and mechanisms utilized to cope in response to stresses during the pandemic and lockdown. Objective: The aim of this study was to identify and describe the coping mechanisms adults utilized in response to the stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic during the 2020 South African lockdown. Methods: This study included adults (n = 47: 32 female; 14 male; 1 non-binary) from the greater Johannesburg region in South Africa. Interviews with both closed and open-ended questions were administered to query topics regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were coded and thematically analyzed to identify coping mechanisms and experiences. Results: Adults engaged in a variety of strategies to cope with the pandemic and the ensued lockdown. The ability to access or engage in multiple coping mechanisms were either enhanced or constrained by financial and familial situations. Participants engaged in seven major coping mechanisms: interactions with family and friends, prayer and religion, staying active, financial resources, mindset reframing, natural remedies, and following COVID-19 prevention protocols. Conclusions: Despite the multiple stressors faced during the pandemic and lockdown, participants relied on multiple coping strategies which helped preserve their well-being and overcome pandemic-related adversity. The strategies participants engaged in were impacted by access to financial resources and family support. Further research is needed to examine the potential impacts these strategies may have on people's health.

The Sidama Model of Human Development

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2023
HUM NATURE-INT BIOS

Human ontogeny has been shaped through evolution, resulting in markers of physical, cognitive, and social development that are widely shared and often used to demarcate the lifespan. Yet, development is demonstrably biocultural and strongly influenced by context. As a result, emic age categories can vary in duration and composition, constituted by both common physical markers as well as culturally meaningful indicators, with implications for our understanding of the evolution of human life history. Semi-structured group interviews (n = 24) among Sidama adults and children, as well as individual interviews with children (n = 30), were used to identify age categories across the lifespan and to specifically investigate acquisition of sociocultural skills and cognitive development. Ten major age categories were identified, covering birth through death. These largely map onto patterning of human universals, but specific cultural beliefs and behaviors were indicated as important markers of development. Adults and children are oriented toward the dynamic relationships between physical development and acquisition of skills tied to social and cultural success. Culture, ecology, and ontogeny are co-determinants of human development, and the interactions among them should be considered in studies examining human life history and its evolution.

Jumping is not just about height: Biosocial becomings as an integrative approach in understanding contextualized jump performance in Maasai society

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2022
PLOS ONE

Studies focused on jumping performance in humans have so far investigated either its biological or sociocultural significance, with very little attentions paid to the inseparable relations of these two aspects in daily life of people. Integrating both ethnographic and biomechanical methods, this research investigated the biosocial features of the jump performance of Maasai youth in its most well observed context, the wedding ceremony. Ethnographic data were used to explain the social status of participants, the physical movements and singing tempo of performers, and their interactions. Biomechanical methods were applied to assess the heights and frequencies of identified repetitive double-legged vertical jumps (n = 160, from 15 male youths). All youth performers followed a certain posture pattern, paying specific attention to their final landing. Large variations exist in their jumping heights [coefficient of variation (CV) = 0.237]; however, the frequency in jump repetitions were maintained with the least variations (CV = 0.084). Cheering interactions were confirmed, but with no significant difference in height between the cheered and non-cheered groups. These results indicate that the Maasai youths did not compete for jump height during local ceremonies. Rather, they emphasized the rhythmical retention of jumps, corresponding to other youth mates who were singing alongside. In the broader context of human behaviors, the analysis addresses the diverse meanings of motor performances in different daily contexts that reject the generalized sports regime of “higher/faster-the-better”.

A systems integral approach in exploring creative innovation in culinary research: the example of seaweed in the context of the new nordic cuisine

Article

Apr 2022

Creativity and innovation in culinary research have gained steady academic interest over the last decade. The scholastic interest in creative innovation ranges from its artistic value to culinary creations, gastronomic experiences, and food science and technology. Creative innovation is important for food enterprises to succeed in a highly competitive market. In the context of the New Nordic Cuisine, entrepreneurs and chefs are constantly challenged to bring something new to the dining table. In this context, the processes of creative innovation remain under researched, particularly in the use of seaweed. As such, using the example of seaweed, a relatively new food in the New Nordic Cuisine, the objective of this corpus based study was to explore creative innovation from a systems integral approach, in order to uncover salient themes that contribute the processes of creative innovation in culinary research, and bringing new foods to market. For a corpus driven study, we built a small corpora of interviews with chefs, and food entrepreneurs. We enquired after what inspired and motivated them when faced with a challenge of bringing a relatively new food to market, or in creating new dishes with new available food technologies. The results suggested that food technology plays a critical role in creative innovation, and the resulting new dishes that can be presented to customers. They also suggested that seaweed in the New Nordic Cuisine is an emerging food concept, and that it is embedded in a social and cultural history and familiarity of the Nordic people.

Cultural Consonance in Food Consumption and Nutrient Intake in Southern Brazil

Article

Dec 2021

Culture influences food consumption and nutrient intake. In this paper we present a new approach in research, examining how knowledge and understanding of food is encoded in cultural models. The degree to which individuals match these shared models in their own consumption patterns is then measured, using the concept of cultural consonance. In research conducted in urban Brazil, the configuration of cultural models of food, and the association of cultural consonance in food with nutrient intake, are moderated by socioeconomic status. The theory and method employed here offers a new approach to the study of culture, food, and nutrient intake.

Skeletal evidence of structural violence among undocumented migrants from Mexico and Central America

Article

Aug 2021

Objectives We examine the prevalence and sociodemographic risk factors of skeletal indicators of stress in forensic samples of undocumented migrants from Mexico and Central America. Materials and methods Cranial and dental remains of 319 migrants recovered in the Arizona and Texas borderlands were assessed for porotic hyperostosis (PH), cribra orbitalia (CO), and linear enamel hypoplasias (LEH). Logistic regression models for each condition were estimated to test for associations with biological sex, age, recovery location, and whether individuals were identified. Additional models estimated for a subsample of identified migrants included region of origin, residential context, and community indigeneity. Results The full sample shows moderate crude prevalence of CO (9.6%) and LEH (34.1%), and a high prevalence of PH (49.6%). Significantly higher odds of PH are associated with being male (2.16 times higher), unidentified (1.89 times higher), and recovered in Arizona (3.76 times higher). Among identified migrants, we fail to find associations significant at the p < 0.05 level between skeletal stress and all sociodemographic variables except age. Discussion The factors associated with PH may be related to influences on decisions to migrate and diversity among migrant sending regions. The skeletal evidence for early life stress is generally consistent with common public health concerns among impoverished communities in the region. The lesions themselves are viewed as embodied risk of physiological disturbance when resource access is structured by higher-level social, economic, and political forces. Forensic anthropologists would benefit from increased sensitivity to embodied structural violence among the vulnerable individuals and communities they serve.

Refugee Impacts on Turkana Hosts

Book

Nov 2016

SARS-CoV-2 infection in India bucks the trend: Trained innate immunity?

