In this paper, we first discuss various vantage points gained through the authors' experience of approaching conservation through a "cultural lens." We then draw out more general concerns that many anthropologists hold with respect to conservation, summarizing and commenting on the work of the Conservation and Community Working Group within the Anthropology and Environment Section of the Americ...

How have anthropologists related to extraordinary or supernatural phenomena (the transcendent) in disciplinary definitions of religion and the practice social analysis? This text argues that ...

Over the last sixty-five years, since the country’s independence, trained anthropologists have conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in India. In this time span, anthropological discourses about Indian society have developed their own specificity, while at the same time the anthropology of India has also had a profound impact on the discipline as a whole. This paper provides a critical ove...

The beginnings of medical anthropology in the Netherlands have a ‘xenophile’ character in two respects. First, those who started to call themselves medical anthropologists in the 1970s and 1980s were influenced and inspired not so much by anthropological colleagues, but by medical doctors working in tropical countries who had shown an interest in the role of culture during their medical work. S...

Divination is more dialogical than some diviners or anthropologists have made it appear. I analyze the transcript of one Bangladeshi divination event, comparing it with a dozen others performed by one diviner, Delwar, revealing how tenuously he manages to assign a single meaning to troubles, especially when clients openly compare his declarations with their intimate knowledge of those troubles....

Social scientists, particularly anthropologists, have been taken to task for deflating and de-emphasising the problematic outcomes associated with alcohol use (Room 1984). Many researchers, reacting perhaps to the sometimes moralising stance taken by welfare-oriented approaches, have focused on the benefits associated with alcohol use for different societies, for example its role in exchange, a...

Kinship was one of the key areas of research interest among anthropologists in the nineteenth century, one of the most hotly debated areas of theory in the early and mid-twentieth century, and yet an area of waning interest by the end of the twentieth century. Since then, the study of kinship has experienced a revitalization, with concomitant disputes over how best to proceed. This special issu...

Within the context of medical examiner's offices, forensic anthropologists are increasingly being asked to assist with the interpretation of traumatic skeletal injury. This case study presents an example of trauma analysis performed by forensic anthropologists at the Maricopa County Forensic Science Center in Phoenix, Arizona. The primary goal of this study is to document an uncommon pattern of...

From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich is a fascinating and provocative analysis of archival materials by Gretchen E. Schafft, many of which were recently discovered, that demonstrate the complicity of German anthropologists in creating, disseminating, and realizing the Nazi worldview as outlined by Adolf Hitler. As an applied anthropologist, Schafft was able to provide critic...