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2020
AM J HUM BIOL

Sreedhar Chinnaswamy

SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19 pandemic caught the world unawares by its sudden onset in early 2020. Memories of the 1918 Spanish Flu were rekindled raising extreme fear for the virus, but in essence, it was the host and not the virus, which was deciding the outcome of the infection. Age, gender, and preexisting conditions played critical roles in shaping COVID-19 outcome. People of lower socioeconomic strata were disproportionately affected in industrialized countries such as the United States. India, a developing country with more than 1.3 billion population, a large proportion of it being underprivileged and with substandard public health provider infrastructure, feared for the worst outcome given the sheer size and density of its population. Six months into the pandemic, a comparison of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality data between India, the United States, and several European countries, reveal interesting trends. While most developed countries show curves expected for a fast-spreading respiratory virus, India seems to have a slower trajectory. As a consequence, India may have gained on two fronts: the spread of the infection is unusually prolonged, thus leading to a curve that is "naturally flattened"; concomitantly the mortality rate, which is a reflection of the severity of the disease has been relatively low. I hypothesize that trained innate immunity, a new concept in immunology, may be the phenomenon behind this. Biocultural, socioecological, and socioeconomic determinants seem to be influencing the outcome of COVID-19 in different regions/countries of the world.

Products of Industry: Pollution, Health, and England’s Industrial Revolution

Chapter

Full-text available

Aug 2020

Sara Anne McGuire

Broadly defined, the Industrial Revolution refers to the culmination of unique events that occurred in major European countries and North American cities during the period spanning the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and which saw a shift in economic pursuits from those of agriculture to those of industry and production. While the Industrial Revolution was a turning point in world history, one consequence of industrialization was the introduction of large quantities of pollutants into urban environments and subsequent human exposure to those pollutants. This chapter will explore the consequences of industrialization – or lack thereof – in two English towns during England’s Industrial Revolution (c. 1760 AD – 1850 AD): industrial South Shields and agrarian Barton-upon-Humber. The individuals who lived in these very different towns would have had unique life experiences, and their physiology would have been influenced by these experiences as well as the environments in which they lived and worked. By examining age at death and stature of a subset of these populations, this chapter examines the differences between more urban and industrial life and agrarian rural life, and discusses the biological consequences of industrialization individuals would have experienced.

Climbing, Hiding and Having Fun: Schoolchildren’s Memories of Holistic Learning in a Norwegian Kindergarten

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2020

Firmly planted in the Nordic tradition, policies that guide practice in Norwegian kindergartens emphasize a holistic approach that integrates care, play and learning and promotes well-being and development through relationships and experiences in the natural environment. While the holistic approach enjoys support both politically and within the profession, a political call for increased learning has resulted in a number of programs embracing school-based methods of learning infusing the field. The aim to increase learning has increasingly relied on a concept of learning that is the result of intentional pedagogic practice and high quality engagement between educators and children. This understanding of learning does not embrace learning related to children as biological beings in a vital phase of growth; that occurs outside of situations crafted to be learning situations. In this article, we address learning as a biological and social phenomenon, and consider how schoolchildren’s recollections of life in kindergarten can shed light on how and what children learn in the unique learning environments of Norwegian kindergartens. Our approach offers an opportunity to understand what holistic learning in ECEC can mean for children as biosocial beings.

Doing biocultural anthropology: Continuity and change

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2020

Biocultural anthropology has long represented an important approach in the study of human biology. However, despite demonstrated utility, its somewhat amorphous identity leaves some scholars questioning just what it means to be biocultural. In this article, rather than providing proscriptive doctrine, we contribute to these conversations about the nature of biocultural anthropology by considering what biocultural research does. We begin with a consideration of some of the foundational themes of biocultural work including recognition of the dialectical nature of sociocultural and biological forces, interest in inequality, and incorporation of both evolutionary and political economic perspectives. To emphasize the consistency of biocultural work over time, we also trace these themes from originating work to their appearance in current research. We then identify some of the key actions of the biocultural approach, noting that biocultural work can execute any number though rarely all of these actions simultaneously. We then offer brief introductions to the articles that make up this special issue, highlighting the ways in which each piece undertakes key biocultural actions. Following these introductions, we provide a discussion of some of the types of biocultural work that are not present in this special issue, recognizing the breadth of biocultural research across multiple subfields of anthropology. Finally, we point to some potentially fruitful directions for future biocultural research. In the end, we conclude that while biocultural anthropology may not have a cohesive or set agenda, it does have a clear and recognizable form of content and methodology illuminated by its actions.

How social deficit models exacerbate the medical model: Autism as case in point

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2019

Steven K Kapp

This analysis argues that social deficit theories exacerbate the worst excesses of the medical model, a framework that attributes autism (in this example) as the cause of a person's functional impairment or disability, and empowers professionals and caregivers to treat autistic people's problems. Social deficit theories of autism generally conceptualise a deficit in understanding of others or motivation to relate to others as its primary cause. Harms of the medical model heightened by these theories include dehumanisation that denies basic respect and dignity, pathologisation of neutral and positive differences, reductionism to a social disorder despite complex traits and sensorimotor underpinnings, and essentialism despite autism's fluid boundaries. Proposed solutions include a more holistic and socially embedded classification system that recognises strengths and functional differences, more inclusion of autistic people in research and society, and practical strategies to help autistic and non-autistic people understand one another.

Building on the biocultural syntheses: 20 years and still expanding

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2019

Building a New Biocultural Synthesis: Political Economic Perspectives in Human Biology called for an integration of political economy with ecological and adaptability perspectives in biocultural anthropology. A major goal of this volume was to explore the utility of including political‐economic and sociocultural processes in analyses of human biological variation, nutrition, and health. A second goal was to enhance collaboration among subfields and work against the “chasm” that separated complementary perspectives in cultural and biological anthropology. Twenty years hence, new ways to link social inequalities and human biology have emerged in part through contributions of developmental origins of health and disease, epigenetics, microbiomes, and other new methods for tracing pathways of embodiment. Equally important, notions of “local/situated biologies” and “reactive genomes,” provide frameworks for understanding biology and health at the nexus of ecologies, societies, and histories. We review and highlight these contributions toward expanding critical approaches to human biology. Developments over the past two decades have reinforced the central role of social environments and structural inequalities in shaping human biology and health. Yet, within biocultural approaches, a significant engagement with historical, political‐economic, and sociocultural conditions remains relatively rare. We review potential barriers to such analyses, focusing on theoretical and methodological challenges as well as the subfield structure of anthropology. Achieving politically and socially contextualized and relevant critical biocultural approaches remains a challenge, but there is reason for optimism amid new theoretical and methodological developments and innovations brought by new generations of scholars.

The construction of the cultural niche: A biocultural model

Article

Aug 2019

William Dressler

Objectives: Objective of the study is to develop a more precise model of culture as an evolutionary niche for the human species. Culture is encoded in cultural models and can be decomposed into three basic components: shared knowledge and understanding, referred to as cultural competence; alternate configurations of shared understanding, referred to as residual agreement; and social practice, referred to as cultural consonance. Individuals are thus located in a cultural Euclidean space of shared understanding, patterned divergence from that understanding, and social practice. Methods: A follow-up sample (n = 64) of a larger survey sample was interviewed to collect data on cultural competence, residual agreement, and cultural consonance in five cultural domains. Nonmetric multidimensional scaling was used to examine dimensional structure. Cluster analysis was used to group respondents along these dimensions. The association of cluster membership with depression was examined using dummy variable regression analysis. Results: Multidimensional scaling was consistent with a three-dimensional structure. Based on measures of cultural competence, residual agreement, and cultural consonance, respondents clustered into three groups: the culturally proficient, the culturally knowledgeable, and the culturally distal. Individuals in the culturally proficient and knowledgeable groups reported fewer depressive symptoms than the culturally distal. Conclusions: These results suggest a three-dimensional Euclidean structure of culture in which knowledge is shared, contested, and acted upon. Such a cultural niche likely emerged early in human evolution because of the enhanced survival value of shared and contested knowledge, verifiable through practice.

Water insecurity and mental health in the Amazon: Economic and ecological drivers of distress

Article

Feb 2019

Paula Tallman

Despite the abundance of water in the Amazon rainforest, people living in Awajún communities in northern Peru express concern over their water security. In this article, I employ a critical biocultural approach to examine how shifts from subsistence to market‐based livelihoods have created threats to water security that can “get under the skin” to influence the mental health of Awajún community members. Specifically, I show how highway construction, colonization, resource extraction, market integration, and overall transitions in settlement patterns have polluted rivers with sewage, refuse, and hazardous waste. I connect this broader context to ethnographic data from Awajún communities documenting struggles with water security in the form of contamination and accessibility. Finally, I quantitatively examine whether water insecurity scores are associated with psychological distress. Data drawn from 225 Awajún men and women from four communities in the province of Amazonas, Peru, revealed that higher water insecurity scores were associated with higher levels of perceived stress (β = 0.35, p < .01), depressive symptoms (OR = 1.32, p < .01), and somatic symptoms (OR = 1.51, p < .01). This study adds a critical political–economic perspective to anthropological literature focused on water insecurity and distress and advocates for future subdisciplinary collaborations to address growing concerns with the contamination and accessibility of local water sources.

Positive effects of refugee presence on host community nutritional status in Turkana County, Kenya

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2017

Objectives: Refugee camps are often assumed to negatively impact local host communities through resource competition and conflict. We ask instead whether economic resources and trade networks associated with refugees have benefits for host community health and nutrition. To address this question we assess the impacts of Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwest Kenya, comparing anthropometric indicators of nutritional status between Turkana communities in the region. Methods: Participants were recruited at four sites in Turkana County (N = 586): Kakuma Town, adjacent to Kakuma Refugee Camp; Lorugum, an area with sustained economic development; Lokichoggio, formerly host to international NGOs, and now underdeveloped; and Lorengo, an undeveloped, rural community. We evaluated nutritional status using summed skinfold thickness and body mass index (BMI). Structured interviews provided contextual data. Results: Age-controlled multiple regression models reveal two distinct skinfold thickness profiles for both sexes: comparatively elevated values in Kakuma and Lorugum, and significantly lower values in Lorengo and Lokichoggio. BMI did not vary significantly by location. Despite better nutritional status, a large proportion of Kakuma residents still report worries about basic needs, including hunger, health, and economic security. Conclusions: Kakuma Refugee Camp is associated with better host community energetic status indicators, compared to other relevant, regional sites varying in development and resources. Based on global nutritional standards, observed differences likely represent meaningful disparities in overall health. We suggest that access to cereals via refugee trade networks and employment might mediate this relationship. However, perceptions of refugees as illegitimate interlopers maintain a high psychological burden.

Voicing the ancestors: Readings in memory of George Stocking

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2016

In this Forum, four anthropologists have chosen an “ancestral” figure to give voice to. Anthropologists’ ancestors are generally teachers, mentors, or, less proximally, canonized scholars of prior generations. Anthropologists draw on their ancestors for theoretical wisdom and practical guidance. Yet ancestors are not always shared broadly across our discipline, and they can easily fall into oblivion. Giving voice to them, publicly, allows each contributor to comment on an important scholar and invites readers to renew their acquaintance with disciplinary ghosts who still have much to teach us.

Anthropologists' views on race, ancestry, and genetics: WAGNER et al.

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2016
AM J PHYS ANTHROPOL

Objective: To assess anthropologists' views on race, genetics, and ancestry. Methods: In 2012 a broad national survey of anthropologists examined prevailing views on race, ancestry, and genetics. Results: Results demonstrate consensus that there are no human biological races and recognition that race exists as lived social experiences that can have important effects on health. Discussion: Racial privilege affects anthropologists' views on race, underscoring the importance that anthropologists be vigilant of biases in the profession and practice. Anthropologists must mitigate racial biases in society wherever they might be lurking and quash any sociopolitical attempts to normalize or promote racist rhetoric, sentiment, and behavior.

L’écologie humaine. Histoire et actualité d’une démarche interdisciplinaire

Article

Full-text available

May 2024

Dans cet article les auteurs s'interrogent sur le statut actuel de l’écologie humaine. Ils mettent en évidence à partir d'une perspective historique et en s'appuyant sur la littérature française et internationale, que l’écologie humaine correspond par sa démarche et par les auteurs qui s'en revendiquent dans le champ scientifique et universitaire, à un carrefour de disciplines à la croisée des sciences de la nature et des sciences humaines.

Biyokültürel bakış açısıyla popüler müzikte üretilen ve seçilen benzer örüntülerin temel dayanakları1Basic Foundations of Produced and Selected Similar Patterns in Popular Music from a Biocultural Perspective

Article

Jan 2024

Güncel Gürsel ARTIKTAY

Consciousness as an intelligent complex adaptive system: A neuroanthropological perspective

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2023

Charles Laughlin

In complexity theory, both the brain and consciousness are understood as trophic systems—they consume metabolic energy when they function. Complex systems are dynamic and nonlinear and comprise diverse entities that are interdependent and interconnected in such a way that information is shared and that entities adapt to one another. Some natural complex systems are complex adaptive systems (CAS), which are sensitive to change in relation to their environments and are often chaotic. Consciousness and the neural systems mediating consciousness may be modeled as CAS and, more specifically, as intelligent complex adaptive systems (ICAS), where intelligence means that a nervous system can solve problems successfully by intervening between sensory input and behavioral output. Evolution of any ICAS will result in emergent properties, particularly advanced brains. Two processes are involved in integrating experience and knowledge: the effort after meaning and the effort after truth. These efforts are mediated by the predominance given to direct experience presented to the brain's sensorium and modeling processes mediated by higher cognitive functions. Understanding consciousness as an ICAS has profound repercussions in how anthropology conceives of culture.

Migration, Death, and Disappearance: Education and Engagement in Tucson, Arizona

Chapter

Full-text available

Feb 2023

A tragedy has unfolded over the past two decades along the U.S.-Mexico border, where the remains of at least 9000 human beings have been discovered in the desert borderlands since 2000. While migration itself is not a crisis, the loss of life most certainly is. In addition to those who mourn the dead are those who experience the painful ambiguity of loved ones’ disappearance. The scale of death and disappearance is vast, both spatially and temporally—the geography is not limited to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, but also includes the south-to-north migration corridor from Central America to the U.S., where losses have occurred gradually and continually since the early 2000s. Within communities where migration is prevalent, everyone knows of someone who has disappeared en route . Sadly, this loss of life will likely continue until Latin American peoples are able to immigrate to the U.S. safely and legally. In the meantime, it is important for students to learn about this issue, understand its root causes, and work on solutions.

Evolution without Inheritance: Steps to an Ecology of Learning

Article

Nov 2022

Tim Ingold

Introductory Chapter: Biological Anthropology

Chapter

Full-text available

Oct 2021

Alessio Vovlas

Echolocation among the blind: an argument for an ontogenetic turn

Article

Sep 2021

Greg Downey

Proponents of the ontological turn typically advance a highly conceptual understanding of variation in ontology. In contrast, this article argues theoretically that cultural canalizations of embodied ontogenetic processes — especially the development of local neurologies — underwrite distinct lived worlds. This theoretical argument for a corporeal basis of world‐making draws on the case of vision‐impaired individuals who actively echolocate, or perceive space using sound. Neurological evidence shows that echolocators’ sensory practices over developmental time produce specialized brain adaptations to behaviour. Human echolocation thus demonstrates how enculturation effaces the distinction between biology and culture in a behavioural‐developmental spiral with implications for our understanding of human being. L'écholocalisation chez les non‐voyants : pour un virage ontogénétique Résumé Les partisans du virage ontologique s'appuient habituellement sur une compréhension hautement conceptuelle des variations en ontologie. À l'inverse, le présent article avance, du point de vue théorique, que les canalisations culturelles de processus ontogénétiques intégrés, en particulier le développement de neurologies localisées, sous‐tendent des mondes vécus distincts. Cet argument théorique en faveur d'une base corporelle de la cosmogonie s'appuie sur le cas de personnes non voyantes qui pratiquent une écholocalisation active, autrement dit perçoivent l'espace par le son. Les données de la neurologie montrent que les pratiques sensorielles de ces « écholocalisateurs » pendant la période de leur développement conduisent à des adaptations spécialisées du cerveau au comportement. L’écholocalisation humaine montre donc comment l'enculturation efface la distinction entre biologie et culture, dans une spirale comportementale et développementale qui a des implications pour notre compréhension de l’être humain.

The Dialectical Primatologist: The Past, Present and Future of Life in the Hominoid Niche

Book

Aug 2021

N. M. Malone

The 1918 influenza pandemic did not accelerate tuberculosis mortality decline in early‐20th century Newfoundland: Investigating historical and social explanations

Article

May 2021

Objectives The selective mortality hypothesis of tuberculosis after the 1918 influenza pandemic, laid out by Noymer and colleagues, suggests that acute exposure or pre-existing infection with tuberculosis (TB) increased the probability of pneumonia and influenza (P&I) mortality during the 1918 influenza pandemic, leading to a hastened decline of TB mortality in post-pandemic years. This study describes cultural determinants of the post-pandemic TB mortality patterns in Newfoundland and evaluates whether there is support for this observation. Materials and methods Death records and historical documents from the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador were used to calculate age-standardized island-wide and sex-based TB mortality, as well as region-level TB mortality, for 1900–1939. The Joinpoint Regression Program (version 4.8.0.1) was used to estimate statistically significant changes in mortality rates. Results Island-wide, females had consistently higher TB mortality for the duration of the study period and a significant shift to lower TB mortality beginning in 1928. There was no similar predicted significant decline for males. On the regional level, no models predicted a significant decline after the 1918 influenza pandemic, except for the West, where significant decline was predicted in the late-1930s. Discussion Although there was no significant decline in TB mortality observed immediately post-pandemic, as has been shown for other Western nations, the female post-pandemic pattern suggests a decline much later. The general lack of significant decrease in TB mortality rate is likely due to Newfoundland's poor nutrition and lack of centralized healthcare rather than a biological interaction between P&I and TB.

What is normal, healthy growth? Global health, human biology, and parental perspectives

Article

Mar 2021

Amanda L. Thompson

Objectives The widespread variation seen in human growth globally stands at odds with the global health perspective that young child growth should not vary across populations if nutritional, environmental and care needs are met. This paper: (1) evaluates the idea that a single standard of “healthy” growth characterizes children under age 5, (2) discusses how variation from this standard is viewed in global health, in human biology and by parents, and (3) explores how views of “normal” growth shape biomedical and parental responses. Methods This paper reviews the anthropological, public health and clinical literature on the nature of child growth and the applicability of World Health Organization Multicenter Growth Reference Study growth standards across contexts. Results The considerable variability in child growth across contexts makes it unlikely that any one framework, with issues of sample selection and representativeness, can serve as the model of healthy growth. Global health, human biology and parents differ in the emphasis they place on heredity versus environmental context in understanding this variability, but human biologists and parents tend to view a wider range of growth as “normal.” Since both biomedicine and parents base their care decisions on their perceptions of normal, healthy growth, the comparative framework used has important implications for medical treatment and feeding practices. Conclusions A more nuanced approach that incorporates the biology of growth and its association with health outcomes across contexts is critical to identify patterns of healthy growth and to avoid over‐reliance on a single standard that may pathologize variability.

The Biosocial: Sociological Themes and Issues

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2016

Biological anthropology's critical engagement with genomics, evolution, race/racism, and ourselves: Opportunities and challenges to making a difference in the academy and the world

Article

Oct 2020

Agustin Fuentes

Biological anthropology can, and should, matter in the Anthropocene. Biological anthropologists are interested in human biology and the human experience in a broader ecological, evolutionary, and phylogenetic context. We are interested in the material of the body, the history of the body, and interactions of diverse bodies, communities, ecologies, and evolutionary processes. However, the cultural realities of bodies, histories, communities, livelihoods, perceptions, and experiences are as central to the endeavor and inquiry of biological anthropology as are their material aspects. Biological anthropology is a constant dialectic between the cultural and the biological. In this essay, I argue that Biological Anthropology has much to offer, a history to contend with, and a future that matters. To illustrate this, I highlight theoretical and methodological issues in genomics, evolutionary theory and connect them to the study of Race and Racism to emphasize specific arenas where Biological Anthropology has a great capacity, and a strong obligation, to play a central role. However, Biological Anthropology also has substantive internal issues that hinder our ability to do the best possible science. If we are to live up to our potential and make a difference in the 21st century we need to ameliorate our structural shortcomings and expand our voice, and impact, in academic and public discourse. The goal of this perspective is to offer suggestions for moving us toward this goal.

Unstable Bodies: Biosocial Perspectives on Human Variation

Article

Mar 2016

Gísli Pálsson

Biological and physical anthropologists have tended to see the study of human variation and the material body as the defining elements of their subdiscipline(s). Generally, sociologists and social anthropologists, in contrast, have shown little interest in such issues. For them, the body has often been taken for granted, absent-present, as a relatively stable and commanding platform on which a variety of cultural inscriptions can be established and performed. Recent theoretical developments, however, in anthropology, sociology and related fields – informed by the notions of biosociality and nature cultures – contribute to the understanding of an unstable, relational and variable body. Since the material and the social body are fundamentally conflated through continuous processes of relationality and embodiment, this paper argues, the issue of human variation needs to be revised and expanded. Such rethinking has important biopolitical implications, particularly in the context of divisions marked by race, ethnicity, class and gender.

An introduction to advances in Andean South American paleopathology

Article

Apr 2020

In the 20 years since the publication of John Verano’s foundational paper “Advances in Paleopathology of Andean South America,” paleopathological and bioarchaeological investigations of human skeletal remains in the region have increased dramatically. Today, primary foci have grown to span the identification of disease, detailed reconstructions of biocultural interactions, embodied social experiences, and ancient living worlds. In this special issue, more than a dozen scholars reflect on the state of developments in the scientific analyses of ancient disease, life, and society across the region. For this introductory article, we frame the current state of Andean paleopathology by reviewing key historical contributions beginning in the last century. More recent trends since 1997 are defined via a meta-analysis of the literature. We then highlight current innovations and consider future directions of study. We then close with an overview of the papers comprising this special issue. Each article explores major theoretical, topical, and methodological advances that have transpired since 1997 and charts the course for the next two decades of work – with implications and insights that transcend the Andes and speak to key paleopathological issues around the world.

An outline of a theory of practice methodologies

Chapter

Full-text available

Oct 2019

This chapter introduces the notion of activist practice methodologies, illuminated through a focus on education research that is informed by practice theory and framed by an explicitly normative regard for education. It identifies and responds to some of the topographies of expansive practice theories; some of the onto-epistemological challenges these topographies create for researchers; and the relationship between methodologies and axiology, especially within education research where social justice values collide spectacularly with policy discourses around competition, the market and particular framings of evidence. Thus established, the chapter outlines key features of research that deploy theories of practice in pursuit of normative ends, developed in conversation with other chapters in this collection. We theorise that within education research, methodologies informed by expansive practice theories are derived from research axiologies that are activist in intent and that they respond to the onto-epistemological challenges of those same theories. In our account, activist practice methodologies are invested with normative ideals, specifically to advance social justice—in this case, in and through education. This work often involves novel arrangements of theory, new approaches to data, and experimental approaches to research writing. Amid the onto-epistemological angst thrown up by expansive practice theories, activist practice methodologies do not give up on method but persist in developing new ways to apprehend and engage practice. Five interrelated aspects of activist practice methodologies are discussed: activist axiologies; re-constituting the ethical subject in research practice; theory as method; more-than-representational data; and restive accounts of research.

Biological and Evolutionary Perspectives in American Anthropologist : An Editorial Provocation: Biological and Evolutionary Perspectives in American Anthropologist

Article

Jan 2019

Experimental Entanglements: Social Science and Neuroscience Beyond Interdisciplinarity

Chapter

Jan 2017

This chapter is an account of the dynamics of interaction across the social sciences and neurosciences. Against an arid rhetoric of ‘interdisciplinarity’, we call for a more expansive imaginary of what experiment-as practice and ethos-might offer. We oppose existing conceptualizations of dynamics between the social sciences and neurosciences, grouping them under three rubrics: ‘critique’, ‘ebullience’ and ‘interaction’. Despite their differences, each insists on a distinction between sociocultural and neurobiological knowledge. We link this insistence to the ‘regime of the inter-', an ethic of interdisciplinarity that guides interaction between disciplines on the understanding of their separateness. We argue: (1) that this separation is no longer sustainable and (2) that the cognitive neuroscience experiment offers opportunities for exploring this realization.

The biosocial subject: sensor technologies and worldly sensibility

Article

Nov 2017

Elizabeth de Freitas

Sensor technologies are increasingly part of everyday life, embedded in buildings (movement, sound, temperature) and worn on persons (heart rate, electro-dermal activity, eye tracking). This paper presents a theoretical framework for research on computational sensor data. My approach moves away from theories of agent-centered perceptual synthesis (on behalf of a perceiving organism) and towards a more expansive understanding of the biosocial learning environment. The focus is on sensor technologies that track sensation below the bandwidth of human consciousness. I argue that there is an urgent need to reclaim this kind of biodata as part of an unequally distributed worldly sensibility, and to thereby undermine more narrow reductive readings of such data. The paper explores the biopolitical implications of recasting biodata in terms of trans-individual inhuman forces, while continuing to track the distinctive power of humans.

Human health and social-ecological systems change: Rethinking health in the Anthropocene

Article

Nov 2017

Katharine Zywert

This review article considers how social-ecological systems change is transforming human health in the Anthropocene. From hunting and gathering bands through modern globalized societies, human health has been shaped by circular feedbacks between ecological processes, available energy sources, levels of social complexity, and cultural ontologies. As the environmental crises of the early Anthropocene (biodiversity loss, climate change, land use changes) push ecosystems across thresholds into new configurations, we are experiencing an equally profound transition for human health. Drawing on literatures from medical anthropology, sociology, complexity science, and ecological economics, this article argues that promising alternatives for health systems in the Anthropocene are emerging beyond the boundaries of the formal healthcare sector in community-based practices that can take root in a context of ecological limits, economic contraction, and growing networks of reciprocal care.

A decade of rapid change: Biocultural influences on child growth in highland Peru

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2017

Objectives: In the past decade many areas of Peru have been undergoing extreme environmental, economic, and cultural change. In the highland hamlet of Chugurpampa, La Libertad, climate change has ruined harvests and led to frequent periods of migration to the coast in search of livelihood. This biocultural research examines how the changes could be affecting the growth of children who maintain residence in the highlands. Methods: Clinical records from the early 2000s were compared to those from the early 2010s. Charts were randomly selected to record anthropometric data, netting a sample of 75 children ages 0-60 months of age. Analysis of covariance was run to compare mean stature, weight, and BMI between cohorts. Percentage of children who fall below the -2 threshold for z-scores for height and weight were compared by age and cohort. Results: A significant secular trend in growth was found, with children born more recently larger than those born a decade before. The effect is most notable in the first year of life, with the growth advantage attenuated by the age of 3 for height and age 4 for weight. While children were unlikely to be stunted from 0 to 3 years of age, 44% of the later cohort were stunted and 11% were underweight from 4 to 5 years of age. Conclusions: Three possible explanations for the rapid shift are entertained: more time spent on the coast during gestation and early childhood, which may attenuate the effect of hypoxia on child growth; dietary change; and increased use of biomedicine.

Reimaging Process in 2016: Deliberations on a Year of Integrative Slow Science in Biological Anthropology

Article

Jun 2017
AM ANTHROPOL

Robin G. Nelson

The year 2016 in biological anthropology represented a return to the methodical study of classic questions and increased integrative team-based research that utilizes multiple methodological approaches. This review is not comprehensive, but rather highlights several papers that reflect trends in four areas of research within biological anthropology: paleoanthropology, primatology, human biology, and anthropological genetics. Methodological innovation enabled scholars in paleoanthropology to tackle questions once hampered by small sample size. Primatologists approached studies of behavior and reproduction with the rigor characteristic of the subdiscipline, while paying increasing attention to anthropogenic influences on primate habitats. Like their colleagues in paleoanthropology, human biologists also returned to enduring questions regarding reproduction, human adaptation, and behavior, including, notably, a focus on variability in cultural practice and meaning, as well as resource inequity. The publications representing anthropological genetics signify a movement toward an incorporation of multiple lines of evidence in our understanding of human and nonhuman primate ancestry. In total, these papers reveal shifts in biological anthropology toward research that is increasingly aware of the limits of siloed science and attuned to addressing issues salient to the populations and communities in which we work. [comparative morphology, Anthropocene, anthropological genetics, human biology].

Shattered Mirrors: Gender, Age, and Westernized Interpretations of War (and Violence) in the Past

Chapter

Feb 2017

Kathryn M. Koziol

Contemporary bioarchaeological research has the potential to reinforce Westernized stereotypes of gender, positionality, social roles, and interpretations of specific events—inadvertently changing our understandings of these events. The collapse of available social information in the archaeological and bioarchaeological contexts reduces the visibility of multiple complex relationships, where a person might have numerous social experiences reduced into a singular context. There are many established critiques of issues of representation and equifinality in archaeological research; however, with the use of modern warfare (and violence) terminologies, Westernized notions and concepts are again shaping the discourse. Limits in the data available for interpretation may cause us to only consider some types of events (e.g., feuds, raids, battles, war, genocide, sacrifice) based on interpretations of scale, scope, and mode of death which are necessarily shaped by modern understandings and might collapse the intersections between these categories, producing a new narrative for the event. Using this frame also shapes who we would expect to see involved directly versus indirectly in these warring behaviors and therefore might also guide attempts at engendering interpretations by causing some of the contributions to these events to be overlooked. Data from bioarchaeological, classic ethnographic texts, and historical contexts are included in this discussion.

A Conversation about the exhibit RACE: Are we so different

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2007

Seeing Culture in Biology

Chapter

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Apr 2006

Alan Goodman

Traversing the Chasm Between Biology and Culture: An Introduction

Chapter

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Jan 1998

Patterns of Human Growth_book review

Article

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Sep 1989
Man

Review of the 1st edition of Patterns of Human Growth by Barry Bogin

A Sharp Rise in Retractions Prompts Calls for Reform

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Jan 2012
New York Times

Carl Zimmer

2012/04/17/science/rise-in-scientific-journal-retractions-prompts-calls-for-reform.html?_r… Reprints This c opy is for your personal, nonc ommerc ial use only. You c an order presentation-ready c opies for distribution to your c olleagues, c lients or c ustomers here or use the "Reprints" tool that appears next to any artic le. Visit www.nytreprints.c om for samples and additional information. Order a reprint of this artic le now.

Chapter 6 Isotopic and Elemental Chemistry of Teeth: Implications for Places of Birth, Forced Migration Patterns, Nutritional Status, and Pollution

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2004

Culture as Consensus: A Theory of Informant Accuracy

Article

Full-text available

Jun 1986
AM ANTHROPOL

This paper presents and tests a formal mathematical model for the analysis of informant responses to systematic interview questions. We assume a situation in which the ethnographer does not know how much each informant knows about the cultural domain under consideration nor the answers to the questions. The model simultaneously provides an estimate of the cultural competence or knowledge of each informant and an estimate of the correct answer to each question asked of the informant. The model currently handles true-false, multiple-choice, andfill-in-the-blank type question formats. In familiar cultural domains the model produces good results from as few as four informants. The paper includes a table showing the number of informants needed to provide stated levels of confidence given the mean level of knowledge among the informants. Implications are discussed.

Brain on Stress: How the Social Environment Gets under the Skin

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2012
P NATL ACAD SCI USA

Bruce S Mcewen

Stress is a state of the mind, involving both brain and body as well as their interactions; it differs among individuals and reflects not only major life events but also the conflicts and pressures of daily life that alter physiological systems to produce a chronic stress burden that, in turn, is a factor in the expression of disease. This burden reflects the impact of not only life experiences but also genetic variations and individual health behaviors such as diet, physical activity, sleep, and substance abuse; it also reflects stable epigenetic modifications in development that set lifelong patterns of physiological reactivity and behavior through biological embedding of early environments interacting with cumulative change from experiences over the lifespan. Hormones associated with the chronic stress burden protect the body in the short run and promote adaptation (allostasis), but in the long run, the burden of chronic stress causes changes in the brain and body that can lead to disease (allostatic load and overload). Brain circuits are plastic and remodeled by stress to change the balance between anxiety, mood control, memory, and decision making. Such changes may have adaptive value in particular contexts, but their persistence and lack of reversibility can be maladaptive. However, the capacity of brain plasticity to effects of stressful experiences in adult life has only begun to be explored along with the efficacy of top-down strategies for helping the brain change itself, sometimes aided by pharmaceutical agents and other treatments.

Early Environments and the Ecology of Inflammation

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2012
P NATL ACAD SCI USA

Thomas W Mcdade

Recent research has implicated inflammatory processes in the pathophysiology of a wide range of chronic degenerative diseases, although inflammation has long been recognized as a critical line of defense against infectious disease. However, current scientific understandings of the links between chronic low-grade inflammation and diseases of aging are based primarily on research in high-income nations with low levels of infectious disease and high levels of overweight/obesity. From a comparative and historical point of view, this epidemiological situation is relatively unique, and it may not capture the full range of ecological variation necessary to understand the processes that shape the development of inflammatory phenotypes. The human immune system is characterized by substantial developmental plasticity, and a comparative, developmental, ecological framework is proposed to cast light on the complex associations among early environments, regulation of inflammation, and disease. Recent studies in the Philippines and lowland Ecuador reveal low levels of chronic inflammation, despite higher burdens of infectious disease, and point to nutritional and microbial exposures in infancy as important determinants of inflammation in adulthood. By shaping the regulation of inflammation, early environments moderate responses to inflammatory stimuli later in life, with implications for the association between inflammation and chronic diseases. Attention to the eco-logics of inflammation may point to promising directions for future research, enriching our understanding of this important physiological system and informing approaches to the prevention and treatment of disease.

Icons of Life: A Cultural History of Human Embryos

Book

Sep 2009

Lynn Morgan

The Medicalization of Society

Book

Jan 2007

Bob Surname

Food, Farms, and Solidarity: French Farmers Challenge Industrial Agriculture and Genetically Modified Crops

Book

Jan 2013

CHAIA HELLER

The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon

Book

Jan 2004

The Use and Abuse of Biology: An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology

Book

Jan 1976

Marshall Sahlins

Food, Farms, and Solidarity: French Farmers Challenge Industrial Agriculture and Genetically Modified Crops

Book

Jan 2012

Chaia Heller

The Enculturated Gene: Sickle Cell Health Politics and Biological Difference in West Africa

Book

Dec 2011

Duana Fullwiley

What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People, and Their Genes

Book

Nov 2003

Jonathan Marks

The evolution of human adaptability paradigms: Toward a biology of poverty

Chapter

Jan 2010

R.B. Thomas

The triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment

Article

Jan 2000

R.C. Lewontin

Coca-globalization: Following soft drinks from New York to New Guinea

Book

Feb 2008

Robert J. Foster

Coca-Globalization explores globalization through an historical and anthropological study of soft drinks such as Coke and Pepsi, examining how they have become more than mere commodities.

Icons of Life: A Cultural History of Human Embryos

Book

Sep 2009

L.M. Morgan

Icons of Life tells the engrossing and provocative story of an early twentieth-century undertaking, the Carnegie Institution of Washington's project to collect thousands of embryos for scientific study. Lynn M. Morgan blends social analysis, sleuthing, and humor to trace the history of specimen collecting. In the process, she illuminates how a hundred-year-old scientific endeavor continues to be felt in today's fraught arena of maternal and fetal politics. Until the embryo collecting project-which she follows from the Johns Hopkins anatomy department, through Baltimore foundling homes, and all the way to China-most people had no idea what human embryos looked like. But by the 1950s, modern citizens saw in embryos an image of "ourselves unborn," and embryology had developed a biologically based story about how we came to be. Morgan explains how dead specimens paradoxically became icons of life, how embryos were generated as social artifacts separate from pregnant women, and how a fetus thwarted Gertrude Stein's medical career. By resurrecting a nearly forgotten scientific project, Morgan sheds light on the roots of a modern origin story and raises the still controversial issue of how we decide what embryos mean.

Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America

Book

Jan 2000

Rayna Rapp

The evolution of human adaptability paradigms: Toward a biology of poverty

Article

Jan 1998

R.B. Thomas

Determining African Birth from Skeletal Remains: A Note on Tooth Mutilation

Article

Sep 1994

Jerome Handler

Tooth mutilation existed in sub-Saharan Africa, and was found among slaves transported to the New World. A small number of mutilation cases have been identified in early New World ?Negro? skeletons from the Caribbean and Florida. The skeletal evidence alone precludes determining if the individuals were African- or American-born, but limited ethnohistorical data suggested the former. This hypothesis is considerably strengthened by evidence from 18th-century runaway slave advertisements found in the newspapers of five mainland British colonies. Analysis of these ads shows that every runaway who is identified with tooth mutilation came from Africa. This ethnohistorical evidence supports other sets of bioarchaeological and ethnohistorical data that the African custom of tooth mutilation was not generally practiced by Caribbean or North American slaves. Where filed or chipped teeth appear on skeletons ?racially? identified as African in New World sites, there is an excellent chance that the individuals were African-born.

The Enculturated Gene: Sickle Cell Health Politics and Biological Difference in West Africa

Article

Nov 2011

Duana Fullwiley

In the 1980s, a research team led by Parisian scientists identified several unique DNA sequences, or haplotypes, linked to sickle cell anemia in African populations. After casual observations of how patients managed this painful blood disorder, the researchers in question postulated that the Senegalese type was less severe. The Enculturated Gene traces how this genetic discourse has blotted from view the roles that Senegalese patients and doctors have played in making sickle cell "mild" in a social setting where public health priorities and economic austerity programs have forced people to improvise informal strategies of care. Duana Fullwiley shows how geneticists, who were fixated on population differences, never investigated the various modalities of self-care that people developed in this context of biomedical scarcity, and how local doctors, confronted with dire cuts in Senegal's health sector, wittingly accepted the genetic prognosis of better-than-expected health outcomes. Unlike most genetic determinisms that highlight the absoluteness of disease, DNA haplotypes for sickle cell in Senegal did the opposite. As Fullwiley demonstrates, they allowed the condition to remain officially invisible, never to materialize as a health priority. At the same time, scientists' attribution of a less severe form of Senegalese sickle cell to isolated DNA sequences closed off other explanations of this population's measured biological success. The Enculturated Gene reveals how the notion of an advantageous form of sickle cell in this part of West Africa has defined--and obscured--the nature of this illness in Senegal today.

Race: Are We So Different?

Article

Dec 2012

Featuring new and engaging essays by noted anthropologists and illustrated with full color photos, RACE: Are We So Different? is an accessible and fascinating look at the idea of race, demonstrating how current scientific understanding is often inconsistent with popular notions of race. Taken from the popular national public education project and museum exhibition, it explores the contemporary experience of race and racism in the United States and the often-invisible ways race and racism have influenced laws, customs, and social institutions.

Making the Mexican Diabetic: Race, Science, and the Genetics of Inequality

Article

Mar 2011

Michael J. Montoya

This innovative ethnographic study animates the racial politics that underlie genomic research into type 2 diabetes, one of the most widespread chronic diseases and one that affects ethnic groups disproportionately. Michael J. Montoya follows blood donations from "Mexican-American" donors to laboratories that are searching out genetic contributions to diabetes. His analysis lays bare the politics and ethics of the research process, addressing the implicit contradiction of undertaking genetic research that reinscribes race's importance even as it is being demonstrated to have little scientific validity. In placing DNA sampling, processing, data set sharing, and carefully crafted science into a broader social context, Making the Mexican Diabetic underscores the implications of geneticizing disease while illuminating the significance of type 2 diabetes research in American life.

The Use and Abuse of Biology: An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology.

Article

Mar 1978
Man

Food, Farms, and Solidarity: French Farmers Challenge Industrial Agriculture and Genetically Modified Crops

Article

Sep 2013

Sarah Waters

Reviewed Work: Long-Term Consequences of Early Environment: Growth, Development and the Lifespan Developmental Perspective by C. J. K. Henry, S. J. Ulijaszek

Article

Jun 1998

Leslie Carlin

The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life

Article

Dec 1996

Europe and the People Without History

Article

May 1984

Biocultural Perspective on Stress in Prehistoric, Historical, and Contemporary Population Research

Article

Jan 1988
AM J PHYS ANTHROPOL

Stress, a concept addressing the consequences of disruptive events on individuals and populations, can be a useful integrative idea. The stress process has much in common with its sister concept of adaptation. However, where adaptation focuses on “adaptive” or positive consequences, stress redresses an imbalance by focusing on the costs and limits of adaptation. In this paper we first review the interdisciplinary roots of the stress concept. While most stress research derives from research in environmental physiology, Selyean concepts of stress (involving increased catecholamine and corticosteroid output) have forced an expansion toward greater concern for perceptual and psychosocial stressors. What is largely missing from all traditions, however, is concern for sociopolitical processes which are not easily adapted to and consequently are persistent and pervasive causes of stress. Studies of stress in prehistoric, historical, and contemporary populations by biological anthropologists vary, in a complementary way, as to ability to delineate aspects of the stress process. Whereas the paleopathological methods of the prehistorian provide a suite of skeletal indicators of stress response, and the demographic measures of the historian provide a detailed analysis of consequence, a wide variety of techniques for examining all levels of the stress process are potentially available to those studying contemporary populations. In order to better utilize information from different levels of analysis one needs to focus on measures of stress, such as infant mortality, which are accessible at all levels. Biological anthropologists are in a unique position to elucidate the human condition if, via concepts such as stress, attention is paid to both human adaptive and political economic processes.

Europe and the People without History

Article

Aug 2013

Ronald Hutton

Rise in Scientific Journal Retractions Prompts Calls for Reform

Article

Jan 2012
New York Times

Carl Zimmer

What Is Epigenetics?

Article

Oct 2010

Referential Ambiguity in the Calculus of Brazilian Racial Identity

Article

Apr 1970
SW J Anthropol

Marvin Harris

Categorizations elicited from 100 Brazilian informants through the use of a standardized deck of facial drawings suggests that the cognitive domain of racial identity in Brazil is characterized by a high degree of referential ambiguity. The Brazilian calculus of racial identity departs from the model of other cognitive domains in which a finite shared code, complementary distribution, and intersubjectivity are assumed. Structurally adaptive consequences adhere to the maximization of noise and ambiguity as well as to the maximization of shared cognitive order.

The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life

Book

Jan 1994

This book is about differences in intellectual capacity among people and groups and what those differences mean for America's future.(preface) The major purpose of this book] is to reveal the dramatic transformation that is currently in process in American society---a process that has created a new kind of class structure led by a "cognitive elite," itself a result of concentration and self-selection in those social pools well endowed with cognitive abilities. Herrnstein and Murray explore] the ways that low intelligence, independent of social, economic, or ethnic background, lies at the root of many of our social problems. The authors also demonstrate the truth of another taboo fact: that intelligence levels differ among ethnic groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)(jacket)

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Book

Jan 2008

Michael Pollan

Genetic Ancestry, Social Classification, and Racial Inequalities in Blood Pressure in Southeastern Puerto Rico

Data

Jan 2009

Background: The role of race in human genetics and biomedical research is among the most contested issues in science. Much debate centers on the relative importance of genetic versus sociocultural factors in explaining racial inequalities in health. However, few studies integrate genetic and sociocultural data to test competing explanations directly.

Science and Society

Book

Jan 1969

An Adversary View of Sociobiology. (Book Reviews: The Use and Abuse of Biology. An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology)

Article

Feb 1977

Marshall Sahlins

{BLR 1620} The Human Body Shop: The Engineering and Marketing of Life

Article

Jan 1994

Andrew Salvatore

Human Biological Adaptability

Article

Dec 1969

Gabriel W. Lasker

Adaptation is an aspect of virtually all questions of human biology. Besides their interest in evolution through adaptive selection of the primates, including man, physical anthropologists are concerned with biological adaptability as a human attribute. In this sense adaptation has been examined at three overlapping levels: (i) those represented by differences in the extent of inherent capacities in subpopulations long exposed to different conditions, such as differences in the inherited determinants of body form and skin pigment in peoples in different climatic zones; (ii) adaptations acquired during the growth period of the individual such as residual stunting and reduced caloric needs in individuals receiving low caloric diets throughout childhood; and (iii) reversible acclimatization to the immediate conditions such as the changes which make it easier to work at high altitudes after the first few days there. Greater resilience to change is achieved if adaptations are reversible in each generation or within a lifetime. This implies an evolutionary tendency to shift human adaptability from genetic selection to ontogenetic plasticity to reversible adaptability.

Social Determinants of Health

Book

Jan 2006

"This new edition of Social Determinants of Health takes account of the most recent research in the field, and includes additional chapters on ethnicity and health, sexual behaviours, the elderly, housing, and neighbourhoods. It is written by acknowledged experts in each field, using non-technical language to make the book accessible to students and those with no previous expertise in epidemiology. This volume provides the evidence behind the WHO initiatives on the social determinants of health, known as The Solid Facts handbook.". "Social Determinants of Health is the most comprehensive, ground-breaking, and authoritative survey of research findings in this field, and is a must for everyone interested in the wellbeing of modern societies. Public health professionals, health promotion specialists, and anyone working in the many fields of public policy will engage with the issues raised in this book."--BOOK JACKET.

Toward a New Biology of Social Adversity

Article

Oct 2012
P NATL ACAD SCI USA

Ernest Hemingway wrote in A Farewell to Arms that “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places” (1). With the advent of industrialization, the forcible employment of children, and the 19th century child labor laws that followed, a broad recognition emerged that even childhood (or perhaps especially childhood) can be “broken” by the adversities of life in a harshly exploitative society (2). The early 20th century ethnographic work of James Agee and Walker Evans (3) depicted the privations and afflictions of poor children reared in impoverished settings, and the psychiatrist Robert Coles (4) documented the extraordinary hardships faced by young, black children during the Civil Rights Movement in the American South. The work of Yehuda et al. (5) and others (6, 7) illuminated the systematic vulnerabilities sustained by children of the Holocaust and famine survivors, and research by Evans and Schamberg (8), Shonkoff and Phillips (9), Hackman and Farah (10), Neville and colleagues (11), Lupien et al. (12), and Felitti et al. (13) has systematically documented the neurodevelopmental and health consequences of rearing in conditions of poverty and adversity. Most recently, studies by Rutter (14), Gunnar and colleagues (15), Smyke et al. (16) and Nelson et al. (17) have described the socioemotional and cognitive deficits sustained by children growing up in orphanages and other institutional settings with nonparental care. Hertzman and Boyce (18) and Hertzman and coworkers (19) have geographically mapped such deficits, linking developmental vulnerabilities at primary school entry to the unique geosocietal circumstances of individual communities. These observations, spanning a century and a half of historical time, have convincingly depicted the disordered development and fragile health incurred by children with exposures to deprivation, distress, and early life difficulties. Nonetheless, and against the odds, not all children are adversely affected by such struggles and misfortunes, and in virtually every population examined, stories emerge of resilient children who prosper and thrive, despite the harsh and often damaging realities of their young, troubled lives (20–22).

Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle: Reflections on the Disciplining of Anthropology

Article